Carman’s Muesli founder Carolyn Creswell strikes the right balance between work and play | #421

Tim

Where the name Carmans came from?

 

Carolyn

So when I started I was a uni student. I had lots of part time jobs and one of my part time jobs was making muesli. When they told me that they were going to sell as little business I thought well maybe I could buy it so I offered them a thousand dollars and they laughed at me and said Oh no you know we want more than that and it took couple of months and they couldn’t sell us the business and so eventually they said then you can you can have it. And that was with the other lady that worked there. So were the first three letters of Carolyn C.A.R. and it was the first three letters of her name which is Mania. So we just literally combined them together made up this name Carman and it’s actually been really good for us.

 

Tim

Clearly, it’s a successful business but you happy with the name?

 

Carolyn

What’s really nice about the name is it’s got this nice kind of personality about it. I think it’s easy to remember and it’s quite visually striking so it actually is quite a strong name. It was really just literally driving to the registration shop and going, we need a name.

 

Tim

So you’re 18 years old. Youre at uni. Thousand bucks I’m guessing was a bit of dough for you at the time. What do you see in the business.

 

Carolyn

I mean it’s it was but I also I worked behind the register at Coles and I was a waitress and I babysat and so I had sort of save this money and I was always the one thing my parents and as much that killed me at the time. They never gave me any pocket money. I always had to earn my own pocket money and so from that it meant that I really knew the value of the dollar because I knew how long it took me to earn it. And at the time I was earning eight dollars an hour making muesli. So you just don’t go out and shout the bar willy nilly whatever when you’ve really busted yourself to earn this money. So I guess for me I was just always thrilled with this concept of thinking well why not. Why couldn’t I buy this little business. And I remember having a bit of a Donald Trump moment of you know wow look at me and this is awesome and for anyone that’s been involved in small business that quickly evaporates in the first few years and you get broker. I was getting at one point my brother to siphon petrol out of my mother’s car when she wasn’t looking until he got a mouthful of petrol one day and said I’m never doing that for you again sister. And literally I was hand-to-mouth I mean I still remember my worst moment was my grandma gave me 20 dollars and I remember just thinking oh this is just so bad that here I am groveling for 20 dollars towards petrol money from my grandma like that.

 

Tim

Your flush working at Cole’s and all the other part time jobs. You then put everything Carman’s.

 

Carolyn

Everything into this one basket. For a period of time I used to have to work other jobs as well. I always still babysit at night. I remember a few years I’m thinking I can’t believe I’ve got to go back and be. I was a giftwrapper of Henry bucks men’s wear store at Christmas time and I think oh my God I’ve been working so hard I can’t believe I have to go and wrap Christmas presents for other people and this really hard dungeon kind of underground room. It sets you up though and I don’t regret any of that because it’s made me who I am today.

 

Tim

Tell me more about the why not attitude. Is that just something that’s part of the Creswell gene.

 

Carolyn

I married into the Creswell. I was brought up by particular very strong mother who just instilled it in me from a very young age and I constantly work with my kids. I’ve got four kids under the age of 13. But I really spend quite a bit of time with my kids going why not. Why couldn’t you do that and really making them feel confident because that’s a really strong life skill to have.

 

Tim

Can I come at that from the other point of view because I was raised the opposite. Complete opposite. If I was going to mow the lawn. I’d mow over my feet. If I was to go surfing I would get eaten by a shark. This is the psychology that I was brought up and I’d worked very hard and continue to work really hard at the why not. We’re for you it’s obviously come naturally in something that’s top of mind, for me it’s just a constant reminder. It leads to procrastination and it leads to not doing stuff and I know there’s a whole lot of business owners listening whom thinking probably nodding their head going yeah that’s me that’s me.

 

Carolyn

And I think I am always about this self-improvement. Every, in fact on the weekend I was still just fine tuning my New Year’s resolutions from this year and changing a few things. So for example tonight is having dinner with my parents and it was saying Okay one night a week it’s to say that’s on my parents come for dinner and my husband’s parents say they see my kids and we just know that it happens every week rather than sort of feeling you need to create something. So many little things like that. And I think you have to look at your life and look at who you are and go how can I be more of who I want to be and what’s holding me back. What are the blockers and for me having confidence has probably been the biggest success in Carman’s journey because I’ve always had this sort of attitude of bite off more than you can chew and chew like crazy. And I do think it’s something that I think that also the fact that if at all fell in a heap I could go home to mum and dad. Mum would make roast lamb. I could sleep and hop into the diner and tomorrow go.

 

Tim

This why not attitude. Does that mean you just go for it. What are they say jump and or the parachute on the way down or are you very considered and do your numbers and calculate it all out then go hey, Why not.

 

Carolyn

What I think I’ve learnt over the years is to be a very quick decision maker but to weigh up the risk pretty quickly. In fact I’m super risk averse when it comes to things like bungee jumping or all that stuff. However when it comes to a business risk very quickly I’d say well what’s the worst thing that could happen if this doesn’t work out. And often what your greatest fear is kind of not the end of the world you might be bit embarrassed or to launch something or fail whatever the thing might be. And so I always I quickly say well hang on what’s the risk of that. And I try and say to people who work for me at Carman’s if you’re going to come to me and ask for forgiveness and not permission which is what I want to do I’m really sorry I didn’t ask but this is what went wrong. Just weigh up what that conversation looks like and if it’s saying look I hired a person to help with this mail out and you know cost a few hundred dollars no problem. However if you come and say I let the guy double stack the truck and we’ve got a hundred thousand dollars of squash muesli. It’s a very different conversation. So try and always look at it and I think that helps you make quicker decisions and that is another trait that I’ve learnt that you do need to be pretty fast making decisions in a fast paced business otherwise you’re the biggest catalyst for growth because everything stopping with you not making a decision.

 

Tim

For those business owners listening Carolyn, who are going I wish I was more like Carolyn. Can it be learned or is it just you?

 

Carolyn

I think it can. I think that the first bit is if you don’t have the confidence practice doing things that you’re good at and maybe do less of the things that you’re not good at. You don’t have to be really good. I was laughing with my husband on the weekend. He’s doing this cold water challenge where he goes by jumping into a freezing swimming pool. You know it’s seven degrees. And I said you know what. That’s not something I need to do and it’s okay you don’t have to do every challenge that comes your way or really self reflect on what you need to do and what would make you a happier person a better business person what do you need to learn. I remember in the early days saying well hang on I don’t know how to read a profit and loss. Who do I know that might be able to teach me. I had no money and I’d go into my friend’s dad and after dinner and say hey could you just teach me the basics of this for half an hour. And everyone’s always happy to help if you’re specific with what you ask and then you work out what do I need to learn. And I don’t have an MBA. I don’t have a business degree but I’ve got 25 years of asking questions. Reading business books listening to podcasts like this.

 

Tim

How quickly did you get because again a lot of small business owners would try to do everything ourselves either because were control freaks or because the cash flow is not there to resource it out. How quickly did you realize that there are things you’re really good at that you can focus on that are going to grow Carman’s and then all the other stuff either needed to be deleted or delegated?

 

Carolyn

Look it probably took a while. Actually the real growth of Carman’s has happened since I had my kids but because that before I had the kids I could work crazy hours I could be a total control freak and I thought no I could probably do it as well as I could. And then I had to get people in and all of sudden I realized that I could actually spend more time doing on the stuff that I was actually quite good at unless I remember saying well why don’t you do the invoicing and I’ll go off and see these clients.

 

Tim

So you were forced.

 

Carolyn

I was forced to stand back and then what I’ve realised I just kept going. The business is just better each time but I think that sense of looking at the biggest impact you can have on business what’s the game changing stuff. Stop doing what you don’t need to do. Look your to do list. Scrap a couple of things off. What I think at Carman’s we’ve been focused on brand Carman’s on what we do. We don’t do private label and we don’t run around and do a whole heap of other stuff. People know us, has a very tight I think obviously I’m bias but a well-respected business.

 

Tim

Your branding is so tight and consistent and like there is no mistaking when you are in the world. Carman’s. We’ll find out how you do that. Can you reflect on a moment I’m sure you’ve told the Carman story? Will get into the present day very soon. But it is interesting because this show goes global. There will be people who don’t know Carman’s despite the fact that being in 32 countries. But my question was there a moment. It hasn’t all been roses right. Is there where you’ve really looked yourself in the mirror and gone Carolyn I’m not sure this is

 

Carolyn

Oh my gosh if I could have given this business away. If I could have shut it down I absolutely would. I still remember ending up going to a counsellor and I was probably five years in and I just said this is a disaster I’m working so hard at making no money and what am I doing this for. And by then I literally was hand-to-mouth financially. Every cent I was running to the bank every day I got a four-thousand-dollar overdraft. Banging on the door saying please can you process these checks otherwise knowing that my checks going to bounce that night. Like I said you know doing whatever I could like tears constantly and it test your integrity as a person. Being broke for a long period of time. I mean I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shut it down because I owed money at the bank and so all I could do was just work as hard as I could to try and it wasn’t that I’d lost faith but I was. Trust me there was plenty of times.

 

Tim

So what made you keep going. I think it was the pride of thinking I’ve always thought okay you know so I go in I do a presentation and they say no we’re not taking it. And I said well why not. And they said well you need a barcode. Leave that with me and I’d go away and I’d work on what I needed to do and how I could get barcode or nutritional panel and I still remember the day that I had this big appointment with a major supermarket chain Coles Myer and I walked up there and I stupidly got there about two hours early. Bad strategy when you’re super-duper nervous and so many nervous ways eventually my name to be called out and did my little presentation and I’ll never forget this angel. Great McShane who said to me I’ll tell you what I’ll give you 20 stores delivering yourself and let’s to see how it sells and you have never seen 20 Cole stores more magnificently taking care of Id Park that day behind the Linfox semitrailers and I’d run in and I’d put Uncle Toby’s shoulders on the bottom shelf. I used to be. Because I worked in the supermarket. I put me at eye level and blessed my mother who would stand at local Coles and anyone walked past muesli she’d say This is the most amazing muesli it has the raving about it I love it and you know it’s just been this slow evolution I use to use little leaf samples for the in the tea room of the guys that worked at Coles saying if you see anyone buying muesli let them know about Carman’s.

 

Tim

It was beautiful and I’ve told the story to work with a fellow in advertising Kevin Luskin who you may or may not have heard of an FMCG legend and he would with people like you heads of FMCG companies. He’d run these courses and the first thing he would do is take you down to the local supermarket have you stand in front of your of the aisle in which your product was and just observe people buying it and not buy picking up the competitor’s product putting it back. Looking at the label. Was there a moment when you were unable maybe you still do but unable to have that connection with your tribe.

 

Carolyn

Not at all. I happen whether I was born with it or I happen to have a very grateful heart and I have never at no point in this journey of I’ve taken any of this for granted. Oh my gosh my kids get so embarrassed I am in the supermarket and someone has a Carman’s product in their trolley you can’t avoid me. I’m going to go off. I’m going to thank you. I’m going to shake hands. And they go so embarrassing I guess that’s what puts dinner on your table.

 

Tim

What do you say to the person.

 

Carolyn

I say, hey I just noticed you’ve got Carman’s at your trolley. That’s my business and it’s so exciting to see you buying it and they go really, I love it that’s my little snack. I think that if you constantly feel grateful and feel thrilled. I’ve just had a meeting about we’re having this amazing success in China and I thought oh my gosh and I’m like I said I don’t know if I could ever teach someone to feel like that. I think that once again I practice with my kids every night. We say what are you grateful for and you do want to constantly stop and not take it. Whatever is happening in your life for your business success for granted.

 

Tim

It sounds like you’re one of those business owners Carolyn that celebrates the small wins big wins while many don’t. What is your sort of philosophy at HQ around celebrating success.

 

Carolyn

Totally. So often I’ll put a bottle of champagne on everyone’s desk or We’ve got a bell that will ring or an e-mail or go out or we’re very conscious. And the success might be. So we have quite an interesting sort of the way that we run our strategic process might be quite interesting for small business owners to think about. So we sort of say well there is business as usual. The stuff you always do. But if this is where we want to be in three years’ time what could you do in your role to either do something that you’re doing currently and you’ll do better which is called an excellence initiative to do something brand new that we’ve never done before. And that’s an innovation initiative or something. I have a strong bent on technology. Something where we could bring technology in to improve the way that we operate. So everyone works on their these ideas. So these are above and beyond what you normally do. So the whole thing is caught our initiatives projects and so we might have 60 of those every year and then when one of those gets achieved people will celebrate. Part of your bonuses is on and every person from receptionist on up is has initiative and would know that they are incentivized. So the reality is if you’re doing 60 new projects doing something a lot better than you were and that was on you know a big business like Carman’s but each person will have one or two things that they can just plug away and think what it be a game changer if we really changed the way that we viewed couriers and the way that we knew which couriers to book and that we had a good documentary system or we went to tender or the way that we process something and then that culminates in improving the whole business. And I think if you look at it business you know if I look at our business you look at it every five years and go Really, it’s quite a transformed business from where it was five years ago. If you’re feeling that it’s just business as usual maybe there are other things and like I said often it might be technology coming in to go hang on How might that improve the way that we operate.

 

Tim

Carman’s is such a household name. Certainly, well in Victoria I guess it’s the same nationally and I’m trying to figure out how do you get there and I thought about and I’ve gone well you’re in supermarkets so if you’re going down the cereal aisle or the muesli bars or you’re not going to miss it so you’ve got the benefit of distribution which many service business doesn’t have for example. I’m wondering did you at some point run some famous TV campaign that the creative strategy just got it nailed it can you put your finger on why its a household name.

 

Carolyn

Okay so two things. One I’ve been doing this for 25 years. So we’re not an overnight success story. We’re not a brand that just invented it. So I’ve been doing it for a long time. The other thing is I own Carman’s 100 percent myself. We don’t have any investors. I’ve had no money for big expensive marketing campaigns. So what we’ve had to do is just honestly treat customers really well the whole journey and I guess that probably comes more from me in my philosophy on treating people as I’d like to be treated. But then I’ve done lots of whether it’s media or we do get a really big kick when I hosted a cooking show and I was a judge on a show called Recipe to Riches and we literally had a 10 percent increase in our sales year on year. People watched me on television and Channel 10 paid me to be on the show. So there’s stuff like that that I’m always quite smart of saying well hang on we can’t do other things but this is something we can do. And I think that if we put the money absolutely back into our ingredients and the one thing people would say when they have a Carman’s product and this is what I viciously defended at all will be the voice of the consumer. Carman’s that if you put our product on a plain white plate and you eat it. It’s a good product. This is not marketing puffery. This is not some beautiful TV commercial. When you take all the wrappers off you, That’s a bit disappointing. And honestly consumers will come back week after week to buy it as opposed to something that’s amazing on television. But you’re disappointed when you get it and I don’t know why that’s so novel.

 

Tim

Because we talk on this show and other marketing magazines and blogs talk about you know whether it’s social media or whether it’s viral videos or whether it’s advertising or networking. But the best marketing is a great product or service that if you put the love and attention into that then surely that’s the best thing that you can do.

 

Carolyn

Then the end game is that you might say to your mate hey this is a nice muesli bar would you like one, right. Word of mouth word an old school format of talking about it and that to me is the most powerful thing as well as packaging.

 

Tim

I would say yes packaging. Word of mouth I think is the result of great product, doesn’t just happen to so many businesses they would amass the best marketing but well yes but you have got to do something in order to get that right.

 

Carolyn

And a few little tips on that. I think that you need to under promise and over deliver and we need to embed the voice of the consumer categorically in your business. You need to be so concerned with how they get the product if they’re going to enjoy it. If you are constantly thinking about them and taking care of them and I will say to my big buyers in huge supermarket chains my number one stakeholder is the consumer because they’ve got to come in with their five dollars whatever and pick up my product and go to the register and hand over that money and that is the hardest part of the journey. With all due respect if I focus on that you’re going to be happy. It’s not about me making you happy with tickets to a fancy football match and us you know boozing along and me not worrying like that. That has never been how I run Carman’s. In fact I’ve been anti that kind of. I’m very much about saying if I make my consumers happy then you’re going to want to stock me because people are going to want to buy my product. And once again it seems very simple.

 

Tim

I also think that you make your staff happy. We’re going to talk about your workplace surely but I had Jenn Lim from when she was originally from Zappos and she now has the agency delivering happiness. I had her on the show and she’s all about making your staff happy. Customers are secondary just kinda. You probably do that without probably knowing it. You focus on having very happy customers but you’ve got very happy staff I’m guessing.

 

Carolyn

I don’t think that they, I will always say to my staff that the customers are paying your salary. So I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive. You care about more. For me the customer comes first and then that and we’re servants to the customer but we’re all at any point in time.

 

Tim

Is the customer always right?

 

Carolyn

I think so. I mean in a way of saying if you’re annoyed about something well tell us what and we need to take that on board. Whether you might have a skewed view of why that’s annoying. I remember we used to have this flex around when we wrote the name Carman’s a little sort of like a pencil it sort of come off the edge of the wording and the customers drives me crazy and I have to get a text around the boxes and you know well the time I thought you’re crazy. Maybe that is a bit annoying and challenge. But what I’d say is we also do the similar thing where my staff we now have a beautiful upmarket factory outlet where we sell things like we might have become close to use by date or because we sell whole Carman’s range plus we have a space where people can come and try everything. And in that all of my staff have to work in that store. Doesn’t matter how senior you are. It’s in a place called huntingdale so it’s just run in Chadstone.

 

Tim

It’s almost a bit of a little destination store.

 

Carolyn

Yeah it’s a destination store. So people will come in as a destination trip and you might come in and spend half an hour and you’ll be shown things and the range will have little samples. We have something called Truth booths where we might get your advice on different things we’re about to bring out we’ll give you a voucher to promote that. It’s just only opened in the last few weeks so it’s a brand new thing we’re doing but as I said all of our staff have to come and take over on the lunch shift and it’s very good for my staff to have to talk to customers and understand what are their concerns or what it’s like if you have an anaphylactic child or you’re gluten free and to be able to be across the stores.

 

Tim

I love that. How will that impact your supermarket relationships at all.

 

Carolyn

At the end of the day what you want is you want people to and particularly with e-commerce because the difference with e-commerce and I happened to be to have lunch with the guy. At one of the guys it started coming to warehouse recently and he was talking about.

 

Tim

Jack. In fact, he’s been on the show.

 

Carolyn

Has he. Yes, he is marvelous. So he was talking about the thing with e-commerce it’s a little bit harder to put other things in your trolley when people go into a store they’ll put lots of stuff to wander and they’ll say oh that looks interesting and they’ll pop it in. Whereas e-commerce you’re often just looking for what you’re going to buy.

 

Tim

Well yeah I’ve just seen a big e-commerce conference on the Gold Coast last week. I think the trick to that is making the experience online even more interesting. I buy my blades from Dollar Shave Club. And I always just going to get my blades I end up with the conditioner, shampoo, the shaving gel and they’re very good at getting you and other things trolley but I think there’s a greater challenge in e-commerce than maybe you have to get people right in front of your product. We are talking to Carolyn Creswell who is the founder or owner of Carman’s Muesli both and currently a managing director. So you 100 percent in the business you got four kids under 13. You’re all in. Your love the business. How is your work life balance going?

 

Carolyn

And people they don’t believe when I say this is my number one thing that I like to talk about because I think that you can actually have a career and I have a very interesting career that I love. Can actually still be a great parent and have a lot of work life balance. The way to do that is work out what to say no to and I am particularly good at the graceful No. So if someone asked you in the street for twenty dollars you would say no but if someone asked for 20 minutes of your time. Everyone always feels that they just have to give it and it’s mean or it’s not nice to say no to that. And I would say that I protect my time viciously in saying well often I have to say well what’s in it for me. So a supplier wants to come or a new supplier wants to try and build a relationship with me or that wants to take me out for lunch I kind of have a I don’t do coffee policy. I rarely see external people I try to only really see people that work Carman’s

 

Tim

I feel honored.

 

Tim

What I think is that if you really protect your times. You’re doing important stuff that you need to do and then I try and work out things like I said having my parents for dinner one night a week so that I know that just happens and then hopefully the aim was for me that I have weekends where I don’t work at all.

 

Tim

So graceful No. I’m guessing you put your social things in your calendar as much as you work so that they blocked before anything else comes up.

 

Carolyn

And I am a big one for things at home so with four young kids I’m much better to say to someone hey come around to our place for dinner or come round and have a glass of wine. I think you have to constantly self-reflect and if you end up going to too many networking things and I used to do this in the day I would go to the opening of a paper bag anything I was possibly invited to and then what I have found over time is if I’m more selective. I actually need some thinking time too and sometimes plan a perfect day looks like for you. And then I’ll look at my year and I’ll try and always whenever I’ve done something think oh hang on was that a good use of my time so then I’ll do more of what I enjoy. Well what I think is a good use and less of what I feel is sort of sapping my life energy.

 

Tim

So if I’m an employee at Carman’s. How does that then spill out into me. Because the bosses got it together. Have I got it together as well?

 

Carolyn

Absolutely. Well what I would say and it’s interesting because people who’ve worked with me for a while very much get that I am. I detest meetings and I try and get to the point quite quickly so just come and tell me don’t do a big ten page PowerPoint presentation on something just come and say Hey Carolynn what do you think about this or can we just chew the fat about this and that to me is much more powerful than you don’t need to impress me and I just had a new guy started working with us. I love this and he was from a very fancy and I employ these people have worked at all these very fancy big stage companies. He said you know what’s amazing working here is we don’t do any business with ourself. We don’t write any reports to impress ourselves. And he said 80 percent of my time in my previous role was just trying to impress my boss justifying your existence and I reckon my boss ever even read them.

 

Tim

And this is why I love small business. I mean seriously I have also come from a corporate background. People would have meetings for meetings sake. Every meeting had to be an hour and often as you say you could nail a five minute conversation and get to the end and the result much quicker and less pain.

 

Carolyn

I would push back on people. I’ll say no one is allowed to do a PowerPoint presentation for me just so someone said the other day Oh look I’ve done it. I won’t bring it and show you I’ve done it just for my notes I said if you want to choose to do that for yourself and you know you’re the one that is going to look at it, is absolutely fine. But when it comes to me let’s just have a conversation about what you need to talk about. And I think a lot more are achieved and it’s the flow of business when you just cut through all that bullshit.

 

Tim

So the staff at Carman’s got a lot of flexibility can they work at home can they work at park can they work on holiday.

 

Carolyn

So we’ve just moved into our wonderful new head office which I’m super proud of and I spent a lot of time looking at offices in Australia around the world and what I felt was the latest research and stuff that really resonated with me. So we have lots of different things from stand up desks so you don’t see be sitting down we have stand up meeting spaces so that you can have a meeting and then there’s no chairs. We have lots of sort of bench seating we have a gym with classes a yoga room a pool table all of fun stuff as well. We’ve got a wonderful conservatory which is building at the moment which has got a garden and barbecue an outdoor area so you can have walking meetings outside. It’s a very kind of dynamic space where we have a massage room with a massage automatic massage chair and everyone knows that they’re encouraged that every week they should have at least a 10 minute massage at least just to be able to sit in the chair. I actually had a 20 minute one myself today where you sit in the chair because what you sometimes need is thinking time you actually need to get out of the noise and actually think okay what else am I going to deal with. And in a crazy life of noise sometimes that spaces is super important. So I found since we’ve moved just the sense of cross collaboration of different people working and the conversations we’ve got in-house chef. You can order food for a lunch every day and we actually have the best thing is called Make Time not dinner. And so she has an enormous freezer and you can go down and you choose whatever if you want to take home anything for dinner. yeah you pay.

 

Tim

By the way you got 35 staffs it’s not as if there’s 500 or 5000 people.

 

Carolyn

And so I think it’s a very dynamic and interesting work environment where people can.

 

Tim

What are you hoping to achieve from? It sounds obvious but you’re hoping that people never go home?

 

Carolyn

No not at all. What I hope is that they I mean I didn’t do any of this. I did it because I feel that this is what can enrich people’s lives and that it’s stuff that I would love myself and whatever I’ve had a policy I think if I would love that so we have a guy that comes in and washes your car and of all the things we do how much people love the fact that they don’t have to think about washing their car and they go to their cars or washed and clean and they never have to leave work for it and all of these little things are things that say hey my workplace actually cares for me as a human and that they want me to enjoy my life.

 

Tim

What’s your staff retention rate like.

 

Carolyn

Pretty much 100 percent. People working at Carman’s and I spent a long time trying to make sure I hire the right people.

 

Tim

Do you pay well.

 

Carolyn

We pay a normal rate so that a lot of the time people have taken pay cuts so that’s not normally the case. People take a pay cut or to move to Carman’s or that they will work. Well sometimes if you want to go work in a really unpleasant industry or an unpleasant place they’ve got to pay a lot more money to get people to move there. Whereas when people come and work at Carman’s they go oh I feel so free just to get done what needs to get done and if they want to come in early and work out in the gym or we have infrared sauna and often apparently these people have slept off in their gym gear heads off. This is all like I said it’s brand new we’ve just moved in but I never knew how it would all come together until we were there and I saw a guy today new employee and we have these telephone booths he’s coming out of the booth then say I’m so excited to see that it’s getting used. You never know if everything will get used and I probably pushed the boat out there on radical things. We have a as I call it my mum used to call the panel beaters when she used to go and get ahead and stuff. And so we have a room called the panel beaters and that has a chair her hair washed or you can do your makeup and get ready when you go out.

 

Tim

I’m going to represent some of the business owners listen to this. Sounds like a bit a wank to me you know do you get that. It sounds like an amazing workplace but it also sounds expensive. It also sounds like. What point do you stop rewarding the staff and having them get on with the job.

 

Carolyn

So what I would say about that is I happened to have bought a very big old chocolate factory that had a trillion rooms. In fact there’s so much space and so many rooms I didn’t really know what to do with them. So the architect would say well what do you want to do with that strange room at the back of the female toilet and I’d think about it and think about it. And I literally went on eBay and I bought a crazy old dusty pink retro couch and I said well I want to put some mirrors in there and put some chairs in and you know and so some of that lot of this stuff is not expensive and a lot of it is stuff that people do in their own time. So if they want to go in there they’ve got a space where it’s got a nine dollar coat rack from Bunnings and they can get themselves changed and then put their makeup on and what I think is in this day and age sometimes transport and travel is what’s driving people crazy. So if you’re working you know as I said we’re in huntingdale and you live out in the suburbs and you want to go into the city on a Friday night. It’s really nice it can actually get ready at work that you’re not having to you know that you’ve got a nice space.

 

Tim

It’s higher perceived value to your staff that low cost to you. Gets a massage chair doesn’t cost a lot a couch doesn’t cost a lot like having the chef.

 

Carolyn

So people I think are a bit intrigued but then when you think about it you go well hang on I have actually sort of make sense. Yeah I guess when the chef started working there and she pays me rent to be in the building so she’s not a carbon employee and so I said to her I don’t know how many people are going to want to have lunch for me every day but I would just say I’m a big one for sucker and say let’s try it. I said I would probably want to go down the street but literally so we do something called huddles at 10am a Verne Harnish concept that sort of the whole company comes together. We quickly go round a circle and if there’s anything you working on that day. Who are you going to speak so I speak to you or whatever the case may be. So I’m going to see this supplier orI’ve got a Skype call with China. And so then someone will come up and say when you speak to people in China I’ve been desperately trying to get some data out of them and no one’s responding to my emails. So could you drop that into the conversation. So no one can ever say at Carman’s that they don’t know what’s going on. So it’s like the pulse of the business at 10:15 atleast every day. We all get together and it takes about 10 minutes. So everyone from the receptionist to the CFO will have their say and sometimes and often my take is that if you ever say I didn’t know that was happening well you’re just not listening because you should know every day and I think that’s a very simple low cost. So that and the other one is that we would do the quiz and of the local newspaper and at lunchtime and that’s another low cost way. But its how you connect and it doesn’t have to be a lot of money.

 

Tim

So it’s very clear to me as you’re talking the words do come down to me like these are obvious things right. I mean the human beings, we want to be nurtured and cared for and shown that we’re really important and that doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

 

Carolyn

I think in this day and age we actually also want to be reasonably sort of healthy and we want to do a bit of exercise then we want to know food matters obviously we’re a food company so if you can go down and you can you know get some lovely minestrone soup from our freezer at work and you’re going to go home and say that cost me eight dollars and you’ll heat up a big bowl of soup and get some crusty bread and go to your partner hey you know dinner’s ready. It’s just a difference of making someone’s life that bit easier and all the things I try and do as well.

 

Tim

Let’s talk marketing. You have a great brand. What’s branding to you.

 

Carolyn

It’s about how my business makes you feel. And my aim is that you feel that you can trust me that you feel I believe that we work with integrity that we are a business that you enjoy doing business with.

 

Tim’ It’s an emotional connection.

 

Carolyn

It’s an emotional connection and I nurture that and I take care of that very carefully because that is a trust that all the marketing in the world is very hard to build a very strong brand connection and for me it’s kind of how I would like to be treated.

 

Tim

You have an incredibly visually consistent brand. How.

 

Carolyn

We’re just very tight to the girl that runs all of our branding, I put an ad in the local paper and if ever anyone ask where do you start I would start with a local paper and because I think it’s really nice and people aren’t travelling at enormous distance I put an ad for someone to come and work four hours a week. When I was having my first baby to do the invoicing I thought Oh that would be the start. And she’s now developed through the Carman’s journey and it’s probably almost roughly seventeen years for her. No actually it must I know how long it is. I can well about 14 so it’s 14 years for 15 years then she’d been there a year. And so she’s grown up to now be running the Carman’s branding and she doesn’t have, we sort of laugh sometimes we sort of frauds in office we just do it because we love it and people think oh wow we must have some MBA’s or you know.

 

Tim

The old impostor syndrome. You talked about the best marketing being great. Maybe we talk marketing communications is there anything particular that you’ve done that really worked well to build the brand.

 

Carolyn

I particularly love this this example where I thought about it and I thought well hang on why don’t I write to everyone in Australia with the surname Carman because that’s kind of cool. So I looked up in the white pages I got a letter saying hi you know we’ve got this product we’ve just released on the shelves at Cole’s. Thought you might think it’s fun and here’s a sample. It didn’t cost a lot of money but the cut through of something like that because it was personalized it was something that was different novel. I still have the letter where Doris Carman wrote back to me and said I’m so excited to meet members of my of the Carman’s family tree and I said we’re not really related Doris but you know enjoy your muesli bar.

 

Tim

So you wrote to anyone with a surname Carman and sent them a product.

 

Carolyn

I sent my product. So now we’re much more sophisticated in how we do certain things. For our business. I feel that the answer is not just social media because advertising on social media has becoming very expensive and if you used to be whatever it was five years ago it was all about how many Facebook fans you could get. And I remember we had 100000 Facebook fans. We thought that was the be all and end all but then very quickly. Facebook would say well you could only actually speak to those 100000 people if you pay us. And I think it’s dropped out now. I think it’s less than 16 percent of people. And they keep reducing that down. Do an organic post you know you can’t reach those people. So now we’re trying to do more stuff of our owned media of things that we can control more. And I am very proud we do something called Carman’s kitchen table and we have about I think 4000 people who were on that. And every week we go out will ask them a question like Would you prefer the packaging to be black and purple or black and green for this product or would you. It woukd be email so it depends. But it might be on a certain examples so say we’ll bring our porridge flavour. We’re doing quite a lot of sort of novel stuff and porridge so we’ll send out. So three flavours and say cook this up at home and let us know what you think and then we send them. So those people. And it depends on what you’ve told us you’re interested in and what products that you buy or what’s happening in your household. So another area for us that we’re very keen on is bars for boys we know a lot of teenage boys consume a lot of say protein bars so we’ll send those families different flavors and often it might be the wording on a on a packet. Would you like to say you know honey roasted nut. You get the gist. And then from that. So we do a survey like that every week. And from that that’s how we really make our make our tweaks and changes which we’re doing all the time. So that’s a huge part. We actually often with a laugh we don’t do anything without asking kitchen table what they think. And that’s been an amazing leap for our brand.

 

Tim

Has this anti sugar campaign effective.

 

Carolyn

So what was amazing and what we do is we look at international trends when they’re coming in and then we sit down and say well what could we do. So a lot of our products are low in sugar so we just went through. We put sugar decals on heaps of sorry decals like a little just a little call out on the front of the pack and we’d say less than six grams of sugar or whatever the products or no added sugar for a lot of the porridges and amazing increase in sales. So it’s actually been amazing for us because and we’ve bought out a few more sugar free products I said in our porridge’s which have been very quick to be quite successful. So not everything we do will always be launched as being successful but it’s about saying I will let that go. We’re letting our product go this week and bring out something that’s new and exciting and you have to. I found that really hard to start letting stuff go. But as it sort of I guess almost like culling your wardrobe at home you know how much better it feels completely mean when you’ve you know the exciting new thing comes in or the product that gets released because we’ve let something go.

 

Tim

Carolyn your mom and dad are waiting at home. What a wonderful story well done and wish you massive success for the future.

 

Carolyn

Thanks everyone for listening.