Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast that features inspiring entrepreneurs who have overcome challenges and achieved success.
Today we're excited to have Alisa Newey, Founder and Director of Re:New Design, a Brisbane based Interior Design Studio and certified social enterprise, leading the way to move the construction industry toward a circular economy for a more sustainable future. Their purpose is to bring together design and business to create solutions to the global environmental crisis. Alisa is the key creative and design thinker at Re:New design and she's dedicated to building a business for good. Let's tap into how we can use entrepreneurship to create a better world.
Alisa, welcome. Thanks for coming today.
Thank you.
So Alisa, that's a really big mission, a big purpose, to be the shift in the construction industry towards a sustainable circular economy. Tell us how you came to believe that was possible.
It's been a big journey. So I'm actually in the second iteration of my business. I started my business for the first time a decade ago, in 2012. And I started my business a day after I graduated with my Master's. So I did a master's looking at industrial design so basically looking at the retail industry and fit outs within the retail industry and saying we can do better. At the moment we're building fit outs to last two to five years out of materials that last forever. So why are we doing that? So I spent a year in the workshop prototyping and developing and looking at industry waste and saying, We could make products and we could do fitouts out of this waste. And so I started a business which is Re:New Design and I was very ambitious. I was 25 and I thought that my research just made sense and I would go out to the industry and the industry would see that it made sense and it didn't. And 10 years ago in Brisbane, circular economy didn't exist, the word didn't exist. And I had been looking at things that were happening in Europe and thinking that the industry here would see it but the construction industry, in general, and in Brisbane, in particular, is very conservative. So that was a whole journey of realising that the business that I thought I was creating didn't exist at that time.
Realising that the business you were creating didn't exist. Oh, my gracious!
Tell me something, explain what that circular economy means? Just help me understand that a little bit deeper?
That's a very good question. Because I think it's just starting to become a term that is recognised but primarily within sustainability circles, so probably is quite misunderstood. Generally, I think the common understanding is that it's about recycling and fancy recycling where you're looking at a fit out and saying, Well, where can these materials go? Which is part of it but the circular economy actually is about business and economy. So it's not just looking at construction, it's not just looking at fitouts, it's taking the approach that our economy should be circular. So rather than it being extraction, then use, then waste, we throw it away, we're actually facing a global shortage of materials and resources are running out. So for our economy to continue to develop and expand not just in first world countries but throughout the world, we need to fundamentally change how an economy works and there's people working on this in all different sectors but it's primarily a business and a design problem and it needs to be a business and a design solution to the problem.
Yeah, so why would it make sense for a business owner to embrace this as an idea rather than the norm, which, like you said, was get something new, get rid of it a few years later, and on to the next new thing?
Well, I think it's coming. The circular economy is coming because the government is realising it has to, the Council is realising it has to, but it's actually going to be business that drives it. So all that needs to happen for it to make financial sense is a waste tax from government. The minute there is a waste tax from government and our recycling and waste isn't free, picked up from our curbside or thrown in the bin at every level of business, then it becomes our problem and our financial incentive to actually solve it. So that could be stationery in an office, it can be plastic takeaway containers, it can be waste paper in an office. It's not just looking at a fit out and saying, Well, we have all of these really valuable resources. And at the moment, it's most convenient and cheap or free to just throw it away. But where is away? And where did those resources come from? And it's changing our whole thought around how that works and so from a design context, and in my business, it's looking at waste streams that are coming out of fit outs but it's also looking at how do we design better? How do we design products that aren't designed to be thrown away? How do we design buildings that are like a Lego kit of parts that might sit somewhere for five years and then we pull it apart and put it together somewhere else? So it's changing the mindset around something as expendable. And looking at it as a valuable resource, which it is, and we only have so many valuable resources and we're running out of them.
It's so simple. It's so simple that it's a little bit mind blowing, that you said just a waste tax, never would have thought of that and I think you'll get a lot of pushback from that, from ordinary people be, Wait, what?! But when you think about the impact, something as simple as that could be. In Bermuda we implemented a sugar tax not long ago and people were not happy about it when it first happened because chocolates got more expensive and stuff. But you can see the impact and how that can help over time, right? It's about longevity.
Exactly. It's really in business. It's about what the financial imperative is. So business is always as much as we want businesses to do good, there are businesses that will do that, regardless of whether it's profitable, but for the majority of business the lifeblood is money. So you've got to be doing something in your business that actually generates money. So it's switching it to actually be financially beneficial for our business and that will cause innovation within the business. So it's not new, it's been happening for more than a decade overseas. It's not really happening in Australia very much at all, yet, it's really a kind of frontier in Australia that it's coming here. But there was a book called Cradle to Cradle that was written more than a decade ago about circular economy and one of the things that they suggested as the solution was a waste tax. So it's not a new idea but it's an idea that hasn't really been adopted. And that's why I was so stunned as a 25 year old, that it didn't exist, that the word for it didn't even exist.
So what next steps do you have? So you described that you started the first business only to realise that it wasn't feasible? And so what what steps have you taken to make it feasible, you've just launched a second iteration.
Agreed. So what I'm working on at the moment, and there's a whole big business story behind why that is, that probably very much relates to Resilient Entrepreneurs, which I think that we should get to.
Let’s get into it!
Where I'm at at the moment is the second iteration of the business. So it's looking collaboratively at what everyone is doing and saying, How can we be a really small part and do our little slice really well and then how can we connect all of the other people that are trying to make this happen. So what I've spent the last year doing is seeing who are the players in Australia that are also trying to solve this problem? And how we can approach projects together, and then how we can share that knowledge with the industry. So the point we're at at the moment is we need projects, we need projects to actually demonstrate this in a real way. So at the moment I'm talking to corporates to say who has environmental sustainability goals, who has an agenda to get to net zero for their carbon and how can we actually help you to do that. Because it is going to be something that from a business and corporate level has to happen and we're trying to facilitate that to happen as soon as can possibly happen.
How much uptake have you seen so far? Do you see a lot of other private industries or private entrepreneurs working towards the same goal?
It's starting, and it's only been in the last couple of years. So there's different organisations, there's a Sunshine Coast based organisation which is two sisters called Coreo. So they're working on it at the big corporates level with people like LendLease and Stockland to talk to them and educate them about the circular economy for their business. And then it's filtering down to there's other businesses who I'm working with, like FTD Circular and different organisations who can take furniture and connect them with charities. So we're looking at it from an implementation level of saying, If we have a project we’re the people on the ground, where does it all go? And then how do we take that knowledge and feed it back into new design projects so that we’re design better. So it's definitely growing and there's people working on it but it's very far behind in Queensland, there's very few people in Queensland who are really doing it and that's why we need to show people how.
But you have such a building boom here in Queensland, I mean, this must be the fastest growing state still in the country. And so it feels like that's such an opportunity but if they're racing ahead without any regard to the sustainability aspect, I guess that's pretty frustrating sitting in your seat?
I think it's a great opportunity, I think we need to do it and we need to do it fast. And we need to talk about it at all levels. So there's actually a waste strategy conversation that's happening with the government next week, which this social enterprise sector is part of, to say what are the strategies that we need and I think for industry to be able to feedback to them and say, This is why it's not working. This is what we need from an infrastructure level, it's really a logistics problem. And then it gives government an opportunity to solve that, because there are really big goals towards a green Olympics. But how do we achieve that? And how do we take it from being a goal and actually make it something that can happen and will happen. And it's not just about building a building that has a garden on the front of it and rain-efficient landscapes and having more energy efficient buildings, it's actually going, we're rebuilding large parts of a city. And this is an amazing opportunity to lead the world in what we're doing and what we can do in construction. And there's everything there to do it, there is no reason we can't do it, it just needs to be adopted by the industry.
So exciting.
Very exciting.
So tell us a bit about your journey of resilience between those two phases of your business.
Yeah, so when I started the business, as I said I was 25, I was quite naive, I thought I knew how to design. And I didn't understand that running a design business was running a business. So that at least half my job was running a business and the other part was trying to deliver design projects while I ran a business. So that was a very big learning curve and I realised a couple of months into that journey that I needed to learn business. So I enrolled in a couple of different entrepreneurship programs to teach me what a business was, how the financials of a business worked, how to actually connect with people, how to build strategic relationships with other businesses that were working with me, that I could give them work and they could give me work. So that whole idea of how a business works was very new. But I loved learning because it's just another different project, right? It's another creative project to put a business together and to understand how that works and I love connecting with people.
So that was the start of my journey and very quickly, it took me probably a year to get traction in the industry and to start getting real projects with real clients. And when I first started, I thought the way to do it was to knock on people's doors. So I was a cafe and hospitality designer, I went great, I'll go to hospitality venues and cafes and I'll knock on the door and I'll say to them, I'm a designer, I can look at what you do and I can tell you how to do it better. So it did not work as a sales and marketing strategy, I did not get work. But what I did get out of it was a really good understanding of why hospitality businesses weren't working and talking to the business owners about their business, not just their cafe.
And I didn't realise again, at the time that that was a very different conversation than designers have with business owners. Most designers come in and they say, Well, you should paint it green. Green is the colour of the season, it will attract people, it's a really nice fresh colour and so they'd paint it green. And they didn't come in and say, How does your business work operationally? What are the problems in the business? What attracts your customers? Who are your main customers? So having the chance to have six months of those conversations really set up the way that I thought about and ran a business. And because I was doing business training at the same time and was an entrepreneur myself, I really understood how important it was for these small business owners that their business worked. So it led me to create a whole network of all of the people other than me, who they needed to connect with, who were the graphic designers, who were the brand strategy people, who were the shopfitters, who were the equipment suppliers, because I needed to understand how their business needed to be successful. And I only realised well after that, that I was doing a lot of unpaid work for free, connecting them to this whole network and introducing them and going to meetings and doing things.
You could have been charging high consulting fees, had you known!
Very high but I was learning and I was understanding how a hospitality business worked. And I think I just naturally viewed it from a very different perspective than most designers coming in, because I was also learning business at the same time. So it was great, I loved the work, it was very long hours and very long days for very little money. And I charged probably a third of what I should have charged and I gave away a lot of time and energy for free. And my network of partners is what ultimately gave me all of the work that I had. So establishing those relationships was the best thing that I ever did in business but I also gave away a lot of time for free to those relationships, which retrospectively, I would not advise anyone in a business to do. Do not say that you can come and offer a service for free, which is of high value, work out with your partners how you can package that as a product that you can both get paid for. Because you don't need to give it away for free to prove the value of what you're doing.
So there were lots of learnings in that iteration of my business but the biggest things that happened ultimately is I burnt out. And I ran the business for four years, I brought on a small team, I had two people working for me, neither of them were in management positions. So I was trying to manage all of the business and all of the client relationships and all of the partner relationships and I just got to the point where I couldn't do it. And so I went away for a long holiday and I looked at all of my personal life values and the things that I wanted to achieve in my life and I looked at my business and I realised my business was the one thing standing in the way of me achieving what I wanted for my life. And that the way I had set up the business, the bigger the business grew and the more successful the business was, the worse the impact it was on my life, because I was the one who had to run everything and I was the one who was responsible for everything. And I think the decision to shut the business was one of the two hardest decisions that I've come across probably in my life but it was the right decision, it was definitely the right decision at that point, to walk away and to go back to being an employee and working for someone else.
So at that point, the business was still successful, it was running, you had clients that you had to wind down, you had employees you had to release, yes? And so it was very much a mental, and I guess a wellbeing decision.
It was and there was a lot happening in my life at the time. So my mum had terminal cancer and she had been on that journey for a long time. But I knew that the burden I was carrying with the business was something that I could not carry going through what was about to happen in my life. And so I was looking at that saying, I either need a business partner, I need someone who can come in and take what I've built, or I've got to shut it down. There's no in between of those things. I actually tried to find a business partner, I tried to find someone who wanted to come in and take the responsibility and grow what I was doing, or at least take half the responsibility, who could manage the half that I wasn't managing. But I employed the wrong person and that person didn't really have the experience and didn't really want to take on the responsibility of running a business. So after a couple of months we went our separate ways and I ended up making a decision to close the business because I reached the end of my runway and went.. it's the business or me, one of them isn't going to work and I chose myself and my wellness and to close the business. So it was successful, it was actually at the point that we were starting to get the clients I really wanted, which was franchise hospitality at that time and people looking to grow their business and really good hospitality operators, that we had some exciting design projects and we delivered all of those projects that we had in the pipeline. But I did have to let my team go and say to them, it's not working, I can't do it. I can't carry you and pay your wages and manage everything, going through what I know is ahead in my own life. And they understood, we'd worked together for a few years and they were good at what they did and didn't have any difficulty finding another employer. But yeah, it was tough. I think when you've spent four years building something it's tough to make the decision that you've got to walk away.
Yeah, I can't even imagine. I can't imagine that must have been really, really difficult. Do you regret it?
No, I think for me, I had to, for my health, I actually pushed it too far, I should have made the decision much earlier or at least a few months earlier when I knew that I needed a break. But I think I tried to find the solution in finding a business partner and maybe if that had worked, it would have been a different outcome. It's hard to say I know that at that time and certainly for a few years after that, I felt like it was a failure. I felt like I had set out to do something and I hadn't successfully done it and that I had failed in the business. And so I didn't really keep a lot of the relationships that I had at the time, I didn't.. I hid working for someone else and I didn't even tell the next employer that I had, what my experience was in business. I didn't tell them that I had spent $40,000 investing in myself and entrepreneurship training. That I'd published a book three months before I closed the business. I didn't tell them my actual value and the experience that I had because I didn't believe it anymore. And I think that was a mistake. I think it was where I was at the time but I think that closing the business wasn't a mistake, but I think not valuing all of the experience that I had in running a business and in learning to run a business, that was the mistake, because then I didn't show that to anyone for the next five years.
It’s heartbreaking.
Yeah, what came next? Five years working for somebody else and then what changed?
I realised that working for someone else, so I worked for a business that did large hospitality projects which were very creatively fulfilling but had multimillion dollar budgets. So compared to where I had been at designing at fit out levels for one-off little business owners, it was amazing from a design point of view and it was great working within a team and having more experienced designers to work with, and architects to work with, but I was quite morally challenged by the types of projects because a lot of them were gaming casino, pubs and clubs. And I just got to the point of having conversations over time that I couldn't do it anymore. And I had a particular conversation with a builder on site where I realised that no one, not a single one of us actually believed in what we were doing. And that when it came down to it, I believed we were doing harm in the world, that we weren't doing good in the way that we're using our skill sets in design and understanding business, and understanding human psychology to create businesses I didn't want to succeed. When the skills and knowledge I had created was to help businesses succeed and so I went back and said, I can't do it. I can't do this anymore, I don't believe in it. And I ultimately left, we parted ways, myself and that business. I think we had several conversations over several months about it and I then went and re-registered my business and decided to launch again - and then I chickened out.
And then I went to work for someone else for another year and a half. And then I decided that I was actually going to relaunch the business. And that was about a year ago. So it took probably more courage to start it than it did to walk away because I know this time the challenge I'm getting into, I'm not a naive 25 year old that goes, Oh business is easy, I'll just go out and change the world. It's really hard and you work really hard initially for not a lot of reward but you've got to really believe that you're going to succeed. And I think you've got to really believe in what you're doing. And for me, I've set myself a very big ambitious challenge because I believe it's something that has to happen in the world and so it's hard on different days to say, Oh, I don't have the clients that I want. I don't have a consistent income, I don't have consistent work, I could just go and work for someone and get paid. And it's really hard to back myself and say, No, I know that I can do it. I know that as a 25 year old I could make a business succeed and grow a business and I had no idea what I was doing, I can definitely do it as a 35 year old and this time it really matters. So I think it's yeah.. I guess I'm very early in my business journey again, although it's the same business 10 years later, it's hard. It is hard as an early business owner because you do really have to believe in yourself and often you have to believe in yourself when the people around you are telling you that you're a bit crazy.
Yes. We're familiar with that. Very familiar with that.
Alisa, you must have some fear about or I mean, perhaps not, but you've experienced severe burnout. You know what those symptoms are like, you know what leads to that situation. So what do you think you'll do differently this time to prevent burnout?
Well, I was actually thinking about the word resilience in the lead up to this podcast and I think I've learnt myself and with psychologists in the last 10 years is resilience is coming back from something hard, that's definitely resilience. But resilience is also building into your life what it is that you need to be able to cope with the challenges. So for me, I have to schedule rest, I have to finish at five o'clock, or if I don't finish at five o'clock it has to be the exception. I have to spend time with my partner, I have to schedule to see friends. Ideally, I should go to yoga but if I don't, I have to have a morning walk. And it's all of the things that I want to have in my life and that bring me joy. I'm a natural workaholic and I have to fight that and say, Yes, I'm excited about what I'm doing, yes, there's a really big challenge, yes, there's a big business to build but I've got the rest of my life to do it. And to build a life that I want to live and a business that fits within that life I've got to shedule rest and all of the other things that bring me joy. Otherwise I'm going to end up there again, and I'm going to end up with a business that doesn't give me the life that I want and I don't want to do that a second time, I want to learn that lesson.
Yeah, it sounds like you have. And that's incredible advice for anybody starting out is to schedule rest, scheduled downtime, schedule your life because it is really easy, like we say entrepreneurship is going from a nine to five to a 24/7. Because even when you're clocked out, your brain is still ticking, even if you're not physically at a laptop, you are physically.. you're thinking, you're talking, it's always on the forefront of your mind, and being able to shut off and rest and take care of yourself is so key. We've talked to so many entrepreneurs about exactly that. Do you have any.. you mentioned yoga, do you have a morning routine? Are you that type of person that has to do anything special in the morning to start your day?
So I have scheduled into my calendar every morning, rest and nourish, which means I can't have my breakfast while I brush my teeth and talk on the phone. I actually have from six o'clock till seven o'clock scheduled. And I live near a big park with a duck pond and I have a little dog so every morning I get up and I walk my little dog around the duck pond and then I have coffee and then I don't start work until at least 7.30. Because that's very different from what my life used to be.
Yeah, get up and go right? Answering emails while brushing your teeth and all that. Yeah, yeah, we've all been there.
Yeah, I think it's staying conscious and look, there's definitely days I do that. But my partner knows that's not what I want to do and I know it within myself but also express it and try to do the things and schedule in the things so that it actually feels like when I do that thing, I'm also achieving something. I'm not taking time out and I shouldn't do that, and I'm therefore not doing all of the productive things I should be doing, I'm doing the thing that I need to be doing at that scheduled time.
And how soon do you believe you will reach your goal? Because you talked about being patient and that you have your whole life to achieve it, which is true. But the spirit of entrepreneurship is impatience, in my mind. So I love that you found that balance. Have you set yourself a target, a timeline?
So I actually discovered something a few years ago which has been quite revolutionary in my life. And I am a very goal focused person, all the entrepreneurship training that I did, they said you need to have measurable and achievable goals and you need to have a set date that you achieve it by, that did not work for me. Because I achieved those goals and I achieved them, no matter what impact it had on me I would achieve it once I had set it. So what I find actually works for me is to set my values. So I look at, I really believe in community, connection, creativity, and impact, impact’s a really big one. And one that I've had to add to my list which wasn't on my list is wealth and abundance, so, what I'm doing to create wealth and abundance for my family. And what I look at now is, what am I doing in those areas. So I am doing at the moment for the second time this year, what I call the 12 week year and there's a book about it for anyone who wants to look at it. But it's basically saying it's a sprint of three months and you set your very specific goals for your month and then you set the actions that you need to achieve them. And the outcome of those goals isn't actually what you can achieve. What you can achieve is waking up every morning and saying, This week I need to have two meetings with collaborative partners and that's how I'm going to bring in work. So I can't control that I've brought in whatever dollar value of work, what I can control is that I've had the two meetings. So that's what I look at, but I actually schedule those goals around my values and saying, One of them is rest and relaxation. So in the next six months I'm aiming to go overseas for a month and of that time, for two weeks I'm going to be completely non-contactable. So I need to then think about all of the projects that I bring in and all of the teams that I build around those projects and say, Well in August I'm not available, so if this project starts in July who do I need to approach that project with, to make sure someone is available in August? So it changes that whole dynamic, having the big goals that kind of sit behind the little goals and then I can go every week, Well what do I need to do this week, but it's in a much bigger context of what I'm trying to achieve.
It sounds to me like you're describing yourself as a really happy employee of your own business, with a great boss.
Exactly. Well, so my goals for the business this time are to work with people I love, doing work that I love, and together to change the world. So I have no illusions that I personally am going to change the world. All I can do is be one little speck in the big network of all of the people that are working for the same cause and I can't exhaust myself trying to be the one that changes the world. I’ve got to go, Well in order to have the energy to do anything I need to do the things to keep me well and to keep me happy and to keep my mental health. And that is a big part of what will make my business successful in the long run and will mean that I can run a business for 40 years, not four.
Exactly one that is sustainable in itself and developing change as the iterations happen and global changes happen, you'll be ahead of the curve, right? Leading the way.
Yeah. And I think of it as a sustainable business and I think that's where it's often misunderstood as environmentally sustainable. Sustainable Business is good for people, it does generate income and it is good for the planet. So you have to build a business that's good for you. If it's not good for you, that's not sustainable.
Exactly right. And so Alisa have you had a mentor to help you come to these realisations along the way?
I've had quite a few. So some of them have been through the entrepreneurship programs that I've done. Some of them have been people that I know from my network that I think I can learn from. My current mentor is called Howard Tinker, I would very much recommend him, who I met through Dent Global. But I think I come across people that I want to learn from so I learn different things from different people. And some of them have been people that I've been employed by and some of them haven't been, some of them have been people that I approach projects with, some of them are just people that I happen to know. So I think there's different ways that you can learn from people and some of them you pay them to learn, some of them you don't have to. You just surround yourself with really good people.
Yes. And if you have approached somebody to be in a formal capacity a mentor, can you talk us through that because there could be people listening who wish they had a mentor but don't quite know how to do that.
It depends on what you want to learn. So some friends of mine actually asked me a few weeks ago to recommend a business coach to them and I said, Well tell me what you want to learn because I'd recommend very different people. If you want to learn how to run a business, then do a business training. If you want to work on yourself as a business owner, then work with someone who will work on your mindset. So my business coach was actually someone I knew as a restaurant marketer 10 years ago and we reconnected when I started the business again, and I said, I think that we could work together, we’re great collaborative businesses. I know you're a great person and we had a big chat for about an hour. And he said, Actually during COVID, I realised that my calling is to mentor people in business so I'm still running my other business but what I'm spending my time doing now is passing on that knowledge and mentoring people, but I'm specifically looking at what their mindset is and what things in their background stand in the way of running a good business. And I think that's what I have learned a lot in various business trainings, is, It's often not the skills of managing finance or doing what you do that stands in the way, it's all of the stuff that comes from your background that means you approach things in a particular way. So the first thing that I worked on with him is my scarcity mindset of, I don't want to make money because I think if I make money I'm not doing good. I'm being paid to do this and therefore I'm not doing it out of my own generosity. And therefore I will stay poor and I will run an unprofitable business and I will work extremely hard to pay my mortgage which I shouldn't do, that's not sustainable for me. And so having those conversations around, it's really a psychology conversation, then completely changes the way I approach it. And now I view it as saying, Actually, I'm running a business that changes the world and I know that the more money I make, the more money I have to invest in the causes that I see as changing the world. So I want to make as much profit as I can, so that I can have the greatest impact. And I want to have abundance in my family, I want my family to have the life that they should have from the amount of effort and time and skill and knowledge that I've invested and I am investing into creating a business.
Ah there's so much around mindset isn't there, especially around money mindset, we come into this world, somehow just covered in a money mindset that we didn't ask for. You're born into certain situations and you grow up with all kinds of crazy thoughts about money and it's a wonderful thing to be able to mature to that place where we can consciously choose our mindset around money and the good that we can do in the world with it. And I think that's so freeing, it's liberating to have that, but then also to free our mindset on what our possibilities are, what we can achieve that we can think big, like you Alisa and having a big goal and not shying away from it. And I always say that business brings out the best in you but it also brings out the worst in you, it is a relationship, you learn so much about yourself by running a business.
So much. And I think that's what I realised retrospectively I loved most in business training. Finances is not my jam, I obviously have to learn about them because I need to run a profitable business but it kills my soul the days that I have to sit down and do invoicing. But the bits that I learned I loved is actually learning about people and learning about myself and doing all of the profiling and then understanding why I approach things in a specific way. And I think there is so much of that in business because as you say, it brings out your best and your worst and it is a pressure cooker, particularly the first years of running a business. So if you've got reasons within yourself, why you're driven to work too hard, you won't be able to address that unless you can address why you're doing it and you'll end up burnt out. So a lot of it is actually looking at the deeper reasons behind what motivates you to do something. And I was having a discussion with my friend the other day about the energy of moving towards something compared to the energy of moving away from something. So if you're building a business like I was, because I wanted to prove myself in the world and I wanted to be successful and I was fundamentally, I didn't want to have the life that I had as a child where we didn't have enough money and there was scarcity. So as much as I felt like I was building something I was actually running away. And I was using a business as a vehicle to do that, to create the opposite of the life that I didn't want. Whereas this time, I have a vision of the change I want to see in the world. So I know what the target is, I know what I'm building towards and it energises me to try to get there. So that the amount of work might be exactly the same but it's energising rather than depleting, because when you're trying to constantly struggle against something, it takes so much energy compared to when you're excited about achieving something.
That's a fantastic insight. Yeah, it's something that I'd actually like to I mean, that is really material for another whole episode because there's a lot of psychology there and some practical guidelines too. This has been an amazing conversation and I'd love it to continue but we do like to keep it short and sharp and keep it easy for our listeners to fit it into their day as they find balance in their business world too. Just want to remind the audience that you are also an author of - the book is Open Restaurants That Flourish.
Yes.
And is it still available?
It is available and if anyone wants a copy of it, you can purchase it but the purpose of the book is actually to educate. So I wrote the book after the first four years of my business with all of the other people who helped the hospitality business succeed. And the reason I wrote the book is because I realised at that point that I don't have the energy to be the person that everyone needs when they're starting a hospitality business to guide them through the process and connect them with all the people. So if you want an e-book version of the book, I will send it to you, just send me your email and you will have all of the content that's in the book. And what I'm working on at the moment is reconnecting all of those collaborative partners and the book links back to the Re:New Design website and it will have all of the links to all of those collaborative partners that you can go to the person you need at the time. So if what you need at the time is restaurant marketing, what you need is a shop fitter, what you need is any of those people that aren't me, contact them, don't contact me. It's the self-guide version of the service that I offer and the service that I offer now is really targeted towards businesses that really know what they're doing and want to grow their business. So if a hospitality business has one or two venues, they’re a really good operator, they want to open more, come to me, I offer you the guided version of that, that helps you to grow. But if you're a new hospitality business owner or retail business owner, send me an email, I'll send it to you for free and you can guide yourself through the process.
So collaborative, I love that you're not holding on to your knowledge, you're not holding it back. In fact, you're doing the opposite, trying to get it out into the world and there's a lot to be learned from that. I'm very excited to see that you're reconnecting with those old connections so all is not lost. And thank you for your vulnerability and sharing with us the hardships of your journey as much as the successes of where you are now. I think it's important that people hear both sides.
I think it's very important because what I realised in a lot of the entrepreneurship networks is there’s this culture of, you're an imposter but you have to believe it to sell it. And so people are saying, Oh this is what I do, this is how successful my business is. When you could actually have a much better connection saying to someone, I didn't make any money through November and December, it was really stressful for me, people didn't pay me $20,000 in invoices, which is what happened in my business in November and December, and it's really hard and then it gives the break for the other person to also be vulnerable and not say well my business is so successful, when actually most small businesses aren't.
When you say it like that, it feels so painful.
Not yet.
Not yet. Okay, we'll leave it on that hopeful note and also I can't leave without just commenting on the irony and the joy in the name of your business, Re:New Design, given that this is your second time around and yeah, just so so thrilled to have had you as a guest on this episode. And thanks again for sharing, we'll include all the links in the show notes if anybody wants to track you down, that the website is www.renewdesign.com.au
Thanks again, Alisa.
Thank you.
