Episode 493: The book everyone should read
Ever feel like your business is in need of a little spark?
In today’s episode, Fiona Killackey dives into a topic that’s been on her mind lately. It’s easy to get stuck in the daily grind and forget why you started in the first place. But what if you could reignite that passion and appreciation for your business? That’s exactly what’s happening in this episode.
Fiona shares something that truly inspired her recently—a book called The Flamingo Estate. It’s a coffee table book, but it’s way more than just a pretty piece to decorate your space. It's packed with stories and insights that have made Fiona look at her own business in a whole new light.
Here’s what Fiona will explore today:
The importance of loving your business—and how to get back to that spark, especially on tough days.
The story behind The Flamingo Estate book and why it’s not just about the aesthetics (though, trust me, it’s gorgeous).
How nature, community, and real human stories are at the heart of any successful business—and how you can bring these elements into your own brand.
Fiona’s personal reflections on the book’s lessons, and how they’ve made her rethink her approach to storytelling in her own business.
Why telling your story in a genuine, real way is one of the best things you can do for your business.
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Do you love your life as a small business owner?
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Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build.
A business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually love what you do.
So, let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the Daily.
Hello, and welcome to episode 493 of the MyDaily Business podcast. Today, it's a quick tip episode, and that's really where I share a tip, tool, or tactic that you can implement immediately. And today, it is a tool. Honestly, without sounding too extreme, I think this may have just changed my life a little bit. So I'm going to share that in a second.
Before I do, I want to let you know that if you listen to this podcast and you find it useful, I would be so appreciative if you could stop and leave a review. That can just be as simple as hitting the stars. Honestly, I don't monetize this podcast yet, and you know, it's a lot of effort and time that goes into this. We get so many beautiful DMs and messages from people. When I do workshops or speaking gigs, people will come up and say, "Oh my God, I love your podcast so much and I appreciate it so much."
What I would absolutely love is if you could take a bit of that love and just take two seconds to leave a review. It really helps other people find this podcast. So if you've ever listened to any of the near 500 episodes and thought that was really helpful, please could you take a second to leave a review? Thank you so much in advance for that.
All right, before we get jumping into this thing that kind of changed my life, I want to, of course, acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these beautiful lands on which I partly indulged in this tool that I'm going to talk about. For me in North Warrnambool, that is the Wurundjeri and Raungdri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
Alright. Let's get into today's quick tip.
So recently, for Christmas in 2024 — or, you know, it may not be recent if you're listening to this sometime in the future — hello, future! I was gifted a beautiful present by my good friend Phoebe. As soon as I saw the wrapping, I was like, "Oh my gosh, is this what I think it is?" It was something I’d wanted to buy for myself but had been kind of putting off, thinking, "I don't know." I was so thrilled that she bought it for me.
I didn’t actually open it then and there. I waited until Christmas Day, and when I opened it, I was just absolutely in love. So, what is it? What is this tool? It is the Flamingo Estates book, which is a beautiful, big green coffee table book. You may have seen it making the rounds on socials.
Flamingo Estate, for anyone who doesn't know, is a beautiful, I don’t even know how to describe it — a skincare lifestyle, just stunning brand out of LA. The guy who started it is originally from Australia. So, you know, that’s always nice. I think people who listen to this, maybe from overseas in huge countries, maybe don't understand how, like, in our little Australia, we have a pretty small population. I think it's less than 10% of the US and it's about a third of the UK — way less than so many other places around the world.
There is this idea that we kind of, I mean, we have tall poppy syndrome, but at the same time, we like to see Australians do things in the world because we're like, "Yeah, as if we know them." And the thing is, we usually do know somebody who knows them if we don't know them.
When I was reading this book, I was like, "Oh my goodness, there's that person mentioned, and that person mentioned." It's just lovely. It's lovely to see Australians succeed in whichever way they do when you come from a tiny little country that nobody ever wants to get on a plane and spend 24 hours coming here.
So, with that in mind, I opened the book and I was like, "Okay, I think I'm going to love this." I thought originally I would just like it because of how it looks. It's a beautifully aesthetically appealing, gorgeous book, which goes to, you know, Flamingo Estate. Everything that Flamingo Estate does is beautiful.
If you get one of their candles, or then their hand lotion, or their bars of soap — I mean, everything is beautifully executed. And you would expect that because the guy who started it is called Richard Christensen. He originally had an agency called Chandelier Creative, which was based in New York City. They were doing the coolest, most interesting, fun stuff.
I remember a friend of mine, back in the day, Kate Dinon, had, I don't know, worked with them or met them or something, and she was raving about them. This is like 2014.
He came from this agency setting where they’d done identity and brand storytelling for Hermes, Nike, Nordstrom, and huge companies. So, he then started a brand that is this lifestyle, beautiful beauty, skincare, and all sorts of things.
I'm sure I'm not probably giving it its due, but of course, it's going to be absolutely beautiful. And now, it's based — he is based in LA, so I knew that I would love the book because it's beautiful and everything they do is beautiful. But honestly, I found myself so touched by the stories in this book.
Throughout the book, there are ideas about, you know, how hard it was with COVID and the agency, with a huge amount of work falling away. Then, how Flamingo Estate got started and how, through nourishing this property and building these connections, and kind of starting again, he was able to build something absolutely beautiful.
And so throughout the book, there are all of these stories about challenges, but also relating that back to nature. A lot of the Flamingo Estate brand is about the property — the Flamingo Estate property — and the growth of these beautiful, genuine flora and fauna. Things that are grown on that property are then utilised along with all these other things from different farms for the products they create.
So, the candles, the smells, the scents, and all of that. The property itself, nature, and nurturing nature, waiting for things to grow, and understanding that things take time — that is so beautifully interwoven with business lessons throughout this book.
As I said, I opened it thinking this is going to be a beautiful book that is going to inspire me visually. But I have to say, I dipped in and out of this book the whole summer. I spent seven or eight weeks just going through the stories, really taking the time.
Like a million times, I found myself reading and then closing the book and just taking a moment to take in what I just read. The other thing is, I'm somebody who absolutely loves nature. I live on a bush property. I choose to live away from the city. I get my energy a lot of the time from the surrounds that I have. Even last week, I was just in this funk, and I just got up and looked out into the bushland.
There’s something so powerful about nature. So there was a part of that that was resonating so much as I read this as well. It allowed me throughout this summer to really go and get my hands dirty, do weeding, and start looking at my garden as not just something I can take energy from, but things I can put my own energy back into. So there was all of that.
But I have to say, just the honesty and the rawness with which Richard talks about his own personal challenges. He talks about things around weight and body image, and it's so refreshing to hear that from a man, I have to say. Not that it’s a good thing, but you know, you often hear it just from one gender.
I think also the power of his connection — so he has interviews in there with the likes of Jane Fonda, John Legend, Alice Waters, Jane Goodall, and just so many people in there. What I love about a lot of the interviews is that they talk about their own challenges.
I think so often, you can look at people like, let’s say, Jane Goodall, and be like, “Oh my goodness, she is a powerhouse. She has done so much good in the world.” And you don’t hear about necessarily the challenges, and you don’t always think about those.
We can all be guilty of this. You can look at people all over the internet, social media, etcetera, and be like, “Oh, their life looks so perfect and beautiful.” I mean, not necessarily Jane Goodall, but other people — let’s say John Legend or others in there. And you fail to sometimes see them and their humanity.
I think the book was a real reminder that, like, everybody goes through stuff. As someone who works with literally thousands of small business owners, I see that again and again. I totally understand that all the vanity metrics and other things — even people who are financially really successful — still go through hard things. It's not like one counteracts the other.
The book was a real reminder of that, but also a reminder of just the power of community, of nature, of taking time to build genuine connections. That things don’t just happen overnight.
So this book has been such a beautiful, I guess, salve to just how much heartache is going on in the world. It's not to say, “Oh, I just read this book and you can ignore everything in the world,” but I think the moment that this book found me was exactly when I needed to read it.
It just reminded me of how much beauty there is in the world, and beauty in the really simple things as well.
This book is called Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive through Chronicle Books. You can buy it everywhere. You can also buy it directly from Flamingo Estate. It's just a powerhouse of feeling, emotion, and connection.
But the other part, obviously, which is, you know, hugely what I help people with, is that it's an incredible brand piece. Honestly, throughout the book, you know, it had all these beautiful feelings. I also had the feeling of, “I want to have everything from Flamingo Estate in my house. I want their candles. I want their shampoo. I want this, I want that.”
So, they're absolutely beautiful things. But it was not just the beauty and the aesthetics — which, yes, I have seen their stuff and I’ve had some of their candles, and it's lovely. Then they look really nice. But it deepened my connection with that brand, which made me understand the story, the value, and the time that goes into those products — which, you know, is in parallel with how expensive some of them are.
And so instead of just looking at it as, like, "Oh, this is a luxury brand and, you know, gosh, they are way overpriced candles," for example, that someone could think, for sure, you start seeing all of the steps that go into making one particular candle or one bar of soap or, yeah, just...
I think it's so inspiring if you are somebody who's particularly in product-based businesses, but all businesses. You're thinking, "How do I tell more of my story? How do I tell more of the human side of things? And how do I tell my origin story, my personal brand, without going too far?"
I think that's a line that sometimes people feel scared of crossing. "I want to tell more about me, but I also don't want to be telling everything about me." And I think Richard Christensen does such a good job of that in this book.
So, it is a beautiful book. It looks beautiful. I'm sure it'll be on a million coffee tables in a million interior design magazines. However, it's so much more than that. It's so much more than that.
So if you are in the mood for a beautiful book and a book that is going to challenge you and inspire you, and connect you to maybe parts of yourself that you wanted to be a bit more connected to — like me getting out in the garden, really watching things grow, and not just taking that energy, but giving back the energy — then this is definitely for you. Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive.
We will link to it in the show notes for this episode. And yeah, I just want to say a massive thank you to the team at Flamingo Estate, because it is a team. Yes, there's one person's name on the book. As somebody who's written two books, you know, it's a whole team behind you. And there is a whole team at Flamingo Estate, and I think they've done an absolutely brilliant job with this book.
So, that is it for today. The tool is Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive. Such a good book. If you can get your hands on it, go and read it. Go and borrow it from your library. Go and, you know, borrow it from a friend. Read it. Invest. It's beautiful.
So, that is it for today's episode. If you want to get a link to that book, you can head to the show notes for this episode, which is mydailybusiness.com/podcast493. And again, a shout out to my beautiful friend Phoebe, who bought me a copy of that for Christmas.
Thanks so much. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Podcast for a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates. Check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email at hello@mydailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram at mydailybusiness_. You can find us on TikTok at mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
