Cherie Metcalfe - Pepper & Me

Hi everyone, I'm Katie Dawson and welcome to Super Creative, a podcast that delivers candid conversations with inspiring women who are thriving in business. Today on the podcast I speak to Sheree Metcalf, founder of Peppa and Me, a total-based food brand that believe food should be bold, exciting and never-a-chewer. Their salts, sources and seasonings are designed to make cooking easier and bring big flavour to every meal. Peppa and Me grew from Sheree's background as a chef in a very practical idea, helping people cook great food at home without over-complicating it. Built on the idea that good food should be simple, flavourful and accessible, the business is growing to include a range of more than 80 products, cookbooks and a highly engaged online community. In this conversation, Sheree shares the story behind the brand's growth from its early beginnings through to becoming a well-recognised name in New Zealand households. What I loved about this conversation is how open, funny and down-to-earth Sheree is. She's incredibly generous with her story, an absolute open book when it comes to the realities of building a business and very clear on the values that underpin everything that Peppa and Me does. That authenticity comes through strongly in the way she talks about community, trust, and the importance of connection over constant selling. Her approach is thoughtful, honest, refreshingly practical and often humorous, offering valuable insight for anyone interested in building a brand that feels both commercially successful and genuinely human. We actually recorded this conversation in the evening last year, I think it was no been between 2025, so it's been a couple of months Sheree generously made the time and I took so much from this chat. As you will hear, I've been a fan and observer from a business and marketing perspective of Peppa and Me for a long time. I think their approach to social media is right up there with some of the greats and I do really encourage you after this. If you're interested in that kind of thing to really like have a look and follow and observe how they do social media and really how it works so well for their brand, now obviously all brands are different but it works so well for their brand. I often look at brands like Peppa and Me and think okay how can I replicate that approach for the business that I'm working on or working with. Anyway this chat is honest, practical and full of insight for anyone interested in building a values led brand with authenticity and real heart. I loved my cottage over Sheree and I know you will too. After this conversation I know you will want to make sure you are following @Peppa and Me on Instagram and then you can head to Peppa and Me.co.nz to check out all the delicious products that will enhance your every meal and if you anything like Me, I went to double check the website address today and ended up with a full cart of products and a delivery on its way so there you go, be warned. Also once again thank you so so much for listening, thank you for any messages and comments and shares and likes and following the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever, however you listen, I really really appreciate it. This is a passion project that I love doing and I would love to keep doing so the more people listen to it, the more I'll be able to keep doing it. Thank you so much. Right, let's get on with the show. Hi Sheree and welcome to my podcast. Hello, thank you for having me. Now I'm going to start off by asking you to describe who you are and what you do. Okay, my name is Sheree Metcalf. I'm the founder of Peppa and Me. We are a business we sell, sell spices, seasonings, also write cookbooks, host my own podcast and I'm a food writer for our local magazine as well. I like to start off this podcast usually by giving a little bit of background as to why I was keen to get you on the podcast. So I would like you to bear with me for a second because I'm going to be quite flattering to you for a second. Oh gosh, that sounds awesome too. First of all, I am no foodie, I'm not a very good cook and I am a I'm a watcher and saver of recipes, but I'm not often a someone that makes them, but I have to say, first of all, last year you did on your Instagram cabbage with tiktok trending seasoning and the nuts. Do you remember that? Yeah, the shrimp. Yeah, the shredded one. Yeah, yeah. I have made that. I reckon about a hundred times. In fact, when I'm going to anything, I go, I'll bring my cabbage dish and now I've got friends that are going, now I've got friends that are like, are you bringing your cabbage again? Because it's all pretty much all I can do. So that dish has impacted my life and the life of my family, my husband even is like, you should, it's really good and it makes me look really, really good. So first of all, that is one compliment I would like to thank you for. But also, I have been in awe of people in me for a long time actually. Like I said, I'm not a foodie, but I'm an admirer of business and business progress and just as an outsider looking in, I feel like you have just nailed it. Like, it seems like you've created the perfect business. Well, to me anyway, and I love watching your social media and I have just heard you speak at an event, a marketing kind of event last week. And everything you see solidified what I thought was what your business and your brand was about, which is community sharing information, making food and cooking fun. And I just feel like everything on your social media, just it's the perfect social media feed. Anyway, so I just think from an outsider looking in, it is such an amazing business. And final thing, I've got a friend who doesn't really, one of my good friends doesn't really listen to my podcast and I was talking to you the other day and I was like, so who would make you listen? And she was like, probably sheree from people in me. And I said, well, actually, I see you every now and then I'm always saying, come on my podcast. And so that's sort of what spurred me to make it happen this time. I had fans of yours. So anyway, huge fan of you, huge fan of your business, love what you've created and would love to talk more about it on this podcast. Thank you. That's very lovely. I love that. I love what I love about Instagram is I would have made, I mean, we've we've got over 2000 recipes that we've created over the last nine years. And every single person I talk to has a different one that just stuck with them for some reason. And you can never pick which one it's going to be or why. So I love, I love hearing which ones are home for some people. Yeah, it's very cool. I would love to go through my Instagram saves over the last. And I've got, you know, I've actually got, you know, two accounts, one for the part of my personal. I would love to see how many of you are receiving. So I've got saved. I feel like that would be so many people, right? Like that, it's just that sort of save, save, save, save, you know, it's very savable, I guess. That's good. I do the same thing though. I've got a group chat. I've seen it too. Things too cool. Can I send about 10 pins a day? And I don't think I'll be able to put to any other. Yeah, but I like the idea. But it's interesting though. I feel like and again, we'll get into this, but I feel like you sort of have been doing that social media side of it in the cooking online for a lot longer than what it's been trending. Yes. I feel like I've been watching you do it for a long time. Yeah. I mean, it's different now. It's a different ballgame now, but I used to, it was stories. And I think that's where people really got, got engaged because you'd sit there and watch me explain and chat with, you know, I'm filming always down cooking one handedly. I'm talking people through what was happening in the kitchen before Reels, before editing or voice overs. It used to be a Snapchat. I used to, I started on Snapchat. And it was a Snapchat story. And I guess that's why it was so easy for me and why I had the confidence to just do it because because you've been doing it just instinctively the whole time. Yeah. And I needed absolutely nothing except a phone. No, there was no tripods, no microphones, no nothing, just whatever phone you had and you just stuck it up in it. People like it. Yeah. So yeah. And I don't actually want to get into that because this is all kind of part of the story. But at the beginning, I would just like to take it back a little bit. Where are you from? Did you study? What were your first jobs? Well, give a little bit of background sort of before that people in Me Juni began. Yeah, Cole, I'm from Rotorua and I left school about 16. I actually used to waitress at a restaurant where while I was at high school. And so when I was kind of in my last few years, I kind of fell into the kitchen. I was very drawn to, always drawn to the food obsessively. So they moved me from waitressing to plating up desserts and to helping with the dishes and things like that after school. So by the time I was about 17, I left school to go and work there. I'm reminded that we need to go and get a qualification. If that's what you're going to do. So I went off to shift school and I did a year at shift school. And then I went traveling pretty quickly. So I went to super yachts, went to Hamilton Islands at a year there. And I went to super yachts. And I spent lots of time traveling and meeting people and exploring the world. Then you know, standard story, come home, meet your husband, get pregnant. And then you're like, what am I going to do now? So that's the birth of people around me. It was very much a necessity, I think, of all the only skill I have is I know how to cook. And I know how to talk to people. So we started mixing salts and took them down to the market to see how it, it was salt. It was originally electrification, eating salt. That was, because my daughter was three months old. So it was, well, what can I, you know, all the people around you are breastfeeding and you want to provide them something that's the like, well, you're immersed in. So I made this breastfeeding sucks. I couldn't understand why everyone was putting electrification spices in the cookies. And it worked really well. I took it to the market and no, no one bought it, no one, everyone bought it. Yeah, like it does sound a bit weird, but kind of before that, like, were you thinking I need to make some money? Or do you think you just have a little entrepreneurial brain that's like, I'm a bit bored, I'm here on kind of metal level, you know, like I'm here with a baby, I need to get my brain working. Oh, I definitely just need to make some cash. Yeah, I think it was three months, and well, my daughter was three months old. And when you're staring down the barrel of having to go back to nights in a restaurant. Oh, yeah. You have to really, there was no other option or there was no other options for me. So it was kind of like, what, what can I do just to get by for another six months? Basically, that was the end. Like if I can just get a few hundred dollars a week to help pay the bills, until she's a little bit older, that, that was all, all that was ever supposed to be or all they wanted it to be. Yeah. So then you come up with this idea, I'll make electrification seasoning, effectively. Yeah. And yes, I didn't sell the first market, but everyone liked the flavours. They loved the flavours. They're like, this is yummy. What can you use it on? You can put on anything. Tell people how to make it and all the anti-natal girls and all the space because everyone loved it. We wouldn't buy more. So just basically took the word lactation away and added some barbeque rubs to keep the boys interested and went from there. Very, very slowly and steadily. I'm very lucky to have a brother who's always worked in tech. So he, he was, it was only two markets in and I was like, look, this is actually hard work. These markets are actually, yeah. It's a hard, yet you sort of check to some of the half an hour and you're just really trying to get them to part with your five dollars and you said, oh, make your website, you can get one for next to nothing and you can promote it on social media, whatever. And then you can just drop your orders at the post shop and then you don't have to be at markets three times a week or whatever. So that was brilliant. I've had quite a few people on this podcast with products that have started at markets and you know, like even though it's a punish, it's such a great way of getting that market research. Like if you just gone straight online with lactation salt, it might not have turned out but because you had that direct feedback from people like, and no, we like the idea of the product. You know, that's quite a game changer. It absolutely is. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's brilliant. It's a brilliant way for people to just sit their toes and anything with a very low investment and just get out there and have a go at something. So your website, you launch your website, you're still doing a few markets here in there. I'm imagining. Yep. You used to do all the little school markets and maybe a year and we did a few food shows. They were always like a big investment but were huge, huge for us. Those first few food shows in Auckland. Yeah. How would you have afforded those? Like when, you know, like are you making enough then or are you like, look, we can just see the value and the staff. We just can have to put some cash in. Look, you just go for the smallest stall that you could possibly buy in the worst spot. We used to go to the general collective market actually. I don't know. Anyone else's? Yes, I remember that one. That was the market of the time. Incredible. And we went and did one of those and we would have, oh, would have made 10 grand in that first market within that first year. So it was just my like, absolutely mind blowing that you could do that sort of money which would have given us the confidence to go and invest in a food show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's right, isn't it? Once you do those smaller ones and then you're like, wow, imagine if we were at the food show, how do you go from doing $300 at your mum's evening or something to, to something like that, that general collective market at the ASB show ground. And yeah, different, different ballgame was awesome. So you're just hustling in that stage, like doing anything you can, how many products are you sitting at around or product types at that point? Yeah, we probably started with three pastes in a salt and then we added the man rubber and man grind. And then it was a walk source not long after that. So maybe eight. And then we probably add three, four, five, yeah. And are you just getting ideas as you're going about and selling these, I guess the ideas are just keep coming for you? Yeah, definitely. And there's so many different cuisines that it's actually been never ending. I mean, not only now when I'm at 95 skews and I'm starting to scrape the barrel a little bit or sort of starting to hit blanks, but even we've just finished out a deep calendar for the year 12 brand new products. And they were, they're a little bit more leafy, but we've just, just we're halfway through making them and they are incredible. And I'm like, wow, once again, we can put this forward and I know that these people in the world's going to absolutely go mental for these 12 products. So yeah, I guess it's like a never ending discovery path. I guess it's like fashion and trends, like, you know, all of the everything changes all the time, right? And why not food? It's like how in the Seventies, even, was eating the pineapple and cheese and little toothpicks and ham and everything. And you know, and it's like dipping your bread bowl. Yeah, totally. And it's like, so I guess it wouldn't always keep moving. It's not just going to stay the same. Yeah. So yeah, cool. So that sort of phase of the business is happening. What's the next significant maze in growth? I think when I moved out of home, when we moved the business out of home, so it was always at home in my honkitchen. And then we got a bigger rental property, actually. So I had had my whole, an office to be dream to store it in. And then taking on our first warehouse, which was a very, very small warehouse, but it was a huge step to sign a lease at that point. And the business, we were two years, two years. I was going to say, yeah, when were that about? So two years, that's quite, so that's still quite it's going to go. I went and got another job because it wasn't enough to cover, cover any bills. So I was working at, put people in daycare and I was working at her daycare as a chef. And I was there for about a year, I'd say. So just to get it out. So I'd go to work Monday to Friday and then go high and mix my spices and then do my cooking online and sell them. And then drop the orders at post office next morning and do the markets on the weekend and go back to work on the Monday. I love it. It's so full on, isn't it? And is that when you said, like, that's when your snapchatting all of this stuff, as well? And it would have been pretty quickly when Instagram really was, maybe not new, but it was still kind of Facebook will back then, almost pre-influencer. And there was only a few sort of original ones, but that was really when that will just kind of took off, I think eight or nine years ago, eight years ago. We were just in the prime position. And really for it, well, you know, we just did a send, I used to just send stuff to anyone who was doing online marketing, I mean, but sending spices to people who are other small business owners, that's who I would send them to. And they were my influences because they were the ones online telling their story, like Anita from Global Baby and Bets from Ignolia Kitchen and sort of just lots of people who were also trying to sell their own thing, but just sharing their lives. And people just loved watching those girls as well. And that was a nice time, wasn't it? Because actually it was before people, you could say hello and someone can get offended now, but like back then you could just share it and people were just interested, you know, we weren't bombarded all the time and it was actually we all loved watching that. It was and there was no ads, it wasn't sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, there was no, there was none of that, it was this is my life, I'm here cooking a meal, this is what I'm using, I'm going into the shop today and like it was just watching other, there was like a reality TV show, I think it was all stories, it was all Anita said, it was crying, it was war, it was real, no one was beautiful or perfect, it was, I was different, yeah, it was not. You kind of forget sometimes that it did start out so naively, I guess or it wasn't naive, but it was just such a different, it was a different time, wasn't it? And it wasn't actually that long ago, but it was, you know? Yeah, yeah, very different. But I guess that we, it was also really reasonably niche maybe, whereas now you can reach so many more people, whereas maybe then I would have my sort of 20,000 followers who watched everything I put up, still a lot, it was a lot, it was a huge number and they were very, very, very, always very engaged, but it was harder to get past that point without, you know, now running the ads or having the new discovery or having TikTok where you can sort of flip through where people can find you through other avenues, so it certainly would have hit a wall, yeah, with that type of marketing and that point. So you've got your new warehouse, you're sharing your stories, sharing your journey, you're still doing a bit of, you're still working on the side and things are starting to grow and pick up, yeah, yep, and it just grew, I think we doubled sales, doubled every year, reasonably consistently, and so it obviously started, it was a small, very small double in the next year, I was like, wow, in the next year I was like, wow, and then we had taken on that warehouse and we found a contract manufacturer, so up in Auckland they started, and I uploaded some of the manufacturing to them, so they were making the pastes and some of the sources, and then I'd be able to buy to get the palette load in, rather than literally mixing it in these tabs and then we'd, so we'd make all the rubs and salts and things ourselves and jar those in the little warehouse and then be able to buy those wetts in as well, so we were able to sell more, expand more, bring in new products more quickly, and then cause a hit, and that, that was a really hard time for everyone, everyone, and general maps, in terms of being a food business online and being someone who was there on the internet, providing a positive place for everyone, it was just a sweet spot for me, I think it was just a a little melting pot of right time, right place, right products, it's the affordable luxury, because we couldn't buy anything else, we were going on holidays, we were able to buy anything else, or shop for anything, except we're doing a lot more cooking, little treat, you know, you'd do more cooking, and I immediately knew people, because you can have takeaways, so I just ran this whole series of takeaways, so we do how to make cabs at home, how to make burger king at home, how to make big Macs at home, and people were just just so invested, and I'd say my follow-way, like invested following almost double during that time, and sales went for the roof, and we're just just moved into our new warehouse, so that was the best bit, about four, five years in, four years in, because we'd had our original warehouse, then we took on the warehouse next door, and then we took on the one next door, so we had three, four, and then we'd gone to the big one, and we were just moving in during that kind of a time. You're like, oh cool, we've just taken on, and luckily worked, your brain, I feel like I watched some of those, but remind me, are you kind of making those up as you go, like let's see if I can make KFC, or as your brain, just like KFC, says me, I know how to do that. I guess you know flavours, when you know flavours, and you know how to balance flavours, and I mean the internet, if you're not sure you can google it, what goes in KFC culture, and it's a pinch of sugar on this thing, that's it, so you there, you might be three quals away there, and you know you had a half teaspoon of sugar in you, and you're like, almost almost, you can just sort of fiddle around with it, but if you've got a rough idea, and you're willing to do the research. And I can see you're doing these raw videos where you're cooking, and making, and talking, and chatting, and all of that kind of thing, and it's like that kind of perfect combination, or that it's the perfect recipe, excuse the pun, for someone at home, stuck at home, they're being entertained, you're giving them ideas, you know, it's, it's, and you're nourishing, and they get to eat something yummy at the end of it. And I'd share my personal, like parts of my life as well, I think because that was also, back then it wasn't a big deal to have your kids running around, some people saw the birth of my son, like he was, you know, they saw my pregnancy, we brought him all the little baby bits, and then he was literally born on the floor, and you know, we can't, you know, be able to talk about that journey, so they, I mean, there's so many people who've grown up with my kids, you know, and now they don't anymore, obviously, but sharing when you're in the second that, right, and the second that newborn phase, or toddler phase, when people couldn't, anyone else who's going for that journey is, is that you're like a lifeline to them, because like she's having a hell of a time too, like her kid doesn't sleep, her kid doesn't eat, people just really connect with that, when you're honest about it, and you're not going on about how perfect your life is, people, people really, really connect with that for sure, and they want, they want to support you, they want to be part of your journey. And it's so, I feel like for a lot of businesses, that's the hard part, or doing it genuinely, or doing it, I think for a lot of people, they know they have to do it, you know, even at the session where we're at the other morning, you know, it's a lot about this sort of founder lead content, because we see it work, so people, a lot of people are like, oh, I know I have to do it, but it's not natural, but I think for people that they don't mind doing it, it does come quite naturally, that's really obvious, and it's not, it's not a sell, it's just, this is the so we are, it's our brand, it's what we're doing, if you like us, great, you know, it just comes so naturally to some people, and you can see that. And the funny thing is, if I'd even learned about marketing, or been taught anything, I don't know if I would have ever done anything like that, because it was genuinely the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, and I was able to share that, was what, was what worked, the mistakes, the mistakes, even the mistakes in manufacturing, you know, trying to ship jars, everything we did, all the drama, you know, sharing it, and then sharing how you fix it, that's what builds your lifelong customers, for sure, there was never, never, never about selling really, that's, that would be my one marketing rules, it's not, don't try and sell something, you're just building relationships, I think, or building a connection, or taking people on a journey. Yeah, and obviously alongside that, you've got product that works, you know, like product that people love, and it's, because if it was a product that was disgusting, or something, then you could hit build all the community in the world, but they're not going to, they're not going to read, they might buy it once, they're not going to read by it, are they? Yeah, that is very true, but then it's also maybe knowing how to use it, so you're like watching what I'm showing them, or seeing an idea, is that's what, that's what gets them using their products, which then in turn means they'll come back and buy it again. Yeah, and I think, I mean, that's the classic example of me that I just shared before, like, I wouldn't have packed out that TikTok trending, now I feel like I've put probably a hundred but because I was showing how to use it in a really simple way, like, really easily, and it was really low-bariety entry, because again, with the recipes that you see that are the actual breakdown of the, of the recipe, I'm never going to do that, or I'll go out and buy those, all those spices once, yeah, I will make it once, and I'll never do it again, so it's kind of very easy for people to, to, it's actually really accessible, anyway, yeah, we get, we're in the, the bigger warehouse, it's COVID, things are cranking, yeah, and by that stage, I mean, I'd always, my staff started out as my neighbour, and my aunt came to work for a week, and then my cousin, and then I just put on, I just put on Facebook, does anyone know who, somebody wants a job? So that was how I started getting staff, but then once we were in that big warehouse, we kind of, oh, I was, when Kit was born actually, and I'd hide someone to run the day-to-day while I wasn't, well, I wasn't there, and during that time, I just actually started the second business, Kitco, which was the cast iron cookware, I guess I was just at home. I bet you got two Kitco, thank you. Oh, wow, perfect, yeah, beautiful, again, a bit ultimate consumer, yeah. I just really, with that, just saw a gap in the market for that, I just hated the briskers and came up cookware, but I couldn't afford the liquor so, and I was like, there must be a way to do this. Better, found it, there was a way to do it, better, pick some beautiful colours, got some cool packaging, and got a couple of container loads of that, and I got that going when Kit was a newborn, and so we brought on more staff, you know, and had actually then started to have specific staff for making product, and then someone for paying the wages and doing their accounts, and then my brother came to work for me full time, just after that, around that period, which was pretty great, so that took all the tech stuff off my hands, a lot of the operations, and then, yeah, we're in the big warehouse. Oh, gosh, what have we done over the last year? Every year, we're trying to do something new, launched our podcast, the Ramadan table podcast, we started the Canable Knife business, sold Kit Co business, but why did you sell Kit Co? So when I got separated from my husband, and that was the best way to solve all money problems without having to touch people or me, or anything, so it was actually just perfect, scenario, it was a perfect business to sell, I'd set it up so that it was running from a dispatch warehouse in Auckland, so you didn't even have to touch it, they unloaded it, packed, it was imported, ready to go, and all you had to do was sell it, so dream business to sell, great, great margin, great turnover. I was going to say that was actually, I was wondering if you found that business harder because of, it was such big product, but I guess you're not even having to just in, out. Yeah, it was difficult because it was heavy, that is correct, and there's definitely limitations on that, but when you high, higher product value, higher margin, got a lot more intimate and then we had sort of six shapes or sizes and then three, four colors, you just did so well with the colors with that, I think that was what I made. Well, it was price point because I was the same, I couldn't afford the expensive stuff, but I really wanted some cast iron, and then it was like, I've got the marshmallow and sage green, and it was like right on trend right at the time, it was like kind of the perfect, and it was perfect for my audience, because you're right, like this, what I knew they needed this, what they wanted, and I think some of those, the further it goes, if it's coming from here and going to that store at warehouse and then being distributed to a farmer's or a Stevens, the markup on that is insane, and I used to look at them, they're like, this is actually a joke, you guys are taking the purse, so whereas if I can import it directly, and then still make a great profit, but everyone else is still getting a great deal, then everyone wins, so it's win-win for everyone. So great business for the time, and it was a great business for the time, but then also I wasn't putting enough into it, and then we had just started the knife, we're just trying to get the knives off the ground as well, and it was just, it was just the perfect business out, probably sold it at the perfect time as well, I think the economy pretty much took a dive straight after that, so it was probably lucky in terms of timing with that one, but I do, I enjoy the challenge of getting something off the ground as well, I find it really, really nice to be able to problem solve. You're obviously that true entrepreneur mindset, right, like the ideas person got it thinking about the ideas that will work for the particular audience that you're working with. I think so, but I think I guess I can feel like maybe trends, or I can see, but I just, you look at yourself, I guess, and then trust what you want, and you know your customer, like I know my customers are me, like the my age bracket, the 96% female, they have the same budget, we're not, you know, we're in that right in that mid range, we like beautiful things, we like delicious things, we like to entertain, but we're not going to spend an absolute fortune, but we want something that's nicer than the bottom, bottom tier, and then they just see the gaps in the market, I guess, when it comes to good food, so yeah, and was the same with the knives, is that the same sort of concepts you wanted some good knives, you could see that gap. Yeah, it was, and it was a really people who make their knives actually approached me, because they were trying to sell their knives, and they told me the story, and they were made from old carp, war trucks, and Vietnam, and they're making these knives, and they're sitting around the fire, hand making these knives, and they were rough, but they were beautiful, and no one else was doing anything like them, and they were a funny one, because I was like, oh, they're not going to be able to be touched on the dishwasher, you need to look after these knives, but they are that gorgeous, so you had to really communicate that really well, that the carbon steel is not your average home knife, but it's a beautiful like metal, it's easy to sharpen the blades nice and light, they are really easy to use, so we just thought we'll give it a go, and with the same kind of pattern import, I got Campbell to do the branding, and I had this vision for this brand that was going to be real dark, and so my brother's son's name is Abel, and he's in the business with me, and I thought, oh, we've got pepper, we've got pepper in me, we got cat, we got cat co, we've got Abel, what are we going to do here, and so it launched my brother, and I was like, what about can you enable the story of how the brothers killed each other, and we'll make it real dark, and we'll make it real like sort of stone, and earth, and fire, and pull these biblical bits into it, so that was really fun creative project for Campbell, and he just nailed that, so a different, you could easily have just put those into pepper in me, but it's quite a, I mean, it's a completely separate business, isn't it, in terms of look, feel, brand, how you market it, all of that kind of thing, like it's completely separate to pepper in me, it is, yeah, completely separate, yeah, it started off maybe being a bit more tight into pepper in me, but Campbell ran with that, so amazingly, so he now runs that business completely in all the marketing and everything, so he's gone from being the designer of the brand to owning what, you know, being the brand, which has been really cool. For him, we did the e-commerce equation, well he's done the e-commerce equation with that business, which has been really interesting, so we run it completely differently to anything else, and it is predominantly ads. I think the reason for that is it's not a consumable good either, you might buy one, you might buy two, you might buy three, you're not buying, you're not buying one every month, so we constantly have to find new customers, which is the difference, whereas with pepper in me, you're just constantly building that relationship with your current customer, and then the best way to, for that to grow is literally word of mouth, or getting new stockers, who are as passionate about your brand as you are, and it's a more of a slow growth, rather than constantly running ads, I guess. Can you also talk a little bit about, well, the next, you talked the other week about the Pickles business, because I think at this stage we're talking about all the ones, all the glory, all the glory. Then there was the Pickles brand. Yeah, the Pickles brand. I don't know, what watch we were thinking, I think we wanted to do something. Well, Pickles were the trending thing at that point, that were really, really in and three, three, four, three and a half, yeah, three and a half years ago. I was like, oh, this is brilliant, let's do Pickle Dunions, because I was making lots of Pickle Dunions, I was like, oh, no one's really doing that bright, red beautiful onions, and we'll do yellow cauliflower, so like a curried cauliflower, go on the cucumbers, and they'll look gorgeous in the colour, and you do the brand, we have them clear jars, and can we do the great branding? Yeah, so cute, I mean, they were beautiful, and we went all in, we're like, right, let's just, we know what works, we'll do a bulk amount, we know we can sell them, everyone wants a config art, we kind of had nice five products, so we thought we'll go big, we'll get printed jars, so we can get them real cheap, we'll get them from China, we'll wear it, don't have to do us labels, we don't have to, you know, so we have nice 20 cent jars as opposed to total of jars, and we'll fill them and sell them, and whole sell them, and whatnot, and then we've got the, so we got the 20,000 jars, and they came and they bloody leeks, as we wanted this beautiful jar that no one else had, of course it's the reason no one else had it, so I was a bit of a disaster, and then obviously we had a great summer, and it did go actually really well until we had winter, and cucumbers were $8 a piece, and cauliflower was $10, and even the onions, we couldn't get to stay the bright colors, we were adding like nice beetroot powder to them, but we wanted them in rings, and we needed thin rings, and you had to do it by hand, you could, as soon as you put them on the mandolin, you lose, you lose the color, and you use the sharpness, and you lost what I wanted from the pickle onion, so we're making pickle onion jars, we're cutting them by hand, and you're kind of just realising this all along the way, you pull your jars, you've got, you know, like just shafts, well it was fun for a long time, and then you realise it's not scalable, and then you kind of like, this is the perfect business for someone who wants to keep it small, but I actually don't have time to run another small business, I need something I can get to a nice big point, and then hire people to do the work. So we did, we sold it, we actually sold it, and there's a couple of girls who run it now, and they do a great job, and they go and do the markets, and they've got some cool little stockests across the country, and it's probably perfect for the two of them. Yeah, so that is a thing, isn't it? Some people, for some people, those businesses are exactly what they need, like not everyone wants a business that is going to be that kind of like take it really big, and have stuff, some people do just want a kind of a cottage industry kind of business that they can keep like that, and it runs really well. Well yeah, yeah, if I didn't have pepper in me, you know, you could probably get it to a perfect point, if that was your happy to do, you know, make pickles two or three days a week, and then sell pickles two days a week, perfect, but I probably had two hours a week, and so did Cam, so head of it on, and then yeah, we just had too many disasters, I'd say, to pull it back, but it was, I mean, it wasn't actually, I wouldn't look at it as a disaster, we drunk about it, but you learn, you learn so much from that, and we sold it, we sold it for 20 grand, which probably covered our time, and if it's so, it's not like it. Yeah, I was like you say, everything is a learning, and that informs all the decisions you go on and make in the future, right? And I know we're just talking about a lot of the good bits, but I'm sure there's been many of these little failures along the way, and many, and one of my favourites was we maybe a couple of years in, I mean, just got in the new warehouse, and we were making a big batch of crumb, and a crumb mix, and it was a ducca crumb, so it was our Moroccan ducca base through a crumb, and someone in the dump the bag of, they'd use the cayenne people instead of the Moroccan seasoning, so we had I don't know, like what, even 50 kilos of crumb that was this too hot to eat, and I'm like, what can we do? But I also had all the nuts and up, but there was too many ingredients, I didn't want to waste it, so I said split it into seven bins, go get a hole, now that 200 kilos of crumb will divide it all, like, and we'll add some cumin and coriander, and it's a bit prequel, we'll make it a Mexican crumb, or spicy crumb, and we'll, so spicy Mexican crumb, we'll call it the fucka crumb instead of the ducca crumb, and so we, we told the story, we showed everyone what we were doing, we tried it, we cooked some chicken and it's nice, it's a nice Mexican crumb, we'll make some, you know, crispy chicken burritos and what not, and we put it online, fucka crumb sold out in about 20 minutes. I love it, that is, I mean look, that is a classic example, isn't it, like turning your mistake into, like, and a lot of people that would be in absolute, do you, do you lose your cool in those situations, or are you quite level heated, like, are you just, oh well, shit happens, kind of, oh yeah, now it takes a lot for me to lose my cool, I actually really probably thrive when there's a problem, a hit of me that I can figure out, that's probably a, yeah, probably wouldn't, yeah, no, not in terms of that, those kind of mistakes, too, I love it when people own things, too, if someone comes to you and says, I've made a mistake, I respect that so much, it'll be like, cool, let's go figure out how we can fix it, that's great, if someone tries to hide it and carries away your lies, or whatever, that'll upset me, yeah, different story, but I think ownership, ownership's one of our core values that people are in me, and yeah, really try and make that well known, that we can fix, fix any mistake, if we deal with it, front on, that there was another one, the Chimichuri exploding Chimichuri jars, and I was still working from home at this point, because I had been to Queenstown and we'd had these empanadas from the empanada, there was a little empanada window, and they made these little hot sauces, ahi, it's an ahi, maybe hot sauce in this beautiful fresh Chimichuri, and I loved it, I thought this is great, I want to put these in the Christmas boxes, so I'd bought a couple of hundred jars off of them and put them in my Christmas gift boxes, so they had a nice Chimichuri, I think we did a ham glaze and a salt and whatnot, and set them out, wrap them up, set them out for Christmas, and I'd say to them, do they travel okay, and the heat they're all good, and they said, yeah, so we should be fine, but it was, it was, well, it must have been the hottest Christmas that had ever happened, and then they took three or four days to get on the truck to get up to me, and they must have fermented, so they started to ferment away, and I didn't, they had packed them up in the boxes off that gone for Christmas, and then two or three days before Christmas I get the first phone call, and all my gift boxes just exploded under the Christmas tree, like actually just sitting wrapped under the Christmas tree, and you get one and you're like, oh shit, no I knew, as soon as I got the first round, I said, oh shit, I'm in trouble, and I must have, how many did you get? I had a box at home so I'd gone out and I could smell like it immediately, see so the lids were popping off, and the smell was horrific, and I mean we've been pregnant because I was pregnant so I couldn't cope with the smell, I was like, oh no, it took me, it took taking me to now to make friends with Chimichuri again, but I think we must have had a hundred or something, but managed to, I think just dive into it, had first called every single person who'd had one, get it out of your box, get it, and if it's already gone, then we'll replace, you know, we have to replace the whole whole box, but we met, I think we managed to really, obviously at the time it was incredibly stressful, but I look back on it and think in one laugh, and two, remember how well we dealt with the customer service, I remember being really proud and being like, if we could take these people's terrible experience and turn it around and think, well that company dealt with that, so well, oh but again that's more powerful than them just having an average experience, and so really like other compensating, making sure everything was good and everyone was happy and fixing, you know, not just replacing the one thing, making sure they got a whole fresh box, get rid of it. Yeah, so don't, yeah, and it is quite funny. I love it, I love it, there's the thing, like there is so many, there's the high highs and the challenges and the small losses along the way. Tell me, moving forward a little bit closer to today, another massive thing that has just happened. I actually know, before we start that, you also, you've done two cookbooks, well you've done three cookbooks, but before this, most recent one, you've, along that kind of process, you've done two cookbooks as well. Yes, so we did two cookbooks, I did two cookbooks with the publisher, well first one was 2020 and the second one was 222, which was cool, so I basically took, I mean, 80 or so of my, I guess, best recipes and really worked them to the bone and then we up and shot them in Auckland with the photography team and the food stylist team, which was a great learning experience and then they actually did all the rest of the work. So they make the book, they did the editing, they sent it off to the publisher, they put all the investment in and then I, you know, and then they got the books and then they distributed all the books and then I just bought books for us to sell online too. So it was a really cool way of doing a first few cookbooks, it was relatively easy and stress-free and learnt a lot. I guess they're probably not going to be like a huge money maker for you, but there are great, solidify your presents, a great kind of awareness, all of those great things that come with. Yeah, it was a great way to get into that real mainstream wick calls and the warehouse and things like that. I was always worried, people would buy this book and then think, oh my god, I'm going to have to go buy all these products now, this is a disappointment. So it was a funny little balance of trying not to make it too much about people or me, but then still trying to get new customers. So yeah, no, they went really well those first two books and then we did last year, so we do the advent calendars, that's one of our biggest things that we do. And we've just finished that, so this is our fourth advent calendar, first year we did 24 products in each with the recipe card and so your 24 products come together to make your Christmas feast, so there was drinks and dessert mixes and seasonings and salts and ham glaze and relished and put a little recipe card with each thing. Do you remember where the original idea came from? Maybe a gin advent calendar or like a cheese advent calendar or something I definitely seen some, I don't think it was in New Zealand, but I remember seeing something I know that Heinz did one, right? Different sources and mayo of that sort of thing. And it was a huge amount of work that was insane, that first one and then we realised the second year we dropped it down to 12 products because 24 full-size products is actually too much for anyone to quite with. I know that people still got some of the original Sunday covers now. And then last year we instead of putting a recipe card and we actually wrote a little magazine to go with the thing, so we did three recipes for each product, so if you didn't want to use your panic cloud and mix to make a panic cloud and we did a pineapple coconut tart, so you've got all these options with your things and we put it into a magazine and then we realised we were just written a book. In a matter of three weeks, if we could do that, we could make a book for sure. So it kind of gave us this really massive confidence that we can do this, so that was in the advent everyone loved the magazine, so February March we took, I guess the greatest hits and we, the first two books were very much my things I loved cooking and I wanted other people to cook, maybe a little bit more shifi, some of them, there was a lot more entertaining in the home where this one, let's just do every weeknight meals, that everyone will use over and over and over again, the favourites of the last 10 years and your weekend baking that you do with your cats and some desserts and some nice little pizza dough and the casher bread and a cool baked bread, just stuff that we do all the time is really like solid recipes, so kind of collected those, refined them, added in the new ones that have been loving over the past few years, and then shot them with Tasha photographer and then our designer Luke put the book together and along with the team of girls helped me at work, we all sort of, we think we cooked 90 recipes over four days. How long did you think the whole cookbook process took you? My part was the recipes and the photos and we got that done in about six, seven weeks, very good. Okay, and then it handed off to Luke and the editing took a lot longer than we thought, that was actually the hard part, the big job, isn't it? The editing was insane. We would run it through five different people and we still, you still find mistakes and question things, but yeah, yeah, and then that maybe took another six weeks and then dealing with China and then picking the colours and it was perfect because we just were launching this rebrand, so we tied it in everything the fonts and everything with the rebrand, so it had a nice theme and it was a great way to launch the rebrand with something physical and pretty and exciting. I wanted to talk about the rebrand, so that's a massive thing, you've obviously been in business for nine years and this year, just literally how long from when we were talking about six weeks ago, was it? You did a rebrand, relaunched your new look and feel. Tell me a little bit about the process for you. Well, and it was great in this talk you did the other day because you sort of showed the evolution of the first ever logo that you did and little iterations along the way, but this had been your baby, right? Your pepper and me baby and you spoke really well about it, so yeah, tell us a little bit about that whole process. Yeah, so we started, we started trying about 18 months ago and the reason, the push, I'd been wanting to change it for a while, but the push was going to the Melbourne Sydney food shows and we went and we had done what we thought was enough research, which really wasn't and we were there and it just didn't work, the brand looks so outdated, the products, we took the wrong products, we didn't, we didn't make enough context, adjusted and worked basically. I mean, you're looking around Melbourne and looking at the other brands, you're like, okay, we're going to have to step up our game big time here if we even want a sort of ticket to this show. So came home and I was like, right, let's kick it into gear and our design had ever since he'd started the year before, he had wanted to have a crack hit it because he had sort of, he was like, we need a refresh, everyone I'd sort of met and said, you probably need a refresh, so I knew it was, that was sort of had it's day in the sun and then there was also a huge pushback from a lot of loyal customers and they were pretty firmly against the idea and we wanted to bring some colour in and I think that was part of the problem because I got so caught up in the colour and what colour it was going to be, that I couldn't see past the colour to the design, so we literally went through every colour in the pentane book and one week I'd like the greens and the more tones and the next week I'll hate them and then we wanted a bright, bright blue and then I was like, well that doesn't go with the spices that are in the jars and we were, yeah, we probably went through eight different designs were presented to me and I just couldn't, I didn't like any of them and it was, it was this weird clash of worlds where my designer was telling me, we are a fun company, we are family friendly, you are funny, you're wild, you're bold, you're big flavours, you're not, you know, you're not basic, you're not any of those things but I wanted the most high-end looking seasoning you will ever find, I want a minimalist, I want a white, no words, I want a nothing, I was like, no, I want to be the best-looking seasoning, pack a ginny ones of a standard of life, I want nothing on the bed, because that's what everyone in Melbourne has, that's what, I'm like, that's what my customers want, they don't want bright, loud, colours coming out of them, you know, because that's what all the other seasoning companies are doing, and we don't want that, we don't want to be that, so we're basically battling each other the whole way and the two, trying to clash these two worlds together, and to be fair, we got there in the end, we've got a nice minimalist design, we've got a little bit of fun sneaking through with some, some fun sayings on the bottom, there's peeps of personality or thrill, we're still with our fun names, but I think it looks a lot more high-end than it did, so yeah, it was just sort of a matter of going through that process, I think, but it did take till the very last, we'd missed all our deadlines, but we were close, when we were really close, but we couldn't get it over the line, and it was the pattern down the side that I wasn't sure on, but I was happy with the fonts and everything else, and the deadline had come and gone, and I was on holiday going to Europe for a month, and so when I left I'd kind of, I was like, right, we're done, it's now a next year project, because we're not going to get it out for Christmas, so I left and thought that was the end of it, and then they kept calling me and sending me more designs, and I said, "Can we just look at this because I think we can get this over the line, we're really good, and I think I barely skimmed over the email, and I, it's lawn, my brother said, look, what do you think, because I think it's, but I think it's pretty good, it's close enough, it looks good, I think you're going to like it, and I honestly, I don't know, literally said, I couldn't care less, what that brand looks like, don't want to know, don't talk to me about it, goodbye, something I came home, three weeks later, and we had all gone to print, and I was a little bit, I was throwing, I was like, oh my god, on then now, but we had gone back to black and white, and we'd made that call last minute, and I think that was what saved the whole thing, it was the right move to make, even though one of the original aims of the whole rebrand was to bring color into the packaging, so sometimes you just have to undo, I guess, and go on the journey and figure it out. Oh, I think you do, and I think, I think you actually do, and it's quite a good example, though, of like, not just going with the first thing as well, like doing it right, this is the spread will stay with you for a long time now, so you do want to get it right, but I do like, mean, you did tell that story at the marketing breakfast the other day, about like, just, it took you going on holiday, and just being like, having a margarita and being like, I don't care, just do, you know, and in a way, it probably was the best thing for it. You just got to make a decision at some point and just go, you know. Yeah, he do, and I knew it was, I knew it was really, really close, and I don't know if I was ever going to get to 100%, so that was, that was cool, and it came home, and I think then we started to pull some really cool stuff alongside the, not just the jars and the bags, so we're getting the beautiful printed yellow boxes and our paper, the tissue paper, the website's been completely redone, we've put all the colour in there, and we've used that beautiful pale yellow, which I love, and the bright blue together, which is actually perfect compliment for the black and white packaging. It's just these little pops, just sort of little shelf talkers, and like, little packaging touches, which have been really nice to see key rings and whatnot, all the random little bits, signs, the website looks great, and it's definitely, it just, it definitely pulled it all, pulled it all together, and the beauty of it is, if we get sick of the colours, we're changing colours, you don't have to change the packaging. Yes, you don't have to change the packaging. No, and if people don't like that yellow, don't like that yellow doesn't matter because it's not on their shelf. How has the reception been? How has your loyal community found it? Good, I think, Lauren did say to me, he said the whole time, he's like, it actually doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because if you believe in a, you, they, they will listen to you, if you truly go there and you tell everyone, I love this and this is why they will absorb that energy. Of you, no one else can tell that story, it has to be you that loves it. So, I guess that was why no one else really had it, a say in it, but I hope we've just been around the country during the book tour and been able to tell that story at all the events, and I think that's really brought it together. It's so true because if you'd gone out whether well, I've been dragged, kicking and screaming to do this, and I know I'm not a hundred percent, but oh well, you know, people would feel that, right? And I think you probably would see an impact. Probably. And I guess mum and dad have, you know, been, they've listened to my honest concerns the whole way and they've been, please don't do it, don't do it, if you're not sure, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. So, if you can, yeah, I don't know, I don't know if it was mindset or what, but yeah, I think I did a seeing, seeing the team pulled together, we had, I think we had, we had 100,000 units of products that we had to make to get the shelves full with the new picture, and then seeing where this big day we changed, we cleared the entire warehouse, massive sale, cleared everything, and then to fill the shelves with that new lock and see it all come together was just amazing. It just really was just the tipping point, and I was able to get that excitement out and across and shared, and then when you put the two packets together, it's very clear to see the improvement. I reckon, I think it even mums said to me, she's like, "God, you're right, actually. Now that you put them together, it does look a bit outdated." I was like, yes, they got, so yeah, yeah, we got that. It is such a, it really is a good rebrand though, in the sense that you have retained some of the original character of the brand, like you say, it's not, if you had the two sitting on the shelves using up an old packet, they're not like you've got two completely different companies sitting next to each other. There is a relationship there, so it's a nice way of doing it without completely shocking everyone. Yeah, that's true, you know, right, exactly right, and a complete, you know, a complete change, which, like you say, would be insane. So you don't want, we still want it to be recognisable. I guess, especially when your brand's your biggest selling portal, biggest drawcard, yeah, you don't want people to walk past you on the shelf, because they don't even, you're not even close, and because we've now seen this, just changed over and all our stalkists, and there is a lot of the old packaging next to the new packaging, and you're right, it's not, it's not bad or offensive for anyone, no one's calling us upset and be like, "Can you take away a little stalk?" It's not been like that at all, so it's been a very, very smooth transition, yeah. So coming to where we are today, give us a little overview of the business, what how many staff, how many skews, how many stalkers, what does the business look like today? Yeah, so we're coming into Christmas season, so we'll hit 30 staff for the Christmas season, and we're sitting at about 23, 24 permanent full-time, which is amazing. This is the first year, this year's been really been the first year that I have had most of my physical tasks been offloaded from me, so obviously every year I've managed to offload a few more, but our offloading, the editing of the social media videos and replying to a lot of those messages has really freed me up a lot, and we've got a bookkeeper as well, so they were almost the last two little bits of the puzzle, we had an operations manager come on last year, and then having learners really, really freed me up to create my own job, which has been really cool this year, I think, being able to go out and do that book tour, I've got loads of speaking events lined up, is probably the best thing I can do for the business I think, so being able to follow that forward and hopefully meet and thank and greet and get as many new people in my edit. Do what you do best, you know, like that is a huge skill as an editing with that community, so how many products do you have? So we have 90, I think we've got about 93 skews, and then we've got 12 more coming in the advent calendar, 93, with a summer range we launched last month, and yet 23 staff, we've probably over 300 stockers, we're in almost even a new world now, the Binns, and yeah, sort of growing, growing any redirection, we've just launched our custom salts, which was what we got at the marketing breakfast, so I kind of thought this is going with something cool, no one else is doing this, yeah, so I'm hoping that that takes off, and we can make custom seasonings for other businesses to share with their loyal customers or clients, or I could be an idea came, but I want to do one for the German, or the anytime fitness, if I might make a seasonings for the German, and they can have their own anytime seasoning for your chicken and broccoli, or whatever, and we get all the gym ones hooked on, people are me, and then they'll come and eat, she's such a good idea, but there is someone with their chicken and broccoli, yeah, so I'm always trying to find the creative marketing avenues I think, but yeah, that's, I mean, that's where we're at, I guess, we're up 20% on last year, which is pretty, pretty big feet, so we're still growing, but I think I certainly don't have any desire to take over the world at this point, I'm really happy with how things are running, we've got a good lifestyle in terms of balance, and everything is just a nice, I like working, I like going to work, but I'm not going to commit to going to Australia and giving that six months there to try and start from scratch in that market, or in America at this point, I think our next goal would be to move some of our production. We produce all of our dry goods on site in a seashore, and some other things, but we still outsource our mayors, which is actually huge part of our business, so I'd like to pull that in house, which means some big tanks and different MPI set ups in a whole new kitchen. That would be a whole new ballgame, wouldn't it, producing that sort of pose? Yeah, if we could do that though, I mean, I think we worked out, we'd say, $100,000 per scoop per year, so if we could get 10 mails at that, it would be a million dollars up in terms of profit, so maybe just working on trying to increase the profit rather than the turnover as such would be epic. And it's a good lesson again in business that you don't have to have everything optimised and nailed right from the word go, you know, that's an evolution, right? You're now at the stage where you could do that, but you wouldn't have been in the position to do that five years ago, or maybe even three years ago, but it's like getting yourself into the position you go, right, what's the next kind of way we can improve on, improve and optimise and yeah, definitely, definitely, and you kind of think, I always thought, oh well, I run things all right, but having bringing someone in who actually runs off the spreadsheet properly and pulls me into line all the time was needed, you know, and that's just been incredible to have someone who's going to say, oh look, the numbers actually don't end up on that, so maybe you need to rethink it all, and I'm like, no, I want to charge $10 a minute, she said, well, you know, you're actually going to have to charge $18, and it's always bad all because I never want to, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, but having people like that in charge of the paperwork really is quite good business, yeah, I was going to ask how you have found going from ultimately being a chef with an idea to being a CEO, like, have you, has there been lots, I mean, I'm sure there has been lots of learning along the way, have you kind of had business mentors and all that sort of thing along the way as well to help you grow in that area? No, haven't actually, no, I'm probably quite stubborn in terms of not really listening much as well as people. Are you doing something right though? Like, you've obviously figured it out along the way, I guess, as how to manage people and how to, you know, and you know, but I know what I'm good at, I know, I know what I'm not good at, I think and the staff is something I'm not good at because I just want everyone to be happy, and which means that I don't correct things as they need to be corrected and I let things go, let things go, let things go to when it gets to a point and you're like, oh, God, this is a disaster. And that's just maybe my personality, non-confrontational or do I want to drama? I don't want to have people, I want to come to work on everyone to be happy, have a good time, love coming to work for me, and you know, if someone's not doing their job properly, they need to be told, they need to be taught, they need to be managed, they need to be helped anywhere, it doesn't actually, it doesn't happen anyone, but I just can't do it, I just can't do it, so I thought, what law and I thought he might be able to do it, but turns out he's no good at it either. So having someone to actually do that and give people KPIs and have their follow-up meetings with them every week and whatnot's been amazing, amazing thing to happen, but you also learn that you actually just can't, because you hire all your friends right, and then you get to a point and you're like, you can't actually do that now, we're too big to do that now, I need to have staff who actually have respect for the businesses of business and it can be run a lot differently, so I've had to step back from a lot of that as well, I guess, and I'm a little bit of a professional. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you have to, but that's great having someone asked to manage all that, because I'm not the one who's to say, sorry, no, you can't do that or whatever. So I guess it's just self-awareness and knowing what your skills are, it's better if you hand things off, you know, that helps kind of grow, I guess, your role and how you work. Very much so, yeah, and bringing in a warehouse manager, actually knows how to manage a warehouse and production, managing and forecasting and all those sorts of things has been really cool, very cool. Yeah, I love it. So what has been the biggest highlight, or highlights, I'm sure there've been many, but like off the top of your head over the last nine years, what are you the most proud of? Yeah, I honestly find that so hard. I think the book, the book that we've just made as a team has been something physical that I feel like we've actually really stopped to celebrate as a team, which has been really nice. I feel like having something that we've all done together, and it's just beautiful, very, very, very proud of that and stoked that we've done ourselves and they will actually be able to make good money off it. And we've got control over it, which is so nice, you know, we're not going to see that in the warehouse bargain bin like it's our book, we're not selling it to any big chain stores, we're only selling it to our stockers. And we've sold, like you know, almost 5,000 copies in six weeks or something. So that's so, so, so, so cool. Really happy with that. And the Advent calendars do bring me great joy. I love it. I think bringing the, bringing feelings to people, you know, bringing this experience to people is so cool. It's what, that's what we're all about, really. So seeing everyone open their days and then just gets so empty about it. So I'm bringing the joy of Christmas to adults and to the food world is, is cool. And I do love doing every year. It's a lot of work. There isn't, there's 90,000 pieces in the Advent calendar this year to them. So it's just insane amount of work, but really have enjoyed that. I think I try, oh, there's just so many, so many, so many things, but we, I think we, we maintain a pretty genuine purpose to connect people with food. That's our purpose. We're not, we actually don't like, no one will believe me, but I actually don't care about making money at all. Like, I just have fun and I enjoy what I do all the time. And it has provided me with a good income, which is cool, but I'm certainly not out there or driven by money in any way, shape or form, like not at all. It's amazing though, because as you say that, and because that is, I mean, that kind of comes across, right? Like the true passion and love for what you do is kind of like I said at the beginning of this, like it exudes out of the social media, or not just socials, but in every pepper and me touch point, you know, how, what a, what a great place to be in that you are making a living, obviously. You have got, your company is growing, let you say, it's doing well, but that it's doing something that brings you personally so much joy and for the people that receive the products as well. Yeah, and other people, yeah, and just everyone I meet, like, oh, I like made this last night, loved it, loved it, loved it. I kept it stush, yeah. Yeah, and that's really cool. It's really, really cool. It's very special. I think getting out there on this book tour and hearing that face-to-face from so many people really was really powerful. Yeah, very cool. Really awesome. However, you mentioned it before about a value of the brand, but could you tell me the values or ethos that drive your business? Yeah, well, so our purpose is to connect people with food. That's our purpose. So we do try and pull things back to that sometimes because we're very ADHD, but if the time will I am, I'll let's do this, let's do this, that's that. But that's our purpose and then our values are ownership, which I've heard said before, is really what it wanted me. Celebration, I think, we as humans, as busy humans, forget to stop and celebrate sometimes. So we want to celebrate the wins. We can, we really work hard to try and like, I mean, we know it's a busy season coming up, so we've just decided we've just made a little roster and we've brought the whole staff into it and we've said, all right, everyone, pick a day, tell me how much money you need to want you to organise. A little surprise for the team on a Wednesday has an activity or like a food show, like something fun. I don't know, we did it last year and I got a stripper and it was the most inappropriate thing to do with it and I was literally the best day and I was an absolute hysterics. I thought it was so stripper just turned up to work. No, we are called a meeting. I told them, I pretended we're having a serious meeting and I made them go around the room and say nice things about each other. It's just a stripper to come, it's amazing. Now that you say that, I do think I remember saying it, but I didn't put it on socials or maybe I talked about it a couple of times, but it was definitely borderline. But have you had just the life after that? Yes, it taught me great pleasure. We've been told no strippers about this year, but we do a little soda station and we make lunches and we have snacks and whatnot. Anyway, celebrate, have a good time bringing people together, bring people together via food. It's just really important to all of us. It's very much of the heart of what we do and it all ties in together quite nicely. I think so. That's our little circle. Yeah, that's cool. Again, the marketing breakfast the other day, you talked about marketing, which is where I, which brings me a lot of joy. I love hearing about how businesses marketing their business and their brand and what that looks like and I love what you talked about. So could you talk a little bit about how you market people in me and what kind of that marketing mix looks like? Yeah, this was cool because to be honest, before that breakfast, I'd never really thought of these things specifically as marketing. I guess even though that is my job, it's not really my job, it's just I just, I just didn't guess it's just what I do. But we do, we do the social media and I think we do the best we can on that. Instagram's our core social media, Facebook sort of overflows from that slightly older age group, but we put the same content up and that works really well. And then TikTok really hard, really hard, haven't got it right. People are horrible. Don't get sales. You're like, we're the kind of, because we think we're the kind of, yeah, we've not, we've not got that right and that's absolutely fine. So we have our own podcast as well, which is more of our long form. Now, so we can just sit there and share, we don't even have an agenda. It's just chatting about what's been happening over the last few weeks. What we're eating, what we're cooking, what products we're excited about, what's been happening in business. And then we take those clips from the podcast sometimes too and we'll sometimes run those as ads, or just, you know, get people another another string. And that's that's a nice, it's, it's a smaller shot. I don't know a few thousand listeners, but they love it, they love it. And then they are very fully invested in, in that nice long form chat. And that's what we bring a little bit more of the personal stuff in their tool, which is cool, because I don't put so much personal stuff now on my social media now that my kids are older. You're in a safe place anymore. That's not a safe place. And I don't like, I don't, I mean, my life's probably just a little bit more private now than it was. Maybe I just value that a little bit more. So yeah, socials podcast I write for the our place magazine, so food writer for them. And that really keeps me connected with hospitality world, restaurant owners, business owners. And it, you know, we go to all the events, we get to go to all the restaurant openings and all the things like that, which is really cool, to make sure that we have a nice foot in that local hospice scene. We have a Facebook addicts cult group, which I guess you talked about this. Yes, we've had this for a solid eight years. And it's just a place where people can share whatever they've cooked. If they've discovered a corny recipe, if they've got a question, and then me and my team, you know, will answer it within half an hour or they can ask the other group members. So there's thousands of thousands of men, people in that Facebook group as well. I try to be, I really try not, I'm trying to be better with it because I've just sort of thought, oh, every Monday, I'm just going to put a little question in there and see, well, the answer, you know, what's your favourite Wignight meal that you're cooking at the moment? What's your favourite? Do you like the Tartus or Spitter or the New Dill Mail? Just to get the conversation rolling and it's a great way for people to ask what's coming back or if they want something new or if it's going to say you'd have right insight from your customers, right? Right. Yes, they tell you. Yeah, it's also, you don't, we don't try and sell things on there. It's not just selling, it's a discussion, but that sells things. So, you know, you don't need to. And there's people who just love sharing what they have cooked every day, which is cold. I put my caramel in my ice cream mixture and make it today. I've got, you know, a new bread recipe or something which is quite fun. It is a safe place to share because you feel like a dick if you share that on your, or some people, you don't have to put it on your story or put that on your Instagram or your story, you're putting it with other people that like the stuffed toast, it's your people. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that goes quite well. And then we have, we actually have a subscription, we've got two subscription things at the moment. We've got a subscription recipe website, which is, we have different contributors, we put all our recipes up there, we've started adding our videos on to the recipes there as well. So there's 2,000 people in my recipes, on that hub, I think it's 10 bucks a month or something. And you've had this one for a long time, and that was people in my club. People in my club have had for seven years, yeah. So there's, yeah, literally two and a half thousand recipes on there. So if you've got a manor, don't want to do it, type manor, you know, there's hundreds of recipes, or if you've all got mints out, you don't know what to cook or something. So that's getting harder as a platform, I think, because recipes cost content is so free and easily available. But there's no ads on it. So whenever I want to recipe online, and there's a hundred ads is your scrolling, that does my head and says no ads on it, which, you know, if that's with two bucks a week to you, then perfect place for you, they're for me club. And now that we're trying to link up. So if you, you've got this Instagram video, I know I was just saying you make that hot pot, but it might have been a year ago. So now we've linked all the videos on to the club, recipes. So you can search hot pot, and it's going to come up. So we're working, we've been working quite hard on that this year, and we've put it on a new platform just to hopefully try and keep up with the world as it evolves. But I don't know that seems to be one thing that's probably going to get harder for us, I think. It is interesting, though, because as you speak, you know, a lot obviously the conversation is with AI these days, and how it's kind of, you know, there's obviously pros and cons to everything. But I wonder if we'll find that people will actually want, like, we'll be happy to pay to know that they're getting quality recipes rather than that something that's just been generated. And because it's getting harder and harder to tell right, like everything you search, is that real? You know, like, yeah. So I wonder if there will be a kind of a turn back, who knows, but who knows? Who knows? I'd served us really well that platform has been great. So yeah, hopefully it continues on. And then we have, so we've got this, people post, we started about a 12 months ago as well. So that's 50 dollars subscription. First of every month, we've sent out a box of seasonings and spices, a couple of regular range of salt, and a couple of new things that we're working on, and we're trying to do a mayo of the month. So you get a new flavour, mayo and salt, and you get some cool stuff that we're working on. And then a couple of regular range, which is cool. So we've got about a thousand people signed up for that people post box, which gives us the cool, it's basically how we try our new products, I guess. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if that's marketing either, but I guess it's products, development, trialling, an error, they'll give us great feedback, and then yeah, I guess we go from there with what products are the hottest favourites. And it's still that diehard community, you know, if you're signing up for that, then you are a true people in me, kind of community member, I guess, in that respect. And so it is, you know, I mean, I guess it's like you say, all of this, what I love about what you guys do is that it is marketing, but it's kind of not a hard sell, like you don't feel sold to with people in me. And actually I want to talk to you a bit more, drill down a little bit more into the Instagram, because again, you spoke about it the other day, but it was really interesting. I know you do digital advertising, and obviously every brand does, and that's important, but a huge part of your Instagram is just your organic content, and it is not paid. And I was just having a scroll through before we chatted, you know, and it was like, there was one, and it was like a really high, highly viewed reel, and it was like Lauren's show, so I don't know, it was something like, I can't remember what it was, I mean to remember which one it was, but it was like Lauren coming through a door and something, it was so non-food and non, it was just office antics, basically. Yeah, when something like 28,000 like views, I can't remember, but you know, like, and I was, and you go through your feed, and it's all like that, you know, there's food, there's fun, there's, and none of it is paid content that you're being forced to. Yeah, watch, that's, that's right. I'd like to do no ads, to be honest, but I think we're just in this world where you kind of have to a little bit now, but we try, we try not to make, oh, well, you know, Campbell's that he does our ads and he's like, right, you need to go on and say this and stuff. Okay, we try, we try all sorts, but we try and make, we try and provide value, I guess, for the content that you have to provide value, whether that's making someone laugh, teaching them something, or like, you know, give them away to use their products, or anything that's entertainment value, I guess, while being a cell is, is what we try and do. I think the office antics is, is really, that's what's been on the rise in terms of the content that I like watching. You almost, you, you always can't go wrong with it, I think, which has been great. So I've had Ms, she helps both edit the socials, and so she's great at organising that sort of stuff, because it doesn't always need to be me, which is cool. I say, you know, having told that the, my biggest strength in the business is me, and my biggest weakness in the business is also me. So to be able to bring more faces, more personalities until it has been quite cool, takes the pressure off, which is, yeah, good fun. I think I like the office antics, yeah, I think it's good. And I think as a brand, you don't take yourself too seriously, and I love to just look and analyse, brands like yours, and you try everything, and you aren't afraid to be a bit silly on there, and you're not, and I mean this in a nice way, like you're not afraid to look a bit silly, or to do something about crazy, but I think that is what, that is exactly what your brand is, and what, what's your brand, you know, a bit different if you are a hained luxury fashion brand, but, but again, it's showing that personality, and everything you do, but also try it. Yeah, yeah, try and, try an era. You have to connect with people, right, and people connect with things that are real, not something that they can't attain to be, you know, so that's what gives you that connection, gives you a relationship, and then that's where people want to buy from. They want to buy from you, they know you, you're kiwi, you know, you're real, you're local, and that really, that makes them want to spend their money with you, and it's quite a funny, because we're such tall poppies and New Zealand, and you do have to be careful, I think, I definitely got what I put a poll in my house, la, beginning last year, and there were, I went with TikTok, but oh, oh, look at, you know, good to know, right, what a $10 salt is going to give you, and luxury life of, wow, wow, I'm like, I may have put it on my mortgage, yeah, I'm like, oh, I'm actually wrecking it really out. But 99% of people genuinely said, I've watched you work your ass off for last night, and use of any of those polls, it's you. We know, we work hard, we donate to charity, we do everything we can for other people, it's not like we're rolling around in luxury, not everyone can have a poll, but it's that balance, right, of being like honest and real about it, and not being too much or too, too, yeah, showy or like, just being real, just being real. Yeah. I was going to ask, but that's a great example, if they have been any times where you're like, oh, that's not hurt or, oh, actually, I'm not doing it anymore, I've, you know, had negative feedback or anything like that, or have you generally been fairly okay with that kind of thing? Oh, I reckon it's always like 95% good, and then there's 5% of people who are sour, and I do, sometimes actually just feel sorry for those people, because if you really need to lash out like that, and you know that, they're about someone else having something nice. That's a, that's a you problem, like, that's not a me problem, whereas if the tide was turned and it was 50% people saying, oh, too much, you know, you'd definitely read the room on it. Yeah. Oh, no, I think it's mostly, it's mostly pretty sweet. Yeah. Oh, do you know what, the one thing that, one thing that you do notice is the cost of living food prices of food. So if I do a recipe that's using Kelo butter or something, like, that's when you get the pushback, and like, the comments, comments, comments, no one can afford that, no one can afford that. But that's when you tackle things head on and you can, more your cooking, you say, I know that tomatoes are $10 a kilo, you're not going to be able to afford them. This is my million dollar salad here. Go make it if you're rich, and if you don't, then don't. Yeah, don't, make it at a different time. Literally just, yeah, just grab it by the horns, and then you can't, they can't say anything to that. Oh, you can do this laugh, isn't it? And that that's expensive, and it has been hard for everyone, but that doesn't mean you've got to stop using half of the food that we buy. We certainly try and cook seasonally, 90% of the time, but sometimes one to the, everything is hard work. Well, yeah, this one, too, it was like, doesn't matter what you buy, it's like extravagant, leaprice, so yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's the most important lesson you've learned in this journey so far? Oh, gosh, so many, so many lessons. I think we'll have spoken about it a lot, but do do what you're good at and offload the other things. That would be my biggest lesson. You can't, people might tell you you need to do that, but like you really have to play to your strengths, follow and follow that path if you want to thrive naturally. And if you play to your strengths, you'll feel fulfilled as well, and you'll be hippie, rather than trying to slug your guts out, managing staff or doing accounts if that's not way your strengths are what you're good at. That's a great lesson. Yeah, there's only so long you can do that for or destroy your soul. Yeah, and no one wants that. No, or what have been the biggest influences in your business so far? Influences. Gosh. There's, I think everyone brings something to the table. My brother really has been the solid rock. There's a port that's allowed the business to be me for me to go and be what I need to be. So to have someone a bit a second that you trust and that you can literally just walk away and have 100% faith that things are going to play out as they should. And also he will also be the person who will be able to gently pull me up because no one else probably would. And he doesn't do it often. It'll be very rare. Or in a firm way, he'll just say, can you just explain your thinking behind that? And then I'll be like, okay, all right, okay, maybe I need to take class about that or something. So yeah, I mean, that would be the biggest, I guess, influence or from a person. Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's really cool. And like, I think you showed a picture the other day. I mean, he was literally there side by side with you on the couch from almost the very first moment of the situation of the business, wasn't he? You know, it looks like, yeah. Building my camera logo for me. Yeah. So good. Okay. What advice would you give to a woman, it's predominantly woman listening to this podcast, who's early on in their business journey, or about, you know, has an idea for a business, maybe in your kind of world in the sort of food world, what advice would you give that woman? I reckon I've always said just start, just do something, stop thinking about it, take a few steps forward. You might get knocked back another step, but there's only so long, so many people I know in this world have been sitting in an idea, and they don't know what the first step to take is. Like, you can do anything, you just need to do something, go and go and buy some product samples, go and get a mixing bowl and mix up your first batch of something. Like, if you want to make cupcakes, go and make, go and book a table at your local market, go and ask someone about doing some branding, just do something, do something, because once you do one thing, then you can do the next thing and you just keep going, but I reckon there's just a million people out there sitting on something and they just don't ever take the next step, it never leaves the thought process. Do anything one foot and head ahead of the other, or I like to like break it down till I try and break it down to a million bite size chunks, because you're probably like, "Oh, I've got a million things to do." Well, find 10 things, put them on a post at night, put them in the first row of like, "What are these 10 things that I could do tomorrow?" And then once you've got those 10 things in, you can do them and then move on to your next thing. What are the next thing? So much easier. Yeah, when they're broken down, it's so much easier. You know, the small little bite size rather than one big thing, yeah, that's greater bite. Okay, what is the future? Feel as this thing? You talked a little bit about it, but if we were to talk again in five years time, where would you love to see Pecker and me? Yeah, gosh, honestly, it is, I think this year I've really just hit the nail on the head with everything I need in my life, all that I want in my life. So, I mean, you could always walk for more, for sure, but okay, so I like going to work. I like working for five days a week, but I love having the freedom of going traveling two or three times a year, which is, it's really cool. I'd like to, I'd like to start another small, something small, single product. I've got a couple of ideas that I'd like to see, brought to New Zealand, and I'm just doing it, so I'd like to sort of, we've started, we've already started, so we'll get a lot to do that. Yeah, I went to, it's been a lot of time in Greece and Spain this year watching the food over there, what's happening there, what can we bring here, what can we get in New Zealand and bring to life, because I think in terms of selling, I don't know if I think it would be, it would just have to be so much for me to sell people around and then they have to start from scratch again, when it's this nice, you know, I don't want to go and put those hard yards in again, but if we could start smaller businesses, get them off the ground and then hand them off for sell those to people who maybe don't have, that's, who can't do those starting bits, but then get up good profitable, great branded business up and running and then sell those off, I think, is probably, would be the next steps in terms of that, and then if people are making continue running, is the hub without being too dependent on me, or just as dependent on me as it is now, then that would be ideal. I love that more. I guess that would satisfy your creative entrepreneurial mind, you know, those ideas that come without kind of infringing on people of me, but you're still giving to kind of create and play and try and think, you know, yeah, yeah. I'm very interested in what's going to happen with the world of advertising, like digital marketing in the next few years, I think ads has just had its heyday, and now there's only so many ads a day we can see, so I reckon that's almost going to be over, I don't know, it's certainly not going to work as like they have it working now in my opinion. There's only so many dollars to be spent online on random shirt that they're all working. Well, and we're all going to turn our foil to Matt Lee when only everything we see is ads. That's ads, exactly, so I don't know what's going to happen in that space, I really, because I've never done any traditional marketing, but we know we did, for the first time this year, I had a publicist as she went to traditional media, and we did a billboard, so we're almost going, let's just go revisit that, is there anything could be seen in that? So yeah, in terms of starting at business and getting off the ground, I don't know if just hammering it with ads, it's probably not the direction I'd take it, but yeah, that's probably what I'm looking at, I'd love to do another book, I reckon it was so cool being able to do that, so I think there's definitely a few more books in us and doing them ourselves and being able to make money off them has been been real cool, very cool, and then it's our 10-year anniversary next year, so I'd think having, oh, I've got a few ideas, I don't know, the book crazy, I'd love to go to China and visit some packaging shows and see this world that's out there, that we don't kind of get here, like the advent calendars that they do overseas, you know, and they're inside a train and there's a hundred carriages and a lot, they're just beyond my mouth, dreams. I don't know, I'd love to go and get some inspiration over there, and there's a fine food show in New York next year as well, I'd love to go and see, and watch what's happening over there, I was thinking that's always really interesting. If you just got this so much, right, this so much still to do, and it's all fun, like it's all cool stuff, like it's exciting stuff, like the cool stuff, how cool to get to a position in your business that you've kind of created this great foundation that's allowing you to do the cool stuff. I bumped into you on the football field, amateur girls football field. Last year, and I feel like you were a bit like, yeah, I mean it's good, but it's hard, but it feels like you've completely found your flow. Yeah, I do feel like, I truly feel like that this year, which is just, yeah, it's, it is really different, it's almost too good to be true, isn't it? No, it's hard work and it's just making some decisions that make the business run wow. Yeah, and having the, having the freedom to, yeah, I get, we'll just, we'll just see where the, where the road goes and hope it lasts. Yeah, I think because we started and I reckon for that first four or five years of having this business, I was waiting for it to crash as fast as it went up. So I've never really like settled, had settled into being a comfortable, like it was kind and every time we release a product, I'm always think it's going to flop. Oh my god, surely no one's going to buy the butter again this year. Surely no one's going to buy the event calendar, they've done it for three years. It's always been like that, where it's maybe now you finally like, I guess it's, we've got these spreadsheets and we've got these forecasts and when we can predict quite accurately what's going to happen and it does seem to, the data always seems to match up. It's, it's a different world, yeah. That's actually incredible, isn't it? When you look at it like that and you're like, we, it's not just a, yeah, let's see how this goes, yeah, it's crazy. You know, you can actually release some things with some session to you. I'm still nervous about it because my accountant, we've got a new accountant and he, he, he's just mind blowing by me, he's like, because I've always refused to take on any debt and he's like, why would you not get a loan and I was like, well, I don't want to risk getting a loan. What if the business goes broke tomorrow and stuck with a, he's like, what? I don't think your business is going to go broke. My like, what, what on earth would make you think that all your sales are just going to stop tomorrow and I'm like, well, I don't know, it might not be cool anymore. I don't know. Well, it isn't just doing that because I just watched the Victoria Beckham documentary on Netflix, which is quite, it's actually boring, but her business all tanked and it was, but she was like, you know, in hindsight, it's spending like, it was something like $70,000 a thousand pounds a year on plants for the office, wasn't probably the least, she was a complete opposite mindset of you, like they're just stopping it up, stopping it up and the whole business crash. So you're probably an accountant's dream. Well, really, you know, he's so funny. I'll explain things to you because he's like, well, why haven't you invested in this equipment? So you can bring those maos in house. If you know that's how much money you're going to save. I said, oh, it's hard. I have to get a food tech. He's like, you're just told me you're going to save $5,000, $100,000 a year. He's like, you can have three food techs. I love it. I guess it is just that small to larger mindset and it's sometimes it's hard to just commit or something. I don't know. I mean, I would be, I would find that stuff hard, you know, as well. Yeah. And yeah, when people people are like, do you say, you know, did you dream? Did you dream? Is this what you thought would happen? Did you ever think? And I was like, oh my god, absolutely not. Absolutely not. The electrations actually couldn't, no, god, no. And it wasn't even what I even hadn't even hoped or wanted or anything. It's just a natural, it's just a journey, isn't it? It's a fun journey. Yeah. I think that's so special about it. Okay. Last couple of big questions. What are you passionate about besides your work? What brings you joy outside of work? Oh, so it's still food. 100% food. Food food food. Oh my god, I'm obsessed. Yeah. It's all I think about when I wake up in the morning. I'm like, oh, what am I going to eat today? I love it. And I love, I love new food. I love new restaurants. I love dining out. I love traveling and I love traveling and eating and meeting people who are also passionate about what they do in terms of food. I love, yeah, I think traveling and experiencing the other cultures and I think the simplicity of it all has really been, I think, fascinating, quite fascinating. I think that story behind the food is what makes the food good. Sometimes it's not the actual taste of the food or what you're getting on the other end in terms of coming from families or experiences or memories even and how that relates to food. So yeah, I just love it. Yeah, very, very much so. I love anything to do with the water. Beach, pool, swimming, fishing, boating, anything. Anything to do with being on the water makes me very, very happy. And the kids, so that's all great. I tell you what I don't like doing, going to the soccer game on Saturday morning is probably my least favorite thing. Me too. I am so thankful it's over and my big girl has decided not to play next year, so I'm like, I've got one left still playing, but I want a joy to not get up on that Saturday morning. I've loved it so much. Yeah. Yeah, it's cold mornings. Oh, honestly, it's just never ever gets any better. Okay, final big question, what does success look like to you then personally, professionally or both? I think success is freedom that is 100% what success is for me. And I've thought about this before because people always say to me, like, you're so successful or like, and I'd always thought like, am I? Why would you think that? Why would you say that? And then I kind of like drill down into it, and I realise I'm like, I have the freedom to make the make choices that other people don't. I can wake up in the morning just I don't until I go to work sometimes, you know, not every day, but I do really really have that justification. I can organise my life how I want to, if I want to go on to the school cross country, if I want to go on holiday, I can. If I want to go out for dinner, and try to get out for dinner, I can. And I'm lucky to have that freedom, I think. I can control my whole life and have it how I like it. I can even organise within my work what things I want to do, and what things I don't want to do. And that's, you can't get better than that, right? To be able to make every single choice you want, is very lucky. And you worked hard to get that too, which is even more cool. I have. And it's not like you've got unlimited money to do whatever you want. It's more like the freedom to make, you know, I can choose whether I want expensive butler this week or not. It's not going to mean I miss a house payment. It's just being able to have the freedom, basically. I love that. Yeah. That's cool. Hey, that's the end of the big questions. The final little questions are just quick fire and then we're done. I realise that no one probably realise is that we're talking quite late at night. So we will get the final questions done and then we add it. No, you're all good. Okay. Three items you could not live without. Let's change this one. For you, let's say three people in me products. Oh, all right. Okay. Yep. Mangrine, Seishoyle and that might relish on it. Yeah. That changes every day but the tomorrow relish. I love it. Okay. But Seishoyle, yeah. Love it. Good. Okay. Which app or like online tool for business and all life do we need? Yeah. I only Instagram really. Everything else kind of comes in guys. I mean, yeah, I have been using chat GPT a lot more, but honestly, I ask it. I just don't, I'm not used to it. It's really anything intelligent really. It's just, just like, like hacks. No, I was a kid. How many people died on the Titanic? Well, why is metal hard? That's a lexar in our world. Just ask a lexar because I can't answer all these questions that you're firing at me all day. Okay. What have you watched lately that we must see? Well, I watched the girl in Cabin 10 the other night, which I really enjoyed. Actually, I really liked that. I'm not a TV watcher at all. I struggle hugely to watch anything, but I sat there and watched the whole thing. So, yeah. Oh, that's a good sign then. Yes, it was good. Very good. Yeah. Okay. Now, I know that you like to eat and drink out. When we are in your town, which is my town, where should we go to eat or drink? I think Celera is really on point at the moment. And he's a great price point for a nice footer that's got two hats and you can go and have a nice $70 set menu or $80 set menu and that is like that's insane. Their foot has been flawless lately. I reckon that's top tier. I really like Clarence as well. I actually really enjoy picnic and Clarence too. I haven't been there much lately because I've always go to new places. Captain Barnes, new cafe in the mountains. Oh, I haven't been there yet. Okay. Yes. Big tech killer meals. Like, there wasn't much in the cabinet, but there was a couple things on the menu and they were amazing. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Really good. I think that's probably, oh, and we go to the island a lot for pizza and we take the kids. If you've got kids with you, go to the island and have pizza here. I was going to say that would be handy for you, wouldn't it? So handy. I'm a bit lazy to drive down there, but it's the best spot. Yeah. And they do great, would find pizza there. Awesome. Yeah. Really. Okay. Do you have any must-have skin care products? I like the O Cosmetics comfort cream. I think it's like a super intense moisturizer and that is probably the only thing I have. I'm a bit. I've got nothing. I've got no makeup on, nothing. I'm a moisturizer. I don't even know how to cleanser. So, yeah. I'm not much of a. Yeah. I don't have time for all that sort of thing. Yeah. I'm too busy doing all this stuff. Oh, once you get into it, you have to keep doing it. Yeah. So, are you a podcast listener? And if so, what do you listen to? Oh, I do. I kind of flick around them, actually, as to who's on them. I think I probably have people that I look up to or some people I'm just interested in. I think Between Two Beers does a great job of interviewing and I really admire their. how much work they put into their podcast, because obviously, I put zero work into my podcast. We sit down and talk about what we've done in the week. So, when they've gone through their whole, this person's whole life history, it's amazing. And it's been spying stories on their own. They're amazing. Did you listen to Simon Barney? I did. I did. And these are beautiful. I mean, so many good ones. There's this guy who was the. he was in the. in the SES. Oh, I didn't listen to that one, but I've heard that was really good. Oh, my God. And then he just said, he was in the SES, and then he wanted to beat someone on the rowing machine. So, he went and sat down and went on the rowing machine and broke the world record. I never wrote it in that life. Yeah, that was a great story. Great, great. I'm a big fan of Brody Kay, and I think she's. Oh, I youth. Yeah, really, really enjoy her and her girls lighthearted ones, and then the more serious ones as well. I think she's great. Yeah. Dom Harvey's got some good ones. Yeah. Gosh, you mean, yeah, you've got one. I'm going to have to go back and listen to some other ones of your ones down to. Some of you all sort. Some great podcasts coming out of New Zealand, doesn't they? Obviously. And some of those bigger, bigger, more high-profile ones. Yeah, there's some great stories. Okay, last two questions. This will be a good one for you. Final meal before you're cast away to a desert island. Oh, gosh. This will be changing daily, but this week I've gone back in time. I'm back in my Saladau era, so I've been in the Fakasha era for the last five years. I knew I really got that into the Saladau, but I have been just having the time of my life baking Saladau every day, and I roll the whole thing and it's used to me. And then it comes out of the oven and I like stow, or like, when I went to Aussie to Sydney last month, and I filled, I literally filled my boots and bought back in my suitcase, all this French butter, because we don't get much of it here in the beautiful paper, so I bought this suitcase full of French butter back and I had my Saladau with my French butter. Would you make something every day? Would you just be making, would you ever have a day where you've just tossed back bands for the kids that kind of thing, or would you, yes, yes, totally, because sometimes some days are just so busy. Like, I was in Auckland last week developing these adved products, so I was up there, I think I flew up on this, whatever, I was at the left time at 5am and then I got home, and I had to race Peppa to her, she had a new swim squad that she was down there, so I had to race her for five family, I got home at like 7.30 and I was absolutely wrecked, so I think they got literally a piece of toast and just put them in. So, yeah, totally, some days is all he goes, whatever. And I do love dining out too, so much that, like, I'll always make an excuse and go, oh, I'll be just popping here and make sure try this little snack, snacks all over here, and then yeah, I think we have days where I film videos and we'll make, you know, I'll try and punch out like six or seven recipes in one day, for the more sort of recipe, recipes needed on the club sort of thing. And then I'll just sort of, you're sometimes I just potter around, I'm a big fan of like clearing out the work, fridging and just using whatever's in the work, fridging and then making lunch with it, so it's always like odds and ends and I'll chop them all up, farther, more off, put them in a pastry and make a quiche or something with like literally whatever's left in the fridge. I admire people like you that can do that because every time I even attempt to do that, it's just so questionable what I come up with because my knowledge is so limited, but you just have to buy that. These things, and you're fine. Yeah, yeah, I actually do, I really do. I need more than a little tiktok trending anyway. Okay, final question, do you read? Are you a reader? Yes, big reader. Big reader. So, what should we read next? Oh, okay, I've read some really rubbish ones lately. I've been trying to get into the fantasy because everyone's into the fantasy at the moment, so I've done a quarter of Thorne and Rosa. Yes, I've read that. I did. Yes, I did. And I like that. It's how I want it actually. I haven't read that yet. The one. She's got another, the same also, she's got another series and it was the sword. Yeah, the flame in this sword. Yeah, so I know there was a way. Seventh Sisters series is probably my favourite at the moment. Yeah, days ago. Are you just, are you just reading them at the moment? No, will I be done? I am probably on my second rate of those at the moment. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now that in terms of in the last years, my favourite thing that got me the most like, yeah, was their Seventh Sisters. Yeah, I like the game on those and because I was always like, no, no, and then the minute I read book one, I think I read all seven at a bit too late. So I'll just stop reading them. This is why I kept, this is why I'm avoiding the romanticy fairy smatch because I just know that it'll consume me if I get into it. I can't do that. Yeah, I love reading when we went to Italy last year and I, I keep getting in trouble because it's like, can you just read it? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I do what I want to do. Yeah, that was pretty good. When we were in this year, I was like, oh, I won't download a stick because I'd be to be in the moment. I don't even think I've picked it up, but yeah, I go through phases and I'll be, I'll be needed. I've got my nine year-old daughter, a Kindle for her ninth birthday and she's on her Seventh Harry Potter book, I think, in the middle of two months. So yeah, we all read massive readers, no TV during the week and we read every night. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Hey, that is the end of the questions. Thank you so much. I feel like I could just drill, want to pick your brain even longer, but it's like, and I won't, but you've been very, very generous in all your knowledge and, and just your story and there's so much insight in everything that you say and I, like I said at the beginning, I just admire the business you have created so much from a business, marketing, all of its standpoint, one incredible business that you've built so far. I can't wait to see what you do in the future. Thank you. I hope it's a lot to live up to us to keep going. No, I see. Well, I mean, you do have to keep going, but it's, it's so cool. Honestly, I really admire the business you've created, which I, I sounding quite a lot like a fangirl and as I run it because I don't make you need food. Well, I mean, I don't just sustain my family, but I'm not going to that batch yet. Incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you. No, that was great. Oh, thank you for all your, all your good questions. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to see you around. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. I would love to hear what you think about the podcast, and if you wanted to tell your friends about super creative, I would just be ever so grateful. If you'd like to keep listening, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And if you wanted to write and review, that would be amazing. For more information, find us at super creative podcast on Instagram and Facebook. Bye.