The Beach People – a beautiful home and lifestyle brand – was founded in the summer of 2013 from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales by sister-duo, Victoria Beattie and Emma Henderson. Inspired by family, friends and a seaside lifestyle, the first collection of round towels sold out in a matter of weeks. Fast forward a few years and The Beach People is now admired around the world as a brand that epitomises seaside luxe “to enhance one’s living spaces and life experiences from the beach to home”. Ahead of speaking at the Retail Global Conference next week, from May 23 to 25, here Victoria reveals how they manage the juggle as mamas and their secrets to launching a successful business.
By Victoria Beattie
When my sister and I started our business, our intention was to be stay-at-home mums, work from home and make a bit of cash on the side while designing beautiful seaside-inspired products.
Nothing could have prepared us for the public reaction to the “roundie”. After all, our little sleepy seaside town was hardly the location for a global re-invention of the beach towel industry; but here we were, babies in our arms, running a global business. What the!?
We had stopped exercising, seeing our friends and cooking wholesome meals (something we love). Don’t even get us started on the personal upkeep… let’s just say my eyebrows got a little too “boho”!
Emma and I were deep in a world of reaction! Reacting to this that and the other. Responding to our inboxes instead of working on what we loved during the day – also known as the things that our business needed. We were waiting for the day that it would all slow down.
“One day,” we would say, “one day I will clock off early and take my family for a walk on the beach.”
“One day I will book that overseas trip.”
“One day I will work on that important part of the business.”
“One day I will live less out of reaction and more out of intention and purpose”
Well, enough! Today was one day. Emma and I decided to take back control of our lives and start living the life we wanted to live now.
These days, we have days off, we take holidays, we spend time with our kids (everyday!) and have date nights with our husbands. We also structure our business to be on purpose and with intention, instead of the chook-with-its-head-cut-off situation from the past.
Surprisingly, the work still gets done – and possibly more productively. All it took was setting our intention and purpose and taking control of our diarys again.
Here are our top five ideas that helped us:
Take them or leave them, but just know it’s totally in your hands; you are the boss of your own life!
- Write down what you want your life to look like. Re-engineer it back. Add in things like holidays, days off and self-rejuvenation afternoons then treat those things as important as a board meeting.
- Do it slowly. Don’t change evening overnight.
- Don’t be too hard on yourself. For real. Guilt is debilitating.
- Live with intention and purpose. Daily, ask yourself: “Is this task going to get me closer to my dream life and the goals for my business?” Allow time in the morning to meditate/pray over your day/objectives/diary/inbox.
- Do things that make you smile every day. For that is the true richness for life. The small things are the big things.
Lots of love,
Emma & Victoria
You might also like: 5 inspiring mamas to help you kickstart the week, We’re throwing in the 9-to-5 for life on the road with a 1-year-old, and A boss-mama’s 6 secrets to the running your own business.
