Planning, pivots & pee dribbles: Kachina Dimmock on resilience, AI & small business growth

Transcript

Brook

Welcome to Meaningful Work Remarkable Life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy and I’m a business coach,  trainer and speaker  living and working on the unceded lands of the Camaragayel people here in Sydney, Australia.  

In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money,  magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do.  

We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work.  

Welcome, welcome. I’m very excited to introduce you to Kachina Dimmock, who has been a absolutely awesome client and we have traversed so many different things together. We’re gonna get stuck into that in a moment, but I wanna take a second to talk a little bit about Kachina’s business which is Collective Catalyst. Now this is Australia’s first AI marketing agency.  And Kachina was a very early adapter of AI. She was in all the groups, learning from all the, all the Americans. I remember you saying at one point, I’m like the only Australian in the group. And during the time that we’ve worked together as well, you’ve rebranded, you’ve done so many things, but I’m going to shut up and say, g’day.

Kachina

Hello, hello. Thank you for having me.  And where are you joining us from today, Kachina?  Well, today we  are seated, or half of us anyway, me, I am seated in Biarritz in the south, southwest of France. Awesome. And so tell us a little bit more about Biarritz.

Yeah, so Biarritz is the biggest city in the French Basque region. So down, down south on the Atlantic coast of France about 20 minute drive away off the border of Spain, which is a crazy novelty that I don’t think I’ll be getting over ever for the whole time that we’re out here. yeah, guess essentially I’m out here for 12 months with my husband, Henry. So I guess we’ll probably crack into that in a little bit more detail after about our conversation today.

Brook

Yes. And 20 minutes from the Spanish border, does that mean that you’re popping over regularly?

Kachina

Not as often as we should be.  It’s kind of on the agenda point. So far we’ve just been exploring more of the French Basque side because it’s such a beautiful and unique region. We have been talking about needing to utilise the proximity to the Spanish border more strategically because groceries and fuel and everything is much more affordable on that side of the borders.

Brook

Yeah. For logical reasons, For logical reasons, utilize strategy, resources, blah de blah.  Look, we’re all armchair travelers, so please share us all the details so that we can live vicariously through you.  I want to kind of take you back a little. Can you tell us a little bit about where you were when we first met? Because I have a terrible memory, so I’m sure that you remember it.

Kachina

God, was a while ago now, wasn’t it? I think we first connected towards the latter end of 2022, would you believe? And back then I was getting in touch with, I guess obviously I wanted support with the business, which was then at the time called Content Collective Co. So we’ve had, as you mentioned before, we’ve had a complete rebrand in the time that we have been working together. I was an agency, predominantly content marketing agency of one. I did have subcontractors that I worked with that helped kind of lift the load when things got heavy, but it was, it was just me in the business. And I think at the time I’d gotten in touch because I knew that I wanted something different. I wanted something bigger. I had tried doing the whole, let’s put a course together and see how that goes. But that wasn’t, that wasn’t a planned thing at all. It was very haphazard.

So unsurprisingly, it didn’t, it didn’t perform as well as I hoped it would. And I think I was just feeling a little bit lost. I knew I wanted something more, but I didn’t know where to start. Um, so that’s where we first kicked things off. And there’s been a lot, a lot of change in the time since then. 

Brook

You weren’t in, in France then, right? No, back, back in little old Wollongong. Yeah, Clare. Humble abode. 

Yeah. Love Wollongong. That’s why all the Sydney-siders are fleeing too.  

Kachina

Yeah. See, I was an early starter there too, right from the beginning. 

Brook

There you go. There you go. This is a really, I think, interesting thing that happened not long after you first, we first started working together because you got  engaged.  Yes.  To the aforementioned Henry, and then you got married and what happened next?  

Kachina 

Yeah, life. This is life doing its crazy thing, wasn’t it? So we, I think we’d only been working together a couple of months. So it was still very fresh. And I think you and I were still kind of planning out, okay, what do we want? Like, what’s the ideal? It was still very much so goal setting, kind of establishing with the business. yeah, so we got, we got married in March of 2023, which was the absolute best thing in the world. And in the lead up to that, as it was, I’d had, by that point, the business had been, it was close to three years I’d been working in it and I’ve not taken any time off.  And I knew I wanted to take time off for the wedding and the honeymoon, which was very, very exciting. And it’s a very, very early piece in us working together was you helping me to fulfill the role of business babysitter. So having someone to come in and look after the business whilst I took time off. And little did we know at the time that that would be, oh God, such like a life-changing decision and a very positive decision that was made because four weeks after my wedding and I think what 10 days after we got back home from the honeymoon, my dad unexpectedly died. So we went from personally having like the absolute best day, best day of our lives very, very quickly into the worst thing in the world that could happen, did happen, which made for, yeah, a very, a very, I guess it’s such an overused word, especially in more recent terms, but everything was very unprecedented. And I definitely, yeah, if it weren’t for the business babysitter, Kelly was her name, she was amazing. Things could have been very different. Yeah, very personal, personal life took a bit of a hit. Yeah, yeah. 

Brook

And you know, I mean, it’s a, God awful thing to happen and especially on the back of such a  high with, you know, your wedding and, um, your honeymoon and enjoying that, like it’s the blows even harder, I think, or rougher or rawer. I don’t know. But so the business babysitter was, you know, the first kind of experience, I guess,  of taking time off and time away. And you’d been, you know, you are such a diligent person, not you were such a diligent person. You are such a diligent person. You know, it’s easy, I guess, for diligent,  conscientious people to fall into that kind of trap of working all the hours. And especially because you’re like, okay, well, if I’m working all the hours, I’m working for me. I’m working for my business. I’m working, you know, you can justify it to yourself, right?

Kachina

Yeah, totally. And I definitely, definitely feel victim to that kind of way of thinking. It was always all the more I work, the more I’ll get paid, the more opportunity I have to get paid and find clients who will continue to pay. So yeah, was definitely, yeah, definitely that was the first opportunity working with, working with Kelly, having someone to kind of carry a little bit of that load, which ended up being, yeah, a lot more than we’d originally anticipated. So she stayed on when dad passed away.  And she ended up kind of really carrying a load of the business for a good six months. I didn’t work for, it was at least four to six months that I wasn’t working for after all of that, just because I couldn’t. So it was, very, her involvement was very fortuitous. If it wasn’t for that decision to, I guess, look for that support and to hire that support. for a temporary period, things could have been very different. 

Brook

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

I guess there’s nothing like a being thrown in the deep end to be like, you need to learn to let go a little bit. And, know, and I think that that’s oftentimes the case is it’s, oftentimes we wait until rock bottom or something shitty happens before we actually, you know, make a courageous change. It doesn’t have to work like that, but more often than not, that’s how it works. know, we’re kind of making change, making necessary change and positive change because of a crappy experience. So this was also the year that you hit six figures for the first time, right? The mythical hundred K. Was that? 

Kachina

Maybe. Was that that I don’t remember. Maybe. Let’s say, let’s say yes.

I’m sure I could go back through my notes and records. Tell me a little bit more about that, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s a funny thing, the whole six figures in business, think as business owners we do, it’s the first glorified, I’ve done something well, which is a funny thing. That’s definitely my mindset around that has changed hugely in the time since then. Again, I wouldn’t have reached that six figure point for the first time had it not been for subcontractors and then the help of Kelly, kind of taking care of steering the ship.  That’s not something that I could have done by myself. That’s for sure. Yeah, I guess it all kind of came back to the people. If it weren’t for the people that I had helping me, I think I probably would have been like a chook without its head. 

Brook

Oh, I don’t know about that. I think you’re underestimating yourself, but yeah, I mean, they are kind of arbitrary things, but I think it’s important to celebrate in business. I know it’s important to celebrate in business. I know you agree with me on that front. So tell me a little bit more about, cause I know that you’re, you are, um, a eldest child. We were laughing about that just yesterday, being an eldest daughter. How I see you, Kachina, is somebody who’s not just  diligent and conscientious, but also quite driven. You know, the bodybuilding competitions, for example, deciding to, in the midst of like moving overseas and, you know, growing your business and hiring people, you also decided to take up an MBA. Why not? And also your background in the army reserves. Can you tell me a little bit more about like what drives you? Where does that kind of, whatever you want to call it, diligence drive energy, where does that come from? 

Kachina

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Some might call it madness. Like what is free time?  But no, I think the way I’ve always looked at it is it’s, I don’t know that I would call it diligence. It’s,  or like a drive. There’s things that I’ve always wanted to do and my mindset around all of these things is well, why not? Like why not give it a try? So the army was probably the first of the big things of all the things you mentioned that I did. So I enlisted back in 2019 and that was something I’d always wanted to do growing up. I loved the film Cadet Kelly as a young girl, was an old Hilary Duff film. And I remember watching that as like a young girl, it was like, that is so cool. One day I was in that. Never joined cadets, but I’d always thought I’d love to get involved in the military, but if I do it, I want to be on the ground and making a difference. And I want to be alongside everyone else. don’t want to be positioned or pigeonholed into roles that are for women. And at the time when I was, I guess in my earlier twenties, there weren’t a lot of roles open to women. It was, must have been mid 2017, 2018, the army announced that they were opening up combat roles to women. And I thought, oh my God, finally, like I can do this. Let’s give this a crack. And so I did, I enlisted in infantry, which meant that I was on the, on the, on the ground, on the firing line, right at the front. And I loved it. I had so much fun.

I was enlisted for three years, I did all the training and I was one of 40 women in the entire country across both the full-time and reserves who were in the infantry corps. Given that it was like it had only recently been opened up to women and I guess it’s a very, it is a very male dominated, originally created for men roles. So, but no, I had a lot of fun and I loved my time there and I think I just, that was something that I’d always wanted to do despite the fact that obviously I’ve been discharged for a couple of years now, I think if the opportunity presented itself again, I’d be back there in a heartbeat. 

There’s so much that I learned from that. There’s a real drive that kind of comes from, I don’t know, if you can do that, there’s not a lot that can stop you. So it’s just, yeah, the interesting kind of mindset techniques that they teach you to be, like when you’re doing a soldier training and everything, it’s lessons that you can carry on into your everyday life as well. 

Brook

So tell me, I love mindset tools. me. 

Kachina

I think the first big thing that we were taught at the initial training was being comfortable with failure and coming to expect that you will fail. And the most important thing with that is getting back up and carrying on. I guess obviously the scenario, the examples are different. Like, you know, if you make a mistake in the army, you have no choice but to pick up and carry on because it’s life or death scenario training. But if you can be okay and come to learn with, maybe that’s why they’re so meticulous with everything, right? That’s why you’ve got to have your perfectly ironed uniform and your boots tied up the right way and your hair done in a particular way. And if that’s, if you’ve done that wrong, then you know, it’s, that whole mind muscle connection that they teach you from the absolute the things that you might not even consider. Um, so that when it comes time to actually, you know, on the ground training, you’re so structured in how you do everything and everything. So I guess runs and manages, um, the best that it can. It’s yeah, that was, that was a very early, early lesson. Um, and it’s definitely something that I’ve carried on throughout. Um, and maybe, maybe that’s kind of, maybe that was like my gateway drug into doing everything else because since then, we’ve had bodybuilding, we’ve had an MBA.  

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that would be the big one. 

Brook

Tell me a little bit about bodybuilding. Weirdly, you are not my first female bodybuilding client. 

Kachina 

That doesn’t surprise me, actually.

Brook

Why? Why does it not surprise you? 

Kachina

Like to be a bodybuilder, you have to be a very special kind of person. And I say that with like the most love only in my heart.  But that was one thing I really did like about the bodybuilding community is with all respect, everyone’s a complete nut job and you’re kind like in the best way possible because you have to be in order to, you know, we’ve got such strict protocols around training and nutrition and posing and that’s just the surface. And I love that. It’s a very, very different type of just mentality and type of person that you need to kind of pull in and be in order to do well in the sport. And I did find in my time doing bodybuilding, there were a lot of business owners within that room. I thought, you know, it kind of makes sense because it’s a, you’ve got to have that in order to, you know, to even get involved in bodybuilding, whether or not you make it all the way to stage. It’s kind of like running in business. You have to be comfortable with taking risks. You have to believe in yourself. And you have to back yourself up no matter what. When things get tough, the best support and the best cheerleader you’re going to have. And the only one who’s really going to push you up and keep going is you.  

So I think that’s the same for both, both bodybuilding and business. So it didn’t surprise me that there were so many business owners within that realm. So it doesn’t surprise me that I’m not your first.  

Brook

I think there’s something about that mentality of a certain type of person where I want to see,  that pushes themselves to see what they’re capable of. You know, not for that, like that’s the biggest motivator. I’m pushing myself into the army reserves. I’m pushing myself in  bodybuilding because I want to see what I’m capable of. And it’s, it’s not, even though it appears to be a competition, you’re, you know, you’re competing against yourself, you’re kind of, you’re taking yourself to your most optimum level. I love what you said also about, you know, the resilience that the army told you, because that’s absolutely critical in business.

We’re all going to have setbacks. We’re all going to have rejections. We’re all going to have failures. We’re all going to be told no or lose the perfect opportunity that we were so very certain was going to be ours. It’s not like that part’s not important. The part that’s important is that you get back up and you keep going. And then hopefully over time you build, you build a muscle so that these things that used to really freak you out or, you know, destabilize you become no big deal at all. Yeah, no, that’s exactly it.  

So tell me a little bit more about, um, cause you wrote a really awesome,  uh, article the other day about pee on the leg of a bodybuilder. Pee running down the leg and ruining the fake tan. Is that correct? Did I get that accurate? 

Kachina

It’s a good headline, isn’t it? 

Brook

Yes, I read it. I was like, that was brilliant, was brilliant. 

Kachina

The best response to that was my father-in-law. ran to the table a couple of weeks ago. He goes, did I see something about pee dribbles on LinkedIn? I was like oh great you’re reading it that’s good. 

But yes no that that is correct um there’s a special technique once you get your done before the competitions. Yeah I guess most people probably use a she-wee maybe this is a little TMI.  

Brook

No it’s never TMI okay. 

Kachina

Yeah you have so many layers of fake tan on there any kind of like you’ve got to be careful with like sweat and even sitting cross like it because I guess naturally there’s a little bit of heat between the back of your, the back of your shin and the back of your thighs. But that’s why, thankfully they do have little touch up teams right before you get, get on stage. So if you do go to the toilet and a little bit of pee dribbles down your leg, they can fix it up. The little things that no one thinks of. 

Brook

And it reminds me of the attention to detail in the army.  So the point that you were making was that, you know, these things are, teaching us about planning and also in the MBA, you know, tell us a little bit more about planning as it relates to big business and small business and P-dribbles. 

Kachina

So we love when lessons come together in a holistic way like that. But no, in relation to the MBA in business, this was, this was a revelation that came only in a recent class I was studying. And we were talking about strategy and how the multi-billion dollar businesses do it, how they’re so efficient in when change happens, like we’ve seen that a lot recently with COVID being the biggest one, for example, and with different financial, I guess, happenings  around the world more recently as well. And we’ve seen the bigger businesses, you’ll notice that these things happen and it’s like they click their fingers and they’re so quickly pivoted already.

And it doesn’t affect them as much as maybe the smaller businesses. And it’s so simple, but I’d never put two and two together. I always just kind of assumed, oh, well, they’ve got the big budgets and they’ve got the massive team. So it’s easy for them to do that.  But then it was during this class, the teacher was like, it’s scenario planning. They have all of these plans created from the very beginning. So they’ve got the plan that they execute upon, but then they’ve also got backup plan B, C, D, however many plans they have.

And it’s kind of like they’re filed away and if said scenario happens, they just pull out plan, whatever from the drawer and it’s already there and they know what they do, what they have to do to maintain stability. That was, my mind just exploded. It’s like, that is so simple. But why, like why, and especially with the conversations that I’ve had with other small business owners over the years, I think we’ve all. It’s so easy to fall into that trap of thinking, oh well we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the budget, when things don’t go right, we’re the first to go down. And I think a lot of people have become comfortable and kind of agreeable to that train of thought. And it was in this class I thought, like why are we not operating as small businesses the same way as these big multi-billion dollar businesses? Like there’s no budget required to sit and put together backup plans and to imagine.

What if there’s another COVID? What are we going to do? Let’s at least like write something out in dot point form and hope we never have to use it. But in the case that another COVID happens, we’ve got a plan for it or whatever it might be. Really, really simple actions, but I think it would make just such a huge difference if that was implemented and encouraged across that small, small business landscape, myself obviously included within that as well. 

Brook

Yes, because we’re missing a significant step in this story so far, Kachina. And that is how, how did you go from taking time off, taking time away from the business with the business babysitter, running the business in Wollongong with the help of subcontractors to moving to Biarritz. Yeah. does that say? Biarritz, Binnett?

I must say thank you now, just a second. Merci I’m like, what the fuck? do I say that? Merci that’s it. That’s the one. 

Kachina

It’s all right. There’s been many a time we’ve gone into places like around here and you just get so like, your brain gets so muddled up in all the different languages that sometimes we’ll leave and we’ll say like gracias. Just throw another language into the mix. 

Brook

I’ve done that so many times. I’m ordering a beer in Cambodia, speaking Vietnamese. 

Kachina

Happens to the best of us. But yes, I guess there is a little bit of a bit of a leap between taking a lot of time off in 2023 to, to being in France, based in France. So guess the first, the first big change to help plant the seeds and explain that story would be, I guess, how we became the first AI marketing agency. That’s probably a big one. So that’s when I first started returning back to work in 2023 after the wedding and dad, it was probably around about July-ish that I slowly started kind of just dipping my toes back in the work water. I was also doing work with a New South Wales state rep kind of thing and she was like, what are you doing about AI? Like, what do you think about AI? And I was like, nothing. Like it’s stupid. I don’t need to be paying attention to that. And it was this, we had a few conversations and she gently nudged me a little bit each time. And she was probably like a broken record, probably sick of telling me. She was like, you need to be looking more into AI, like just at least to be aware of it. I very, like many people in the marketing and creative industries, I was choosing to put my head in the sand, choosing to bury my head in the sand because I didn’t want to, I didn’t view it as a real threat.  

And then it wasn’t until I went a couple of weeks after, maybe it was like late July, I went and did a public speaking course down in Melbourne. And there was one of the teachers there, I thought as an example, because we had to put in examples for what would we want to give a speech about publicly. And I was like, let’s test the waters. I’m going to see if this AI thing has any legs to it. And I was like, I’ll submit that as my topic, even though I know absolutely nothing about it. And let’s just see what they say. And the feedback from the course instructors were, Kachino, like, this is so needed and so relevant. Like, why aren’t you doing this already? And that’s when it was kind of like the unsatisfied toddler who’s been so stagnant. And then, no, I don’t want to do this.

It was that moment where my little toddler was like, oh, fine, okay. I guess I’ll look into it then. And so that is what I did. But it was interesting. It was more so, guess, until that point, it had been the conversations that I’d been having with almost everyone in the Australian kind of marketing and creative landscape was, oh, and business as well. A lot of people were saying we don’t need copywriters anymore, we don’t need content marketers anymore, we probably don’t need marketers anymore. And like I mentioned myself and like many others were like, no, that’s impossible. We are marketers, we’re irreplaceable. But it was after those conversations off the back of the public speaking course that I was like, okay, maybe I need a reframe. Maybe it’s like keep your friends close and your enemies closer. So if people are really like, oh, this ChatGPT is so great. Maybe I probably ought to look little, yeah, pay attention to it, look a little deeper into it. And so at that point in time, just, was, there are a few more generative AI tools that had come out in that time. Um, so I lit, I was honestly just playing around, getting familiar with a few of them. And I did think at that early stage of like, these tools are great, but they’re by no means a human replacement. I thought surely there’s got to be a better way in which we can work with these tools that is as what I called ethical. So not replacing the human role, like humans in that marketing role, and also responsible, so data security, which is very important,  and the fact that it’s not regulated. So therefore, the onus is on you as an individual or your organization to be utilizing these tools in that responsible way.  

I tried kind of running the circuits in Australia and I found that people weren’t really having that conversation. I think at that point in time, everyone was still very much so just entranced by, oh my gosh, these tools are doing amazing things. So I took to researching globally to see if there was anything out there. And that’s when I came across a few, an agency called the AI Marketing Institute, sorry, in the US where it was all about marketing and AI with a group of people who had been working within the AI space for, it was like 15 years. And this was something that they were really passionate about that, okay, let’s reframe how we think about and how we apply these tools to marketing. And that was where I started having those conversations with leaders in the AI and that marketing space. And as you mentioned at the beginning, I was the only Australian for a long time within that group. And it was through that and through all of those conversations that I built out my own frameworks as a framework that the Institute teach, which I really loved and I really enjoyed,  which is covered in the certification course that they have. 

Then I kind of added my own bits to it just more along that frame of thought, well, what does it mean to be creative as a marketer? And what is it that’s intrinsically human that makes us different from these tools? It was the, in putting all of that together, that I guess made us the first AI marketing agency in the country. So it’s not using the tools to replace us. It’s not using AI to do the work for us, not at all. We are humans at Collective Catalysts. We’re real people,  3D form. If you see us in real life, you can smell us. We have a scent. We have legs. But we work with the tools throughout different areas of the marketing process to streamline those data-driven, repetitive, but high value parts of the marketing process so that we can spend more time on the creative, on the strategy, communicating and building relationships with our clients and prospects.

That’s how we utilize AI. So that was probably like the biggest, the biggest change. So all of that happened. And I guess we got that, that title of first AI marketing agency by the end of 2023. And it was also alongside that, that we were undergoing a huge brand rebrand as well, because it was when I’d started doing the research into the AI and chose to kind of take that leap and be like, well, let’s give this a crack. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ve always got that content marketing that we can fall back on. I realized that the direction with which I wanted to move the business from content marketing agency through to, I guess, innovative, more full, full service, didn’t match the look and feel that we had at the time.  And I felt that the name didn’t, so the name that was originally launched as the Content Collective Code didn’t quite match that either. So alongside all of this AI work and AI research, we were also undergoing a big rebrand. So was a new name. We relaunched as Collective Catalyst. A whole new look and feel was updated. The whole kibbutz. So yeah, that was all the end of 2023. So it was a very, very chaotic year.

Brook

It was a huge year. when was the, so to kind of skip forward a couple of steps, when did you hire your very first employee? 

Kachina

Yes. So Christina, um, and a little shout out to Christina. So she was hired as my first permanent employee in September of 2024. 

Brook

So almost 12 months ago. was trying to think whether it was early this year. Time keeps flying past. Hello, Christina. are you going?  So back to kind of, you know, the skills of planning. I love what you said about, um, you know, the planning and the execution and you know, there were, there’s a lot that we could cover. I’m thinking about, know, your training courses that you started running.

I was introducing you to some of my clients who were training institutes and training colleges. We were sharing clients in some instances.  And then you decided, okay, I’m planning on moving overseas. Can you talk us through that process of deciding you were moving and then what were the key planning steps involved there? 

Because I’m imagining there’s going to be at least a chunk of my audience that are like ooh, I would love to relocate overseas and keep my business going. How the hell do I do that? 

Kachina

Yeah. So the overseas move had been something that, that Henry and I had spoken about for years, like pre COVID even. That was always something that we were like, Oh, we really want to do that. But it just, it never happened. And it got to a point, we were originally planning on moving in 2023, but obviously personal reasons meant that that was all put on hold. And it was something that we were like, oh, we have to make sure that it happens. We have to do it. Ultimately push came to shove when we learned about the age limit for the particular visa that we were applying for. They’ve got an age cut off of 35. So we were like, is actually the last opportunity that we have to enter France on this particular visa. That was the ultimate push. I guess in terms of planning and how to get there. 

So we did do a trip, like a two month trip to Europe to visit Henry’s family at the end of 2023, around the same time that we launched the rebrand. It was a very chaotic end of year. So we had, yeah, we had a friend’s wedding in Italy and then we thought we’ll visit family, which, you know, that was something that we’d learned the difficult way earlier in the year that that’s something that you just don’t take for granted. And we thought we were like, well, this creates a good opportunity for us to kind of test the waters. Did, we knew we really wanted to actually do this move but we didn’t know what it would be like. And we thought, well, let’s use this two months that we’re in Europe to test, see what it’s like, see like how like the both of us continuing working, you know, me on the business and Henry working with his employer back home. And just to kind of test the waters, see, does it work? Like how do clients feel about it? Is it easy to operate and manage? Is there anything that needs changing? And thankfully, I guess, as I’d always for me anyway, the business Collective Catalyst has always from the get-go been a remote business. I’ve never had an office space or anything like that. So it meant that the actual physical picking up and going away was fine. That wasn’t an issue and everything worked really well. I was lucky in that the clients that I work with and have worked with all have that very, we’ve all got that travel interest in travel in common, which makes it very much easier.  

Brook

Oh, who doesn’t? Yeah.

Kachina

The only thing I found in that two months that we were away that was harder to navigate was the time zone and staying on top of like actual like you know video communication, zoom calls with clients and it’s not that it was impossible it just meant that I was having to get up at stupidly early hours to take phone calls which is fine and it’s not the worst problem in the world but for someone who really likes their sleep. I know I’d much rather be in bed at four o’clock in the morning rather than taking phone calls with Australia. So when we got back home, I that was the biggest thing for me. like, how can I, I recognize that there’s nothing I can do about the time zone difference. If that’s the only issue or only problem that there was, how can I resolve that? And essentially it was, well, the best way in which I can resolve that would be to have someone on the ground who can take care of that client relations kind of aspect of things. And that was the beginning of the planning of, right, well, I know I need to get someone on board before we do this actual move. There needs to be, yeah, cause there were other things that we had to factor in. I needed to work, like a budget was the first big thing, ensuring that we had the budget and the workload to justify that second income, like on top of my own and workload, and then also ensuring that there was enough time to establish a good working relationship and ensure that they were comfortable with the work and okay with, I guess, you know, being based remotely and being based in different time zones before I actually left the country. So that was the early planning pieces involved in that.

Brook

Very cool. And a few cash reserves as well. 

Kachina

Yeah. I don’t know if that’s like an oldest daughter thing or maybe that’s just a me thing, I’ve always been,  for better or for worse, I’ve always been a bit on the conservative side with my money. I’ve always, even as a kid, I always would stuff my money boxes with money and I wouldn’t touch them until they were full. It’s just like a comfort thing. So that was something I carried over with the business as well. So just for peace of mind, more than anything. 

Brook

I mean, you’ve had a few pay rises over the years. Let’s just,  let’s just add, you know, you’ve, you’ve kind of increased your take home pay fairly consistently since we started working together in December, 2022. 

Kachina

Yeah. God, you wouldn’t want to know how little I paid myself at the beginning. 

Brook

I think that might’ve been one of the very first things we did together. Yeah. I think, think  if I recall, cause I think I remember this conversation. I think I asked you about your bank balance. asked you how much you were, you know, deducting blah, blah, blah, blah.  

We talked about goals and how much you’d like to be earning. I’m like, dude, like this is a no-brainer.  Let’s just do that now. we? Yeah. 

Kachina

Oh my God. Do you know what? I think at that point in time, I was paying myself a thousand dollars a month. When you factor in, you know, normal payments and everything. Yeah. I don’t know how I did it. And I don’t know what, what, what motivated me to think that that was acceptable and that that was livable.  

Brook

I’ve heard many, many horror stories, including like, you know, people with  like, they’ve got the cash, they’ve got the cash sitting in the business bank account, but for some reason they’re not spending it. They’re not taking it out. So yes, a thousand dollars a month, that’s least of it.  Let’s have culprit here.  

So you have grown the business pretty consistently year upon year. You have managed almost an impossible feat of employing your first employee and then leaving them to relocate literally to the opposite side of the globe so that you can live your best life in the beach side suburb. Didn’t you say it was one of the first surfing, was the first place in Europe where they, surfing became a thing due to the influence of some Californians? That correct? 

Kachina

Yeah, Biarritz is the first place in all of Europe,  but you know, for surfing to be introduced. So it happened in the fifties. There was a Hollywood film being, being filmed out here. I have to look up to see what the movie was because I can’t remember. But there was, it was a Californian director, I think, and he’d come out from California and he’d seen the beaches here and was like, oh, these waves are good. So he’d arranged for some of his surfboards to be brought out and he was surfing the waves and apparently all the locals were like, what is this guy doing? Like, what is this contraption? And it took off and it’s here. So this was the first, the first town, the first beach in all of Europe where surfing became a sport. It’s really cool. It’s so ingrained in the culture here and there’s where our apartment is down by the water. It’s called  Surf Avenue. So it’s kind of like the Hollywood, where they’ve got the Hollywood stars, except it’s a surfing version. So it’s like little surfboard, like concrete surfboards in the ground. They got some of the world’s best known surfers have come and they’ve got their, instead of their hands, it’s their surf stance. And their signatures, autographs down there. We’ve got like, there’s Mick Fanning’s got his stance down there and Kelly Slater. 

Brook

Stance like you’re talking about their feet?

Kachina

Yeah, their feet on the surfboard. Yeah, it’s so ingrained everywhere. Even the church in Biarritz has a surfboard inside the church that’s got Kelly Slater’s autograph. I have never in my life been to like a beautiful like European like cathedral type church and there’s a surfboard inside. 

It’s just, it’s so ingrained in the culture here. It’s amazing. 

Brook

That’s so funny. Well, um, you were also one of the first, I think you were, um, I can’t remember if it was the first or the second to join the Audacious Mastermind, which I launched in early 2024. And I think it’s quite obvious that you are audacious. You embody that. You you embody that courage. You embody that nonconformity. I want to ask you a big question now and apologies for putting you on the spot. I want you to predict the future for me. I know it’s a big question and maybe I can narrow it down a little to make it a little easier to tackle. But I’d love to hear what predictions you could have, you might have, for small business. And perhaps maybe we could narrow it down further. Maybe we could talk about people such as you and I, people who are soloists or who have tiny teams, you know, and who wish to grow, but not in a way that the traditional business world thinks of when we think about business and we think about business growth.

Can you make some predictions for us? I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Kachina

Well, I think you are putting me on the spot. Um, I think that’s a really great question though. And especially coming off the back of we know particularly this year has been really tough for small businesses. That’s a, that’s a statistic that’s out there. Um, so I think it, I think it’s nice to be, it’s, it’s, it’s time that we flipped like the negative rhetoric from statistics and put a little bit of positivity and a little bit of good vibes out there. So very happy to predict some positive things. I think, I think for, especially for small business and soloists and, as you said, like yiny yeams, myself, I think the biggest differentiator is going to be those that, that present themselves and operate with it’s gonna sound really, it’s gonna sound like eye roll, but with that point of difference, but really owning that point of difference. So not conforming to what we’re told and I guess what’s expected of small business and soloist. I think that emphasis on, I don’t like the word authentic because I think that’s so overused, but for lack of a better word as I’ve been put on the spot, those that do naturally and  are, you know, authentically authentic,  I say with inverted commas, will be those that do see that growth. And I think we’ll see that emphasis on that authenticity more and more as AI continues to develop and as people become more and more comfortable with the tools and navigate, how do we best work with these tools and factoring in things like creativity. 

So I think those that can operate naturally and  being unafraid to showcase and share your sense of humor, empathy, something that’s just different because we’ve got that there’s more than enough of the same same messaging out there. So I think it’ll those that those that are unafraid to be a little bit different and to be a little bit creative and how you present and how you market and and I think that will be those that will see that will see growth and what whatever growth might be for them. I think that’s been a big thing for me, particularly in the last four months that I’ve been out in Europe is that I don’t think, obviously money helps, but I don’t think money is the ultimate end goal, the ultimate what makes you happy. 

That’s been a big key lesson for me out here. The French here, they value community and time spent together and time outdoors. That’s been a really nice and a really welcome readjustment and view on life. So whatever growth looks like to you, think it’s those, those that dare to be different. We’ll see the benefits. 

Brook

Yeah. And look, everything that you said,  it sounds, and it reminds me of what you said earlier in relation to resilience. You know, the things that the army taught you, the planning in the MBA or the scenario planning, you know, and the bodybuilding as well, like the physical  exertion and the physical, uh, you know, the pushing yourself, physically, the army, the tiny attention to detail, all those tiny little things that are designed for a very specific purpose, being unafraid to fail in order for us to have the empathy, to have the courage, to be creative, to be different, to be authentically ourselves and not worry so much about other people’s opinions, which will not pay the bills, you do have to have a level of resilience, right? To roll with the punches and to be able to adapt. 

Kachina

Definitely. Couldn’t have said it better myself, Brook.

Brook

Hi, look, it’s easy for me. I’m just summarizing what you said. I reckon it’s easier to edit than it is to write, right? Well, look, this has been such a joy. I love all of your posts that relate to France. know, armchair travelling for the win. The joy of living vicariously through other people’s experiences, especially when those experiences are as romantic as a seaside surf town in the Basque region of France. Yes, please more. So keep being awesome. And thank you so much for sharing your story with us. 

Kachina

Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun. 

Brook

Real quick before you go.

If this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or has you changing the way that you do business or life, would you do me a super quick favor and write me a short review?  Your podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values-based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.