Episode #14 - Danielle Tinkler

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Thanks for downloading the 14th episode of the Upskule Masterclass. My name's Ralph Tucker. Today we're going to begin a series of interviews from the viewpoint of a small business owner. These are real people with real businesses sharing real experiences.

We hope by them sharing their knowledge will inspire more people to consider taking a course with Upskule and indeed chase their dream of becoming a small business owner. My guest today is Danielle Tinkler from Honeydew & Violet. Danielle, welcome to the Upskule Masterclass. Hi Ralph, thanks for having me.

Really excited to be here. Tell us about your business. My business is called Honeydew & Violet. It's a jewelry company that I started in 2011 while I was on maternity leave from nursing.

I actually experienced post-name depression and it was recommended to me that I start to be a little bit creative. I've always had a passion for design in some form, whether it was fashion or jewelry. I decided to try and do something with that. At the time, I really wanted a lovely piece of jewelry with my daughter's name on it and date of birth.

I went with that, did a little course in hand stamping and the rest was pretty much self-taught. I turned out to be quite good at it, started making a few things for friends and everything went from there. That led me to start seriously sourcing suppliers and get myself a little collection going. From there, I started to build a social media presence and that was on Facebook mainly and then I started with Instagram.

Plus, I networked furiously with other female business owners that shared my target demographic which is basically the new mummy market. So how did you go starting with something like that? Starting off on Facebook, I just started posting photos of my jewelry and talking about it and making it out that it was something that you needed and something that people really wanted. I just seemed to have a really good vibe with people and people weren't really liking it.

That gave me the inspiration to create more. From there, I started learning to build a little website and started selling things. It was all really basic at the time but it was somewhere to go from and it's taken a couple of years but I think I've started to build it up quite well. Now let's take a little step back.

What's your background originally? My background is actually critical care nursing. I've been a nurse for 17 years, seven years in adults and 10 years with kids and I still work as a nurse today. I did go back to nursing even though I created the business.

I worked part-time as a nurse and part-time with Honey Joong Violet. How hard is it managing your time because nursing is obviously one of those professions that would take up a fair bit of time emotionally as well and having a young daughter. How do you manage your time to devote it all evenly I guess? It is hard, especially since I have had my daughter and the fact that I do work with kids.

It all brings it back and makes it very real to me. And shift work is also very hard. I basically worked night shifts for the first five years of my daughter's life. She's only just started school now so time management has had to change with having the nursing shifts and with having the business and everything is just trying to fit in now with school.

So I guess it's a bit of a learning curve. Not that she's just started school the whole family pretty much as had to start school with her. I try and make it that my day is very structured so I start off with office chores in the morning before she wakes up and then after the school drop off. I then designate a good couple of hours in the middle of the day that is purely practical and working on jewelry, working on orders and getting the stock levels up so I've got things there ready to go to be hand stamped.

Then in the afternoons I try to use that for photo shoots because I find that I need the afternoon light. My whole collection I guess is very light and airy and natural light so I have to dedicate that part of the day to photography. By that stage it's usually school pick up time and I'm running off down the road. That's when I'm doing deliveries and posting orders and things like that and then I work on the website at night.

And it's just you that's involved in this business? At this stage it's me. My husband does put in quite a lot of effort with the business as well and then at times like Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day when things get really, really hectic. I do have a very good friend who I also employ that helps out with the office chores and postage and packing, all that kind of things.

And then if it does get a bit too much, I outsource and get a VA. You mentioned that you had to do a course. Understanding how small businesses operate can probably be a little bit daunting for some people. What did you undertake so that once you decided to go ahead with it and you had a real passion and skill for what you were developing?

What did you seek out to further your education in that field? So yeah, from having medical background I had no business knowledge whatsoever. The first thing that I did was looking at website promotion and how to get myself really noticed out there online. I went and basically found a really, really good community college and I went and did a course on website promotion and what I learned from that is what my aim was with that.

Sorry, it was to get myself noticed on Google without really having to pay for it. So the best thing I took home from that was to get myself noticed and spoken about by third party websites. What I mean by that is having the link to your website mentioned by someone else. So what I did was start up a blog and the blog wasn't necessarily about jewelry.

It was more to do with lifestyle but it was targeted at the people who were buying my jewelry. So I write about parenting, I write about self help, I write about our travels and what it's like living in a big city and how it is hectic having little one. Is that something that came naturally to you writing? It did.

Once I got over the postnatal depression I started to get my old self back and really could articulate well and then found that I had this passion for writing and once I started doing it I basically couldn't stop so it kind of just made my creative side grow even more. Was it therapeutic for you to actually go through that? Yeah, totally. So I started to do a business platform must have also opened your eyes to the possibilities.

It was a massive at-home moment. Yeah, massive to find that I could link my creative side in another way. Another thing I've done since then is be able to link my nursing to the jewelry because I've started to release a range of medical lurch bracelets and the fact that I've got such a diverse medical background, people are finding it really, really comforting to work with me especially if their children have diabetes or epilepsy or something. That's now bringing the medical side back in.

I guess I've got that professional, you know, that level of knowledge from my professional background that's really helping and so that's opening up a whole new range of opportunities for the business. You said time management was something that you had to be very aware of. Were there any other challenges that came along on the way? Obviously budget.

I ran for as a loss for the first two years but that was because I was still trying to find the brand's look and so obviously using a lot of suppliers. Now I make everything from scratch. So I've got my suppliers sort of down pat and the wastage, I guess, is not such a big issue. So budget was a big challenge at first.

That can be quite stressful going through that period knowing that you're spending a whole lot of money but you're not making much of return. Exactly, exactly. And especially being a part-time worker now and not having the income I used to at first. That was a big challenge.

Another challenge I found was getting sucked in by dodgy advertisers, people that were promising in the world but not able to deliver or didn't have the same mindset that I did and they didn't have the same vision of the business. That was a big thing to learn of how to sort of suss out who to go with and who not to go with and how to market the brand accordingly to that. Another thing was dealing with criticism. That was a really, really big challenge at first because it's such a personal, it's my creation.

It was really difficult to handle criticism. It's personal taste I guess. It's your creation is not necessarily going to fall in line with what other people are wanting. Exactly, exactly.

But I do work very closely with my clients and I find all the haters in the world you're going to get 100 people that love you. But what that did help me with on the flip side, it helped me really to develop my company policies. So I now have a really strong area on my website that talks about what the process is like of my jewelry. It's not factory made.

It is very individual and it goes through the whole steps of that. So people can understand that a bit better. The last challenge I had was dealing with copying and I found that especially with the artistic community that you get ideas from everywhere and you might get ideas that stem off other people's ideas and that's okay. That's okay and that's something that I guess as an artist you have to learn to deal with.

I really understood that when I read a book called Steel Like an Artist by Austin Cleon and I just think it's a must read for anyone in the creative field that's looking at a business that was really, really helpful and made me understand that I create from the heart and my designs have their own spin. So even though someone else somewhere else in the world might create something similar, it's still not mine. So once I was able to grasp that and had faith in that, then I guess I really had faith in my own business and faith in my own product. It's an interesting area that you talk about because obviously each design is unique and where does it all stand and how do you understand those copyright laws where it comes to patents and things like that?

I use a company that is sort of in the Silver District of Sydney which is New Signum and they actually worked with me on my designs. They got my measurements and my designs and computer generated it. They actually make me a lot of the pendants and no one else can use them. They're copy written to me and so no one else can be them and say, Hi, I'd like to have item number dah dah dah dah from Honey, Do You Want Bilett.

They're not allowed to do that. That's a copyright thing only to me. So apart from that, those particular pendants, the rest are all made by hand. So there's all little unique bits to them because they might not be exactly to measurement.

So that's pretty much all I can do in the jewelry field. I can't see that. You can't do that because as I said, everyone's idea is stemmed from somewhere else. So you've just got to learn to accept that.

Did you have any mentors that helped you along the way? As I said before, setting up your own small business can be quite daunting and to have somebody to assist you in that area can be beneficial. Yeah, especially not having the background, as I said, I've got a couple of friends that I do run to for advice like that. I've got friends in marketing and I've got friends in event management and they've just helped me sort of create a bit of a guide.

I wouldn't say it's a business model as such because I still can't get my head around that. That's something in the next few years. I really need to go and do is a proper small business course. But yeah, I do go and get the help of those friends every so often.

What role does customer service play in your business? Something that is creative as Du Rianne having to promote it on social media, there's obviously got to be a high focus on not only the product you provide, but also the service that comes along with that. Customer service, it's probably the most important part of my business. I do try and go above and beyond for my clients, but I also have to set boundaries also.

So obviously being handmade, there is a bit of creation time that comes with that. And in the online world that we live in right now, people want things done yesterday. I do try and get things done as quick as possible. If someone needs something that is a little bit inside the scope of creation time and they chat to me and they chat to me nicely about it, I will put them ahead and get it sorted for them so they can get their necklace made for their mum's birthday that might be next Saturday.

But as I said with boundaries, I do have a lot of people that request to see me face to face, but I do work from home. So in terms of privacy for my own family, I have to set boundaries there and I don't let people that I don't know come to my home and see my products. But I also am happy to meet people face to face if they really, really want to meet up. I'm happy to bend those rules and meet people in a cafe or discuss design ideas if they want.

But mainly what I do is is try and chat back and forth via email or chat on the phone and really get those design ideas down for them. And that's how I do with that. Talk to me about marketing. It's a big and important part for any business.

The advent of social media has been a really great tool for small business in regards to allowing people to promote products such as yours. How do you use that in one of the most effective ways you found to use social media? Social media is absolutely paramount. It is big.

It is practically free. And if you know how to do it well and you know how to reach a target market, you can just use it every day. What are some of your best tips? The best tips for creative people, creative businesses is Instagram.

You can really build your brand and build your product and build the relationship with your customers. Facebook, not my favorite, but it's got to be done. And I accept that. What I do like about social media though is that you can set it up that you can sort of flip between the two.

So I use Instagram mainly and put my posts on there. But I have it set up that I can then use those posts on Facebook and just change it slightly. Obviously with social media marketing, you don't want to bombard your followers with the same photo over and over again. So I might structure it.

So one post goes on Instagram one day and a couple of days later it might go on Facebook. That's a really big thing, but you have to do it every day. You have to be consistent and you have to know at the times of day that your target market are on there because otherwise you just don't get seen. Okay, for example, what time today would you feel is over the most effective times of post for your business?

When they are Instagram between 6pm and 9pm at night is really big. And Facebook's funny. Facebook's changed recently. It used to be Tuesday, Wednesday nights after 7 o'clock usually when people put the kids to bed but they're not going out that night and they'd be getting online.

I'm now finding that that's changing to Sundays. I'm getting most of my Facebook organic reach on a Sunday. The only other thing is when I have something that is a photo that is exceptionally beautiful or I really want to show off or I think it's going to get a lot of attention, I might use the Facebook ads to try and promote that a little bit more and I get a really, really good reach for that as well. Using the right image I imagine would be crucial to what you do on your social media platforms.

I have worked with a few photographers and been taught of how to get the right light and obviously my website photos that have people in them with my modelling shots and all that kind of thing have been done professionally but my other photography literally I just do on an iPhone and I just have learnt how to use different apps and different light I guess to show the jury off at its best. In terms of picking the right words to go with the right shot I find that with a jury business that is so personalised such as mine I need to tell a story about it. So if my clients are happy to they let me tell the story on social media of why this piece was created and who it's for and who it's about. I find that that is a really big thing in marketing because it gets your clients to, I guess they know you're a friend, they've got that bond with you now because they're hearing the lovely story that's going behind the piece and I find that's a really effective way to market as well.

And you've actually managed to sort of branch things out where you consult two other small businesses and give them a helping hand along the way about things that you've learnt. What are the key areas that if someone comes to you that you teach them? So I teach them that basically this is for someone who is in an artistic market. I teach them that they need to sort of have a face behind their brand.

They need to be not like Coca-Cola who you wouldn't have a clue who the general manager is of Coca-Cola. They need to know that you're a real person, that you have loved ones and you have meaning behind your business. And I teach them to first of all build themselves a little profile on Instagram, start following other people, start following people that are also targeting your market and network with them. Networking is a really, really powerful tool in this industry and that's kind of where I start.

I then tell them to use Facebook as well. They're my two favourite social media platforms. Getting the two together I then teach them a little ins and outs of how to make that a little bit more time effective for them by throwing posts over. And then I also talk to them about this super cool shout outs and things like that using each other, using networking to get your product out there.

So if I've got someone that might make kids clothes or kids lunch boxes or something like that that my target market might be interested in I'll show a photo of their product. Or if I've networked with someone who might be a writer or a blogger, someone in fashion maybe a stylist I will speak to them about showing photos of my product. I might send them my product to wear and then they'll take photos of themselves and post it like that. So I think that's a really important thing to get out there and network with their product.

Offering it for free is always a good thing. Again, don't go above and beyond but you need to get your product out there. You need to get people wearing it. And I think that that is a really important thing to teach people who are getting into this system to learn to network.

You said before that budgeting was one of your big challenges. What are your biggest costs when you're looking at something like this? Pretty much supplies and upgrading of tools. At first I found that I was really losing money on supplies because I didn't find, I didn't have the look down what the brand was going to be.

But now that I know what it is and now I've got my designs. I don't find that that's so much an outlay. Upgrading of tools, the edge will be a yearly occurrence that I have to have to be honest. But to be honest, building a website doesn't really cost you that much.

Building a blog, it doesn't cost you that much at all. If you have the skills or are able to learn the skills to do that kind of thing yourself, the outlay to actually have an online business is not that much at all. Then how do you manage your cash flow in regards to all of that? My actual business website is run by Shopify and I find them really, really easy to use.

I can manage them from an iPad, from an iPhone, from laptop and that just gets linked to PayPal. So all of my income just goes straight into a PayPal account and then I can buy all my products back through that. So it all gets managed quite well and it's good for invoicing as well. The invoices are just there.

You can print it out and it's all there in front of you. Then when it's time to go to the accountant at the end of the year, I can just pretty much print it all out, take it to him and he can deal with it. How important is having a good accountant when you're operating a business such as yours? I love my accountant.

He's amazing. Having a good accountant is really, really clever because they have little tips and tricks to teach you. Now my business as I said is it's a micro business and I run at part time as I still work as a nurse. So my accountant gives me tips to keep my income and my billing on paper at a certain level between a certain level that he keeps my tax down and he can still offset against that against my nursing job.

So learning things like that was a real opener to me. I never thought that it was actually possible to run a business at a loss on paper but still then have an income because there's little tips and tricks that you can do with a good accountant to get around the tax man and still do that. So that's really, really good to know. I'd imagine, Dury, as you sort of said before, is something that's quite seasonal.

So you have to prepare for the big events like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas and so forth. What's it like being around when things are a little bit quieter? In January is usually my quietest month. I do find that there's the massive rush for Christmas and then there's a big lull.

At first it was a bit nerve-wracking but now I use that time to create the actual stock. So rather than the personalized side of it, I'll get the actual ring made. I'll get the actual necklace made. I'll get the penance there.

So then when it does start to pick up again in February, everything's there. So I've got my tie that helps with time management. So using those periods that are a bit quieter financially is actually a good time to work on other areas of the business. I also find that in those periods it's good to get stuck into my writing.

I get stuck into my social media planning and I get stuck into a lot of photography. Also around those times I find it a good opportunity to make a lot of generic pieces. So obviously with my product, it's very personalized. So someone might want Ralph written on it but 50 other people might want Henry or John or James or whatever.

So I don't have specific names made but I just get the pieces made. What I might do is write things with generic words of inspiration like love, hope, freedom, whatever and then have those pieces available for photography. Then what I'll do with them is I'll use them for giveaways. So for promoting the business, generic pieces coming handy and that's a real good boost to the business and it gets the social media following, it gets the people all g-up for it and it gets the business out there again.

So that's what I use those times for. Gross is an important part of any business. Where do you see your future or the business's future? The business's future.

Well right now we are kind of at a transitioning time with my daughter just starting school as we said before. It really depends if we stay in Sydney. As I said right now we're in my micro business. It's pretty much just me and with the help of the husband thrown in every so often.

I can't really say I'd love to take on the world. I can't do that just yet but I've also got a really good work life and creative balance going on. My nursing side of things, it really grounds me and my creative side lets me have that outlet as well. So right now I guess I'm just happy where the business is.

It's doing what it needs to do. It's great for our family. It's great for me but who knows what's going to happen in the future? We'll wrap things up in a second Daniel.

You're being very generous with your time. Do you have any other tips that you might want to pass on to anyone that's listening to this today? Absolutely. My biggest tip and this is what I say when I consult with people that want to start out is get your face out there.

Don't be a faceless brand. Show people a little bit about yourself whether that be on social media or on your website or write a blog and just share a little bit about yourself. You don't want to be faceless and that's the most important thing I could probably share. Thanks so much for sharing.

I'm sure the people listening that have got some very valuable insights into the business that you operate. Can you tell us where they can find you and find your business? Yeah, you can find the website at www.honeydewandviolet.com. We're also on Instagram at Honeydewandviolet and Facebook is Honeydewandviolet as well.

Or if you want to you can read the blog which is called Once Upon a Violet. So that's www.once upon a violet.com. Thanks for your time Danielle. Thanks for joining us on the Upskill Masterclass.

Thanks Ralph. It's great. This is Danielle Tinkler from Honeydewandviolet. I think Danielle's story just goes to show if you have an idea, a passion and some discipline, you too can make a small business work for you.

Thanks for taking the time out to listen today. If you've got any questions or feedback, please head to the website upskilled.edu.au. Don't forget you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can also leave a rating or review in iTunes which would be greatly appreciated.

And if you really enjoyed today's chat with Honeydewandviolet.on at DanielleTinkler, please tell a friend. I'm Ralph Tucker. Thanks for listening. Thanks for downloading and we'll catch you next time on the Upskilled Masterclass.