Episode 278: Creating good design for good people with Imogen of Al + Imo
How often are you documenting the process and sharing your business journey with your followers? In today's episode, Fiona talks to Imogen of Al + Imo about how they started their business and so much more. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
How Al + Imo started
How they came up with their business name
On quitting their full-time job
On working with a business partner
Marketing tactics
Starting a podcast
Books and Mantras
Biggest Accomplishment
How to connect with Al + Imo
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Al and I, we've been very clear about what we want our future to look like. By having the same dream, we're both 110% committed to making it successful and to both being happy and making sure that it's working for both of us. I think because we are both on the same page, we both know exactly what we want. We can work together and like I mentioned before, we just bounce off each other and pick each other up when we need it. Life's emotional, you go through all sorts of ups and downs. To have someone who also completely understands your business inside and out and your personal life inside out if I'm just having a bad day or if he's having a bad day, you're there to just look after each other.
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Welcome to episode 278 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you are listening to an interview with an incredible small business owner that's one-half of an interesting and creative brand that many of you may well know, especially if you are like me here in Australia. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which we record this podcast and where I live and work, and play. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
If you're listening to this in real-time and you are a First Nations person, I hope that you can take some rest this week. I know the last week must have been incredibly painful and challenging and complex and I know that if you are wanting to speak to another indigenous person about this in privacy, maybe somebody who doesn't know your business and is not part of your family, then definitely check out 13Yarn. You can go to 13yarn.org.au. You can also call them on 13 92 76 and it's a 24/7 hotline for support for Aboriginal and First Nations people. Again, that's 13yarn.org.au and we'll link to that in the show notes.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that we are now into February. Marketing for Your Small Business, which is our online course all about marketing. Twice a year we run Marketing for Your Small Business course and coaching program. Any time of year you can go and buy the course, it's always available, you can check it out at MarketingforYourSmallBusiness.com. But twice a year we run a live coaching component with it. You do the course, you do a module, and you turn up for live coaching that week for an hour. You do the next module, turn up the next week for live coaching and you work through it. You have accountability. You're working through it with other people and then at the end, you have the option to share your marketing plan with the rest of us.
It's a perfect time of year. We're starting a little earlier than normal. We usually kick this off in mid-March. We're going to start at the end of February. If you're keen on that, check it all out at MarketingforYourSmallBusiness.com. If you already own the course, know that you'll get an email shortly that you can upgrade to the coaching component for such a minimal amount. It's not a no braver so everything you need to get onto that is just over at MarketingforYourSmallBusiness.com. If you've got any questions, feel free to just email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Let's get into today's interview episode.
I can talk about the negatives of social media all day long and I have many times. Part of Marketing for Your Small Business is learning how to market things without constantly relying on social media. Yes, we talk about social media but we also talk about so many other avenues for marketing that people don't necessarily use today. But I digress. One of the positives that I think is incredible about social media is the actual ability to be social. It's also something we seem to have forgotten along the way like posting this many times and getting this many followers.
I would say that the majority of the 15 minutes allocated per day are to social media. I have it allocated, I have things that turn off all my apps after that time. But in that 15 minutes I would say 90% of that time is spent in the DMS chatting with people and today's guests we met, I'm pretty sure we met in the DMS of Instagram. I have to say that today's guest when I saw her name come through as a pitch, I was like, “A hundred percent yes.” Because early into my business I would say we connected on Instagram and she has just been such a huge supporter of my business and also of this podcast and my book.
When my book came out and I think we mentioned it in today's podcast, this lovely guest created a photo shoot based on the colours of the book was just incredible. And I remember my publisher being like, “What? This is insane in such a good way.” It was my absolute pleasure to say yes to bringing in today's guest. Who is it?
Today's guest is Imogen Roberts who is one half of Al and Imo, Imo being her nickname and Al is her partner who is the other half of the brand. Together they have created Al and Imo, which is a beautiful and much-loved custom-design furniture brand based out of Victoria. They live in a rural or regional area here in Victoria. This is something that we get into like how did you come up with the business, what's it like to work with your partner, but also what is it like to run something out of a rural or regional area when potentially you're working with clients or customers who can't come and visit an inner city showroom. In addition to all of that, we also discuss how they have built a beautiful community that is supportive around them, not only of clients and customers in that financial support of buying their products but also in the support of other makers.
Now one way that they've done that is through a podcast for other makers in business talking about how they are going and how are they going as a husband and wife team, how they are raising a small family as well as running a business. How are they going being in a coastal area running a business predominantly for a lot of people I would imagine that are in the inner city buying their products? How does it all work? That is what we get into today with the beautiful Imogen Roberts from Al and Imo.
I have to say again, I've just always been so appreciative of her support and this is the thing you can make these connections through social media as much as I might bag it out sometimes. They are just beautiful and meaningful and go on for years. I'm sure at some point I will meet Imogen in real life. I just think it's wonderful what social media can do when you use it to be social. Here it is, my interview with the wonderful Imogen Roberts, one-half of Al and Imo.
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Welcome to the podcast Emo.
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so stoked to be here. I feel like this is something that's been thinking about for a long time so thank you for having me on.
I'm so excited. I was saying just before we hit record, it's so nice to finally like meet you because I feel like we've had plenty of like Instagram DM conversations and it's so nice to see a real person as much as you can see someone on Zoom.
Totally. I feel like My Daily Business Coach just pops up everywhere. All of these other brands that I follow and admire, you're somehow entwined in there. It's nice to be here meeting face-to-face and doing this.
That's so nice that you said that because honestly, I don't feel like I'm everywhere at all. It's funny that you said that cause I just had a conversation with my husband about how much of a hermit I am and how I need to get back into the world. Thanks for saying that. Because it doesn't feel like that sometimes, but yes. Speaking of getting back into the world, you live in a beautiful part of the world. How is life going for you right now and where are you joining us from?
I'm joining you from Freshwater Creek. That's a tiny little farming area just behind Toki on the surf coast. About 10 minutes from Bells Beach. My husband Al and I, our beautiful daughter Marigold and our pup Edwina live in a little farm cottage. We're surrounded by paddocks and gum trees and sheep and we've been renting here for the past six years and we're currently building a house in Torque. It's such a beautiful part of the world. We love it. We've just moved here lifestyle everybody down here is creative and they're all just working on their passions so that they can have this amazing lifestyle. I just feel like on the surf coast everyone's main number one priority is lifestyle. You just meet creative and awesome people. I loved the move. It's so nice down here.
It's such a beautiful part of the world. I need to get back down there. But I can imagine that it's just full of people that either grew up around there and just love it so much that they've stayed or they've come back after having kids or growing up or whatever. Or like you said, so many people make that tree change. Speaking of that's part of your business story that will connect with you as we go through this conversation. But tell us about Al and Imo. What is it, and when did it start? For people who don't know you on Instagram, firstly they should go over and follow but when did it become Al and Imo? Have you been doing it forever? How did it dictate or impact your chance to move to the country?
First of all, Al is my husband and my name is Imogen and shorten to Imo and we've now been together for over 10 years. We met in Melbourne, I was working in marketing and Al was working as a carpenter and just one day we were like in our early twenties and I was like, “you know what, we need a new bed frame.” And I shopped around I couldn't find anything that I loved that was in our budget. I remember showing Al a few photos of beds I liked. They were super simple but they were just made out of nice hardwood. And he was like, "You know what, I can build that." And I said, "all right, next Sunday you're going to build us a bed." And Sunday rolled around and he was very hungover but he stuck to his word and we spent the day making it to bed and it wasn't very good.
We made it in our share house carport in Ellwood surrounded by neighbours and our four other housemates and we just built it in the carport outside and then we put it in our bedroom at the end of the day. We didn't even seal it, it was made out of just like random timber that we got from the mattress factory that had these old pallets and we're like, "We'll take some materials from there." They just gave it to us for free, we knocked up this bed, and we put it in our room at the end of the day. I just remember being like, "There's something here." I remember watching Al, and even though he was so hungover and he was so sick all day, he just said to me at the end of the day that's the best day's work I've ever done. I just knew that there was something here that we need to pursue. I think the next day we designed a logo, a Facebook page, and Instagram and that was it.
We started telling people we build furniture and they were like, “What do you mean you build furniture? You've got no experience, you have never built anything before.” We're like, “Yeah but we are now.”
That was it. I love that. Did you make the carport your headquarters or did you have to move out of the share house?
We had to move out of there pretty quickly. We built another two beds there. We built a nice bed for our parents. They were like our first-ever customers and a bed for a friend. We very quickly realized like this isn't going to work. We started looking for like a rental somewhere that was big enough for us to have a carport or an actual garage where we could build stuff. And we just kept looking further and further out of the city and not wanting to move too far out of Melbourne and still be within Melbourne. We were like, "Well maybe let's look towards the coast. We'd been spending every weekend coming down surfing anyway. We started looking at rentals down here and we found this tiny little farmhouse the one we're still in now and we're just like, "This is an adventure. This is exciting."
What a story and good on him for getting up! Because that could have not been a story. That could have been your sliding doors moment of like he just started to sleep in and not deal with the hungover or get up and it's just amazing like what can happen when you go let's just do this and see a gap in the market which is what prompted you in the first place.
That move was scary for us because I'm actually from far north Queensland and I'd moved to Melbourne to study at uni. Al was like a parran boy through and through. He'd lived in Melbourne his whole life. For us to make this move down to the coast, we didn't know anybody down here at the time. The farmhouse itself was like, “We're on tank water here.” No mains are plumbing it's just all very country. And we were like, "What have we done? We've got here. We couldn't work out how to get internet reception, we couldn't work out how to get TV reception." We were like, "What have we done?" But we figured it out all quickly and it was the best move we ever did.
I love that story and I feel like there'll be so many people listening going, “Okay, that's it, that's a sign I needed to just go for it.” In terms of the communication that you have around your brand and even just the fact you've called it Al and Imo and on your about us page throughout everything that you do on Instagram and social media and your website, it's all very real and you can tell just by talking to you it's very real. You have a very authentic, lovely nature that comes across. How did you come up with the business name? I mean obviously, it's your name, but lots of people have businesses and they don't call them by their names. How did you come up with it and then how did you stand beside it or behind it when people were saying, "You haven't done that before or who do you think you are doing this?"
To be honest, we just couldn't think of anything else to start with. I also feel like we didn't know what we were doing in the beginning. We knew we wanted to start a business, and we knew it was going to be furniture, but we didn't know what that looked like. I think the start of the business has always just been us documenting our story and what we're doing. It's not necessarily about the actual product, but it's about what we learn and how we're growing, and how things are changing. I'm an overshare. We share all about our family life, our struggles, things that we're going through, and things that we've learned and we try to share everything that we learned as well.
It was Alan Imo Handmade when we first started and then a couple of years in we dropped the handmade just to keep our options open, keep it a bit more like who knows what's going to happen in the future. I think what I love so much about having our own business is that we can do whatever we want. We don't have to pigeon how to pigeonhole ourselves into something we can change and develop and go on different trajectories if we want to. I think by just having it as Al and Imo it's more about our journey rather than the actual product.
No, I have such a good answer, meaningful and I feel like a lot of people when they come up with a brand name, do focus on what are we selling. And like you said, then they get pigeonholed because they want to change or adapt or pivot, and then they can't because they're like stuck to that business name.
I think I'm scared to pigeonhole myself into something cause I'm like, “well what if what I want in 10 years is different from what we're doing now?” I like keeping my options a little open I think.
Speaking of options, you mentioned how you guys started this on a weekend and then you decided to go full ball and then you looked at different places to rent and then that led you to move out to do like the sea change. In between that when you said you were working in marketing beforehand which I also think is a huge plus for your business, you would have a whole lot of knowledge that maybe people that haven't worked in marketing wouldn't have. But how did you decide, did you just like quit your job? Was it like a few years in, did you decide okay it's a lot cheaper for us to rent in that area than the inner city of Melbourne so we'll save so I don't have to work as much? Did you do freelance? What did that look like as far as you want to share? Between, “hey we've got this cool idea” and then “Okay we're going to move everything down to the country.”
It was a little bit of everything. The first thing was it took us about six weeks to move down because the house wasn't ready. We did have a transition where we stayed with our parents and during that period of our moving, Al would be like, “I don't think this is a good idea.” And I'd be like, "no, it's the best idea." The next day I'd be like, “I don't think this is a very good idea. What are we going to do?” Our whole business has been that we just support each other when the other person's down and we just keep pushing each other forward. But when we got down here, Al quit his job as a carpenter in Melbourne and he picked up a job so easily down here in carpentry.
He went straight into work full-time and I continued working for the company I was working for in Melbourne, driving to Melbourne and back commuting and then also working from home as well. Al continued working as a carpenter for about six months full-time. Then he'd start doing just Mondays off where he'd work on furniture. He'd work on furniture on weekends and Mondays and then that quickly turned into one week off, one week on. And then we had this goal of him going full-time within six months and it happened in like two months. It was a quick transition from him going full-time carpentry to furniture. I feel like that whole period, carpentry is my backup plan, furniture will happen if it happens. It was very organic.
Also, I was commuting and I was getting a bit tired of the drive so I started picking up some freelance work as well. As soon as that just picked up enough, I left my job in Melbourne and did the freelance stuff. I still do a little bit of that now, but at the beginning of 2020, I moved into the furniture-making business full-time. It's very naturally and slowly progressed. I think the fact that we didn't have kids at the time, we were very free with our time I guess. Also, we could be a little bit more flexible with our budget. We didn't have huge expenses like mortgages and stuff like we do now. We were able to just be a little bit wild with our time, which is very different now.
Yes. Wild with your time. I think they're the things you dream of once you have kids. Yes. At least for a certain period while they're young. You have mentioned Al, but obviously, you guys are in this business together and you know from the brand name through to you talking about how much you support each other, which I think is wonderful. I don't know if you've heard Brene Brown did a talk once and she talked about how in a relationship you've always got to have the 80/20 because one partner will be like, "I've only got 20% to give and then the other person needs to bring the 80." It sounds like you guys bring that for each other, which is lovely to hear.
A lot of people would love to be in business with their partner and it's something people dream of sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time it does. But what have been some of the pros and cons because I'm sure it hasn't always been rainbows and sunshine all the time, but what has also been amazing about it and then what advice would you give if somebody's listening to this and they're thinking, "Okay next year is the year I'm going to try and get my partner into the business."
Al and I, we've been very clear about what we want our future to look like. By having the same dream, we're both like 110 committed to making it successful and to both being happy and making sure that it's working for both of us. I think because we are both on the same page, we both exactly like know exactly what we want. We can work together and like I mentioned before, we just bounce off each other and pick each other up when we need it. Life's emotional, you go through all sorts of ups and downs. To have someone who also completely understands your business inside and out and your personal life inside out if I'm just having a bad day or if he's having a bad day you're there to just like look after each other.
One of the biggest benefits of being in business is you can be totally honest and upfront with how you're feeling. I think also Al and I come to the table with very different skill sets and then at the beginning of our business we both just tried to do everything. I was out in the workshop helping him, he was trying to sit on a computer which he hates and we both just tried to like split every task 50/50. And then we realized the best thing to do was just work to our strengths and then just trust each other. A delegate who does what. Probably the biggest downfall of being in a partner, a business with your partner is the fact that it just bleeds into your personal life, you know?
We've had to set some strong boundaries, which we always break because we're so passionate about our business and we just always want to talk about it. We're so excited. But then also there come times where it's like just woken up on a Sunday morning, you're in bed and join a coffee and it's like, "you start talking about business" and you're like, "wait a minute, stop. We need to talk about something else." We don't need to do this right now. We do have Monday meetings, which has helped with our business. We have a specific time when we get to sit down and talk about everything, and then we don't have to do it like on the fly while we're like cooking breakfast or something. Lots of pros. And just a couple of little things that you gotta figure out I think in terms of negatives.
I feel like that Sunday morning, the context of you, I can imagine being in a beautiful bed is the bed that you are in right now, I'm putting you on the spot. Is that one of your own beds?
It is, yes.
Of course. But I was like, “maybe it's not.”
It does need a bit of an update though for the new house. I'm like, “let's just add a few more bits and pieces to it.” That's a work in progress.
I love that. But even you talking about work then, I mean that can come into anyone whether they're in business together or not, just talking about your business 24/7. I love that you've got these boundaries in place even if you push them a little bit. When you said we've divided, you are good at this and your skillsets this, and I can imagine that you are doing a large part of the marketing is that correct assumption? When it comes to the design, do you work on that together, and then he builds most of it? How does that work? Do you ever clash with the designs?
If we're doing something custom, there'll be a lot of back and forth with the customer, which is what I do. We'll come together and do design stuff because I'll have ideas and he'll be like, that's not going to work. He's the one that actually constructs it and puts it together. I think when it comes to design, we both do those things together because I'm a bit of a dreamer and then he's also like, well this is how we're going to make it work. That's definitely like particularly with the house at the moment, like I just want to like have everything planned and organized and he's like, “there are some things that we just have to wait until we get there and we'll figure it out together.” And I'm like, "Okay, that gives me a little bit of anxiety but I'll trust you there." I think the design side of things like Al's got a great eye for design. He's got he's amazing when it comes to proportions and making things function and work well and together I think we come up with some pretty, pretty nice things.
You do. It's just beautiful stuff to look at and purchase if anyone's interested. This brings me to another question because I work with many furniture designers or ceramicists or lighting designers and people in that space. I think before working with them, even from my background, there's a bit of a sense of like, "I'm going to invest in a designer piece, it's going to be 20 times more expensive than if people went to say Freedom or Harvey Norman or a big furniture retailer." I think that is a big barrier that a lot of furniture designers need to figure out how to get over. Even when I bought a piece once I remember talking to somebody and she was like, oh it's about, remember what it was about $5,000 for the couch and or 4,000 even.
I thought, "a Freedom couch is about 3000." There's not that much difference. It's not like you're going from spending four or 5,000 to spending 20,000. How have you worked with breaking down that barrier for people who want to jump from “I normally shop here and now I want to support an Australian designer” because people who have already supported Australian design or any design, already understand maybe the prices, but it's this other bigger group that are shopping in mainstream retailers that maybe are worried about shopping say with a brand like yours because they think that it is so much more expensive? What tactics or marketing have you done to alleviate that?
We understand that our furniture is of a high price point, but we also understand it's because of the quality as well. For us, we always try to like educate our audience on how good it is to invest in quality. The fact that you're not going to throw it away in a couple of years and you are going to have it for a long time. And we just talk about that all the time and the thing that I love about our business is so many of our customers have saved up for years before purchasing with us. We'll get emails from people being like, "you know what? I found out about you four years ago and I've been saving up ever since." “I've sold things and now I'm ready to purchase with you.”
What I love about that is I know that it's just such a considered purchase. These people are not going to throw it away. They've spent so much time saving up and they're ready. With our furniture as well, we've always wanted to like solve a problem. For us, after doing custom for so long, we just realized that people wanted storage and they've got smaller bedrooms and nowhere to store anything. Our drawer beds have become the most popular and I think what I love about that is that they're so practical, they're beautiful but they're practical as well. We have been into some of the bigger department stores and looked at their drawer storage beds and unfortunately, the quality's not super amazing. I think when you're using drawers every single day, you need them to be robust. You need it to be strong and I think that's what we bring to the Australian market it's something that we're proud of and we just want to make sure that that quality's there and that people understand that they're paying for that quality.
Beautiful. I think I'll be getting in touch with you late next year because we are going through like when you said before you're building this house and you've got all these ideas and then Al comes along and is like, "that's not necessarily going to work." We have been in the same boat with our architects. They're wonderful, but because they do it day in, day out, they're like, "oh no," but you'd need it to face this way or you'd need this. We've spent a year just on the, just getting to a point where they can design the home because there are so many issues around this area. But we have been talking about a drawer bed so much because you are exactly right, people have smaller spaces and then have more crap.
Absolutely. I think just like the practicality of like taking something that you need an everyday essential item like a bed and then also making it functional as well. We're building a house at the moment as well and for me I'm just like, every nook and cranny I'm like, "how can I make this function the best I can the kitchen, the laundry bedrooms, the bathrooms." I just want to make everything like look pretty but also just be clever with the design as well. We've found that most of our customers are building new houses or renovating as well so this new furniture comes hand in hand with the design of their homes. We work a lot with architects and interior designers as well.
Such a good one. I know there are a lot of people in that space that listen to this so get in touch. One of the ways that they could learn a bit more about you is through your podcast. Talk us through that. Because I know there are lots of businesses, lots and lots that want to start a podcast. We have a course on it, but we have a lot of people we talk to all the time, and the number one issue is that they get all excited. They say, “I'm a product-based business it's easy for a service-based business to do a podcast, but what would we talk about?” We can come up with lots of different ideas, but can you tell us about your journey and what it meant for the business as well?
I relate to that. I am a product-based business, what do we talk about? Al and I wanted to start a podcast for years. I think we'd been talking about it for about five years before we started. We were like, what are we going to talk about? What value can we bring? We started the Talkshop The Workshop podcast, which records weekly episodes and takes you behind the scenes of what it's like to run a furniture-making business. We talk about marketing and business and processes and sales and all of these things. From that, we created a good little audience of other makers and we launched an online course at the beginning of this year. I think for us, the podcast has lent into this way of us sharing all of this knowledge that we've learned with other makers.
Because I feel like when I talk to other furniture makers who are just like us starting in their home workshops they don't have the experience when it comes to running a business. They just do it because they love building furniture. I felt like with my freelance marketing that I was doing for all of these other different brands and all of these different niches and industries, I was like, "why don't I just narrow it down and talk to the people that I want to talk to and help these people specifically in this industry." Al and I know pretty well now. We've done a good job of making our business a success. I now want to share that with other independent makers too.
I love it. With the actual doing the podcast, we are on a podcast right now so everyone has their systems and everything else. Did you come up with the idea and did Al like, "yes." Do you plan your episodes? Do you have you interacted with people to change the topics? How does it all work from a day-to-day perspective as well? Because I think that's another thing where people, because you are making furniture and you're designing and you're client liaison and marketing the business, all of that, sometimes people will also say, "but I'm busy making ceramics so I don't have time to sit and record." How do you get that to happen?
It's been pretty funny because we decided to launch this podcast with like a five-month-old baby which just seems crazy. And we recorded on Monday nights in bed. There's nothing frilly about it. We've got some little handheld mics. We sit in bed and we record and cross our fingers and hope that Goldie doesn't wake up in the middle of the recording otherwise we have to press pause, look after her, and then come back to it. Which is hard to do. You record podcasts, if you have to stop and restart again, you lose your flow. We plan out topics, we also have a private Facebook group that is full of makers and they all come asking questions and topics like what they would want to hear us talk about as well.
We're guided by what they want to hear because obviously, we want to make sure that we're producing content that's relevant to our audience. I love it when we get suggestions from them and we build episodes around that and we try to keep them to like around the 40-minute mark short and sweet, something that's actionable that you can take away from it. We've just met some awesome people in the past year, which has been nice. Particularly Al and I work on our own. We don't see a lot of people at the time. We're not like entwined in the industry around other makers all the time. I think a lot of other furniture makers feel the same. A lot of people are working from home and a great way to reach them was through a podcast because they can listen while they work. I just felt like the right move was to talk to makers and reach that audience.
I love this so much. I completely agree with you. Also, I love that you said we just go to bed, but we're in bed and we are doing that because I've had people say, "show me a photo of your setup here?" And I'm like, "yes.” You wanted to do it for years and I think you can get in your head about I thought I needed a fully soundproof studio. I thought I needed all this equipment. There is no soundproofing as I'm talking to you right now. It couldn't be worse. I'm right against Windows. I love that you said we just do it in bed. We don't need to have this whole full-on fancy setup. I think that's another thing that people get stuck in. They procrastinate because they want everything to be perfect as opposed to going, let's figure out a way to do this. Also, I'm imagining that because you're in bed, you come across just casual as you know, and real and down to earth as you are now as well.
When you have a small child you just have to do things when you can and our time that we could sit down together is actually at night or ideally, we do it while she's at daycare during the day, but Al just has a little bit too much furniture work on his plate at the moment. That's a goal for next year will record podcasts during the weekday during work hours while she's at daycare. But for now, it's Monday nights in bed, very simple. We record onto our phone, I edit it on the computer and then we just pop it out there and we dream of one day having a more slick setup and maybe video in it or something, but for now, you just pick your battles.
You talked about the fact that part of the reason for the podcast was to help other furniture makers in business. Who has helped you think about business? I mean it sounds both of you are quite go-getters anyway but have you had mentors or do you have like a book that's helped you or do you guys have like a whole bunch of mottos pumped up around your beautiful farm cottage there?
I wrote some notes for this one because there were a few things that I thought I'd cover. Our number one mantra is that we're building our dream lifestyle one project at a time. It doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of furniture, but it could be something that's within our lifestyle or just like small, these tiny projects and I truly believe it's like the small decisions you make every day that creates the world that you want to live in. The food you eat, the people you surround yourself with, the information you consume, the places you go, it's all those small things that create a beautiful life. I truly believe that.
Another quote I love is a Shakespeare quote and it's, "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," and I always try to think of that if I'm having a bad moment or something goes wrong in your business or, or anything you can just be like this isn't that bad but I'm just making it out to be something that it doesn't need to be or you can move through that pretty quickly. In terms of mentors, I know that Al is inspired by his dad who's a designer and he's been just a great example of someone who's dedicated themselves to their chosen field and just been successful. I think we don't go to him for business advice but we've just been able to watch him just like chug away and do his thing and just live a happy life doing what he loves.
For me, I'm just incredibly inspired by women who are entrepreneurial or creative and successful but also are moms. I love seeing people who do it all and I just believe that you can have both and any successful women with big families I've always wanted heaps of kids but I've also wanted to have a creative business and do what I love every day. I think that's something that's inspired me in terms of books, there's a book that's always stuck with me. It's called Happy Money by Ken Honda. I'm not sure if you read it.
Yes, I just heard of it recently and I started reading it.
That's always left a great impression on impression on me about money. I think when you run your own business, money is just such a huge part of it and if you don't grow up with a lot of like money and education, you can have funny relationships with it. I found that good book and it's one that I like to come back to all the time. Passion Purpose Profit, it's on my bookshelf I pull it out now and then when I need a little bit of business inspiration and it's a good thing to have in my back pocket.
Thank you. I was saying before you hit record, I remember sending, you did like a photo shoot with my book and linen on one of your beds and I sent it to the publishing team and they were like, get out somebody is doing linen based on the colours of the cover. Thank you so much and thank you for gosh those quotes. I love that Shakespeare one you mentioned and it's so true. We just I'm always saying to my son, firstly you've got 24 hours, how much energy do you want to spend? Because you only get a certain amount of energy per day, do you want to spend it on that? But the thing is like what you just said, "we all have a filter through which we see things and it can be a negative bias or it could be dialled up to super being great and positive. I love that. What was that quote again? Can you say it again?
Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Powerful. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. What are you most proud of from your business journey so far? I can imagine so many things, what would you think is the proudest thing for you so far?
I would say that just the personal growth of both myself and Al. We met when we were 21, we've been together for a long time and we've been doing business for more than half the time we've been together. I think it's become so entwined with our own identities and personalities but we've worked so hard and I think when you work hard it's something that you love, only good things can happen and it just keeps proving to me over and over again. We just keep getting presented with the most amazing opportunities and it's all because we've just dedicated ourselves to doing what we love. When you are passionate about what you do and other people can see that they just want to be around you. We've met amazing people and we're happy we just get to wake up every single day and do what we love and I just couldn't think of a better life. That's what I'm most proud of is, just sticking true to that dream and just going for it.
What a beautiful answer and what a beautiful thing for all your podcast episodes but also when you're a guest on other people's podcasts for your daughter to listen back to. It's so nice that we have all of these mediums now because I can imagine as a child listening to your mom saying that it's just such a lovely thing to talk about your relationship like that, it's such a beautiful thing if not everyone has that. Congrats to you two and congrats on the business. If people are listening to this and they want to start checking out the podcast or they want to buy bed withdraws, where can people connect with you also what's coming up for you and the business?
For our furniture, you can head to alandimo.com.au where we've got a list of all of our furniture there and you can download the price guide and access that. We only take orders three times per year and we book out quickly. If you are interested it's best to get onto that mailing list.
Sorry, I'm going to pause you there cause I think it's that huge thing. How did you come up with that? And that's for my brain, which is working in systems and processes, this sounds amazing. How did that come up? If you don't mind going into it? , and then how does it work? How do you go, “Okay, we've got to sell this money” because I think a lot of people listening would be like, "What? How do they do that? I would love to do that."
We started taking orders and it got to the point where we were just like about nine months booked out in advance and we're like, “this is just too much. We need to press pause.” When we press pause we were like, “well we don't want to just keep turning people away.” We direct people to our email list and we just try to capture that information and keep them up to date when we're ordering next. I think by not necessarily taking orders straight away, people can start to like get to know us through the email marketing that we do and get an understanding of like our story of like investing quality and we get to like tell these stories over and over again and send the message to them.
The reason why we decided to open and close three times a year is that we're only two people. Al's the only one making and he's the one that needs to answer most of the questions. I was annoying him every single day like going out to the workshop being like, "Hey, I just have another question for you." "Hey, we just got an inquiry," I've got a question for you and we receive maybe 10 inquiries a day. It was just getting to the point where it was like I was interrupting his workflow, we just couldn't do it anymore. We were like, "let's just press pause and then open the orders up three times a year and then the two weeks leading up to opening orders," we open up emails for people to ask any questions they like. I dedicate myself three times a year for two weeks to answering questions for customers and getting people ready to make their purchases. We open up orders, they book out in minutes and then we close it again and we can focus on working
That is brilliant. I think there'll be a lot of people that will be like sending you a DM saying, "Okay, you talked about that.” I’m sorry I interrupted you." You're talking about if you want to check out buying furniture, you can go to alandimo.com.au. Where else can people connect with you?
Our education side of the business, is the podcast and our online course is furniturefriends.com.au and then our podcast is called Talkshop The Workshop Talk Show. Our next big project is our House build, which is called the Good Day House that has its own Instagram as well. We've worked with the local builder and architect to design a house that we are excited about and then Al's done all of the carpentry. He's finished the framing, we've just put in all of the insulation and the next step is plastering right now. We're going in there and designing and building all of the joineries for the kitchen, the bathrooms, the bedrooms, and then we'll fill it with all of our furniture too. It's a massive project but it's something that we've like always dreamed of doing. The fact that we're doing it now is just, it's pretty amazing. Lot of work but good.
Totally. I just started following you @the_good_day_house and we'll link to it in the show notes once you have that in. I know you're probably like, “no we're just going to get in there ourselves,” but I mean this looks beautiful. Are you planning to like rent it out or Airbnb it or anything like that? Maybe that's a bit personal question but it looks Beautiful.
No, I'm an open book. You can ask me anything you like. The dream is that we can Airbnb it and move over to Europe in 2024 for a few months.
Amazing.
That's a dream. Hopefully, we can get it done to the point where it's Airbnb-able. We'd love to go overseas and facilitate a holiday with maybe a little bit of extra income through the house and also just share the house with other people as well. Because we like to stay in nice places when we travel too, it'd be nice to share it.
You have so much on your plate. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us and you just have given so many ideas and tips and insights to people, thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely.
You're welcome. Bye
Bye.
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It was such a lovely chat. You can hear it in my voice, I'm just smiling. It was such a lovely time chatting with Imogen of Al and Imo. I'd love to know what you took away from that. You can always email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com or you can send us a DM and connect. Our Instagram is @mydailybusinesscoach and I always love hearing what people took away from this. We get so many messages about this podcast, which I love. If you are listening to this and you find it useful, please take two seconds to leave a review. It just helps other small business owners find this and perhaps somebody needed to hear what Imogen had to say today. Two things stood out for me.
I mean there was a lot in that chat, but two things stood out for me, I guess the first one is Imogen talking about documenting the process and sharing the process of the business journey with their followers, with their audience, with their community and building that community, I guess through the trust because they are showing the struggles, they're showing behind the scenes, they're showing that it's not all perfect 24/7 all rainbows and amazing things, but also sharing and celebrating the wins as well. I think sometimes in business we can take the idea of showing behind the scenes as just the negative parts of the business, but showing behind the scenes also goes into the celebration, the excitement. I know with my first book I showed a lot of behind the scenes and I'll do so with the second book that I'm writing at the moment, but showing that helps people go on a journey and Imogen is very good at showing this is the journey, this is what we are not loving right now, this is what we're loving, this is surprisingly amazing, this part that we didn't expect.
Showing that through social media, email content, website, and podcast. It just allows people to form that real connection with Al and Imo. I think that's been a huge part of their success as well. I love that she talked about that. The other thing I love is the idea of recording a podcast in bed. I'm laughing because I would love to do that, but my husband is not part of this business and not part of the podcast. I think he'd be like, “I'm trying to read here.” But no he wouldn't. He'd be pretty supportive. But I love that idea. I love the idea of just getting started doing it. I always often talk about the Arthur Ashe quote, I think it's now I'm paraphrasing, but start where you are. Use what you have, and do what you can think.
I think that creating a podcast that you can record in bed I think is just brilliant. And it goes to that idea of just start, just start. If nothing else, just have a go and start. Many of us can get caught in the procrastination through the perfection that comes with anything that we're doing that's new, especially a new marketing avenue, creating video content or creating a podcast, or creating our first email. We can sit there and procrastinate, procrastinate, and make, "oh my God, it has to be perfect." And in the meantime, months are going past when you could have just started and built something. I often talk about when I started my Sunday email that's been going for years now, every single Sunday I started with nine people on that list and I didn't know most of them because I'd used this tool at the time, I don't know if it still exists, called Tiny Letter where you could put a tiny letter URL and get people to sign up to things.
I did that and I remember sending that first email and being like, "oh God." And then thinking, "am I ever going to get more than nine people on my list?" Now, we have thousands of business owners that read that every single Sunday. We always get so many replies. Just start, I think Imogen is such a great example. She's got a lot of determination and ambition in her that I think part of her success is also just starting, just give it a go. And you can hear that in her voice and her attitude. She's got that just have-a-go attitude. If it all doesn't work, we'll do something else. It's not the end of the world and I think that is what you need to cultivate as a small business owner to succeed whatever success looks like to you.
I would love to know what you took away from that. If you are interested in checking out the work of Al and Imo, and course if you haven't already, check it out at Al and Imo and that's alandimo.com.au. You can also check out what they're up to over on Instagram, which is just @al_and_imo. Of course, we'll link to everything else that they talked about, including their beautiful new home over at the show notes, which you can find for this at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/278. While you're there, if you are interested in starting a podcast, we have a course on that just literally called How to Start a Podcast. You can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. Thank you again, Imogen, for coming on and sharing all your wisdom and so many insights and tips, practical advice as well. Thank you for all your support and thank you listener for all your support in listening to this. I appreciate it and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
