Episode 392: Cassie Byrnes of Variety Hour
In this episode, Fiona chats with Cassie Byrnes, a renowned surface pattern designer and the founder of Variety Hour, a vibrant lifestyle label. Discover insights into Cassie's creative process, learn about the challenges of juggling motherhood while running a business and much more. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Overwhelming nature of marketing
Strategies for creating content
Challenges of imposter syndrome
Experience with collaborations and the changing landscape of freelancing
The decision-making process behind opening a physical store
The challenges and rewards of running a cashflow-based business
The importance of financial awareness
Strategies for effective marketing
Balancing personal and professional life
The experience of transitioning from a hobby to a full-fledged business
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It was like, everyone wants to work here. But no, there are so many other cool places. It made me realize that I'm in competition with other brands and places and they're going to choose what's best for their careers. How do we look as appealing and interesting as possible? Also for the girls that work here, just like I don't want them to go I need to keep them and they're motivated and growing their career so I need to keep nurturing them.
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Welcome to episode 392 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is an interview with a very creative, curious and lovely small business owner who many of you will know and you'll know her brand as well. But before we get stuck into that, I want to of course acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which I meet these creative and curious people. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that marketing is like if you ever watch the movie The Gremlins and you just put a bit of water on the gremlin and it multiplies, that is how I think a lot of people feel about marketing that there are so many new platforms and apps and all these different things coming up all the time and there's just so many options and it's overwhelming.
How can we create content for all of them? How can we be strategic? What funnels should we have set up? It's just all so much. If you want to fully understand your marketing, regardless of what platforms you're going to be on and even look at how to analyze which platforms are going to work for you, which ones are not, which ones are strategic, which ones are more daily dose stay relevant things, or if there's even a difference for your brand, then you might want to check out Marketing for Your Small Business. It's one of our big online courses. You can buy it and go through it at any time, but at the moment we will be launching and we do this twice a year, a nine-week live course and coaching program.
You can go through the course in your own time and then come to nine consecutive weeks of one hour coaching calls where you can ask any question that you have about your marketing, about something that you've just gone through in the course or anything else. And at the end of that marketing course, you can share your marketing plans with everyone in week nine. That is kicking off at the end of March. If you are keen to get into that, just go to marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and if you've got any questions you can always just reach out to us at Hello@Mydailybusiness.com. Let's get into today's small business interview.
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Today I am talking to the wonderful and very curious, super bright, and colourful Cassie Byrnes. Cassie is a surface pattern designer living in Melbourne and has worked with some massive clients like Anthropologie, Google, Nike, Haagen-Dazs, and Microsoft. It's nice that Kuwaii, Penguin, Gorman, Frankie Magazine, Country Road, I mean the list is endless. In addition to all of that, she's the founder and the main thing that she's working on at the moment is her label Variety Hour, which is a lifestyle label, print-focused, very colourful lifestyle label, selling women's clothing. This is an iconic brand here in Australia and particularly if you're in Melbourne, you will have seen people fall in love with the designs. In today's chat, we talked all about how Cassie has got to where she is now, both with her textile design and creativity what did she study and where did she come from and all of those things.
But also the brand Variety Hour, which now has its own store. It is much loved, it has its online store, it has multiple staff working for it and how has she transitioned from one to the other. But we also talk about things like imposter syndrome and growing up in a country, regional town and then having this big brand now that a lot of people know about and love and also how she balances all of that from what marketing do they do, how do they practically run have that all going. How did she open a shop, a physical shop and what has it been like to hire staff and do all of those things? It's a lovely chat. Cassie is an open book, very honest, transparent and real in this conversation and I thank her for that. Here it is, my chat with the wonderful Cassie Byrnes from Variety Hour.
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Welcome to the podcast Cassie. How are you feeling about life?
That's a very interesting question. We were meant to talk this time last week, you remember? I feel like in those seven days my answer to that question has changed significantly. Last week we'd like all hands on deck this year. We've probably had the busiest, craziest January and February we've ever had because we have all these goals and we're ready to grow. It would've been positive and motivating. And then my whole house just went down with the flu last week, everything stopped. I haven't worked in 10 days and it takes you back down to Earth and you're like, “Okay, this is life and grounds you a bit and slows you down.” It was the first time I think that I didn't stress that much about it. I think it's just made me get better at motherhood and parenthood instead of getting anxious about trying to do the work while you're sick or your kids are sick. I just let it go and took the time off reshuffled everything, delegated as much as I could and didn't let it stress me out like it used to. Which was awesome. I've never done that before.
I think that's sometimes with having a business especially if you have a business and kids and I get that. Our kids have been sick or one particular has been sick lately, but you forget that you're not in an employed job. You can control things to some degree and you can switch things around and be like, “I can't do this right now. This is going to have to move.” Part of the reason, I started my business partly to have more time with my kids.
Exactly. And you know what, life happens. It's okay. Sickness is going to happen and big life events and your work can wait, deadlines can be moved back. You just have to be flexible because otherwise you're not flexible and then you just get stressed. But does the stress achieve anything except just like make you miserable? Especially trying to work with kids around it's like I've just given up, it makes me 10 times more stressed than normal.
And then you feel guilty on both sides.
A hundred percent or someone just sends you a text that's like blase and you're like, “Deal with this.”
Tell us about your business and your work and your design studio and did textiles and variety hours. Can you tell us a brief overview?
Yes, we'll keep it brief. When I graduated from uni, I worked under my namesake for a while under Cassie Byrnes doing lots of collaborations and I'd run Variety Hour like the end of year summer Christmas markets. That was in 2016, 2017. And I also worked part-time in commercial design offices. in 2018, I went completely full-time in the business and still freelanced as a way of financing the clothing brand. Because clothing labels are not very profitable for a very long time. I don't know if it's a surprise to anyone. Then around 2021 we probably just started to become profitable and I just stepped into the label and the brand. At the moment I'm fully invested in Variety Hour, I'm obsessed with it.
We've got eight people under in the team, three in the store, five of us in the office. We chilled for a little bit while I had a few kids, had a couple of kids, not a few. And now we're gearing up. I call it growth, I don't know what that means, I just made it up. But we've just hired a couple of people taking a few risks. I've been very low risk the last five years now we're just ramping it up and seeing what happens. It's exciting. I'm feeling good after a couple of pregnancies and I turned 35 a couple of years ago and I went through this weird life stage and maybe like a bit depressed and everything and struggling to find out who I was personally and creatively and also having like a tough pregnancy didn't help but I'm feeling like good, confident and a bit sure of myself now for I think the first time in my life. It's refreshing.
That is a wonderful way to bring in our conversation and thank you for sharing so openly. And many people go through that, whether it's at 35 or 45 or 50 or 24.
It hit me bad and I think from just a creative perspective it was like I felt irrelevant for the first time and because I was getting old. Suddenly I wasn't just young by default just relevant by default. That's what I called it. When you're young, you're in it, you've got the time, you're obsessed during the pop culture, the zeitgeist and then you have a couple of kids and you withdraw from the culture a little bit and I woke up and I'm like, “Am I irrelevant?” Like who am I? I work a design and fashion so it's all about relevancy and keeping fresh I just had to go through that stage and I talk to a lot of creatives who are mid thirties and they're all going through similar things. I think it's just a life stage.
I think also, I look at that and think, “Oh wow” because I'm now ticking the box that's 35 to 44 and I'm about to turn 44 so I'll have to go into the next box.
You're in the last Box. I'm in that box now. I was like that too. I was like, “I'm the next box.” But it's a real little zone 35 to 44. It's a whole different box if they were right.
I think it's hard and I've talked to so many friends and everything and my brother's a psychologist and he's told me a lot about this. This period is very hard because you've proven yourself at work, you can do what you can do. Most people have had a career but also it's the period when your parents start getting unwell or older. Your children are young or going to become teenagers so there's so much going on at all spectrums and you're not at that period the end of life where you can slow down.
I love that. That is so spot on.
.
I know a lot of people listening will know Variety Hour. How do you describe it? You've mentioned a little bit there of what it is, but how would you describe it to someone who's listening who doesn't know what Variety Hour is?
That's a great question. I'm so in it, so it's hard. It's a print focused clothing label that is ethically made slow fashion. We go up to size 24. From 8 to 24, we do seven sizes. We try to be as inclusive as possible even though we have a bit of space to grow there. I design all the prints. I'm a textile designer by trade. I am a traditional textile designer so I paint everything by hand and that's my shtick. I've made up my own method as time goes on and it's a little bit dated but it works. We're very much print focused and fashion focused. We've had a few little tries of bedding and accessories, but I'm still so obsessed with clothing after all this time. We're just zoning into clothes now for the future.
Amazing. You have in the past done a lot of collaborations and a lot of people may have even discovered your brand like that, like many people through collaborations. How do you balance having your own label and then working with other brands on their designs?
Well, I did it for a while so I don't freelance anymore just because I'm a bit more focused on Variety Hour. But I'm going to go back or we'll end up now we're doing partnerships as Variety Hour, but that's just at the beginning stage. I don't want to ramble, but freelancing and collaborations have changed significantly over the past five years. But that's another conversation when it comes to when I was collaborating, I don't think brands cared that I had another brand because it was just so tiny and insignificant to them. When I first started collaborating, that's what I was touching on. I think the reason I stopped freelancing, other than the fact that Variety Hour was taken over my time is the landscape of the namesake collaboration that I used to do has changed. In the past when I started, it suited my personality because it was all about brands leveraging your authenticity and using you to intertwine into their story.
You had to have some presence online, but they just wanted the artwork, they wanted the little picture of the artist and the writeup and to build a story that way. And that's I did collaborations with Haagen-Dazs, Nike and Uniqlo and they all used me as part of their marketing. They're the freelance jobs I used to do where it was all encompassing and I loved that. I think freelancing today in that field where you are partnering with the brand and your name out there, you have to spend a lot more time building your profile online, which is like Instagram and TikTok. It's almost like you need to be a bigger creator digitally then your artwork is good, so am I naturally that person? I don't think so. Maybe I will be one day, but right now, who I was in the past I was way too shy and I had way too much cringe to ever put myself out there that much.
I was lucky in the fact that I came up freelancing and in my career at a time when brands were just starting their collaboration with creators and it was all very new and pure and simple. Now it's more complicated and brands are now just collaborating with other brands. That didn't happen that much, as much as it is today. You got these huge brands partnering with huge brands and everyone's just leveraging off each other's audiences. That's the big difference between then and now with freelancing. You can't just go putting up a couple of posts of your artwork anymore, which I used to just do and it worked. You have to be like a full creator and that's a full-time job.
It is. And it's such an interesting point you bring up, I've had this conversation with numerous clients who are artists and also one of my best friends is an artist and he came up at that time, maybe a little bit just before you, but he got like New York billboards and all this amazing work and now it's sad in a way but it is like, so how many followers do you have on Instagram?
It's the creator first and artwork second.
I think that's hard. I mean for anyone in business.
It's hard for creators who maybe are like me, like traditional creators maybe we're a little bit weird, we're shy, we just love doing our work. I don't hate social, but like it's not naturally me. I was never one of those people on my space or Facebook doing status updates. I'm just like a bit more quiet. I get embarrassed easily.
Did you grow up in a super creative family? How did you even get to a point where you were like, I can do art and I could make money from art as well. Is that something that you've always had like a love of colour and art?
No creativity in my family at all. I'm a massive bogan from farming, both parents come from farming families and I grew up a regional Queensland which is probably where the color came from. But when it comes to creativity in regional Queensland in the nineties where I grew up, it's absolutely not. It was like you are in theatre, which I was because that was the only creative output anyone had was theatre and music and dancing. If you did art you were just like a hippie and you were alternative. I was always creative though weird as it would've been seen back then. I just latched onto anything that was exposed to me. This was pre-internet so I was in theatre, dancing, and singing, not into photography because anyone can buy a disposable camera or film camera. And then it was funny because you know the show Will and Grace, right?
Yep.
Grace is an interior designer in New York and I remember this is so like a regional kid in the nineties with no idea of what's out in the world. I just saw her in a little studio in Manhattan and she had a mess everywhere and she was creative and I just was like, “I want to be that person.” Then of course I wanted to be an interior designer and I ended up studying it because of Will and Grace. But it just shows you like before the internet what you had to latch onto.
Yes, I was like that. But with Moesha, I mean we took straight, I don't know if you ever watched Moesha meets Brandy. She had the coolest style. I still probably could go back and look at Moisha and be like, “Yes. Oh my God, we all did it.”
Like, look at our deprived little laugh. I made whole career decisions based on the TV.
That was so good because we didn't have like you had books, you had what you could find at the library, and you had conversations.
I grew up in a small town. There are no art galleries. It was just nothing. And I was talked out of my want to be creative by everybody, not from a place of like you must do this. My parents are very supportive of anything. People just legit worry. Also, that's not a career. It was like pushing me just like being an accountant, being like anything regular. Which I'm sure like most people my age probably went up against if you were. I was always very creative. But on the other side of that, I grew up in a family business. That's where I think I'm just as a business person as I am creative. I love running a business and I love numbers, I love analyzing everything and I think that's why I am a designer more so than an artist. I love the practicality to design and I love retail and all that comes with it. You would say an unsuccessful family business to some degree, but it was all encompassing, it was like a golf course.
When I was 12 my dad had a dream. He was from the country and golf is big in country Australia. We bought a huge block of land is flood land at the back of Mackay. You can't be built on, it's just zoned for sporting. We built it together as a family, planted all the grass over a couple of years and opened it in 1999 and it's still there today. My parents have separated maybe because of it and my dad now runs it. It was on the brink of bankruptcy for probably a decade. Flooding in Mackay is a big problem so wet season, sometimes six months the year we wouldn't trade. I think I overtook their revenue within my second or third year of business.
It just stayed the same over the years that it grew. But it taught me so much about business and a lot of what not to do. My parents are so beautiful and humble and nice and two of the hardest working people and it sucks that they're retiring with nothing. I think it was like a real eye opener. You're going to get old and 60, 70 is going to happen and you need to put some money away in your super.
A lot of people I would say and especially more so in Australia, women in Australia because women 55 plus are the fastest growing homelessness group.
Definitely. Because they didn't have the super hour age group still, it was like not as taken seriously. I think people in their twenties now it's a bit more taken seriously, which is great, but I didn't pay myself superannuation until two years ago.
That's a common thing and if you're set up as a trader in Australia, which is a business model financial for tax purposes.
You don't have to.
Most people don't.
You're like, I'll do it next year. I think seeing my parents separate and they had to separate assets and mom had no super and she got a house like a tiny little house in regional Queensland so it wasn't expensive. Most likely we'll have to work now till she's 80, or 75 unless I can help her. I think it was just a shock that just because you work hard doesn't mean everything's just going to work out. The other thing they taught me is that they're extremely generous people and they were super generous with customers. I'm a very generous person too. It is just about me having to recognize that and maybe stop myself sometimes from giving things away and buying gifts and treats for everyone. What was it?
I just want to give, I think maybe that's our love language. I just have to stop myself a lot so maybe they're the two lessons I think that guided me but they were amazing and still are customer service and I think that was instilled in me very early on when I was working at 10 that the customer is everything and the most important person. That's definitely how we run Variety Hour these days. I think it's very important. I'm also like an old school hospital.
That instilled in you also that your dad had that dream and yes, maybe the business hasn't worked out exactly as he might've foreseen, but having that dream, being that initiative to try it.
And he loves it. He runs it by himself now. He's changed a lot. I'm proud of him. It's running better than it ever has. He is in his sixties is completely changed the method. He has thrown out all the memberships, it's only social, it's meant to be like a fun club. And it's doing well and someone offered to buy it, not much but to buy it and he turned it down because he just said like, “I just love this.” He just wants to be there forever and he's a like from a farming family so just born to work and that's what keeps him going and happy he has a great life now and he is a dreamer. While I don't come from any creativity, I come from a small business lineage on my dad's side and the dreamer aspect too.
How good. You talked about the fact that you'd love the business part as well as the creative part. How have you set up the business when you were saying, and I'm putting you on the spot here, how do you set it up in a way that you know you've got an amazing store? Is that on Gertrude Street?
Yes.
A prime location in Melbourne.
I know.
Beautiful space and also hard work. But when did you get to the point in your business that you were like, we can open a store. This has all happened when you said before we started focusing on 2021. I mean that's only a few years ago. How has this all happened? And then how did you run the numbers? Was it like, okay the online is going so well or did the store come first? Where did you get to financially and everything to be able to make those?
That's interesting because like I was in dire straits financially up until 2021. I was running into the red constantly looking at payday loans and credit cards, but I never took anything. We survived. That's the thing with a cashflow business like mine is always money coming in every day from somewhere. You just pick it and push invoices. When it came to the store, that was 2018, so it was completely premature in the whole scheme of things, but it was a popup, so it was a six month popup. I was keen to test retail. I interned at Melbourne Label Kuwaii for a little while. I had called up Christie who owns that brand and she also opened retail way before she was probably ready. I said, “What should I do?” Like got this space and she was like, just go for it and you'll figure it out. That's all I needed.
I did and it was six months and then they're like, “Do you want to stay?” And I said, “Yes”, so I'll stay. Then Covid hit and they were like, “Do you want the entire building?” And I was like, “Absolutely.” And I am obsessed with our building. I love that location so much and I just somehow wormed my way in and it was petrifying at the start. I had no money so I had to work every single day in the store plus run the business and I had having mental breakdown in 2018, which isn't funny, but it just shows you that the repercussions of working that much were real. It's easy to brush over it in hindsight. But like there were some tough times there. Especially going through my first Christmas alone in 2018. That was hard. It was hard.
And retail is just hard. Even if you had all the resources and you had all these other people reach out.
It's just people become a little bit more crazier in December. I was also way more fragile. Every email just hurt me. I got pregnant that summer which was funny because I feel like sometimes having kids has to completely blow up your whole career. But it pushed me into having to hire. And the people who came into the store like completely like just made the store run so much better than I ever did when I worked in the store. There wasn't even a swing tag on like anything. It was just such a mess. The whole operation for that first six months. The girls came in, they wrote all the manuals and got everything running and we were, But then at the start of 2020 I had a very frank discussion with my brother who was my accountant and he was like, your business is not profitable. I was like, “We just had our big this year.” And he's like, “If you pay yourself, you are not making any money.” He is like, you need to change this, otherwise I suggest you get a job. He is very direct.
Sometimes you need that. I was like, “Okay, we can change.” I needed that discussion because, for the first time, it changed from a hobby or passion to a business. When he put it in perspective, like, you either change it or you're going to be better off just working somewhere else. I was like, that was deep. Thanks.
With your business, part of I think what you guys do very well is your marketing. I've worked in marketing for a long time so I'm always aware.
Thank you.
No, I feel like you have just the right amount of being in lots of places where people see you and have familiarity but then not to a point that it's so oversaturated and like, I've seen them 10,000 times.
Such a big compliment.
Well, my pleasure to give it. Where did that come from? When you were trying to do the six month popup, were you like let's just tell everyone.
I just love that you said that because there's never been a plan. I don't even have a logo. Like there is no plan with the marketing. It's funny, we just hired a head of brand and a digital marketer and we for the first time have that a part of the business is now marketing brand it's called in the what all chart. Now we're going to invest in the brand for the first time ever. Before this, all our money was just towards photo shoots and maybe one influencer or two influencers a year. But we do like kooky things like nice packaging and stuff. But our brand strategy's just been Instagram and photo shoots.
Really good photo shoots. When I saw it, I remember seeing you guys and files and seeing other things and it pops there's the product as well, which also pops. But I feel like that's maybe that's where you were like, great, that's where we're going to invest in and then that's going to pay off because media are more likely to pick up a story if it's got good image quality.
I think again like it's just something I picked up when talking to someone when I was young, like what do you think is the most important thing as a brand of his team? I remember him saying photos like they're everything. And just taking that on board. We do spend a lot of money on photo shoots, but we're still very frugal with them as well. This year we're putting some money towards things like we just did our first outdoor poster.
Like a street press poster.
A street one. We got more of an influencer and gifting strategy and today we set like a little press thing to a journalist and just like trying different things. I'm good at organic, I'm just good at being me. I can do that on Instagram. But I've learned about a funnel now. I think we've just like got all the organic reach people that are very connected and that would easily like our brand. I think we've like got them. The issue is now that we need to bring more people into the top of the funnel, which is completely out of my like, I don't know how to do that stuff at all. That's why I've hired two people in the last month or two months to take over that top of funnel stuff because that is completely beyond my knowledge.
You've done pretty well based on what you've just said to get to the point that you're at now, how does the business run into, like you've got your online, you've got your physical shop, you've got potential brand and brand collaborations and you are running all of this. Plus you also have children. And I do ask this to men and dads who come on the podcast. I know that women get asked it all the time, but how does the business operate on a practical level? Do you guys have great systems? You mentioned before when people came into retail that they set up manuals and swing tags, making sure that people could get training and know how to sell a product. How does, what does it look like on a day-to-day so that you can be a mom and also run these different elements of the store and the online and now you've got the brand piece as well?
That's evolving. I have only just started back full time this year for the last, I don't know, a few years. I've only been doing three days a week maybe. It was just getting by. In the last couple of years, our new hire has come from more of a corporate background. Whereas the other two girls that worked with me came up through the store. Between us all, like none of us had worked in an office before. We just like making do. And then we have this new girl covered and she worked at an office for 12 years. She's got us onto Google calendars and everything's now done through Google Docs and there's a little bit more structure and I've been put in my place now to share a little more like I like shared with the team all our budgets and like our break evens and the goals and the desires and the whatever.
I shared that and they were all just like, “Wow, thank you.” It was also internalized. And the last few months I've learned to share it all with everyone so they have goals as well. And I'm really into nurturing my team. I've got a couple of young girls too at the start of their career and I just want the best for them and I want them 'em to be a part of it. A supportive workplace. It's been good to open up and be a bit more professional I think just a bit because we were very unprofessional.
No, you're so hard on yourself. Because I often have this same conversation with clients where I always say one team, one dream. And when I used to have staff, I mean when I had, when I was head of marketing or other senior roles and I'd have lots of staff in the team, I would always just be walking around like “OTOD guys”, like really cheesy, but I'd be like one team, one dream. We all need to know where we're going.
Yes, it's true, it sounds cheesy but we are all human like that. I didn't do it because these Gen Z people want to feel encouraged and on that. It's one of the reasons why I want to grow is I never really wanted a big business. I still don't. If I could keep the business as it is now, that would be great. But what I realized last year was I guess I've always had a weird relationship with money. It doesn't drive me that much. I was like, let's just get to this comfortable little state and potter on. What I realized is I have young talent who are amazing and at the start of their career and they want so much.
I also want to work with really cool, interesting people and I want to hire creative, talented people and the only way to do that is to be an aspiring business that's growing that people see as growth and opportunity and nurturing. I was like, “Okay.” One of the most important things is to collaborate and work in a team of people. I love working with others, I'm just a natural collaborator. I just want to be able to keep the people who are working here and also attract talented people and just create cool amazing work. I was like, we need to keep growing just like very tiny growth. But you always need to be aspirational.
I love that perspective as well. To get great people you have to be great.
It was like, everyone wants to work here. But no, there are so many other cool places. It made me realize that I'm in competition with other brands and places and they're going to choose what's best for their careers. How do we look as appealing and interesting as possible? Also for the girls that work here, just like I don't want them to go I need to keep them and they're motivated and growing their career so I need to keep nurturing them.
I love that. I think, if more people fought like that we'd have amazing cultures.
I was like isn't this everyone?
People to the bone. I mean obviously, that's why we've got this new law being looked at in Australia.
Look that's all about, that's all changing. I see the change on the horizon and I love it and I'm all more power to people pushing back. I think it's awesome. With the program, we're very what do you balance workplace? I've accepted it even though I come from a millennial background where it was a hustle.
Yes, it worked.
Pizza parties.
Pizza parties, we had them. If you worked past 9:30 you got free pizza.
My girls could never, they just be like, “See ya.”
What advice would you give to someone who's listening to this who might be a designer or some small business owner or creative business owner and they're just starting their journey and you've mentioned before building that community on social, building that presence? Is there any other advice that you'd give to them?
I think if I could advise my younger self that might be, I think it's time for us to be a little bit more confident in ourselves. I remember listening to the podcast you did with the lady, sorry I forgot her name. Who runs Mutual Muse?
Kirsta. She's wonderful.
She is American I think, and she wouldn't even think this herself but the way she spoke was just so different to Australians. It was very forward and matter of fact, I know she has autism as well, but to me, there was a confidence in her that I felt was aspirational. I was like, “I just want to be more like her.”
Aw, but you'll love that when she hears it.
I come from the worst but my dad can't accept a compliment always self-deprecating and just like, that's over. Let's just change the narrative a bit and stop hating on ourselves so much and just become one with the cringe I think.
Or even think of it as cringe. My son doesn’t know what cringe meant the other day. He was like, “What is it? I hear people say it all the time” and I was like, “We should stop saying that's cringe.” It's such an Australian thing.
Is it? We're so embarrassed. Just be free. Maybe the artists are unsure of themselves all the time. And especially as women we're all just like, “I don't know” like I don't want to annoy anyone.
Yes. Instead of just like what do I want?
We all love that. Like I didn't listen to her and think, “Oh my God, who does she think she is?” I was like, “Yes. Get it.”
Yes. And on that note, let's be super proud of yourself. What are you most proud of?
There we go. Now I've got to practice.
What are you most proud of from this business so far?
I think just like getting to work at a job that will the Grace Adler. I wanted that as this little 10-year-old and I've got it. And to appreciate that as things go fast and you want and new dreams, it's to be like I get a salary now. I get superannuation and I get paid a nice wage to work with amazing people and do creative things and I'm just learning to be a bit more appreciative of that.
I love that. I think so often in business we are always focused on the thing in front of us instead of looking behind and thinking.
Absolutely. Or we don't even get excited when the thing that we've been working on comes out because you're already all that came out already on. I don't even think when I worked at the Australian Open like I appreciated at the time. But I was like, it's not even that big of a deal and I was like already like over it and now it's only in hindsight you look back like that was amazing. Why weren't you more present for that instead of being like, because it's happening and you need to appreciate it more while it happens instead of wasting that time being embarrassed.
Instead of being like, this is amazing and I'm also super happy.
I don't think I ever said that.
Well, now you can be like, “It's super cool.”
No, I don't think I could ever be like that.
No. Like parenting, in the moment, I'm trying to remind myself all the time.
I'm going through that too.
Enjoy.
Yes. Especially after having my second. I don't think I enjoyed my first, I enjoyed it but I was always waiting for the next phase. I think with my second I can just see so much more beauty in it and I appreciate it so much more because I know how fleeting it is.
It really is. I have a lot of friends at the moment whose children are turning 16, 17 and they're going through their own grief of having to let go.
No, don't even talk to me about that.
And that is the same with business.
I see so many TikToks that can't deal with. And the same with business. I do get a little nostalgic, ou know with a bigger team I'm like, remember when it was just me like alone in my little home office. And that was nice too.
Every element can be nice along the journey.
You're right. Let's just be more appreciative.
On that wonderful note, what can people connect with you and what's next for Variety Hour?
We're on Instagram and TikTok. VarietyHour_. And our website, we also have a store at 155 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy.
What's coming up next?
This year's goal is to catch up on our timelines. Because we've never had timelines that correlate with fashion at all. They've just been like crazy. We are trying to push our whole calendar forward because next year we're opening up wholesale, which is something I said I never do, but now I'm really into it.
That's amazing and I feel like that can expand you in so many places.
That's why we're doing it. I think it's more of a marketing thing instead of like, looking at it a bit differently. We have a huge overseas audience, like 30% of our online sales are overseas, so we don't know what to do with that. We have a big American following. We'll get some agents and see what happens. Start slow but I think I'm ready now to tackle that logistical operation and hopefully not make too many mistakes.
But I think that's so exciting. And even though we are such a global world, I still feel so excited for an Australian brand when it gets into Asia or Europe.
It's a whole different, like the Americans, the US, they keep in business during winter here. Winter's traditionally quite slow because we're like a summery little brand. But in the last two years they have just 30-40 % of our orders online are from the US and New Zealand a bit in there, but predominantly the US and they do multiple items per checkout. We've adjusted our shipping rates. But they're interested in the brand. I've done a few collaborations with Anthropologie over there, I've been building up a little bit of an audience. It's just an interesting market, but I don't want to be like a typical person in the US.
Very humble.
But you know what I'm not like, “Let's like get to the US because like that's where the money is.” I'm more like, that's a really interesting thing that's happened, what's going on there and what do we need to do in that market? I guess wholesale is to be felt.
That's super exciting. If someone's listening to this in the US or anywhere else in Australia can they be like, “Hey, can I be put on a waitlist for your wholesale information?”
A hundred percent. I have no idea how wholesale works. We're at the start. All I want to do now is get our calendars forward so we could get six eights, nine months ahead or whatever you need to do and then start pitching out, we'll work with a wholesale agency in Australia and then we get our head around the logistics, get an agent in America or I guess it's what you do. Well, I don't even know what to do.
Exciting. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.
Thanks for having me and thanks for running such an informative, interesting podcast. I appreciate it.
You're so welcome and thank you. We'll link to all of that in our show notes. But thank you for making time today, especially when you're still not feeling so well.
Yes. Bye
Bye.
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Such a lovely chat with Cassie and I know there's so much to take away from that chat. As always, I'm going to highlight two things that stood out to me among many. I'd love to know from you what stood out for you. you can always just send us a DM at @mydailybusiness on TikTok and @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram. The first, and I think this is so important, and I love that Cassie was so open in discussing it was when she talked about her brother giving her the advice that if things don't change you should probably just go and get a job and just that real bluntness. But sometimes we need those people in our lives to be like, “Hey, this is what's happening and this is the numbers and this is where you're going to end up.”
I love that she then uses that as this impetus to go, you know what, I want this to happen. it's going to happen and it's going to move from being a hobby to being a full-fledged business. Now she's got staff in a store and all the things and getting to know and embrace your numbers. I think this is something that so many people either bury their heads in the sand about or just don't look at, particularly when it seems like it's all running well and things are selling sometimes I've worked with numerous clients where they've made, they're making really good money, but they're not aware of how much money is going back out. That difference and that ability to have a good profit margin and have a bit of buffer is not necessarily there.
I love that she talked about that and just really how it gave her the injection of, do you want this to happen then you've got to work at it and you've got to change things and move things around and get those numbers up to a place that it is comfortable and you can hire people and you can take time off and all of the things. I love that she shared that because so often you can look at brands from the outside and think, they've got it all figured out and they must have got it figured out from day one and they knew exactly what they were doing and everything just worked easily for them. I love that she took us behind the scenes and was like, it wasn't always like that. The second thing that Cassie mentioned, which is so important, and I think this is important, regardless of what type of business you have, whether it's a product and whether you have these beautiful images of beautiful products like Cassie or whether you are in a service space or a different type of business, is that visuals are so important.
She mentioned how somebody had said to her to spend the time on the photos because getting that marketing, getting media to fall in love with what you're doing, getting other people to share your stuff, they're just not going to if the photos aren't great. I love that Cassie talked about that. And being in a business like hers where the stuff is colourful and it's beautiful and you want it to be captured well is going to help in terms of your marketing. I have worked on the other side of marketing in media for many years and was writing about different brands and different labels and different people and service-based providers for the likes of Cool Hunting and Refinery29 and these different magazines in the UK and the US and UAE and even in Japan and then here in Australia.
Honestly, if people had great images, it was like 70% of the work was done because that's what would help sell it. We work so much now in a social visual world where people want to share things and if the visuals look good, obviously that's not the only thing that you have to be concerned with, but putting the effort into that, and even if that looks like working with certain people to get those visuals happening, but also making sure that you've put the effort into the prep for that. I see people all the time that spend a lot of money on photo shoots and they haven't got a shot list, they haven't got a mood board, they haven't gone through Pinterest and created all sorts of this is what we'd like, this is what looks good.
They're not saving photos from social media into a folder that they're then sharing with the photographer ahead of time. They're expecting that they can just turn up and the photographer magically will know exactly what they want, the lighting, everything. Often that prep is the most important part. The photo shoot is really important. Still, you'll talk to any photographer and they can be prepped and briefed and given a sound understanding of what you're trying to achieve on the day with them still being able to have this creative outlet for it, it's going to make the whole process smoother for everybody, including their photographer. It's always a thing to think about when it comes to your photo shoots when it comes to how you visually represent your brand, putting the time effort and money at times for the right people to bring that to life for you, but also that you as the brand owner have put the time into really consider how are we coming across.
One of the exercises that I often ask people to do when we are looking at defining their brand, it's a quick exercise, is to imagine that you've got the cover story that you have landed the cover story for one of your favourite publications. It could be the Sunday lift out in a newspaper, it could be a big global magazine, whatever it is. But you have the cover, what's the angle, what's the hook, what's the title? Also, what are the photos? Are you if you're a service provider, is it a photo of you? Is it a Provo, a photo of your work? If it is a photo of you, how do you come across it? Is it a headshot? Is it you've got your full body? Are you inside? Are you outside? Are you in a studio? Are you dressed in a ball gown or a gala thing or you're just in jeans and a T-shirt?
What represents your brand visually in one shot? It can sometimes be a confronting thing, especially when you've got a team and everyone's dissecting it, but it will help you get on a page as to how are we crying to be represented. I think that Cassie mentioning how important visuals were in terms of the marketing getting her brand out there and getting it seen and shared by people was so spot on. That is it for today's interview episode. If you want to check out Variety Hour, you can go to varietyhourstudio.com. You can also find them on all the socials and Instagram they are @VarietyHour_. And on TikTok, they are VarietyHour_ as well. And if you want to check out Cassie's beautiful Textile and surface design as well as her artwork, you can go over to cassiebyrnes.com. And if you're interested in Marketing for Your Small Business, whether you're just buying the online course or interested in the live coaching component that kicks off this month, you can find all the information at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. Thank you so much for reading.
