Transcript

Rowena:

Brand You Magazine and podcast exists to inspire, motivate and invigorate women to step into their businesses as truly themselves.

Full of real life stories, practical solutions and inspirational ideas from fellow entrepreneurs. Each issue has a different theme that showcases the meaning, values, beliefs and morals that women build their businesses around today. So be your business and brand you.

With everything that has happened this year, 2020 could have easily been a year of disconnect and hatred. Instead, I have seen communities coming together and rediscovering their common humanity, their connection and inclusivity. Each woman in this issue was chosen because they embody these belief’s heart and soul both personally and professionally.

Welcome to issue one of Brand You Magazine and podcast, Work Together issue. In this episode you’ll be meeting Cherie Clonan, the founder of The Digital Picnic and about how she puts people before profit. Not only that she’s also our cover woman. The Digital Picnic is a rainbow unicorn dipped in glitter in a sea of social media of management companies.

Cherie ensures that they stay cutting edge in the digital space and focuses on being socially strategic while still embodying the values of courage, integrity, commitment, collaboration and accountability. Tell us about Cherie Clonan and what The Digital Picnic is.

Cherie:

Yeah, sure. So, I guess, well I’ll start with me, Cherie. So I am a 37-year-old mother of two and a digital marketer. Always passionately digital right from when I was a teenager and dial-up internet arrived to Australia and I just remember honestly I thought that’s me done.

Like dad was just really worried. I remember him feeling really worried about how much time I was sinking in online and I just lived, breathed it right from day dot and was coding up chat rooms and Mirc and ICQ, those were the days and just building up websites and so on and I just loved it from the minute it happened to my life, but didn’t go straight to that because it wasn’t even an industry honestly when I was finished up with Year 12 I should say. So I studied law and hated every single day of having to do that and then basically ultimately ended up in digital marketing, which is where I should have been.

So I’m really happy here. I love my job so much like I just feel like one of the lucky humans who is not wasting her life and her years and her happiness on stuff that I don’t like. So I really just genuinely wake up and think yes get to do this, this is actually apparently a job. So that feels good.

That’s me and then The Digital Picnic began in October 2014 because I honestly remember sitting in university qualifications and just thinking, man I feel sorry for people when they graduate and are expected to hit the ground running on the practicals of paid ads and just things that you’re not taught in university and by the had worked it into the curriculum it’s outdated anyway. So not discrediting universities at all, they lay all of the important foundations, but I remember sitting there thinking I’m going to be the person who fills in the gaps one day and that’s what we do now.

So we are professional gap fillers with lots of different workshops that we teach to people and we run team training, and then we also manage social media and specialize in performance marketing. So that’s me and that’s us.

Rowena:

We just need to spend a small amount of time in your space to see how [crosstalk 00:04:03] you and your team. Like I have so many ‘me too’ moments when I’m on your stories. Tell us the importance and benefits of an authentic and real social media presence.

Cherie:

I think people are finally really understanding that and it took them almost too long because I can remember craving to humanize all of the presences that I worked with when I was in House Marketer for lots of different spaces and places and it would be [fighting 00:04:36] sometimes and we just need to show a lot more real here and it would be so much pushback. Ah, we possibly couldn’t do that, we couldn’t possibly be human online and I said why, and that’s what people are craving.

Cherie:

So I’m just so lucky and grateful that we did that from the first day we posted Instagram for The Digital Picnic and Facebook and even now LinkedIn, which is where I’m concentrating some efforts as well and it’s just so well received. Fancy that, people craving people, who would have thunk it. So that’s what we show up, and you saying that you have so many ‘me too’ moments that’s why you’ve got to share the real because ultimately even the biggest of brands do need to create a connection between themselves and their followers.

That’s just marketing 101, but it saddens me how many people just don’t kind of grasp that there’s such a 101 kind of thing so that’s what we’re teaching.

Rowena:

So how important would you say being yourself has been to TDP’s success, not just you, but your team as well?

Cherie:

Yeah. I honestly couldn’t imagine our business having done anything but be that, and the beautiful thing about it is obviously when I started I would love to tell you that I had a big five, 10 year plan; but that’s just not me.

Who would have thought that 2020 would be the year of the bat anyway? So 2020 is just let’s just write it off. No, can’t put that in a business plan. So I think for me I didn’t pretty expect we would have the size of the team that we have, which is still honestly small and humble, but for me that’s a really big deal to have 24 carat human beings and by me always humanizing at every touch point both rocked up to our workplace and felt like they could be themselves.

And there’s been so many beautiful moments in that space that people wouldn’t see online because it’s not my stories to share, but I’ll never forget when one of our team members stood up one day and it was so brave. Our top office is where we all basically sit and map out strategy and she just stood up from her chair one day, encouraged by private conversations with me, and talked about her absolute battle with mental health and chronic depression. Ah, I just still get goosebumps thinking about how brave and courageous she was.

She needed to share it because she was worried that how she presents to work some days when she’s in a real low might be misinterpreted from the team and the way that she shared and the way that, that was received was nothing short of what I suppose anyone who follows TDP would expect it to be shared and received. And it just welded us altogether yet again through experiences of being human and daring to share your self-esteem in a workplace and comfortably know that, that’s never not welcome.

You know and that was a moment for me. I just sat there thinking look at what you’ve built, sis. There’s this great woman who has been comfortable enough to stand up just like that, stand from her chair and just say, “Guys, I battle depression in a chronic way and sometimes it presents like this and other times it presents like that and I’m going to need your support in these particular areas to get through this.” And then we all had a hug because we could because COVID didn’t exist then. You know and it was a really lovely day in that, not lovely for her battling depression. That’s not something I would wish on anyone, but lovely that she was supported the way in which she was and continues to be.

Rowena:

And you yourself have shared some of your own mental health journeys…

Cherie:

Yes…

Rowena:

Publicly as well.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

And in so many ways I feel it is reflective of my own journey with anxiety.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

So it was something that wasn’t diagnosed when we were kids like it wasn’t something that… You were the high strung kid or you were the kid that had sensitivities or whatever it was, but it was kind of woo, woo, we’ll just pop that aside for now.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

And by seeing people like yourself and other people step up, one of the most pivotal moments for me was when the ‘Are You Okay?’ movement came.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

And I remember posting something about how anxiety felt to me and so many people came out of the woodwork and sent me messages and support and since then it’s like its removed this whole woo.

Cherie:

Yeah. I agree and I just think that more people need to… We learn Japanese at school, we learn Mandarin, we learn German, can we please learn how to speak fluent anxiety, depression because I want people to get better at understanding the way this person is presenting is because they’re actually really anxious.

You know and if more people could speak fluent anxiety we would live in a better world. I know this, I know that there’s been different instances where I’ve presented team training to highly strung corporates who straight away I’m like you are high functioning anxiety and I cut them so much slack. Look honestly during the session the way they speak to me isn’t ideal.

I’m like oh, but I also know that it comes from an anxious place and I cut them some slack because I know by day’s end they’re in a better place just by what I’ve taught and the way I’ve communicated to them and I’ve said really validating things like, you can sit in all of the masters of everything, but they don’t teach this because this is the knowledge and this industry moves so fast et cetera, et cetera.

And I give lots of examples of how I used to be a tick box marketer. I wasn’t proud of my early days marketing efforts of like tick box done, see you later and I wasn’t making an impact for the brands that I represented and so them hearing me disclose that. So honestly they are like, oh okay, and it just gives them a bit of breathing space, but I just think the world would be a better place if we just got better at understanding how people present. So I communicate that really openly.

I’m high functioning anxiety at any time. I arrive at a domestic flight five hours early sometimes, domestic just going to Sydney and I just think I couldn’t possibly be that person whose name is being called out for the second time running onto the plane. I’m like how do you live? How do you live? Not me, I’ve been there for five hours, I’ve had lunch, I’m bordering on ready for dinner and I’m just happy. I’m so happy it doesn’t impact anyone else, it’s just me being where I need to be at the time that I need to feel comfortable about that flight being made you know.

Rowena:

And that’s the thing it’s a level of understanding, I feel that so often once you start taking that step away from hiding.

Cherie:

Yeah, exactly.

Rowena:

Not only do you start to understand yourself more, you understand others as well.

Cherie:

Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree. Dave, my husband, he used to say, “Oh, it’s 9:00 a.m., you’ve got a flight at 3:00 p.m., will you be heading off soon?” And I’m like, yeah you know me.

Rowena:

So we’ve talked a lot about being yourself in your business, it’s something that is a constant journey for myself personally like it’s constantly looking at the next way that I can be myself in my business because I’ve seen the effect it can have by stepping up into my space and how much it frees up a lot of the previously quite indoctrinated corporate space that I used to be in.

What tips do you have for people to step into themselves within their business? What can they start doing?

Cherie:

I think it could be something as simple as… And I’ll just share what I do. I know that I’m lucky. Content marketing actually comes easily to me, watch me on bookkeeping and zero reconciliations and you’ll see where I come undone as a human, but I know that I’m blessed in that content marketing I almost could probably do it in my sleep.

So I’ve just got to acknowledge that because I understand that some people really battle in the space of marketing themselves online and that’s just not something that I battle, but in saying that, I set myself reminders. You know really simple ones that don’t serve to overwhelm me and head me into that space of paralysis by over analysis and three reminders that I constantly have on a post-it note literally just behind my computer is memorability, relatability and endearment.

So I want to be memorable, I want to be relatable and I do want to be sometimes endearing and for me those three things have lent themselves to some of this most powerful content we’ve ever shared on our little pocket of the inter-webs and I haven’t got this one burgundy big deal, but in my little pocket of the world I feel like I make an impact with the content that we share and it’s because of just three things written on post-it notes that are bright yellow and it just says memorability, relatability and endearment. And for SMEs like that’s something that you are so lucky that you get to tuck into that without needing seven different approval processes like the ones I had when I was back in bloody corporate land.

So just be happy that, that’s not you and that you get to just show up and be yourself and there’s really no restrictions other than you restricting yourself. So that would be my top line advice, we could exploit it so much better, but if that serves as something just to remove the… I don’t know, what is it? The barriers that people put on their own selves. It’s just learning into those three things really helps me every single day.

Rowena:

That is so true, having things simplified down to three words is something I am a fierce advocate for in my branding process when I dealt with people.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

I’m the kind of person that when I see these big long mission statements, don’t get me wrong, I understand the purpose behind them, but there’s a constant level of self-doubt that you are actually implicating it across all levels, by having three key words as long as you come back to that. So, for instance, I have the brand values of bold, confident, honest, energetic and creative.

Cherie:

Yeah, yes.

Rowena:

And pretty much I have those across my office because basically everything I do needs to come back to those words.

Cherie:

Yeah, I know.

Rowena:

It’s as simple as that.

Cherie:

It is simple and I think people just over analyse it and for me even if I only had memorability that would serve me well. I mean I need more, I need more than one word, but memorability alone that means that I share things that shake things up a little bit online.

I take risks. I share things that maybe other people wouldn’t share and it’s never not served us well. If it hasn’t I don’t know about it because it means that some people have decided that we’re not the company for them and I’m like great. What a great way to screen who is not suited to working with us you know. So to the SMEs especially, the solopreneurs, the one or two or three person shows like just go out and be you online, don’t be afraid to be you because whatever you is, is unique and people want that.

And I only put up a post a couple of days ago on LinkedIn and I just said for me I stay true to what suits me and actually I love using Tik Tok, I love watching it. I love seeing all of the pranks. I laugh so hard, 11 o’clock at night I’m like laughing on the couch because of all those great pranks that women do on their husbands.

I’m like, yeah I get it, but can I do it? No. I am not an actress. I get really embarrassed that’s where maybe it’s an anxiety thing, but I just can’t actually do that and a few times that my team have asked me to show up on Tik Tok it’s taken me one hour to make one 15-second video and I’m dying inside.

It’s broken me as a human, I’m like I hated every single element of that. So I’m not an actress and I just decided, hey team love you all, but Tik Tok isn’t for me. So you keep doing what you’re doing there because you guys are all awesome. I’m just going to destroy whatever good you’ve created on this platform. So I’ll consume, you create.

So I say to people be true to you, if you’re funny be funny, if you’re authentic be real. If you’re more serious go for the educational type pillars like just show up and be yourself whatever that is. The people will lap it up when they feel it’s true to you.

Rowena:

That is 1000% true. I was opened up really raw and honest the other day, I know everyone can’t see me because we’re not going to do it on a video because it’s a podcast after all. Like yesterday, was it yesterday or the day before, I rocked up on Instagram stories on my page.

Normally I have my hair done and I have my makeup done, it is just those things I do in the morning so I can feel like I need to show up there done. I rocked up, my hair wasn’t done. I had big dark circles under my eyes and I owned the fact that I knew I was heading towards burnout and I was taking the next day off to address that space.

Cherie:

Yeah, well done.

Rowena:

And the amount of people that came to me and just went, me too, thank you for saying this, I felt like it was something I had to hide, I felt like it was me failing.

Cherie:

Yeah, exactly.

Rowena:

To feel this way.

Cherie:

And then you save people from hitting their own burnout or worser versions of burnout. Burnout is savage at the moment in this climate. People just have to look after themselves. So you do sometimes have to rock up, I just say whenever you want. I rock up regularly with dark circle situations and not amazing looking hair and I’m like well this is me today enjoy you know.

So, and then people can see that I look a bit tired and they know that the behind the scenes must be looking a bit more forlorn and sometimes I will put on makeup and they’re like you look like you’re good today and I’m like it’s makeup, but thank you so much, I’m dead inside.

Rowena:

I’ll take it.

Cherie:

Yeah. I’m joking, but also not.

Rowena:

Jokes, but not jokes.

Cherie:

Yeah, exactly.

Rowena:

So a huge part of TDP are the team you applied in so many ways as much as you are the brainchild behind it, they’re the ones that have like… You have got so many characters on your staff.

Cherie:

Oh, I know, best humans.

Rowena:

One of my favourite things that you did in response to going into lockdown and having all your team work remote was the Bunker Diaries.

Cherie:

Yes. Yes, oh my God, I will tell Liza, she’ll be so happy with that. She created that.

Rowena:

It was just so nice to see that other people were on the same situation and being really creative in that space, but also being really honest. You’ve done so many creative ways of introducing your team and supporting your team and being really transparent about what that’s involved.

What are some of the creative ways apart from the Bunker Diaries, what’s been one of your favourite creative ways that you and your team have shown up online?

Cherie:

I think that in all honesty because there are so many incredible behind the scenes moments at TDP that people when we’re working together and legally allowed to really we have a lot of great moments honestly. And we’ve actually just started pen to paper, a little notepad writing down some of the epic laughs that we’ve had or great moments, funny moments, powerful moments, inspiring moments, teachable moments.

Just all of it, it doesn’t matter what moment that is we write it down pen to paper and then when we have our photographer come out, we’re lucky we get her out every month usually. Again, I’m saying this all pre-COVID, but we’ve got a list then, a really great list of content of moments where, for example, Mel when she started at TDP she interviewed for the role and she was a little bit nervous before the interview.

I mean understandable, all interviews are. Just they get you where you are like please like me, and so she had this little nervous moment. She had already rung the doorbell and then she whipped out a power pose in the hallway, but unfortunately for her she didn’t realize that we had a video camera that records and we were like dying. I was like hired, honestly you don’t even need to talk at this point in time, you are hired, sis. Lost it, absolutely lost it because mostly we just caught little sneaky nose picks or just whatever people do right before that interview, but this extravagant human being was out there power posing like Brene Brown in our hallway.

So what we did is we got her to recreate that when she settled in probably three months in, felt comfortable and we were like we have to recreate that and now it’s one of the best pieces of content we’ve shared because we tell the story and people just think that she’s as magnificent as we think she is.

It’s just so many moments just from putting pen to paper and I would encourage anyone listening to this podcast to do the same. Don’t forget your day to day like it might just be day to day to you, but these are all fantastic opportunities for you to share content. Tell your stories and record the things that you might have otherwise forgotten. So that’s what we do and that’s my favourite part actually. I really look forward to seeing what we’ve got by the end of the month and it’s a content sheet list. The photographer is like you guys are bloody genius, it’s too easy. Yeah, that’s great, I love that.

Rowena:

Your team environment is actually one that I find really inspirational and we’ve already touched on what some of your values are that you show up online with. What would you say are your brain values for your team?

Cherie:

Yeah, sure. So we know because it spells out CICCA. So C-I-C-C-A. So we give a CICCA trophy at the end of month for people who have lived into the CICCA.

Rowena:

Awesome, got to love a good acronym.

Cherie:

Funny, but true exactly. Yeah. So that would stand for courage, integrity, collaboration, commitment and accountability. Yeah, that’s basically what we stand for as a team, as a company and yes it’s definitely no doubt evident online I’m sure. I hope that it’s especially true of just how my team members show up day in and day out and live into different elements of those values and that’s ultimately what turns us into a chicken trophy at the end of each month.

Rowena:

Is it an actual chicken, please let it be an actual chicken?

Cherie:

I promise you, I’ll DM it to you after this interview, it’s a legitimate chicken trophy that I googled and had sent over from the US and now we Uber it to each other on Monday at the start of each month whoever has won the chicken trophy gets put on a passenger seat in this taxi.

Rowena:

Yes, this makes me so happy in my soul.

Cherie:

It’s the highlight of my month seeing our little chicken being wrapped up in a seatbelt with this confused looking Uber driver thinking what is my life and that person gets to own it for the next month because they’re the CHICCA of the Month.

Rowena:

I love that so much, that level of enjoyment I feel really breathes a positive environment where you feel like you can be a bit goofy because you also know that you can trust those people to have your back when shit gets real.

Cherie:

Yeah, my team tease me they call me rogue Clonan, because I’m always going rogue on them and just changing things. I’m like sorry I pivoted on this, but yeah great idea.

Rowena:

Yeah, and it’s just those little things that really build a team and I know that one of your driving values for your team is that you always aim to put people before profit.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

In what ways, I feel like this last six months must have been a really hard time to be doing that.

Cherie:

Yeah.

Rowena:

And it really probably pushed you on that as well, in what ways do you do this and why is it so important to you?

Cherie:

I don’t know, for me it just comes easily and naturally, maybe, I don’t know, I won’t go into too much psychology here, but I didn’t come from literally anything. We were below poverty line, I grew up in foster care. 1980s foster care, which was honestly genuinely horrific, not a great time to be a foster kid let me tell you. So I haven’t strived for millions and millions of dollars, it’s just not what I actually need. It’s not even about wants, it’s I actually don’t need millions of dollars to make me happy in life.

What I actually want is a profitable business. My dreams for having a profitable business are around when you have money and it’s in the right hands, good hands do good things with money. So what my hands do with the profit that TDP makes is I take it and I make sure that my family are looked after and everything like that because that is important, but I also give a lot back.

In ways that we don’t share online because I feel like it’s a bit, but there are some really incredible organisations that benefit from how we give back, but also my team because our industry sucks. People are underpaid, creativity isn’t valued, salary bandwidths are a bloody joke. So what I do instead is I throw 10 or 15K on top of the usual bandwidth and that means that I have really happy people who stick around long-term and do really incredible things for my business and what I’ve learnt is that actually makes your business profitable.

There is a thought, pay people what they’re worth and a little bit beyond if you possibly can and they go on to do really incredible things for your business and that’s made us the profitable business that we are honestly, I’m glad. So for me, look Victoria are giving some grants at the moment because we’re all COVID. So grants have come through and it might have been something like $3,000 and I look at that and I’m like that could be a private nanny for the couple of working parents that I have whose faces are disintegrating on our Monday Zoom chats.

I can literally see the circles under their eyes getting darker and so I thought let’s get a private nanny, but unfortunately we went into stage four and now we’re not allowed. So I was like let’s get home cooked meals to them immediately. Let’s send out… I sent out last week a bottle of terrible wine because just the name sounded so representative of this time to be a working parent.

You know it’s not just the working parents because that’s not fair, but it’s everyone in our team. They all get something nice that just lifts their spirits up and it’s important and that’s where people before profit seriously matters. And it’s not like I’m Oprah and just giving out cars, it’s just small tangible things. I wish I was Oprah that would be amazing, but it’s just really small things that were so easy to do and that changed outcomes for people and make them feel valued. People over profit always because then you’ll be profitable anyway honestly.

Rowena:

So a lot of the people that are going to be listening probably aren’t lucky enough to be at the stage where they can consider taking on a team yet and as a one-preneur I am busy outsourcing with Francina because once I did it the first time the value that I placed on it like yesterday felt like I had reached the pinnacle of my success. I always joked that my success was going to be measured when I could hire a cleaner.

Cherie:

Ah, yes, my God, yes.

Rowena:

It was just starting to flip the value of things a little bit as well, but I have to admit I’m starting to head towards that stage of knowing that sometime in the future I’m going to need more. How do you know when you’re ready for that next step of hiring someone?

Cherie:

I know that’s such a good question. I think for me and I can only obviously speak from my own experience, but you just know because you’ve reached that point of discomfort where I guess you feel defeated by Monday and if you’re feeling defeated by Monday like 09:30 a.m. because you know for a fact you’re not going to get through all of the things that you need to get through something has to give, doesn’t it?

So what gives? You have to decide individually, for some it is the cleaner because you think about your hourly rate versus a $30-40 per hour cleaner, for example, and I know straight away that I can’t be cleaning my house because it takes me longer as well because the kids slow me down at every touch point. So it’s a 4-5 hour job for me.

Rowena:

I procrasti-clean.

Cherie:

Oh, yeah. I rage clean. Dave used to argue with me all the time because if he wants the house clean I’m like I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you with this sparkling clean house, but just knowing what to outsource and when is just so important and don’t be a martyr, don’t make yourself sick and I did this last year. I just didn’t do it quick enough for things that I needed and I got so sick and stressed that I had gastric ulcers all over my stomach, covered. You know they opened me up and they couldn’t believe this was a woman in her thirties and ever since then I’ve just tried so hard obviously pre-COVID, COVID is an exception to the rule.

We’re all just out there, home schooling, I am just always trying to recognize when it’s feeling too much and deciding what has to give. I would stress to your beautiful listeners do the same, whatever it is. If it’s a HelloFresh, if it’s a cleaner, if it’s a bookkeeper. I just don’t know, it looks different on everyone, outsourcing looks different on everyone, but be kind to yourself and I promise you will be surprised what that gives back to the business.

Rowena:

I always say to people look at the thing you hate, you are dreading it, it is the thing that you procrastinate on, it is the thing that you literally something in your soul feel like it’s dying when you have to do that thing outsource that.

Cherie:

Oh, I couldn’t agree more. Honestly for me, that’s cooking. I hate cooking, I hate it.

Rowena:

I’m just lucky I have a hubby who likes cooking. I purposefully, here’s a tip for everyone if you want your husband to start cooking for you purposely make your cooking crapper.

Cherie:

Oh, I know. Honestly I need to, but unfortunately I married someone who isn’t just bad at cooking, but we’ve been together 18 years, he’s cooked for me three times. The two of those three times food poisoned, chicken undercooked. He’s dangerous. He’s a dangerous man who needs to get the flip out of that kitchen.

Rowena:

So this issue of Brand You Magazine is all about inclusivity and connection and I feel like we’ve really dug into the connection side of things. However, you’ve also been really honest around the inclusivity learning curve that you are on and you’ve been really honest and transparent about what you know and what steps you’re taking on your journey to improve with TDP.

Can you tell us some of the things that you have learnt over the last few months. Some of the things that will educate our listeners as well about things they may not have considered?

Cherie:

Yeah, definitely. Okay, I’ve learnt a lot. So for me it started three years ago for me in an online mother’s group that I was in, which is very white because of the particular area that I guess that I live in. I’m not sure, but it’s a very white group and conversation happened in that group, which talked about white privilege.

I read it, I felt offended and insulted. I decided you couldn’t possibly consider me a privileged person because of my background. You know just earlier year stuff that’s got nothing to do with privilege. I was initially offended and that’s just a normal early day’s probably response for most people when they start to unpack their white privilege. I’m glad that conversation happened because it made me feel, I don’t know, just I probably was in that dreaded minority of people who were crying the white tears, which is not what I want to be about now three years later. I’m such a different person to that person who felt offended back then, but I still have a long way to go.

I think you can only ever keep going in this space, for me now as the founder of a growing business, I’ve got this huge responsibility to be better and so what that looks like is making sure that our workplace is inclusive. Our HR policies are, are we attracting bi-pop candidates? No, and I’ve recognized what mistakes we’ve made there. So we are rectifying that now, but it does take time. We are still, I think sometimes people think we’re this juggernaut business, but every hire is just so much has to lead to each individual hire, but the next time we do hire whenever that is, we’re going through a recruitment agency that employs indigenous Australians. That’s just the first thing you can very easily do.

We also straight away started working with a diversity and inclusion consultant and they have mapped out what the next two, three, five years looks like for The Digital Picnic and I think the future looks colourful. Not just the way that TDP and colourful is associated as being, but colourful in that I know now how to write better job descriptions thanks to this person. So that people feel included and represented and that they see themselves in the workplace. They see opportunities there, opportunities not just for particular roles, but leadership positions and so on.

So that’s the first changes and then I made a really big effort to make sure that our language is inclusive and I’m falling down here every single week and getting caught out every single week by people online and I welcome it. It doesn’t feel great, honestly, I’m a human being and I read it and I’m like, ah you know, and then I just quickly get over myself and actually read the words and learn how I can be better.

So the most recent example is I was in a team meeting describing the pandemic is insane. I was like, ah this is just insane, and then a member in my team very politely one-on-one to me and just said when you use words like insane or crazy or cray to describe things that’s offensive to people suffering from mental illness. I was like yes, my gosh, thank you.

So now I change my language to wild, I use wild a lot, most recently our website is in the middle of being completely overhauled. A few things reverted back to how it looked in 2014 when we first began, one of those and this was just an accident, we got an agency in the US in the middle of making all of the changes. So our email opt in that appears on the website said, ‘join our tribe’, which is definitely a word that I used in 2014 because I didn’t know better and when you know better you do without that, but when I was in 2014 I was like tribe yes because you see that a lot online and now I’ve completely been educated on the word tribe and how you can’t use that.

So updated our opt in straight away, but someone recognized it just last week and emailed us and the email was pretty full on to read honestly and it was designed to make me feel incredibly ashamed and I do. I did feel incredibly ashamed and I wrote back just a superhuman response and said, this is courageous of you, you’ve got to keep doing this, you’ve got to make the sure that the brands who are living loud in this space and talking about being inclusive and progressive and so on and if it’s not matching up at some point, at some particular touch point online call it up. So thanks for doing that. We admire you for doing that to explain and then I provided the explanation. Not that it’s an excuse, but it was just an explanation and I said so I’m going to update that right now and I really thank you for coming across and letting us know.

So that’s just what we’re trying to do, not trying to create a word to use and so on, just trying to really be better in this space and be open to people telling us where we can do better. You know I don’t expect people to donate lots of their time to educators, I pay consultants for that. I don’t want to take the piss by expecting bi-pop communities to take me on an education journey. There are people with courses for that and I have signed up to many like Whiteness at Work by Desiree Adaway, Unpack Your Privilege by Sharyn Holmes and so on.

So there are so many things that you can do for less than $500 to up-skill in the space of being a better human, just being a better citizen of the climate and that is my responsibility because I am growing a team and I have to be better in this space and pass that learning onto my team as well.

Are we perfectly inclusive? No way, we’re still… I don’t know how to write visual descriptions, we’ve got a lunch and learn next week to teach us how to do that. Is my language perfect? No, call me out if it isn’t, tell me so I know, but I can say for as long as I am online every single week literally guaranteed 52 times a year I’ve learnt something new about how to do that. 52 times a year is a pretty good opportunity to be a better human.

Rowena:

It comes back to awareness.

Cherie:

Yes.

Rowena:

It comes to where holding that space to learn and to adapt and to change and be open to that change.

Cherie:

It’s all you can do.

Rowena:

But not all cast and faster in and capable of moving outside of what the space we’ve always been in. So I feel like that comes across when it comes to inclusivity. It comes across even just making a connection with a person that might not have been in a space that you normally would have or having a conversation or it starts really small and I know that it sounds really cliched, but by taking these small steps it’s amazing the snowball effect it can have both internally and externally.

Cherie:

Yeah. Honestly, if we all felt comfortable to give feedback and receive that feedback comfortably we would all be better off. You know you can be gentle about giving that feedback and it can be in the moment even when you feel scared too.

You know I was asked to MC a particular event once and it was for start-up folk who were looking to start something and the whole selection of panelists were just saying yeah, just do it. I just did it, I just started. I just leapt in, I just did that and as the MC I kept hearing that and I thought, yeah because you’re partnered and that person you’re partnered with covered the other 50% of the salary while you were just doing it. You know without the income for the first two or three years for a lot of start-up folk and you are.

Now what about our single parents who can’t just do it? And, so as the MC I just really gently, I just said I’m hearing a lot of just jump in, just do it and so on, but I want to let you know I did the same and I was backed by my partner who was on a stable income so I could. So to anyone in this room whose not in that position you are going to have to approach this differently because of literally financial restrictions you know.

So it’s just important to acknowledge privilege wherever you can. My privilege is that I partnered to a person whose fully supportive of how dirt poor we were for the first three years of TDP existing. I couldn’t even afford baby wipes. I had to scrounge silvers together and walk down to the milk bar one day and I literally laid out the last 10 cent on the counter, I felt so ashamed and was like five cents short or something. He gave it to me, I was like thanks mate.

The privilege of having even Dave’s salary at that time even if we were just scrimping for baby wipes, it was still a privileged position to be in. I could actually start the business because of being able to rely on Dave’s stable income and there are so many people who haven’t got that. So let’s recognize the privilege and be gentle about giving feedback and it was received really well and there were some nods in the crowd. They were like thank you, solidarity, because they were like thanks for acknowledging that we ain’t in that position to just start.

Rowena:

I have done a lot of collaborations and I am naturally an empathetic person. I just want to help. I always just want to help. I try to do everything that I can to help my friends or help a cause that I believe in and step up into that space, but just remember that, that can have a huge effect like it can have a huge blow on effect.

Cherie:

Yeah, I agree. Honestly, I completely agree. So give back where you can and when you can and if your business gets to that position where it can, oh man, do it. We are there now, we can give back and it feels really good and I know I change outcomes for people. I actually know and it feels good to my core to be able to do that.

Rowena:

When it comes to being in your business and being you in your business the thing is you can’t help but develop and grow as a person if you’re showing up as yourself and how important that can be to self-development as well as professional development.

Cherie:

I agree completely, yeah.

Rowena:

Well, very last point now because I feel like we’ve covered a huge range of bases here. Lastly, why do you think it is so important to brand you into your business?

Cherie:

I think it’s so important because people are craving your stories. You only need to look at your top line social media analytics at the end of each month and every month without fail I see that we can’t be without that founder content. So it has to be there because it lifts everything else up and it’s hard for me because I’m actually introverted as a personality type and also I don’t like to make it too Cherie centric and I want to elevate my team.

But they know when I share my founder pieces of content it’s lifting everything else up because we see it in the month to month reports in the back ends and we’re lucky we know how to explore that data because we are digital marketers, but it just it makes it so damn obvious what we have to do and that is to lean into honest pillars about what my experience is as being the founder of The Digital Picnic. And I’m really open with it and it’s not just about high performing content and so on. It’s not just about lights and engagement, content clips and so on. It is hopefully a bigger thing. Hopefully I’m making an impact with people who are just literally sitting there and thinking me too.

You know and like you just said at the start that’s important stuff. I want our content to connect and I just can’t do when it’s all product, promotion, conversion. It’s just the quickest way to drop out of a person’s newsfeed, they are like yawn, we don’t want that. That’s not our gem and I just can’t believe that a digital marketing agency in Melbourne has grown 40 something 1000 followers on a platform like Instagram. Like who would want to follow a digital marketing agency?

Rowena:

We’re not following the agency, we’re following you and your team.

Cherie:

Literally and so that’s why you’ve got to do it. A digital marketing agency in Melbourne should not have the follower base that we have and we have it because of that, because we have showed up, we’ve been memorable, we’ve been relatable and we’ve been endearing multiple times per week and 40 something 1000 people have decided.

I don’t completely always understand some of the paid ads results that you share on Google analytics results and so on, but I’m here for your stories and that makes an impact and the next time I head into my whip and recommend digital marketing training I’m going to say The Digital Picnic. You know and that’s the stuff that really sticks for us and has made us become the business that we’ve become and hopefully continue to be.

Rowena:

Thanks for joining us today, for more information about our amazing contributors don’t forget to check out dubdubdub.brandyoumagazine.com.au. Also, stay up to date on our socials and see all the new bits and pieces that are coming out over the coming months and remember be your business, brand you.