Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: How Sheree Sullivan turned a 'side hustle' cheese business into a global brand

Episode Date: March 9, 2019

Our guest Sheree Sullivan is perfectly positioned to show you how real sustainable success can be achieved, and what it takes to make it. You see, Sheree and her family have gone from part-time, after hours 'side hustle' start up with their ‘Udder Delights’ artisan cheese business, in an industry they knew absolutely nothing about 20 years ago, to an award winning global brand. Udder Delights now has a team of 50 staff servicing a multi-faceted end to end customer ecosystem that has recently attracted joint ownership investment of over $14M from a Japanese conglomerate. 'How lucky are they' I hear you say. The truth tells a very different story, one which most people would not have survived, and Sheree is just the person to share it with you. During our insightful and wide ranging discussion, she gives you answers to all of the important questions, that include: Are entrepreneurs born or bred? If you’re called 'unemployable', is that an insult or a compliment? How do you successfully go into business with your parents and your partner? What is the best way to make decisions if you are partners in business as well as in life? How do you manage having babies with business? What is the key focus that will drive your success in any endeavour? Why is the concept of seasons important to enduring the journey and achieving success? How do you keep yourself calm in very stressful situations? What do mental shelves and open doors have to do with goal setting? So now sit back and enjoy this great conversation with the savvy and sassy Sheree Sullivan. Sheree's book recommendation: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don't envy what someone has because you don't know the price that they've paid. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously,

sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested.

Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. How often have you caught yourself looking at others and saying, I wish I had their life? They've got it so good and they're just so lucky. Now, we're all guilty of it. The grass always looks greener from afar on the other side. And these envious thoughts and comments are often directed to people who we perceive as successful. And our tall poppy syndrome, which has become somewhat of a national sport,

means we're often subconsciously trying to find fault or lessen their success by putting their apparent good fortune down to luck. Well, in my experience of studying success now for well over 35 years, luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. You only get lucky when you've worked hard enough for long enough so that perspiration and preparation are ready to meet opportunity. Inevitably, so-called overnight success is always 15 to 20 years in the making.

So what does it really take to become successful? Do you have to risk it all? How do you endure the relentless risks and all-consuming, ever-present pressure and stress to survive and then thrive? Well, today's guest, Cherie Sullivan, is perfectly positioned to show you how real sustainable success has and can be achieved and what it takes to make it.

You see, Cherie and her family have gone from part-time, after-hours, side-hustle start-up of their under-delights artisan cheese business, in an industry they knew absolutely nothing about 20 years ago, to an award-winning global brand with a team of 50 staff serving a multi-faceted end-to-end customer ecosystem that has recently attracted joint ownership investment of over $14 million from a Japanese conglomerate. Oh, how lucky are they, I hear you say. Well, if only it were that easy. But the truth tells a very different story, one which most people would not have even survived. And Cherie is just the person to share it with you. Now during our very insightful and wide-ranging discussion

she gives you answers to all of the important questions that include things like are entrepreneurs born or bred? If you're called unemployable is that an insult or a compliment? How do you successfully go into business with your parents and your partner? What is the best way to make decisions if you are partners in business as well as in life. And how do you manage having babies with business? What's the key focus that will drive your success in any endeavor? And why is the concept of seasons important to enduring the journey and achieving success? How do you keep yourself calm in very stressful situations? And what do mental shelves and open doors have to do with goal setting? So now sit back and enjoy this great conversation

with the savvy and the sassy Cherie Sullivan. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now today I could be excused for letting my really cheesy sense of humour take over but I'm not going to embarrass myself any more than I normally do nor insult my special guest who has heard it all before. So by way of introduction I'll keep it really short and sweet. You see, last year, I had the pleasure of attending an executive roundtable event where today's guest spoke very generally, and she had all of us spellbound, and it was by the genuine vulnerability and openness that she spoke about her long and arduous rollercoaster ride to success, and I knew straight away she'd be the perfect guest on Get Invested.

So welcome aboard, Cherie Sullivan. Thank you. Cherie, really pleased that you can spend some time with us today. Let's kick off by just letting the audience know who you are and what you do, if you don't mind, please. Sure. So I'm the Chief Executive of Outer Delights Australia, and we are artisanal cheesemakers in the Adelaide Hills. And we also have a salad or sort of food tourism outlet in Harndorf. And I have been doing that as a startup business for 20 years now.

Awesome. Let's dig in a little bit deeper to why you do what you do. Sure. I always think that if MasterChef was around when I was growing up, I would have said to myself and to everyone else, I'm going to work in the food industry. But it wasn't. But I loved food from a really, really young age.

but I had just never even thought, okay, one day I'm going to work in food. So that when the opportunity presented with my parents, I just loved it. I really love the food industry and I really love business. So I definitely found my sweet spot by falling into it. Yeah, okay. Well, let's go right back there because I'd like you to take us on your journey so far. And I'd like you just to sort of take us through the entire journey, if you don't mind. And focus on what you've invested your time, your interest,

your skills and your money into over that journey and why, if you can. Sure. So this is quite a long story. So feel free to interrupt and ask questions as we go. We like good stories, so it's all yours. Whenever I get asked, oh, how did you start? It's like, oh, my gosh, you have like five to ten minutes. Great, you do.

You've got the floor. Yeah, and we do today, so that's good. Um, so I guess our story and our business journey began, uh, it actually began from a really young age, to be honest. Um, I grew up in a family that always had businesses on the side and I, I look back now and go and realize that it, it set me up to have a go and not to be afraid of failure and not to start a business and shut down a business because my parents did it all the time.

So I guess that's a bit of background. And then when I was 18, my parents decided they were moving our family to the Adelaide Hills on a 33-acre, I remember, easterly-facing slope and good bore water. That was the ad, was it? I had no idea what that meant. Just winding back, where were you before that, just so you set the context? I was born and bred in Elizabeth until I was 18. Okay. And so I often joke you can take the girl out of Elizabeth, but you can't take Elizabeth out of the girl.

And it shaped me. And it certainly shaped some of my, I guess, life and business philosophy. But we can get to that later. So we end up in Lobethal. So my parents had done a whole stack of research and they were going to work full time in the city and commute and then start a raspberry farm on the weekends. Wow. And that was going to be their long-term retirement plan because they'd nearly paid off their house but they had no super. So they were always risk takers.

And I think to their face, their friends would have thought that's – they probably would have said that's really super exciting, wow, amazing. And then behind their back, I'm sure they were just saying they're mad and they're going – yeah. What were their day jobs, Cherie? So my mum was always working in some sort of office administration role and quite good at managing finances. So at that point in time, she was working at Port Adelaide.

So she was commuting from Lausanne to Port Adelaide. Good grief. My dad, quite an interesting career, and it was a bevy of things, and it was a tech studies teacher, a math teacher, a truck driver, a bricklayer, a fibreglasser, a fabricator, speed car builder, aeroplane builder, aerobatics instructor, and then ended up as a corporate jet pilot before he retired. Good grief.

yeah so if you said to him what did he want to do his whole life it was flying um and he always did that throughout this journey so again i sort of think i just grew up with random but when it's your normal you don't realize yeah um so we so my dad's commuting from lobothor to parafield at this point and was flying minors all around south australia okay um and i'm at uni now i'm living with my grandparents during the week coming home on the weekends and we have just animals to help keep the the grass down and there was a run-down dairy on the property and even in Elizabeth because we have quite a large block my dad wanted goats we never got them but he just wanted them because his cousins had them so he knew how cool they were and how delicious the goat milk was so my mom and

dad decide we're going to get two goats for family use they were Nora and Nell and they were a mother daughter goat milking team yeah and my mum made some goat coats and my dad welded up some milking stands and they tidied up the dairy and then we just milked morning and night for family and um and then we realized that goats eat raspberry cuttings so there was this synergy and there was paddocks and the fences were there and the dairy was there so my parents were like why don't we start a goat dairy that will be all year round income they'll eat the raspberry cuttings goats will be seasonal income. And they're doing this, so they're milking the goats at 4 o'clock

on the morning before they're heading off to work every day, is that what you're saying? Yeah, and I'm yet to find a dairy farmer who works full-time in the city. So that's what they were doing. They were working so hard. And then – and that's – I think that's the ethic of my family. You work hard. And then it was really hard to sell the goat milk.

So this is sort of, you know, 97, 98 to give perspective. And we had one main customer who wouldn't always take milk. So sometimes it was literally going down the paddock, being poured out. And then one day my dad took the milk and they just said, oh, Trevor, next week we drop the price of goat milk by 10 cents a litre. And so that was sort of the catalyst. He just came home and had a chat with mum and they just decided they were going to value add.

They needed shelf life. They needed control. well, why don't we build a cheese factory? Wow. So this wasn't we're so gourmet, we love goat cheese. You know, this is there's no financial backup plan. Yeah. You have no money left.

Yeah. Let's keep going. Just to put some context around this, 10 cents a litre less was of how much? What are we talking about? Goat's milk get a lot more than cow's milk. So to this day, we are paying, I think, $1.38 a litre for goat milk um so to give you perspective so in retail you're probably paying four to six dollars a

liter for goat milk so back then i can't remember maybe it was a dollar 15 and we went to a dollar five but we were already not making money at a dollar 15 you know what i mean so um and so because my parents can build literally build with their hands on the smell of an oily rag they built a tiny little cheese factory at the old woolen mills in Lobethal. And this was a really interesting site. We're there to this day, but it's one of the only industrial sites in the Adelaide Hills. And when it shut down, which it was a big woolen blanket factory,

it was the equivalent of Holden shutting down, you know, in a life. So the really cool thing is today it now employs more people than it did when it was an old woolen mill. So I think that's pretty cool. So we're one of the businesses there and they built a tiny, tiny little factory by leasing a warehouse and fitting it out with cool room material. Yeah.

I remember my brother thought of the name Utter Delights. He was cherry picking at the time, up a tree, went Utter Delights and my parents thought that was a good name. I can't claim any fame to any of that. It's a great name. Yeah. And then they did all the initial branding. they employed a cheesemaker and there was a very soft opening and launch into the marketplace at

the end of 1998 and I remember driving home and my car broke down I remember that and I don't know how I made it the rest of the way but I got there and um and then that's the whole class so by now my parents are employing a cheesemaker it's just a black hole for money you just put money in and and it disappears, never to be seen again. And I said to my parents at that time, I thought, you know what, why don't I get out and market your product because nothing was selling, nothing. Yeah, I'm very keen to jump in there because you did a music degree

at Adelaide Uni focusing on jazz piano. Yes. Let's just wind back a little bit. Why go from high school to doing jazz piano? know what was the what was what were you investing in there um i was investing in i don't know what to do i love it uh i guess um i had been a musician from age five yeah um my parents didn't have a lot of money but i always remember they had money for music and dentistry so i had orthodontics and music lessons great so you can tinkle the ivories yeah and so i had a natural aptitude for

music um and was also very disciplined so you need both um and so by the time I was in year 12 um I wasn't quite sure what to do my mum was so practical she just wanted me to go to business college so I could just go get a job straight away being a receptionist um I remember driving oh and and then I remember so I went to a private school at Angola um actually the largest school now in the state so Trinity College yeah and they base their prefect captain system on St Peter's and so I was asked to come back as college captain in year 13 on scholarship okay and I had to defer a university course and I can't even remember what one I applied for but I didn't bother I think at that time applying for music I can't remember and in year 13 I was going to oversee the school

and finish a licentiate diploma on modern organ and then I remember driving down main north road I remember my mum and dad being in the front seat and I said to them I think I want to go to uni and my mum who just was so practical and rational was like what do you want to go to uni for like that was actually what she said yeah yeah and my dad just said Estelle if Sheree wants to go to uni she can go to uni and that was the end of the conversation and like it's so funny because most parents are sending their kids to private school so they go to uni whereas there was just freedom and i think i realize now that conversation was that one sentence by my dad was whatever you choose to do is fine so um so i went on to do jazz piano because i was really good at it um

and just let me share just let me share with the audience because i'm a closet muso myself and and i wouldn't even attempt to do jazz piano because not only is it very creative it's spontaneous it's adaptive you've got to be totally flexible and respond to all the other instruments that you're playing with it's i reckon the most challenging way to play piano and generally is But as you said, what comes behind that is an absolute discipline because if you don't know the instrument so well that you can intuitively respond to whatever one else is doing, then it's going to fall very flat. So where did that passion for music come from, Sherry?

My whole family is musical. Every single cousin I have plays something. Awesome. My brother, the family, they were just a really musical family. we all grew up in church as well which essentially meant pick up an instrument and play it and I remember I my mum gave me a little toy piano a tiny tiny toy piano when I was about five and I used the color-coded music to learn the toy piano and then I translated that to her organ and she's like okay it's time for lessons awesome so um but the other thing is I now my favorite

subject at school was actually math um wow loved math and why why why because one plus one equals two yeah and in music it's not always like that particularly jazz um and all the a lot of the other subjects i was doing was so subjective that i just loved that there was one answer in mass and you know and it's i know the higher you get there are more creative answers in mass but um I realise now that I've got the mass music brain, which is the rational creative. So you've got both sides of the brain working extremely well. I do, and that's what's worked really well for me as an entrepreneur.

Of course. Yeah, so I got through the jazz degree on my brain. The really, really talented musicians who are professional musicians to this day I think get through on their ear. Do you know what I mean? They just get through because they instinctively know what they should play. I was going okay that's a c13 sharp four I have to play the Lydian mode over that you know what I mean like my brain was going you know just to keep up um except rhythmically I just felt that

instinctively so um yeah so I do absolutely realize it taught me discipline um and I realized that I was only thinking about it today maybe in preparation of your talk but I've never really um thought about it before but i realized that every year i like to learn something new yep and um that's change and that forces your brain to change and grow and i would say that most adults don't really enjoy that because it's not comfortable but i realize now that till i was 21 when i finished my degree it was a cut for 20 for 15 or 16 years of my life it was constantly here's a new piece of music go and learn it and it was just that constant thing here's a new thing read it study it practice it perfect it so um yeah and so i said i just do that all the time

i guess now and i just like it what part does uh music if any playing your playing your life now uh it is relaxation now so we also don't get on the piano very often my daughters are now getting on um but you know we'll talk later about when i was going through due diligence which was the most stressful professional time of my life yeah i just had albums playing in the background certain albums um i'm a massive believer of of music really getting into your subconscious so i use it very much uh as i guess as a mood setter for different things same here my half an hour a day on the piano

is I get off with a massive smile on my face it's the best mood changer if I'm having a stressful day I'll just walk downstairs jump on the piano for 15 minutes and get off and on buddy and if I've got the time mine is opposite mine is now

let me in the kitchen so my husband loves it I just I find it quite therapeutic as well Well, on the outside, someone would say, how do you go from jazz piano into building a business? But if you look at the underlying fundamentals there, the creativity, the discipline that you bring to that craft, your persistence, the flexibility and your ability to respond to the situation, and it is all pretty foundational to building that. So that makes sense now. So sorry, I went off on a rabbit hole.

No, you're right. We sort of come back in then, so mum and dad with their blood, sweat and tears have started to build this tea factory. Yep, just finished my degree. I said, look, I'm going to teach music, I'm going to perform, and then how about I get out there and market your product, just put me on commission. And they were like, yep, great.

And so I did rebrand very early on, I and and branding to me is something that has come quite instinctively um and I remember I went to a bottle shop because I thought if any industry has done any color combo or feel it's the wine industry so I stood in front of all these bottles for an hour or two and worked out what I wanted and then built the logo and all the branding from that. And I know, I think a lot of the time and numbers that are thrown around that to build a brand or, you know, even to just get your design concept

is anywhere cheap is about 5,000 up to $10,000. And I did Art of Delights for about $500. Love it, love it. And then I went out to the shops And I just had to learn, I guess, who they were and what suits what we're doing. But essentially, I said to the shop owners, I've got this goat cheese from the Adelaide Hills. Why don't you take it on consignment? So if they didn't sell it, they didn't pay for it.

Yeah, love it. Great concept. It just required some bookkeeping from my side to keep track of everything. And then so it was a no, they weren't going to lose. And you need presence in a shelf. In retail, you need presence to be seen. And so that was a really good way of getting presence. No one else would have been doing it at that time either.

No, I don't think anyone does consignment on food. And then I just did lots and lots of demos. I just had to get out there with my little table and get cheese into people's mouths. And it probably sounds odd, like why would you have to do that? And that's because this was 1999, 2000, 2001. And goat cheese wasn't normal. It wasn't in restaurants.

It wasn't in menu. You know, you just didn't see it in recipes. And now goat cheese, halloumi, chorizo are all pretty much well up there and recognisable and what I think part of the Australian food landscape. Totally agree. And you've really pioneered that change in flavour. Yeah, yeah. I'm hearing.

Hey, just jumping in there, Cherie, one of the things that, again, I admire looking from the outside in is that very few people are able to make a family business a success. And talk to us around the comfort level or it may not have even been a second thought for you, but I'd be interested in why you felt comfortable saying, yeah, mum and dad, I'm in, I'll make this happen. Because to give you an example, in my own case, I end up being very much like my father who was a workaholic

for many years. But my response to seeing that was, I'm not going to work for you, Dad. I know you want me to, but I'm not because I don't want to end up like you. I ended up being that way from a different route, so I probably would have been better off working for him. But talk me through your thinking at that time. Yeah. Well, I think what it was is that while I started it with –

mum and dad had been involved, say, six months to a year prior, but there was actually no business as such. it was all that time setting up yeah so I while I'm technically second generation and their daughter I was actually first generation setting up the business so there was nothing that my parents were really handing to me in terms of systems or customer base or you must do it this way it was more like uh have a go you know what I mean so I actually there was nothing there to make me even think for a minute oh I don't do this um if anything it was I need to do this or we're going broke okay okay that's a pretty good driver and then yeah yeah it makes complete sense

yeah and I it's not as if I had anything else to do anyway um like you know I just finished my degree I even went to my degree knowing I didn't want to be a music teacher I knew that I didn't So I just realised it was just the perfect time It was this business waiting for me, ready to go when I finish my degree I know I keep distracting you No, it's good, I like it Yeah, what I'm hearing from yourself and through your father is this limitless, fearless approach

It's almost, you know, for someone And the little bit you said about your dad, he's prepared to have a crack at anything and he'll make it work. Is that sort of part of the culture that you grew up with that's sort of sustained you in the journey so far? I think so, but it wasn't so much my dad. It was probably more my dad would come up with this big idea and my mum would go, okay, let's do that. and I think there were three or four times that my dad said we need to shut down we can't keep doing this and my mum was the one who said no we're going to keep going so um yeah so she it was her while my they were both really good risk takers because you can't I'm a very big believer

and you cannot be an entrepreneur with a family business if both of you are not fully comfortable with the risk taken um or the time sacrifice required and so they both were they're an awesome team and i have married similarly so um who and also you know a guy who grew up with his dad starting businesses all the time and not particularly successful at all however there is then no pressure from your family to go become a doctor or a lawyer or yeah it's it's actually fully acceptable to have a go at something and it not work yeah awesome awesome yeah that's yeah thanks for sharing that that's uh really important i think because the the environment that you're operating in uh does have a big impact on how you think and therefore behave and if there's the

freedom there to say right well we're just going to do this yeah then uh that's that's a great incubator awesome yeah no sorry so go on all right so um so you just got out there did lots of demos started getting some sales the media were really interested in the story um probably 21 year old jazz pianist cheese you know selling goat cheese and and then within six months the cheese maker went on holidays and asked if i would come in and make the cheese in his absence and uh I had about eight hours training with him and I just think that's so ridiculous when I look back. And so many things about this story, I just think that is so ridiculous. And I'm just so glad that I was young and naive.

So I'm not sure eight hours is enough. And I just learned how to make the fresh cheese, thank goodness. And when he went, I was then cheesemaker for two to three weeks, really enjoyed it. And I guess I approached it like cooking and I also knew it would help me sell the product better. So he returned and with a month or two my parents went down to the factory one night after milking and it was just a note that said I resign. And so we didn't have a cheesemaker, we had no financial backup plan,

risk management was non-existent, which is a good thing or we wouldn't have done it. And so I remember sitting around the dinner table that night and I said to my parents, look, how about I become the cheesemaker and I'm going to teach myself how to make cheese, trial and error. I'll read books. I've got this guy I can call in Melbourne and just put me on a really small hourly rate.

I reckon I was probably on like $15 or $18 an hour. Yeah. And then the rest of the time I'm going to get out there and I'm going to set up this business and I'm going to get the sales, I'm going to get profit, I'll brand it, and that can be commissioned based on sales. And I'm going to give you a five-year commitment and at the end of five years I'll recommit again

or I will look elsewhere for a job. and at that point they just went okay so that that was i guess a door that opened for me in my parents despair i just thought okay i'm gonna have a go and i and i just look back now and go if someone was telling me what they're about to embark on with my skill set and my background and that they were naive enough to even think it would be around in five years to recommit i would just think they were delusional but here's what i love here's what i'm hearing here is i mean necessity is the driver or invention there's no no yeah so you're looking at each other going we don't have too many choices you're brave enough to put up your hand you're

you're making it no risk to mum and dad by saying well pay me a measly amount and the sales is on commission so yeah there's no there's you know while you're part of the family there's no major risk then but you're also putting a timeline on it you're saying okay well uh let's put an end on this so that we know what we're working towards and that becomes the major decision point. Until then, we're just going to go hard. And even that thinking, Cherie, is quite rare. Very few people would be able to.

Where did that sort of ability to think that way come from? Is that just intuitive? I don't know. I just think intuitive. I do think I'm yet to see an entrepreneur who wasn't born an entrepreneur. Yeah. and you've got to skill yourself and, you know, you have to develop yourself, but I just sort of think it's there

and it can be fostered or not fostered. I do remember quite a few years ago watching good old, you know, The Voice, that competition. And I had a bit of one of those, oh, and you just sort of learn about yourself moments, but essentially there was this great singer and she said oh so what I'm doing my backup plan is this blah blah blah and I went that's really smart and one of the judges had a complete go at her for having a backup plan and I was like that is really unfair I think you're being really unfair and you know like you literally sleep

on something and your subconscious works stuff out overnight the next morning I woke up and I went oh and i realized that we were successful because we had no backup plan and therefore you keep going you keep going and you keep going because the option is not good love it love it absolutely the necessity you've got to make it work there is no there is no alternative yeah yeah yeah a lot of people don't appreciate that yeah so so in terms of that five years um we followed the pattern of a small business which is first three years you run at loss year four you cut even your five is your first small profit um were you thinking that were you thinking that at the time or is that something you thought about afterwards i had no idea i only learned about it

when i started training myself in business and i let that one in 10 survive um yeah and yeah we we were that and and the truth is that i just continued to learn and change um and i was a because I'm in the Adelaide Hills, I was able to plug into the regional development board who had sort of all sorts of mentoring programs. I just kept trying to plug into those and I chose to change and learn to this day. And then when in year five we stopped milking goats

and we started buying milk in and that was really my parents just weren't sleeping enough. It wasn't healthy but it meant we didn't have to buy milk in those early years. and the other thing is I married my husband so his name is Saul and he was really entrepreneurial really into food and wine and when we got married what was really interesting is I put all the bonbonieri everywhere and on it typed up Sullivan Synergy and the meaning of what synergy meant and it's just so interesting that that has just played out in our life

that what we can achieve together just so far surpasses the sum of what it would have been achieved by ourself. So we are a really good team. Awesome, awesome. Yeah, so he came into the business at that point. We went to mum and dad and asked if we could buy any and at that point they sold 50% of the cheese factory to us. And we just, we meaning Saul and I, just continued to work

in the business and run it. I started teaching Saul everything I knew about cheesemaking. My mum and dad are still working full-time elsewhere. My mum did all the book work and my dad did a lot of the maintenance and construction because we were always growing and that meant the site had to grow. And just maintenance because you're always working with water and plumbing and electricity and pumps and, you know,

it's just constant, keeping it maintained. and um and then my soul said to me a lot you know you're really good at food don't you want to open up a food establishment and I just kept saying no no no and um and then we're at a workshop one day and the facilitator said look if I had a piggery I wouldn't just want the best bacon I would want the best shop selling the best bacon and eggs for breakfast and so again I just had that light bulb moment slept on it and dreamt up this food tourism complex and just didn't say anything to Saul because he would wake up every day with a new business idea and I was just like no bad idea no and um and then you were the Estelle of uh yeah exactly exercise yeah okay and um and then one

day he woke up and said I've got this business idea blah blah blah blah and it was um and it was this food tourism concept which I had been sitting on for about two months and so I went yes so he fell off his chair because you know I agreed um and and then we had so then we had to go about starting this new business and what that was going to look like and where that was so that was a site we found in Handorf it was just this beautiful um hobby build just someone building for fun a three-year project and um I found that site and and said to my husband I found it let's go look at it and he is the really I'm a big thinker he's a ridiculously big thinker and when I showed him this site he actually said to me you've lost it there is no way we can afford that so it was

really interesting that the tables turned for once um and uh anyway that was like 14 years ago now So we sold our house and one of our cars to fund the Art of Delights cheese cellar. Wow. And we did that as a different business structure to the Art of Delights cheese factory. So the cellar door is owned solely by Saul and I and it had to buy off the cheese factory.

So we sort of left it to an income-generating marketing arm of the business. Yeah, smart. And you can then keep an eye on the numbers so they didn't blur and you can understand what was working and what wasn't. Hey, just winding back a little bit to when yourself and Saul got together, the decision for Saul to come on board with the business, was it a decision or was it just assumed when you got together

that he would do that? I'd be interested in that conversation, that thinking, and then moving forward from there, why you work so well. You talked about the synergy, but I'd like to dig into that a little bit. And what have some of the challenges been between working together and living together? Yeah, so it's odd. We never really had this discussion about do you want

to join the business or not. It just was a given. It was bizarre because I've never really thought about it, to be honest. He always joked that if he wanted to go on a date with me, he'd have to come on a cheese tasting. Good excuse. I think he knew that, but he was just so entrepreneurial anyway, so absolutely would have, you know, ticked all the boxes for him.

Yeah. I think he knew if he was ever going to see me, he'd have to work with me. Yeah. He also, though, had had business from when he was age 15. So he had a firewood delivery business from age 15 and I think he is pretty unemployable and my dad even said to me two or three years in, you're the most unemployable person I know

and I was so offended. But he's actually complimenting you really. Yeah, because I was one of the hardest working people I know but it was his way of saying, yeah, that the constraints wouldn't be good for you and that's the same for my husband as well. Yeah. So, yeah, it was just this real natural thing and, yeah. Well, talk me through, I mean, there would have been,

given you're both obviously quite strong personalities and very creative and big, how have you negotiated that? Because I say a lot of likenesses with myself and my awesome wife, Sonia. How have you sort of, again, is it just something that's sort of taken shape by ebbs and flows or walk me through the journey there if you can. We have a rule, and I don't remember when we set the rule, but it was very early, and it was if we don't both agree,

then we don't do it. Love it. So, and that's about the really big things. I'm not, I don't, to this, I'm now not involved in daily operations of the cheese making, and I will never interfere other than if something's hit the fan or whatever and Saul just rings me. um i i'm often the um the uh what would you call it the phone a friend um the the person who knows enough about the business from afar to provide a bit of perspective or a different thought process

so i'm often called in crisis um and can help find a resolution um so that that separation of roles then because what i'm hearing there is you've decided uh right you're responsible for but I'm responsible for this. When did that occur? Because quite often partners, there's a real blurring and that's where it comes to grief because one starts telling the other and vice versa before you know it implodes. Look, when the business was small and we were both working

at the cheese factory with, say, three staff, that was, I think, in my opinion, that was the hardest time of working and being married because you're in such small confines with a pretty small patch to manage and then you'd go home at the end of the day and there was nothing to talk about because you'd been together all day. So a really good turning point was when I physically left the factory and started the cellar door in a different location and then worked remotely for the factory because, you know,

internet and online. That was a really good turning point. But the business has, as it's just gotten bigger, you have to divide up roles. and I'm a very big advocate of carving off your role. So when you start, you have to know how to do everything and you have to do everything because you actually can't afford the help anyway.

Yeah. But the minute you can afford some help, you carve off what you hate the most and that's sort of how we've done it and continue to find the niches we want to work in. Yes. Yeah, you play to your strengths and get someone to fill the weaknesses. Yeah.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, awesome. Okay. So the synergy is a great – I love the word synergy because it's, you know, one plus one equals three. Yeah. Is that what you mean by your synergy? Can you sort of expand on what synergy means to you and Saul?

Yeah, absolutely. I just wouldn't like being in business by myself. and I know that if Saul hadn't come on, Art of Delights wouldn't be the business it is today. So, yeah, I just really like being in business with someone and my husband's actually the same. He would not be great by himself. Yeah.

And I think we feel each other's, we're both very strong generally across areas but there's some areas specifically that we are really good at and generally they complement each other so uh and of course when one's down the others up and vice versa so it's just um we just yeah we just work well together and it doesn't mean that over the years we haven't had to have some pretty honest conversations with each other about when you say this to me like that that hurts my feelings you know you still have to have those conversations um yeah but and what about the because this is something that Well, it continues to be something that Sonia and I work on

because all of us, without even thinking about it, talk differently to our partners than they would if they were an employee or someone else. Yeah. And even the tone and the way you say things sometimes can come across. And if you're in an environment where you're with other people, they'll pick that up. Yeah.

How have you managed that? I think some most of the time Saul and I actually talk to each other differently than the staff we're gentler with each other yeah but every now and then we're not and what's really funny is that our general manager used to be the national sales manager for Maggie and Colin oh yeah and now he's the general manager for Saul and Cherie Sullivan so he has just been I reckon the meat and the sandwich for a long time and he's just used to it um but I'm saying that I when I say the meat and sandwich I do I am joking in that we never ever put anyone between us um if there's an issue it's what we work out together um but yeah if anything my husband is

very strong and sometimes I think the staff actually need me to just call him on it and just go stop being, you know, pig-headed about this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the others are going, here, here. You know, but I'm the only one probably who can say it at times. So, you know, I guess it's just worked. But in saying that over the years, there have been some quite honest conversations between Saul and I about when we have these situations, this is how we can successfully navigate that in a way that we won't offend each other.

Love that. um how do you switch off or do you switch off is it just become part of the fabric of who you are and you talk about it whenever or do you have rules around okay we when we're at home we're at home and when we're at work yeah how do you negotiate that one so we had no rules um and i know we will get to it talk to it um because now our business looks really different with the investment yeah up until that point it was constant and I remember sometimes lying in bed at 11 o'clock at night saying soul can you just stop now like stop um so um but the challenge for him is that he'd then just think all through the night and he just couldn't turn it off

um i could turn it off a bit easier i i'm an avid reader and i have to read before i go to sleep because otherwise my brain won't turn off um but now with our investment uh i've we had to and i in particular i had to say to soul you know when we're at work we will be the very best that we are and give the very best but when we're at home we're at home unless of course there's a crisis that you have to be managing and so be it because that's what you've got to do when you're an executive but that has been a retraining and it's also been a retraining of the adrenaline fight or flight where there's a really big issue and your immediate trigger response is fight or flight and we've had to we've had to retrain ourself in that as well and that was about just

self-talk and reminding each other but until that point we had 18 years of it of course of course it would have been risk and and those constant challenges for survival would just been a part of the fabric of how you operate i'd imagine yeah yeah for sure yeah okay well awesome so i keep going down rabbit holes but uh sort of coming back to the thread then so uh saul's in the business He's assumed the cheesemaking exercise And you've started the tourism concept Yeah, so he became really general manager And oversaw all operations in cheesemaking

And I can, you know, I have no shame in saying He's a much better cheesemaker than I was and ever will be Why? Because he is like a dog with a bone and he will not relax until there's perfection. Right. And that's a really good thing in a cheesemaker. Yeah.

And so from that point on, essentially it was like, here's a business with a brand. He was also very instrumental in bringing cow milk into our range and he identified really early goat milk is too risky because it's feast or famine. and so we started bringing cow milk into our range in like 2006 and by then I'd left the cheese factory in terms of operational and cheese making and really would just remind him,

okay, it's this time of the year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So for the next sort of two, three years I was just sort of on the side coaching because by then I'm running this new business and then pregnant with children. Wow, just throw that in there. Yeah, and also had babies, two girls who were only 15 months apart and we lived on site at our cellar door in Harndorff. So that's how I was able to do babies in business, by merging them.

And we just continued to grow and grow and grow. And so when I left the factory, so in 2006 to open up the cellar door as well we were making about 2 000 liters of milk a week into cheese and these days we do about 100 000 liters a week and i never like seriously if you'd said to me all those years ago so this is what you're gonna do i'd be like you're delusional how am i gonna do that um and even to get i couldn't even see getting to 10 000 liters a week let alone 100 000 so that is um i guess Saul's massive vision where I can I can shoot for the moon but he can shoot for the stars because the stars are way way further away than the moon um and I'd be like okay yeah I can see that I can

do that all right let's do it and so I'm really good at uh execution uh and helping him execute these amazing really big things that I can get my head around and I'm prepared to risk for so yeah we just kept growing and growing and growing and and then eventually my parents were able to go into semi-retirement when my second child was born so that was in 2009 and it just meant that they didn't have to do any more external paid work that they could just work for the factory and and draw a wage by then and so it just meant they would say working 20 or 30 hours a week not 60 or 70 brilliant just again uh sorry jumping in there but you're spiking sort of thoughts as we go that that the big vision exercise that you touched on there with uh you

know saul being intergalactic whereas yourself probably being galaxy based yeah almost and i'm interested in uh just teasing out and did saul have this master vision of this end-to-end ecosystem from, you know, supply, manufacturer, distribution, retail, or was it a matter of, okay, now we've got to this stage, what next? Okay. Yeah, it was more that. Yeah. It was more what next because I think that our world changes so quickly

that you can have this end goal of I just want a really successful, financially viable, great branded business. Yeah. And that can be a 10- to 20-year goal. But if you set the steps along the way, you can have a loose goal and you can have a loose guideline, but the truth is our world moves so quickly that if you were so dogmatic and stuck to that, you would not be in touch.

And I just wrote a quote down because we just finished the marketing plan yesterday. I'm going to put this quote at the top of the plan, and it was don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers. And that sort of resonated with me in that, yeah, you can have this big business plan and this is how I'm going to achieve this massive goal and I'm going to do this

and I'm going to do that. But if the customer base is not asking for that, it's irrelevant. Yeah, if you're not solving a customer's problem, what are you actually doing? No, no. So I guess it was more each year we would come up with this is what we're going to do this year. And it wasn't this formal marketing plan,

but he and I are very big goal setters and we would verbalise them, right we're going to do this we're going to do that and within six months we could have done it or we thought we were going to do that but a massive door opened and we just chose to jump through it and so we have this I call it this mental shelf we've got this shelf in our brain where everything we could do sits there so think of it as a pantry with all these jars and it's everything we could do that we've identified but we don't pull it off the shelf till the time is right, essentially, and the time is right and all of a sudden a customer is requesting it

or there's just these doors open so quickly you just jump through it. So I guess that's how we've navigated 20 years of huge growth. So every year we've done between, say, 25% to 45% growth year on year on year. So I think our average is about 35% and we just finished our financial year, which is a calendar year, sitting at about 30% again. Massive. Yeah, so we're always just in growth.

Okay. No, yeah, so we just continued to grow and my mum and dad retired. The GFC hit, we felt that, and this is the one year we actually didn't grow. The goat milk ran out, so thank goodness we had cow milk, and that was the year my mum got really sick and she'd gone to a few doctor like a doctor and the doctor kept saying you've got a virus and one day she arrived at my house with dad and I'm like I've got a nana I haven't got a mum anymore and my mum was really young and vibrant I'm like something's wrong and I just said to my dad you've got to take her somewhere else and so he did and

that's when we were told you've got three brain tumors and she was incredibly sick by then and died four months later um from brain tumor so that as it that as a one 12 month period was an incredibly hard business time but obviously the hardest personal time in my life yeah um and the business just sort of stood still all growth went on hold the staff maintained and um we essentially cared for mum and dad during that period and um when mum died my she was 58 my dad was 59 it was October and that is the busiest period in our business because we're making cheese for Christmas of course and um and my dad was about to turn 60 and I remember telling my mum I will oversee his 60th birthday and um and I just remember I could have no time off to grieve none

She was our bookkeeper. I had to take over all of that and she was my paid nanny. So I had to restructure my life as much as I could to just get through. And I remember thinking I've just got to get to Christmas, just to Christmas Day. I've got to put Christmas on for the family and then I have some time off. And I even remember my husband coming home, I think it was like the 19th of December, and he said,

oh, Sheree, so what I need you to do is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and I actually said, if you put one more thing on me, I'm going to crumble. Like I was just holding it together. And then I remember sort of January and February having all these ideas of what I could do and absolutely no motivation or drive. And so I didn't do anything other than the absolute bare necessity of what I needed to do.

Of course. And, yeah, my girls then were two and three as well. So it was really, really full on when I look back. um and uh yeah so dad then went into he probably just worked 20 hours a week from that point yeah and then um within a few years went into full silent partnership um and we enacted succession and he also remarried a really lovely lady so um yeah he went into silent partnership um I reckon he was I'm trying to think how old he was I want to say he was probably 65 and I'm sure his friends from all those years ago went,

I cannot believe you've done it, you know, but not without a price, not without huge prices along the way. Massive price and I guess that time in particular must have been challenging for all of you because your father's lost his life partner and when you've worked that closely together, it would leave a massive hole in his life. massive hole in your life too actually given yeah how closely you work work together yeah if your business just went sideways then i think you've done very well most would go backwards

yeah an exercise like that and it was was it just the fact that you had to keep going yeah because without the time to grieve and sort of work through that process it can sit there like a rock and and fester away yeah how have you sort of manoeuvred through that, Cherie? I realised that the 12 weeks, and in particular the last five weeks leading up to mum dying, I actually had already started grieving. I realised, and everyone does grief differently and everyone does different stages of grief differently.

My dad and my brother did not start grieving until after she died. I knew what was happening and I think I started grieving before she died and so I remember each week I wished I'd kept a journal actually because I remember about five weeks leading up to her death I had these I had a really big issue every week or a really big question that by the end of the week was resolved and then I moved on to the next thing and I was actually able to process and move through quite quickly um but if you ask me what they were I can't remember very much unfortunately but I so I I do yeah I just remember that I remember that I was able to work through some pretty big things and it wasn't that

I wasn't grieving it's just that I had I just had to keep working um yeah and and in that was the grief I guess yeah and I guess again the necessity kept kept you going that yeah there's no choice in so you couldn't just take time out. You just had to keep on keeping on. Yeah. So your father, that sort of transition out, was that something that just happened by osmosis or, again, was that something that you talked about and said, okay, well, here's the plan,

or did he just start to phase out because of what had happened with Estelle and then everything else? It was very deliberate. I mean, the whole goal of Art of Delights was for mum and dad to retire. Yeah. um and so it would it actually worked really well because obviously it was unknown how it was going to work and we've got some great accountants and dad just went and saw them and they said Trevor here are your options go and work out what resonates with you

and then we all met back together and dad said here's my idea this is how I'd like to do it and even our accountant said, oh, we've never heard that before, but that could work. And so that's essentially what we did and it was my dad said, I want to draw a percentage of what Saul draws. So whatever Saul's wage was, just a percentage of that as a silent income until the day I die. When I die, the business is Saul and Cherise.

And I will remain silent except on about four or five really quite big decisions which were documented so that's what it was going to look like um and our accountants were they said look this will work and there's only ever problems with wheels when people don't know what it is yeah and i have a brother and i was like but what about andrew what about my brother and and and then so what dad did is every single other possession he had and he did have some property and a few things was going to go to Andrew and um and we all had to go in together and the accountant said you're both taking a risk that the property could go up or the property could go down and the business could go up or the business could just crash and burn and

you need to go into it eyes wide open right now and he my brother and I were comfortable with that it was easy um and that that was what we did um and and that was working really well I think we had a year or two of that um my but we also had some really full-on incidences that occurred in that and and one was that we bought for the first time ever really expensive equipment from Germany um it arrived we'd never spent so much on equipment and um there was a part of it that was poorly made and missed their quality assurance and I it's possible it was made in Poland with cheap aluminium in hindsight and it shredded metal into our cheese for three weeks oh good grief and we couldn't pick it up with an x-ray detector or a metal detector because of the nature of

aluminium and the nature of the shavings and ended up having to throw three weeks worth of stock out um we missed out on a product recall by one day it was in transit and i was able to do an internal recall but we lost our shelf space and our momentum in the market so at that point our average yep we had done 35 growth for 39 months in a row and when you make an insurance claim they look at the last three years of financials and um so we went we got ready to make the insurance claim and our business stood still that year as well so the year my mum died it stood still and the year that this happen it stood still because of the momentum that we'd lost putting the insurance claim they're like yeah yeah and then they said just put all your financials in and when we did they realized

how big the claim was going to be because a business interruption claim is based on gross profit you've missed out on through your historical sales trend yep that just freaked out um and then i had to fight them for 12 months to get the money and that was the most apart from due diligence that was the hardest professional thing I've ever done and very stressful because at that point our house deposit was funding the business cash flow and that's where you're risking everything every day and one thing that goes wrong that's not your fault, you can lose everything and you've spent, you know,

15, 20 years building this thing. So that was really, really stressful and that was full adrenaline fight or flight for quite a long time. Yeah. And then paying a lawyer to help us get the money when you don't even have the money to spend on a lawyer. So 12 months later, we did get a really significant payout and everyone could just go, oh, but, you know, not without its damage.

Of course. Battle scars, I guess. And then it was coupled with my dad going on holidays as a retiree and his house in his absence being eaten by white ants, really significantly eaten. and he went to the bank to say, look, can I just get a loan to rebuild my home? I've got this passive income till the day I die.

And they just said, can't loan you any money because of your age and you're retired. So, you know, he built this business for retirement and he was going to live in a house that was literally falling down around him. So he came to me and said, Cherie, can you buy me out? And I had just gone through this whole rigmarole of not being able to build a house

because it's funding the business. yeah my husband and I in almost nervous breakdowns and my dad saying can you buy me out and it's like you know I can't risk anymore like we are too highly geared in this I can't risk anymore yeah um and so that triggered our whole um we need to find an investment partner we need to get dad out and if possible we need to get some of Saul and I's risk off the table so that that's sort of the journey that led us there okay and was uh uh or your dad's new partner in the mix at this point yes yeah for sure um and and she's just sort of i guess she's not involved in the business in any way legally or or other other than she's a great nana to my kids and my brother's

kids yeah you've mentioned on the day that i heard you talk and you've said again today a marvelous woman she is and uh yeah uh being able to say that is quite rare sheree yeah to accept someone else in into uh your life as well as his at that point in time so yeah well i i have been quite fortunate and selfishly fortunate i would say um that my my brother remarried he didn't have any children from a previous marriage and my dad remarried and they both married people that whole you know six degrees of separation or whatever like we had these connections but also neither one of them had been married or had children okay and that's what I mean about selfishly good for me in that um the family they've come into is just our family there's

you know so we haven't had any blended family issues to work through at all because they just weren't any so you know that and that and I do say selfishly good for me uh and I guess because my my stepmom missed out on children but she's got grandkids who are legitimately hers yeah i bet she spells them rotten and they love it too i can imagine yeah hey yeah look what i'm hearing here is i'm hearing enormous financial pressure on top of everything else and you've got the emotional side of your dad needing to uh you know complete and what he you know his journey and uh You've got the insurance pressure and then suddenly this is thrown at you. I can imagine that will be keeping both you and Saul awake at night,

pretty enormous pressure on everything. How did you sort of manage to manoeuvre through that? I just call it seasons. I know in life there are seasons of pain and trauma and challenge and that was just the season at the time. and so that when you know dad said I want out I need to exit and by then my husband's now saying I need to get out I don't actually physically know if I'm going to survive this if I don't somehow get rid of some of the stress and so both of them were saying to me I want out and so I

I wasn't ready it still felt like there was unfinished business and there was it was the baby but nevertheless my husband and dad were more important to me than the business yeah so um we made the decision that we were going to take it to market and find someone so that there's a an interesting decision so having having sold a business ourselves uh the decision is the easy bit getting to the finishing line and actually getting paid for it is a completely different Yeah, it's full on. And really interesting, I had a friend ring me like last year and she said, I've just decided to sell the business.

I am in immense grief. And she was shocked. And I said to her that when we went to sell it, we were all sat down and the advisor said, right, give me your best case scenario, each one of you go. And my dad's like, I want out, all gone. And my husband's like, I want out, all gone. And I'm like, I'm not ready.

um I don't want to get rid of it all I really I think there's unfinished business but you know nevertheless I will leave this project and so the first month or two of leading the project I went through grief again and I actually had to lay the baby down and the business down um so that by the time the actual process was done I had no grief I was just excited because I don't you know I'd already gone through it and I was excited because I got my best case scenario as well um but yeah selling a business and and we did choose to go global uh in itself adds many challenges because we also went global and we chose to put ourself on the market globally because that was the nature of the dairy industry um and we were also noticing what was going on in dairy

so um yeah so the so we ended up with Japanese cheesemakers um and they make cheese and yogurt and butter in Japan they've made it for about 90 years and but what's really cool is that they own a white mold cheese factory in Australia and they've made white mold cheese over here in um New South Wales for 30 years so they completely get and understand cheese making white mold which is our specialty Australia the Australian market and conditions so it's just been really awesome actually to have an investment partner who knows and who understands and you're never given a please explain because you don't need to explain because they know so that was really good but yeah the actual process itself was really stressful and I guess

looking back it was stressful for a few reasons one was that the timeline's quite short in terms of the information that you've got to submit and the data room is just massive isn't it i don't know what incredible yeah um and the other side of it is that the japanese culture i've since learned is really it's a really honorable culture and i'm really again glad it's japanese and what they say is what they mean yeah and because what they say is what they mean they take a really long time to say it essentially because they do all their research and so what happened with our case is that because they wanted to be so sure the due diligence and the level of due diligence was full-on and um Ernst Young worked on my project and they did the Kidman project here in Australia

the Kidman Land Project and they said we have never been on a project with this level of due diligence and of any size and ours was little and I their team had about 30 I had me leading it for Out of Delights with two lawyers two accountants and two EY people but it was me feeding them the information um and so i worked to midnight most nights with a young family um and um yeah it was and then the other stressor in it all is that the cost of due diligence it kept getting more and more expensive for us because yeah you know i just said i have two lawyers two accountants and two ey they're not a cheap profession and um you have to keep submitting information through them and they also are the ones protecting you and ensuring that not only

do you get money at the end but that your conditions and the legal exposure you have is fair and reasonable yeah um so i remember we you know i liken selling a business to dating to getting engaged to getting married to consummation and every single step there's a month at least in between and I remember we weren't even married and the bill by then was probably $200,000 and then we got married and the bill was probably $300,000 and by the time you know I call consummation actually money changing hands the whole transaction cost us close to half a million dollars and that was just out of our cash flow. So it's going to be a massive financial drain, but also a focus drain because you're spending so much energy

responding to that, which would be harming the business performance given you're so pivotal to that. So it's very challenging. It actually didn't harm the business performance because Saul and I, we said let's divide and conquer, and he led the business and Mike Crowe managed it in probably a very unhealthy way because if anything went wrong in the business during this process, all offers were off the table.

Of course. And I said, right, I'll leave due diligence. I'll just oversee the cellar door, which I do anyway, and just add everything and I'll build our house. And build the house. Yeah. Good grief. You like to take on challenges, Cherie.

I do. I can see that. Yeah. Hey, tell me something that I'm interested in here, given that micromanagement. and obviously understand the reason for doing it. But part of the challenge that, you know, having been through a similar situation but on a smaller scale,

is maintaining the focus, dedication and commitment of the existing team because all the uncertainty that floods into their life, well, am I going to have a job? What's going to happen to me? Were they aware of what was happening or how much did you take them on that journey? I had no idea. Wow.

So because it was really important to us that the business just kept performing. Of course. So the only one who knew was our general manager. We brought him on fully disclosing. Yeah. And we also made sure in his job contract he was protected if we all had to walk at the end of this process.

So no one felt unsettled. They didn't smell a difference or they were just like, oh that's just Saul he's a he's a control freak no no that's just Saul if it was more me and I was requesting information and I came up with some sort of term I think I was doing a business health check or something um so that if I needed some data I'd be like right I'm doing this health check I'm getting I'm getting an audit on this day I need this and so I would be just be doing that because there was no need to make our staff feel unsettled no totally and and when i say i got my best case scenario um the investment would not occur it was it was all written legally

unless the staff stayed unless our dairy farmers stayed unless our customers stayed unless all and i stayed like unless it stayed the same there was no investment and so that's how it fell over then then it's business as usual. No one would have needed to know that even happened. So, yeah, I get that. So either way, yeah, either way there was a job. But I was just really grateful because when we first went down this path and part of the grieving for me is that we were advised

that in this situation a lot of the times a competitor will buy you, shut you down and take your brands to their facility. Of course. And so that's what I had to agree and that's what I really didn't want. So that's why I got my best at the end. Yeah, yeah, and I guess in a way you're fortunate that the product that you produce is so reliant on what you're doing now.

That's not something you can just pick up and keep the same packaging on it and call it the same thing. Yeah, you couldn't call it Adelaide Hills. No way. If it wasn't here, you know? No. Yeah, and that was strength of branding as well. And I think it's smart also,

and what I love and admire about the Japanese culture is they think in generations, not in years. Yeah. So they take a very long-term view, and the cultural fit is the make or break when you go through what you've done. And it sounds like not only do they understand the industry, but there's some pretty similar parallels in the style

of the way you do things and the way you do things. Yeah, the interesting thing, so they're called Snowbrand. they have got um they've got subsidiaries in quite a few countries but this is the first time they've ever bought a subsidiary and wanted the owners to keep some shares so we had to buy 10 as well okay so it's quite an interesting model for them as well um and i'm sure that we challenge them as much as they and they don't so much challenge us i knew going eyes wide open And I knew in this new structure we would get better in terms of I think Outer Delights was really good at everything except corporate structure

in terms of reporting that really high level needed because we've never had a board. We've never had to do the whole monthly sit down and do the formal stuff. And we've gotten really good at that. And I knew that that would be the learning for me last year and I embraced that and really enjoyed it. So in that way, we've gotten good at corporate and in other ways,

I guess commerciality is where they've been able to learn and perhaps we've challenged them a bit in a good way. Yeah, yeah. So tell me the transition from being in total control of the dynasty to being a 10% shareholder in a broader exercise, the pluses and minuses. I can imagine that the financial pressure that you'd feel like this lifted off your shoulders in that breath, but in the other breath, it's like, well, it sort of is, but it sort of isn't my baby anymore. Yeah, you're right.

The financial pressure is completely lifted, and that's awesome. And I have every now and then someone says to me, do you regret it? And I'm like, not in a million years. I do not regret it at all. and I think the way I describe the business now is that the baby's just married it actually still feels like the baby it's just married and when we were going through due diligence I said to Snowbrand look it's completely up to you how you want to structure this but the strength one of the strengths of Outer Delights is its agility and its flexibility to respond to market requests

and customer requests and trends and all those sorts of things. And if you slow it down with a really intricate board structure, you will lose what you've purchased and you'll lose that competitive advantage. So as a result, I came up with a few suggestions and we sort of nutted it out together. But essentially, Outer Delights is run by a management committee and the board only has to meet twice a year.

So the management committee runs it and the management committee is essentially our executive team and someone from Snowbrand and still to this day someone flies out once a month from Tokyo just because they're still learning about Outer Delights. But we come up with a business plan each year. We come up with a budget, P&L budget, a balance sheet budget, a CapEx budget. It gets approved by head office and then we just get on with it.

So I guess it's that whole freedom in boundaries thing. It's like, tell us what you'd like to do and do it. You know what I mean? So I think it's working really well. Yeah, I can hear it in your voice. It clearly is. And I guess having lived with constant financial, emotional, physical pressure for 20 years, which is essentially what you've done

with the trials and tribulations that you've been through, you must be taking a breather right now going, whew. Yeah, I am. We've still got the business with at last the financial pressure is off and the freedom that that must give you in terms of, right, okay, well, there's work to be done yet and we've now got the support to be able to make that happen. It must be pretty exciting for you, Shira.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's really good. And we're about 18 months in, I think. Yeah, coming up 18 months in. and if you said to me, Sheree, I've got this really awesome project that you can do and it's this and it's this and this and you've got to start next month, I still would be a little bit fatigued. Fatigued in that I'm just really enjoying the space right now.

Yeah. So I'm still Chief Executive and Sales Managing Director but we've negotiated really good working hours. Great. um i'm not ready to tackle the next big hairy audacious thing yet and it will come i know it will come because my husband can't sit still yeah um but i'm really i just want another year at least you know so um yeah yeah it's i'm just really enjoying again the season of what it is our girls are nine and ten this is i sort of think

we've got three to four years of some really awesome quality time with them. Yeah. And I really want to make the most of that. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Yeah, before you jump off the cliff and build the wings again, which is basically what you've done. Yeah.

That's awesome. So just sort of pivoting slightly then, it's very obvious that you put heart and soul into investing in your business. And the benefit over 20 years, which is a full season, is now giving you the financial rewards as a consequence of that. And I guess what I've seen, you know, I'm a student of success. I read everything, talk to everyone, and part of the podcast is about this. It's about sort of drawing the threads between what is sustainable success.

Yeah. And what I've seen is that the people who achieve that don't just invest in career and income, but they do invest in assets that grow in value over time and your business has done that. Yeah. You're now in a great position moving forward to continue to grow assets that will sustain and maintain and potentially improve your lifestyle

outside of continuing to put full energy into out of the lights. Yeah. Are there other passive investment vehicles that you'll start to consider or do more of now? yeah so we still own the utter delights chief seller that that wasn't part of the deal um and that's in a licensing agreement um and that that is a nice passive income um but years ago we read rich dad poor dad and that was all about letting your assets buy your liabilities and that and he considered an asset something that put money in your pocket and a liability

something that took money out of your pocket and so a family home by that definition will always be a liability unless you've got an airbnb on it it will never bring money back into your pocket and so we read that when we were uh i reckon 6 27 and we decided that we were going to do that So while we sold a house to start the Out of Delights Cheese Cellar, we then lived on site. And I thought we'd live on site for, say, three years and then go back into a family home. And we ended up living on site in the equivalent of a bed

and breakfast for 12 years. And we chose that because while we were living there, our asset was buying more assets. And so we had no living expenses and just saved and saved and saved and ended up getting a few investment properties under our belt. And then when we said, and the line in the sand for me was, Saul, by the time I'm 40, I want a house. Like otherwise we just would have continued to buy other houses

or business and it's like there's always, you just can't keep doing that. You've still got to live for now. so uh so the line in the sand was we are going to start saving for our own home which will not be an well it's an asset but you know it's not going to ever put money back into our pocket until we sell no so um so then we started doing that and but we were just able to chunk down such huge amount of deposit and cash payment because we were living at our shop um and that was the sacrifice we paid and we chose to pay it because we knew that the payoff would be better love it So, yeah, so we've got a few investment properties, our house,

and then I decided last year that I was going to learn the share market. Of course you did. So I have, and I'm learning there's different, obviously, philosophies to real estate and shares, and I am using the barefoot investor philosophy on the share market. Yeah.

And I've really enjoyed it, and it's a terrible time in the share market, but I'm still really enjoying it, and I'm enjoying learning about it. And I'm still getting a return, but also that's that whole hold for a long time. It's not just the quick fix, nothing. If it's too good to be true, it's usually too good to be true. Absolutely, yeah, and I 100% agree there. Okay, so drawing that massive journey that you've had

and one that very few would survive their way through, lessons learned? what are the takeaways that the listeners could take from that very tumultuous journey so far? I, oh, man, I've got like 20 probably, but I'm not going to give them all because I'll get them to take too long. Absolutely know your numbers is, to me, empirical, essential, and if you're not managing the numbers and monitoring

and knowing what they're doing, your business will not survive. And I think a lot of people, just whether it's in business or life, they get this mental block with maths and I think the mental block actually comes from some time at school where they had a really bad maths teacher who just couldn't communicate in a way that they could understand and then you get the mental block of I'm not good at maths, which then translates to I'm not good at money um which then translates to i can't do this i won't look at it i'll let someone else do

it do you know what i mean so i'm just such a big advocate of you can be good at maths and you can be good at money and and those numbers when they're to do with your business and your personal finances are real numbers and they're alive and they're exciting and they empower and you can make changes because of them so the first time i chose to take control of numbers was probably two years in, I did a huge analysis on the cost of our cheese and realised our number one bestseller was selling at 10% loss. Really demoralising and embarrassing and humiliating. And then when I got over that, I just decided I'd get on with it and do something about it. So that's, you know, something that I'm quite passionate about. The other one would be that business is always the

unknown and you get this new project that you've got to do and there's no one else who actually can do it because you don't have enough money to pay someone so you have to do it and I know that when Saul first came on sometimes he'd come home to go oh so I've got to do this I'm like yep and he's like I'm not really sure how I'm like yep oh so can you and I'm like no it's your job get on with it then you know and so I sort of feel like in my life I to this day I still get it so yesterday in our marketing plan I've decided I'm going to take something on which I actually have no idea how to do um but I think I'm just used to that and I just say to myself get on with it then you know so it's just that whole getting over the mental block again it's always mental blocks of just I

don't know how to do it but I'll learn that sort of thing yeah so and actually I wrote down this this proverb I want to memorize this one because I really like it but it's and it's a Chinese proverb and it says the person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it love it yeah and it's very most people say it can't be done and the truth is sometimes or I will have an idea and the other one goes no as if we can do that and it's like you have to eat your words because you know if you think you can't you can't and if you think you can you can absolutely so true beautiful lead into the ambush uh session now shall we uh which is just five simple questions that i uh the audience constantly comes back to me on so i would love

your thoughts around these yeah uh and kicking straight in and you've touched on a few of these already but your favorite quote and why that's that's probably it but uh no i have another one actually okay i think my favorite quote is don't envy what someone has because you don't know the price that they've paid oh that's gold yeah that that needs no explanation oh yeah i just i don't know i hate people saying oh you're so lucky or um i don't know i'm just really jealous and it's like you you actually don't know the cost that that's been involved i don't believe in luck You only get lucky if you work hard enough is my belief. And those that make that statement really have no comprehension

of the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into getting that result. Yeah. 100%. You've mentioned a couple of books on the journey, but the top one that you'd recommend people have a read more? Yeah, I think the top book that shaped me, it was actually Rich Dad, Poor Dad because it shaped how we managed money and what we chose to invest our money in in the early days.

yeah yeah it's an i'm sitting here doing this because of rich dad poor dad yeah right it was an absolute game changer and a light bulb for me yeah awesome this one's a little bit left field but it's something that a lot of australians feel strongly about but what's the top thing that you've legally done to pay less tax i just think a lot of trust structures um yeah it's probably how we've done that and while we operate our businesses from companies we have corporate trustees of the of companies so the court sorry the company is a corporate trustee of the trust so we've just really i really like trust structures um and they're even when we went to sell our business one of the first questions was what is how does our

structure look for if we're going to sell and then when we looked at it we were in the perfect structure needed to mitigate tax for the sale because you pay a huge amount on a on a sale Of course you do. Yeah. Hallelujah to great accountants. Yeah. Yeah, love that. Back on the investment track, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received, Cherie?

You know, I've got to say the best piece of investment would probably still go back to Rich Dad, Poor Dad in terms of really understanding what his definition is of an asset and a liability. and therefore getting your assets to buy your liabilities continues to shape us and is even shaping us now in how we're making some of our financial decisions. The worst piece of investment advice, I think my husband and I are pretty good at sniffing through the dodginess and we just, I don't know, I can't remember because we just throw it out so quickly other than when you hear

of all these schemes, get rich quick, there's just no such thing. So for us, if it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true, you know. So I don't really feel like there's one that's resonated with me. Yeah. You've got the finely tuned BS detector to be able to reject that straight away. Awesome. All right. And just to close on that then, a personal habit that you believe

contributes to your success yeah and i think i've touched on this too but i just think it's that um continually open to taking on a new thing and a new challenge which i actually don't know how to do uh and and i just i get pleasure in that so last year i did and and it is an ongoing journey of okay this year i'm going to learn about share market um you know and and i every year i want to get better at uh financial management um i have never done a financial course and almost operate you know at that cfo level and really enjoy it so for me it's just always learning something new um another goal i set myself this year is to cook one new recipe every week you know so it's just i just like new things i think and and if you're open to new things and change

that's that's just business and that's how it grows and develops well that's life actually if we're not growing we're dying there's yeah not not much in between really no that's awesome Okay, sort of bringing it to a close now then, if you spoke to a school leave, let's say your daughter is about to leave school. Yeah. What would you advise her to invest her time, money and skills in to create her version of freedom?

I am a really big advocate of just being the very best you and hate comparison um I recently spoke at an event and then got a letter from a mother who sent her adult daughter there as a gift to her because she had just gotten over cancer and her husband had just gotten over cancer and her daughter had gotten home and the mum said she's really happy but she's also really sad because she says her life is just so boring compared to yours and to me that was like a punch in the guts and I'm like I can't believe even someone who's gone through cancer and watching my mum die through cancer the truth is the best gift in life is health and life and I think that I call it the comparison curse that if you just compare

you it leads you nowhere all it leads you is down and so I guess I wanted and I tell them already that I just want them to be the very best that they can be and that if I can get them on a journey where they're doing what they're naturally good at because generally your talent's what you're naturally good at and you can become excellent at and they can generate an income from that, then that's awesome. And I really don't care what that is. Like, you know, there's just no pressure.

If they want to go to uni, they can go to uni. If they don't want to go, they don't have to go, but they have to do something you know what I mean so if they don't end up going to uni I'll put them in a business school or they'll do a trade and then they'll learn the business or so yeah I and I've already they've been watching me read Barefoot Investor and they're like what does investing mean mum and I've even shown them and I've shown them compound interest and you know I'm like so girls I don't I don't really care what you do but the number one thing I'm going to teach you is don't ever earn more than you spend in any enterprise that you happen to

over you know to do love it absolute god i can almost hear trevor's legacy living on in you there sheree uh it sounds like the the sort of it might not have been as well uh enunciated as you just have but uh i hear a lot of what you've just said in and how he's allowed you to blossom yeah your journey look it's been really uh very insightful uh you've been very open and and shared tremendously with us. I think everyone's going to take a lot out of understanding just how much commitment needs to be put into achieving long-term success. I wish you every ongoing success, Cherie,

and have no doubt that that will come your way given your love and approach and dedication to life. So thanks for spending some time with me on Get Invested. No worries. My pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks, Cherie. well freedom fighters how good was that you get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au that's h-e-l-l-o at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested i look forward to joining you next week

for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.