[00:00:00] The only reason that anybody launches anything new is because we are completely naive to what is to come, and that's a good thing. When you speak to business owners, this is a really common theme that comes up, which is that when we look back at what we thought something was going to be compared to what it actually is now, they never match up.
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This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Warri people of the KU Nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on.
I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been seated. This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
When I think back to what it was like when I launched Peach 15 years ago, I was so excited. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was 15 years younger than I am now too, of course. And all I could see ahead of me were possibilities. Of course, I was afraid, but the excitement overpowered the fear. I think if I'd known what was to come, especially in the next two years when I was building peach and had [00:02:00] no idea what I was doing, if I'd known how difficult it was going to be, I really don't know that I would've gone ahead and I think it's a really good thing in a lot of ways that we are so naive before we start something new.
When you speak to business owners, this is a really common theme that comes up, which is that. When we look back at what we thought something was going to be compared to what it actually is now, they never match up. And I've been thinking about this a lot with Ripple Festival. So about a year ago I pitched this idea to my business, bestie Mia FileMan, who is the best marketer that I know.
I said, Mia, business conferences are so boring. Music festivals are awesome. Why can't we bring them together? I said, I wanna run this event that is as much fun as I think small business is. [00:03:00] Do you want to do it with me? And honestly, Mia did not even hesitate for one second. She was in right from the start.
I might have had the initial idea, but what Mia and I have created is definitely equal parts, me and Mia. The idea is really not a big part of actually creating a business. It's all in the execution. And Mia and I joke often on our weekly whip meetings about how naive we were when we first started Ripple.
We knew that events were hard. We've run lots of events, nothing at this scale. We've run retreats before. And I think we actually did a really good job of testing out our business partnership before we went into Ripple Festival. So we've done lots of things together and it's always worked really well, which is why we felt confident to go ahead with our business partnership in Ripple Festival.
But [00:04:00] although we knew that events were hard and we knew that what we were trying to do was really different and unique, we had no idea how hard it was actually going to be. And in all honesty, there have been many times where both of us have considered abandoning. A lot of time has been spent wondering whether the amount of effort, the amount of difficulty, the amount of challenges that we are overcoming in the background is actually worth it.
And I think that in all honesty, if we had known how hard it was going to be, I do not think that either of us would have gone ahead. I think if we could go back to that Greek cafe in Melbourne that we were having a coffee at in September, 2024, when I pitched the idea to Mia, I feel like it would've been a good idea for future us to come and tap that version of ourselves on the shoulder and say, Hey, do you actually know [00:05:00] that you are gonna spend the next year and a bit of your life building something from scratch?
It is going to be infinitely harder than you think it is gonna be. It's gonna be infinitely more expensive than you thought it was going to be, and it is going to take so much more effort and work than you imagine it's gonna be. Would we have actually gone ahead? I don't think so. That's not to say that we are not.
Hell are excited and pumped about what we are doing for Ripple Festival. What happens behind the scenes in any kind of business is so much harder than what it looks like from the outside. So maybe that naivety that we have at the start of a project is actually there to protect us. And I think what we all need to do as small business owners is clinging to that naivety.
Absolutely. Because that naivety and that youthful or inexperienced optimism that [00:06:00] we often feel. Is really helpful, but we can't go into it so naive that we're not willing to actually acknowledge and observe when things aren't going the way that we thought that they would, and then adapt and move and change course.
So let me tell you about some of the things that have been happening behind the scenes at Ripple Festival because you might not be aware of what it actually takes to program, create and run. A two day major event as small business owners. So back in January was when we started working on the branding.
So we started pulling together, you know, what is it that we want this event and this business to be? What is our strategy? What do we want the brand to feel like? How do we want the brand to behave? How do we wanna speak as a brand? And what are the things that we stand for? We had a meeting early on with Odette Barry, who is an absolute [00:07:00] legend where she quizzed us on what the ethics of our festival were.
At that stage, we hadn't actually articulated what our ethics were going to be. And it really forced us to think about what do we actually want to stand for as a festival. So once we had worked through our ethical framework, and I'm gonna share with you what our ethical framework is, because again, that might be something that's interesting to people listening, thinking about how do you actually build something like we have built for Ripple.
So here is our ethical framework. We show, we don't tell. Actions speak louder than words. Ripple Festival is about walking the walk, not paying lip service. We want every attendee to leave with their own clear views, values, beliefs, and boundaries. No parroting required. Our second ethical concept is that we can disagree and still be friends.
So growth comes from the exchange [00:08:00] of ideas, not from echo chambers. Disagreements don't divide us. They help us evolve. At Ripple Festival, we embrace diverse perspectives and believe we can share a conversation even if we don't share the same opinion. The next part of our ethical framework is that one size fits no one.
So all shapes, colors, sizes, and abilities are welcome here. Diversity is not a token gesture or a buzzword. It's woven into the fabric of this festival's existence. Our next point was that purpose and profit go together. Like peanut butter and jam, we reject the myth that doing good and making money are mutually exclusive.
Ripple Festival showcases small businesses that make a profit while making an impact. We believe in valuing the work of creatives, entrepreneurs, and freelancers by paying them fairly, respecting their expertise, and not undercutting their worth. The next point, all for one [00:09:00] and one for all. Loneliness is a virus, and community is the antidote.
Ripple Festival creates a space where everyone belongs. Connections are genuine, and hierarchies and nepotism are left at the door. The next point is that we reap what we sow. Sustainability is woven into everything we do from showcasing eco-conscious businesses to minimizing our footprint. What we plant today shapes tomorrow.
And our last point is healthy bodies and healthy businesses. Wellness is good business from mental health to nutrition to sober options. Ripple Festival supports whole body health because thriving entrepreneurs can heal a sick world. So nine months down the track, reading this ethical framework that underpins the festival, all of those are still there and are still underpinning all of the decisions that we are making.
But because we are trying to run a [00:10:00] festival that has this ethical framework. It's a lot harder than it is to run a festival when you don't have those kind of ethical underpinning that we've decided to go with. So we started creating our brand, our personality, our kind of strategy for how we were going to do things back in January.
And we decided early on that our marketing strategy would be to build in public. Mia and I have been very transparent about what has been happening. Behind the scenes in Ripple Festival, we did things like the Get Squarespace to Ripple campaign where we decided that Squarespace was who we wanted as our major sponsor.
So rather than waiting for them to tap us on the shoulder, we created a campaign to get Squarespace to Ripple and our community lapped it up. And Squarespace was close behind them and they are now our major sponsor and have been since really early days [00:11:00] actually. We also did things like ask our community who they wanted to be speaking at the event.
We asked them what kind of topics they wanted us to be talking about. We told them about the fact that we were launching tickets and we were absolutely crapping ourselves to know, are people going to buy our early bird tickets? So this was all happening in January and February. On the first day that we released tickets, I think we sold 10 tickets within maybe two minutes.
And those two minutes were so exciting because it validated that what we were doing was what people actually wanted. We have what we refer to as our, uh, platinum and gold ticket holders. The very first ticket holder, Fiona Jeffries from Diva Works. She is our platinum ticket holder. I don't even know how she managed to buy the ticket so fast, but she is our platinum ticket holder and the five ticket holders next are our [00:12:00] golden ticket holders, and we'll be doing something really fun at the festival to honor and thank them for being such early supporters of what we were trying to do.
Another thing that we decided to do as part of Ripple Festival was we wanted to build a community, not just an event. And what does that mean? It means that we ran lead up events all the way from, I think our first online event was in February, and our first in-person event was in March. We've since run events in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth.
Now that made a huge amount of extra work for us. But the reason we did it was because we wanted people to come to our events and be able to meet us, meet our people, and decide are these my people? Are these the kind of humans that I wanna spend a couple of days at a conference with? And the answer was yes.
Those events have actually been a great way of [00:13:00] marketing what we are doing and building community and building momentum. But there are not a lot of events out there that are running events before the event.
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Only time will tell whether that was a good idea or not. Another thing that we've been working on is creating our brand from scratch. So Mia has been doing an amazing job of representing what it is that we wanna be in the world. So building our website, building our emails, building our social media, and actually putting ourselves out there as a brand that is separate from Campaign Delmar and Peach Business.
And I think we've done a really great job of creating a visual and a feeling and a vibe. We've also been really conscious of how we are communicating what it is that we are trying to do. One of the things that I have spent an unbelievable amount of hours on, I would be scared to even add up how many hours there have been on the program.
So early on in Ripple, [00:15:00] Mia and I decided we would divide and conquer. I would be responsible for programming and she would be responsible for marketing. And of course we would be cross-checking with each other and making sure that each other was happy with the decisions the other was making, and that all other issues we basically tackled together.
So I've been building a program and building a two day program with multiple mediums. We have music, so live music, we have live comedy, we have speakers, we have workshops, we have keynotes, we have panels. I've been talking with an audio visual team to make sure that we are gonna sound amazing on the day.
I'm talking with an event stylist. Shout out to Kate from Good Day Club about creating the physical space to actually run the festival. We have spent a huge amount of time working with the venue on designing what we want the day to look like, [00:16:00] how people will be fed, where they will be in the space, what our requirements are.
Making sure that our sponsors and partners are taken care of and that we've considered where they'll be in the physical space and how they'll be interacting. I've been talking with our musicians and comedians about their stage requirements, so what do they require on stage? When will soundcheck be happening?
What kind of support do they need from us? I'm even designing a green room so that our speakers and performers have somewhere special to go. When they need a little bit of downtime. We also have a chill out zone at the festival for people who would like to just get away from the action. Every now and then we have a workshop zone, which I've also been programming.
I have been designing contracts and keynotes and panels with a wide variety of different humans that are all small business owners. And making sure [00:17:00] that the way that we are interacting with and treating our speakers and performers is setting both of us up for an incredible festival. We've also recruited MCs, so we have two different MCs, one on day one and one on day two, because we love the idea of having that variety of different people helping to guide each of the days.
So that's just some of what we've been doing with the programming. Another thing that's been happening is Mia has been predominantly working with our sponsors to work out, you know, how can we actually have a real partnership with our sponsors? So rather than just saying, oh, we'll put your logo on our website and we'll put you in the program, that's not the kind of partnerships that we wanted to have.
We wanted to have the kind of partnerships that were interactive, that were mutually valuable, and so. We're talking about activations on site and you know, lead up events that [00:18:00] our sponsors have been part of bringing different and unique aspects to the festival. For example, we are going to have a live podcasting studio on site at the festival.
So we've been working on all of these different activations and event things that will happen at the event to help. The experience and also to help bring in that partnership revenue, which we need to be able to put on an event like this. Another thing that's been happening behind the scenes is a huge amount of worry about money.
It's really expensive to put on a festival like this. We made the decision right at the start that speakers, performers, and artists would be compensated for their time. And that's a decision that most festivals don't make. There are many other events, many other business events that happen in Australia, including South by Southwest, where they have huge [00:19:00] sponsors, huge budgets, and they don't pay a lot of the people on stage.
Now, I'm not saying that the people on stage aren't getting a great opportunity, and I'm sure that being on stage at South by Southwest could. Have really great implications and great profile building activity for a lot of people. We made the decision with Ripple that this festival was going to be buy small business for small business.
We wanted to curate an experience that took small business owners into account in every decision. We wanted to make sure that the topics being discussed on stage were the sort of things that small business owners actually need to make their businesses better. And so because we are compensating all of the people who are going to be on stage and our partners are contributing money back into our budget, that put us at a disadvantage to other festivals and events where those decisions are not [00:20:00] made.
So we're also being trying at least to be really transparent and ethical and honest in our marketing. We have not done things perfectly. We have made a lot of mistakes. The festival is going to be an incredible experience, but getting here has not been easy. Mia and I have not agreed on every single thing.
Thankfully, we've agreed on almost everything and any of the things that we haven't agreed on, we have been able to work through, and we're still, our friendship is just as strong, probably stronger actually now than it was a year ago when we embarked on this ripple festival journey. But we are really worried about money.
We are constantly trying to look at the budget. How are we gonna do this? What can we afford to add in? Are there things we need to take out? How do we make this experience incredible for people while [00:21:00] also not losing tens of thousands of dollars? Lots of events, especially in their first year, lose huge amounts of money.
Amir and I are just not up for that. We don't wanna be losing money, but we have accepted the fact that we will not be making money from this event. So the naivety back in September, 2024, that we were gonna build this incredible event, we were gonna build this incredible community and it was gonna be called Ripple Festival.
And yes, it would be hard, but we would be able to get there to together. It has been so much harder than we imagined it back then, but do I regret doing it today? No. I don't regret starting Ripple Festival because every single person that purchases a ticket tells me that we are building something that small business needs.
Every single speaker or performer who has agreed to be part of our event [00:22:00] tells me that we are onto something great. When I look at the program, not just the topics that are covered, but the people who will be representing those topics, I think that we have a stellar lineup and I'm really proud of that lineup.
I'm really proud of the fact that we have left enough space in the program to dance and move. There's gonna be an hour long lunch break where there is gonna be a dj. Shout out to DJ Dan Tupe, the rump shaker. A whole hour at lunch where we will have a DJ playing. Then there will be two hours between four and six both days, where the only thing that will be happening is music.
We'll have live music, and then we'll have Dan Tupe on the decks again, DJing. And during that time, everybody will have access to two hours worth of alcohol or alcohol free options should they prefer. There's [00:23:00] also gonna be a huge amount of food at the festival. Of course, Mia and I are the Greek aunties of the festival.
I'm not Greek Mia is, I think I'm an honorary Greek auntie. We are the aunties of the festival, and we wanna make sure that every single person who comes through that gate is really well taken care of. So the food, the coffee, the alcohol, and how we take care of you is all included in your ticket. Some of the other decisions that we've made, which may not be obvious to the outside, is that we have chosen a venue that is wheelchair accessible.
It is really well designed for wheelchair access, and we think that that is absolutely required in 2025. We also love that every single piece of packaging in the venue has to be compostable. They have a huge solar panel area. Right next door. We also love that the venue is [00:24:00] inside outside, so there'll be fresh air blowing all day.
So these are the kind of decisions that we are making that may, to the outside eye not be obvious that we are thinking about the experience of every person who is gonna be on that stage. We're thinking about the experience and what it's going to feel like for every single attendee that walks through the gates.
We are thinking about our volunteers. We are thinking about our audio visual crew. We have an amazing event manager, Lisa Calms from the blonde campaign, who is really helping us to put structure around what is going to happen at the event. All of this is a huge amount of balls that Mia and I are holding in the air and we are doing this while also living our lives, running our businesses.
Mia has two children and a partner, and she lives in Darwin. I have my own business as well and my dog, Flynn, who takes a lot of [00:25:00] care and we are busy women outside of doing Ripple, so. Investing. The amount of time that we have invested into Ripple has been a huge investment. It's also a really big risk.
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, firstly, I want you to come to Ripple Festival. So if you haven't bought your ticket yet, then this is the sign that you have been waiting for. Get onto the Ripple Festival website, ripple Festival au, and buy your ticket. You can come for one day or two. If you are coming from interstate or you just like the idea of a staycation, we have a festival hotel, it's Hotel Indigo on Flinders Lane, and we even have a special group rate so that you can come and stay at the hotel where lots of things will be happening outside of just the festival times.
So I want you to come to Ripple Festival because it is gonna be an amazing experience for small business owners. But I'm also [00:26:00] telling you this because. Naivety is really powerful. Human beings are really bad at estimating time. We are really bad at estimating how long or how difficult something is going to be, especially if we haven't done it before.
Now, could Mia and I have predicted that Ripple Festival would've been this much work? Probably, yeah. But that excitement and optimism that happens at the start of a new idea is actually what drives you through the really difficult bit. So if you are in the midst of a really hard part of your business, I just wanna create space for that and say.
Small business is really hard, and being naive and full of that optimism that comes at the start of a new project is actually what gets us through to creating something really powerful and incredible. Like Ripple Festival, every business [00:27:00] owner who has created something really worthwhile has been through the trenches like Mia and I have with Ripple Festival.
And so I think it's a really great idea just to celebrate how much effort goes into creating something really big. And that if you are in the guts of doing it too, then shout out to you. I hope this episode has been fun to listen to and I will see you next week.
Outro
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end.
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