#awinewith Christine Mudavanhu
MEET Christine, Founder of Utano Global
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Christine, welcome to Smart tv. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Christine Mudavanhu (00:12):
Ah, thanks for having me.
Danielle Lewis (00:14):
So good. Look, let's kick straight in and tell everybody who you are and what you do.
Christine Mudavanhu (00:19):
Okay, so my full name is Ro Christina Nu. So I live in Queensland in the Sunshine State. I am a business owner, so I run the Tonno group of companies and we have two companies under that brand. The first one is called Utana Global, which a lot of people know me for, and that's my diversity, equity and inclusion consulting practice where I use virtual reality to train managers and leaders around how to create more equitable workplaces. The reason I use VR is diversity, equity and inclusion conversations are quite sensitive. So you want to create an environment that's psychologically safe for everybody, not just minority groups, but everybody, so that we can have open discussions. Because if you're going to drive change, organizational change or any sort of change, you have to start by being honest and people can only be honest when they feel safe.
(01:19):
So I use technology. I also have a board game. I also have other tools and techniques that we use in that space. Connected to that I run a, well, it's soon to be a not-for-profit. It's not yet. It's still a social enterprise. And that's really a labor of love, which is working at the grassroots with women of color who would otherwise struggle to get a job. And I have a program that I've written where I train them on small business, and this has been funded for a period, it's not coming into its fifth year. We've just had our last cohort for the year graduate. And this cohort was pretty interesting because apart from one woman, none of them spoke English. They all spoke Arabic.
Danielle Lewis (02:10):
Wow.
Christine Mudavanhu (02:12):
It was really challenging for me as a trainer because I've never been in that position before. There's usually one or two or the interpreters working with a minority of the class, the majority can speak. So this way it was completely the opposite. And I can tell you, Danielle, while you have an appreciation of how much language is a barrier from a superficial perspective, and you may do when you go into other countries and you hear them speaking their language, but you can afford to ignore it because you might be there as a tourist, whatever, but if you are living in it every single day, and this is impacting your businesses, is impacting your life. I can say it was a very humbling eight weeks. So it was a lot of learning. So that's under a company called Migrant Women in Business, of which I'm the executive director for that.
(03:01):
And most of our women are based in Victoria, but we are growing our client base here as well. And so what Migrant Women in Business does is we are a business. We are the only national business network that provides, I guess commercial opportunities and business mentorship to migrant women. We've got two commercial platforms, well one now made by many hands. So if you Google made by Many Hands, you'll be able to see. It's like an Etsy type of platform where a lot of the women that we work with, that's where they advertise, they wear. And so the question I always get asked is, well, why create your own platform and not use Etsy or what's available? If you understand the terms and conditions of Etsy and how it works for the target cohort of women that we are targeting, it just wouldn't work. A lot of these women are living from hand to mouth literally.
(03:58):
So they need to be paid instantly. They can't afford to wait 20 days or however, Etsy and eBay and all the others want you to wait. They need to be paid there. And then with the transaction, a lot of them have a lot of hidden fees that the women don't understand. Ours is one straightforward commission that they all understand upfront, which has taken off at the Get-go. We deal with things like GST on all of their purchases. So we worry about the backend. We also worry and support them, how to make themselves look, how do I put this? How to make their websites look commercial, right? And not like it's just sitting in some not look like something I created on a Friday night with a glass of wine. So you want to take a lot of their businesses out of the cottage industry. So we really want them competing, so they have to look the part through that.
(04:55):
We also expose them to wholesale opportunities. So we had the women be part of the Australian Gifting and hosting fair in Sydney and Melbourne this year. So that was a great achievement. So these are women we've been working with for about three years now, and some of them are into wholesaling. So if you ever wondered where the gifts that you see in the stores come from, this fair is where they come from. So it's for traders only. So it's people who are coming to look at what is the next exciting gift that can be put in their store and really set them apart as the gift store. So you've got your Australia posts, your big retail outlets that go there. And so we then subsidize some of the costs associated with that. And we also, because we provide the platform, the women then go in as a collective because they wouldn't be able to afford a stand on their own.
(05:49):
Those stands are thousands and thousands of dollars. They wouldn't be able to afford that because the only arenas big enough to Host Fair are the Sydney and Melbourne Convention Center. It doesn't even come to Brisbane. That's how big it is. So really excited that we managed to get some of our women into that. So that's Migrant Women in Business. Attached to that is my podcast, sisters in Color, so I love Sisters in Color. It's evolved over the years. It's had many different names and iterations as I've evolved and grown. But Sisters in Color as a title sits very well with me because for me it is a sisterhood that we are building globally. And so I bring, and that one's focused on female leadership in particular, female of color, so people from multicultural background, not just African, but the entire spectrum of multiculturalism. And so we come on that platform to have a conversation about how you've built your career.
(06:52):
It really is focused on that leadership and your economic and your career advancement. So that's the focus of Sisters in Color. There's a lot that I'm going to be doing with Sisters in Color next year, which is really, really exciting. Part of it is I actually applied for the Spark Grant to be able to with sisters in Color, just to sort of take it to that next level. My vision is to have a TEDx style platform with different tools and accessories for young girls of color who don't see enough women that look like them and sound like them in leadership, but they can go on here and access the mentors that they don't even know exist because a lot of these women are in leadership, but they're busy getting on with work. So how do we bring them into a platform where they're visible to the world? So I'm hoping to evolve sisters and color brand beyond just the podcast. And so the other arm of Tano Consulting, which is all linked to this as well, is my background is in compliance. So believe it or not, I worked for Queensland Government for too long, 14, 15 years.
(08:09):
I did a lot of health and human services compliant. And so out of that health and human services compliance, I've continued to do that work. And I've got a team of people where we support providers to remain compliant with things like NDIS, aged care community nursing, under the Department of Veterans Affairs. And with diversity, equity and inclusion, you are protecting minorities. And with minorities you are looking at compliance and having good providers is the way that you are able to level the playing field in terms of the market. Because if providers are not compliant and they go out of business, then vulnerable people have limited choice. So that's kind of a potted version of what I do.
Danielle Lewis (08:57):
Wow, that is a lot and hugely impressive. So congratulations on what you've built. That's absolutely enormous. So you mentioned you spent way too long in the Queensland government, so working in a government job, what was the catalyst for you moving from that government job to starting the first business and now expanding into all of these businesses?
Christine Mudavanhu (09:23):
Oh, look, I was always, my father's an entrepreneur, so I've always had a side hustle and I've always known I didn't belong in government. I ended up in government by accident, but I loved my time in government. I absolutely could not be doing what I'm doing now if I had not spent the time in government that I did. It really helped me to appreciate how legislation's made. It helped me to understand the landscape around inequity, social justice. My whole social justice bent only came about because I worked for Department of Communities for years. I worked on domestic and family violence policy, homelessness, and it got me to appreciate things that I had never encountered in my daily life. You read about stories in the newspaper, it's very different when you are writing policy and giving advice on matters of social disadvantage and how that kind of impacts you. And I guess when you come from Africa, people make a lot of assumptions around your background and growing up. And what people don't realize is for you to be overseas and come as a skilled migrant, there's a lot of resources that's actually required to be able to do that. So most people who come here have a very different upbringing back home. And it's always interesting when people say to me, so your education comes from Australia. And I'm like, why on earth would you think you don't know me?
(10:53):
Why did you make so many assumptions? And one of the things we do, myth bust ancestors and color is really just a lot of those discussions around third world education and how a lot of it has given us tools that have led us to actually be on the parts that we are on. And so what was the catalyst for me leaving government? I got fed up, I got fed up of banging against a ceiling. I wanted to be in senior executive management. It just wasn't happening at the rate that I wanted it to happen. And part of it for me was I couldn't see myself as a director general of a department. I looked at that life, you're constantly on the end of a phone with a minister, you're constantly jumping up and down to whoever the government of the day is. The government wakes up, does a machinery of government change? Queensland Police doesn't know what that is. Neither does health know what that is, but that's where the minister, when cabinet decides Queensland's going through it. Now
(12:07):
When they decide, and what's interesting is multicultural affairs is always the poor cousin. It gets moved around every single government change. So that department can never really solidify anywhere that says to you how much of a priority it actually is for a government department. That's disappointing. It is, but it's also the way the world is. And there's some inconvenient truths that a lot of us don't want to acknowledge. And I think over time as a person working in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, one of my business partners said to me the other day, oh, we had a conversation about going into a particular sector and construction was the sector, and this is all de-identified. So they contacted somebody within that sector who was really high up, who had a huge company, well, who runs a huge company, and asked questions around, oh, okay, so diversity, what is it that you do?
(13:04):
How does this link to your productivity? Blah, blah, blah. And basically they got the nonchalant responses that I get all the time. So they came back to me and they said, whoa, people are not interested. I said, no, not really. There's a lot of lip service that's paid to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but there's not a lot of understanding around how it actually impacts the bottom line. McKinsey's done a lot of research in the American market. Americans are very, very interested because it's linked to reputational risk. I dunno if you saw what happened with Zara in terms of their collection and how with the war in Israel, people were looking at their collection and they saw similarities with the bodies that were Google it. Zara,
Danielle Lewis (13:52):
Oh my god, this is stressing me out. Just I don't
Christine Mudavanhu (13:55):
Want to Google it. That's
Danielle Lewis (13:57):
Interesting. I mean it's really interesting and isn't it? It's something it's been playing on my mind as you've been speaking is, and you've just hit the nail on the head there. So people pay a lot of lip service and say, oh yes, it's a priority. And oh yes, we talk about it at the board meeting and we've got this in place or whatever it might be. But what is, okay, let's just go total back to basics. If someone's styling in, and you said this at the start as well, I think sometimes we're a little bit afraid to ask too many questions. We don't want to say the wrong thing or whatever it might be. So let's just go totally back to basics. What is diversity, equity and inclusion and why is it actually important?
Christine Mudavanhu (14:37):
Brilliant question. People ask that.
Danielle Lewis (14:43):
I think people are, I don't know. I think you're right. I think there's people that don't care hit the nail on the heads up. And I think that there are also people who do care but might be a little bit like, oh, have I missed the boat in asking the basic questions?
Christine Mudavanhu (14:56):
No, you're actually on the boat if you're asking the basic questions. So with DEI as that's the industry acronym, and B is attached there, which is now belonging. So diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, those are the common acronyms that you will see associated with it. The way I define it, diversity is about humanity. We have built a world where we have people fit into a one size fits all, yet that goes against the true essence of who we are. No two people have a fingerprint that is the same. So why do we approach our work? Why do we design cars and cities as though they intend to fit a single person type? A lot of that has to do with the history, things like colonization, all sorts of segregation that's happened over time to specific groups that have led us to where we are today.
(15:56):
So I think what is happening now is there's this awakening that's happening with people. And you saw a lot of it, particularly in Covid. I think Covid helped with a lot of things. It forced us to deal with our humanity and things that we just were not dealing with because for the first time we were all locked up. That's all we needed. And we were forced to deal with things that we really had been neglecting. And one of those is how we actually treat one another. So gender equity has always been something that is on the radar. So if you're talking back to basics, most people's understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion is around gender equity, the women empowerment movement, the suffrage is all of that. So people understand the history of gender equity. If I say to you, gender equity, you get it right?
(16:48):
You absolutely get it. You are on team female, and it's around giving women that equal, that equal voice, and women have been fighting for it. So if you take that and you extrapolate it to all the different demographic groupings that they are, so your LGBTQ plus community, women of color, myself, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, myself, so anybody who is in a position of difference, and you would be in that, we all have layers of privilege. And I think why people are challenged by the diversity argument is that sometimes when people's privilege is challenged, everybody's kind of like, oh my God, what do we do? It's frightened. And then you get the other extreme where people are ashamed of their privilege and all of this, and that's not the intention either. So the intention is for all of us to build a heightened awareness of the space that we occupy in this world.
(17:56):
And that space comes with certain advantages and disadvantages and the advantages that that space comes with. How do I leverage that to lessen the disadvantages in other spaces in the areas that I have influence over? And if everybody took ownership of just that and stopped going on about ending world peace, thinking about world peace, just stop trying to save the children in Africa. Africa will get its shit together at. So, but that becomes the default, right? It's like, oh, I need to run off and save the kids in Africa. And I'm like, well, whatever. I never saw World Vision truck in my life go. But that does not mean to say kids in Africa are not starving. Kids in Australia are starving. So it's like, but you don't have that much influence over that Bill Gates does because he's got a truckload of money and he's doing something with his truckload of money.
(18:52):
Whether you agree with it or not, different story, but that's a different budget. But what do I, Christine, with my privilege and my sphere of influence? So where are my advantages? My advantages is I've been well educated, I've had the privilege of traveling. You might find this a strange advantage, but in the colorism spectrum, you find that we all treat each other differently based on the color of our skin. We know that it's conversation. We really scared to have, particularly in the multicultural community about how we treat each other differently based on the color of our skin. It's not just a black and white thing, it's across the spectrum. If you talk to Indian communities and they're honest, they will tell you, this exists if you talk to Chinese communities, if you talk to Japanese communities. So there is this constant, lighter is prettier, lighter is more intelligent, all of these things which are completely stupid, but that is the way the world works.
(19:55):
You have to acknowledge that. So how do you then use, so if I acknowledge that, and if I acknowledge that in the space that I occupy, I have certain advantages. I also have certain challenges. But how do I use my advantages to overcome my challenge? So say I've come from a marginalized background where I've had to struggle, I've had to strive. I've built resilience, I understand people skills at all different demographics because I've had to learn to communicate in all different ways. I'm resourceful. So I know that when I'm starting a business, I need to allocate and ration my resources and I know that I need to be innovative because I don't have the trust fund behind me to start my business. So that gives me a cutting edge. How do I then leapfrog that into what it is that I want to in? So at that essence, that's why diversity matters, right?
(20:52):
Because the way when I come into an organization that I look at a problem and the way you would look at a problem and the way somebody else would, it's completely different. So this is what organizations are missing, right? There is a reason why you should have diversity on your board. One, CEO, I dunno if you watched the podcast Diary of A CEO with Steven Buttler, he was interviewing, and I've completely forgotten the CEO he was interviewing, but she said something that stuck with me. She said, listen, while diversity is, diversity is important because if you do not have a D diverse board, you and your team of happy yeses are going to walk each other to the end of a plank and fall off the edge of a cliff because you're so busy saying yes to each other. You can't see that you've gotten to the end of the cliff and you're going over.
(21:39):
So that's why it matters, because if you have me on your board, and I have you on my board, I have so many different people with so many different experiences, so many different lenses, the way we process problems, the way we come up with solutions is different. And that will always result in a better product or services. But the problem, while people don't want to go there, is people don't want to share power. And if you think about it, the access of power is still controlled by the same people who are of a homogenous demographic regardless of where you go. And there is not that wanting to share power. So if I now start to acknowledge that I can add value, I no longer can now continue to justify why there are barriers to keeping you out. But if I ignore you and say you are irrelevant in terms of your diversity, I can continue holding onto my power.
Danielle Lewis (22:36):
I think it's so interesting because you said right at the start there that we're all used to gender diversity conversations. There are now quotas in some industries where they have to meet certain, and it was a really funny conversation that I had with my husband actually, who's high up in the mining world, and they now have gender diversity quotas, and this is exactly what he said. He said, the problem with that is that that's not diversity. Gender diversity is not what this means. But people have put this arbitrary thing on, which I think has stifled conversations because it does just come back to, we've all been talking about gender diversity for such a long time. That's kind of just, oh, yes, the women have been trying banging on about this for years that we aren't actually having the bigger, broader conversation.
Christine Mudavanhu (23:25):
We aren't. And look, quotas have their place. I've had this conversation with people where people don't understand why would you have quotas? So for me, I take a slightly different stance on it. The numbers are not there. And if you think about it historically, before you did have quotas, how did the men get to all be there by themselves? That's because the women stayed at home, right? Yep, true. It wasn't written as a quota. So all you're trying to do is even the playing field. And it's not about equality, it's about equity. So it's equitable treatment. And sometimes I need a longer plank than you or you need a longer plank than me because where we're starting from is different. So a kid who's grown up in an African country who's had no education, who didn't have the stability of family that I had and support and all of the opportunities I've had, we're not starting from the same playing field.
Danielle Lewis (24:23):
There is
Christine Mudavanhu (24:24):
No planet. So why should this person not be given a longer lever to try and get up to? That's equity, right? That's like saying the shortest person in the building should not be given a step to see over the ladder when the six foot two person is already sitting, the six foot two person doesn't see the ladder, doesn't need the ladder, sorry, they already can see, but the person who's five foot does. So I think why people avoid all of the conversation is that it's very complex. There is no one size fits all. It's a complex conversation, but it's a conversation we need to have in Australia. We shy away from the race conversation because we scared to have it. So when we had to have it as part of the referendum and what was going on with all of that, everybody was kind of cringing and whatever. But America's having that conversation. I'm not saying it's healthy the way they're having it, but they're having the conversation. And when you start to read more into what stops us from having the conversation, we have to actually acknowledge how did we get here to be needing to be having that conversation? How do we have a humanity that treats part of its owners less than we are the only species that does that, and we are top of the food chain,
(25:42):
And so none of us want to sit back in that discomfort that is very uncomfortable. I remember once around a dinner table saying to people, I sat back and I was like the audacity of the British empire. They sat down or the Ottoman Empire or whoever in terms of conquering worlds. If you think about the audacity of that, you have to convince yourself that you are so superior to somebody else that you have the right to invade, take and then your, and make it illegal for them to ask for anything and come through you to ask for things that always rightfully belong to them. That's the world we live in. It's crazy.
Danielle Lewis (26:26):
It is incredible, isn't it? I'm just putting myself in that time and thinking, how on earth could a human do that? But it is exactly what happened. And it wasn't just singular either. It happened quite a lot. And this is exactly, no, no, and it's really interesting because I think too, what you said is we have to have the conversations. The conversations are uncomfortable and we shy away from them. But if we actually don't have them, and I think we actually need to have them imperfectly, as I said, I was like, okay, let's go back to basics. Let's explain this. I feel like we have to sit in that discomfort. We actually have to, if we don't, nothing's going to change.
Christine Mudavanhu (27:13):
And there also has to be a willingness on both sides to sit in that discomfort. And Chimamanda, who is a Nigerian author and a poet and a scholar, she was the keynote at the opening of the Belgian Museum of Arts. It's a very famous speech where she, I guess the strength it took for her to deliver that speech was phenomenal. So she sat down and she basically talked about the fact that everything, all the artifacts, this was a museum, gorgeous, but all of those artifacts were illegally gotten.
Danielle Lewis (27:55):
Wow.
Christine Mudavanhu (27:57):
They all belonged to African tribes who are too barbaric to look after their own things that they create.
Danielle Lewis (28:05):
It's mind blowing, isn't
Christine Mudavanhu (28:07):
It blowing? But that is the world we live in. And she was at the space which looked absolutely gorgeous, dressing world leaders. And so until we can sit in the discomfort of our history of how we got here, colonization is one aspect. Look at how we've treated people with disabilities, right? Yeah. Just look at that history, right? We've talked about women and that history talks about race and that history. Look at how we've treated the LGBTQ plus community. The list is endless. So anything that threatens that access of power, anything that threatens that gets marginalized, gets ostracized and gets treated as less than, and over the years, so I remember one person said to me, well, once you're in the company, given why should there be quotas? Why should there be identified places? For example, aboriginal communities have identified places. And I'm like, okay, think about this.
(29:12):
You have managed to get, and everybody's like, well, I've gone through the whole merit selection process, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. You have, but can we just have a frank discussion about who created that merit selection process in the first place? And you have never been through a door that you were told you could not enter, and you've had centuries of history of being told you were ineligible for, right? You've always been able to enter. So obviously you've built those skills and obviously you've built that. So the lever that you need to get through the door is much closer. And so it's amazing how then people look at you a bit differently and it's like, well, you didn't think about all of that when you thought about that. And the reason people don't think about it, it's not front of mind. It's not something that we discuss. People keep saying, well, how long do I have to keep apologizing for colonization? How long do I have to keep apologizing for? I didn't ask you to apologize. I asked you to get educated. I asked you to understand what role you can contribute into the world and move things forward. I asked you,
Danielle Lewis (30:16):
And is that your advice? So that was the question on the tip of my tongue is so where to from here? And especially as small business owners who are listening in, what role do we play now? How do we actually take action?
Christine Mudavanhu (30:32):
First of all, be aware. Educate yourself. One thing that was really disappointing about the referendum, I didn't care whether you voted yes or no, but I think you owed it to yourself to educate yourself about that vote so you understood what actually was on there. Not propaganda press. It wasn't that hard to find that information if you were interested. So be interested, find out information. Look at your advertising and your marketing message. Who are you excluding from your products and services? Hairdresser, do you cater for me? Probably not. I'm a client, right?
Danielle Lewis (31:04):
Absolutely.
Christine Mudavanhu (31:05):
Get yourself educated, right? There is a whole community as a small business owner that you could actually pivot to just by simply changing your messaging and some of the images that you have on your site and some of the products that you stock. And sometimes the transition between that is so tiny, but the sales can be so huge and ask questions. Just do exactly what you're saying. Ask questions. What do I need to know? I'm in this business. Who am I excluding? Who is not represented in my decision making, in my thought process? How do I think about that? If you're in a clothing, if you're in a line of clothing, for example, how do you think about adaptable wear for people with a disability? Right? Do you think about that as a line of clothing that you could carry, right? Or even if you don't carry it yourself, do you have affiliates that you could just then have bank links to through your website, earn extra money to affiliate marketing? These are things that small business owners can actually do, which will a benefit them as a business, but make them just more aware. And like I said, it's about controlling what's in your purview. Stop trying to end poverty in Africa. That's,
Danielle Lewis (32:27):
Leave that to Bill Gates.
Christine Mudavanhu (32:31):
But on a serious note, because that's a cop out as far as I'm concerned, because
Danielle Lewis (32:35):
Oh, I agree. It just palms it off to, it's too big a problem for me to
Christine Mudavanhu (32:39):
Solve. It's big a problem when you can actually, as you rightly say, as a small business owner, there are very simple small things that you can make. Watch the kind of language that you use, educate yourself, understand why pronouns are important. It's not just about the lgbtq plus community, but for example, if I had said to you, and you'd never met me, my name is, you wouldn't know if I was male female, you would have no idea. But if I put the pronoun on the end of my name, you know that. But if I do that, I immediately get associated with the LGBTQ plus community, which you're sitting there and you're like, no, it's not binary. The conversation is complex. And you need to be able to be open to having a complex conversation that at times is going to make you really uncomfortable. You need to sit in that discomfort and actually realize you don't know, because I get challenged every single day and I have to sit in very uncomfortable conversations in very uncomfortable places. But that's the only way we grow.
Danielle Lewis (33:49):
Oh my God, I love it. And look, I mean, I feel like that's a metaphor outside of this diversity, equity, inclusion conversation that we're having. I love that idea of just discomfort equals growth. And I think that it's relevant to the discussion that we've had today. But I know as well we haven't talked about anything, the business side of things, which I would love to discuss with you as well. So let's just quickly pivot to there because I'm super interested in, obviously we've talked about the work that you do and how important it is, how business owners, how we as individuals, as humans can start to take some action. I'm super interested in your journey as a business owner. So this is a huge mission that you are on, going from government employee to business owner. What was that transition like for you? How have you found being a woman in business?
Christine Mudavanhu (34:42):
There's a lot of learning like, oh my gosh, I was doing my business. But that's different when you've got a salary that covers the bill. And so when I finally took the plunge, because my business just wasn't going anywhere out of hobby territory, and I was fully committed to my job, but then I wasn't because I wanted to do this other thing, so it just felt like I was being disingenuous. So I made a decision, which you look back and you think, oh, that could have been financially catastrophic. But for a while it was. But it, you have to make that decision at some point that what is the best interest for me? So I really wanted to grow and I have a vision for my life, not only just from the economic impact that I want to make in the world, but just the things I want for myself. And I think as women, we are scared to talk about that as well. I like a good lifestyle.
Danielle Lewis (35:46):
Me too. Thank you. Hands up here. Yeah.
Christine Mudavanhu (35:49):
So I want to be able to afford that. I want to be able to afford the way I want life to look like for me, the way the opportunities, I want to be able to afford my son. I love to travel. I love to travel in style. I love all of these things and they cost money. And so part of my motivation was to increase my economic wealth, although it, it's gone backwards a bit. So that was another, which
Danielle Lewis (36:16):
Does happen when you do make that transition. Sometimes I think there's this chasm that you cross that's just like, I just got to get to the other side.
Christine Mudavanhu (36:24):
I'm in the process of crossing the chasm and it's like, okay, on the prize. So making that transition has been really interesting for me. I've learned a lot along the way. And one of the biggest lessons I've learned is really just to better understand myself and where my skills are best served. So one of the things I read was outsourcing and learning outsource really, really well. And that's one thing that I'm learning. So with my neurodivergent, I know that there's certain mundane tasks that just never get done that have to be done that I need to outsource because the next thing is the tax man's going to be calling me this and the other thing. And then we just not going to have a business. So I've started to outsource a lot of those things. And obviously it's difficult when you're starting because you don't quite have the income, but now we live in an age where you've got your Fiverr, you can outsource labor to the Philippines, all of those kinds of things. So I've been taking advantage of that, working with contractors where I can. The other thing was having a clear proposal around what my product is. That was probably the hardest journey, and I don't think we talk about that enough, is when you start, you have an idea. So I work in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. Fantastic.
(37:48):
What do you actually sell? Do people want? So that
Danielle Lewis (37:53):
How to get that end person to actually understand the value that you bring to the table
Christine Mudavanhu (37:59):
And for them to pay for it. And how do you get it so simple and clear that a fifth grader understands it so that your clients, you're not having to explain that. So I've been on that journey of narrowing my product range and how do you understand your market? Some of the products I was putting out on the Australian market, they just were not ready for it. And so I was on a hiding to nothing. While it sounds fantastic when we talk in a podcast, when I go out there to actually try and sell it, nobody's buying.
(38:26):
So I've had to really think about, okay, what is it that people will buy that will advance support the things that I'm looking at? So I'm learning new skills, how to be a content creator, how to podcast, all of these skills I'm having to learn in order to actually get products to market that have a retail value associated with them that can generate revenue. We had to pivot the migrant women in business from being a for-profit to being a not-for-profit. As much as I hated doing that ethically from perspective, because I was like, these are serious business women, so we want to get the charity mindset away, but unfortunately the people who have money and want to invest being white knights, so I know that's not politically to say, but your company, your company becomes more marketable to them. Even when you're applying to government, the first thing you get asked about is are you're an NFP?
(39:41):
No, I'm a social enterprise. Or you're a for-profit, not interested. So the minute you become not for-profit and you get the charity status, so for example, I can now, there's a whole lot of grants the company can apply for that it didn't apply for before. So that's with Migrant Women in business. But with Utana Global, what I've now had to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion, like I said to you in Australia, we're not having the conversation. So I pivoting to global markets, the US and Europe. So that's my mission for next year because I'm not going to make any money here simply because people pay lip service and the market's just not there. And this is not just me, this is me talking to my colleagues. And so I decided that that's why my company used to be Utana Consulting. That's why I dropped the consulting to Global so that I can have that global reach. So that's part of my journey in business, which is learning where the market is at. And there's no hate or anything associated with that. It's just where the market is that on its journey. And
Danielle Lewis (40:47):
It's a great lesson because it's every industry. I think there's plenty of industries where people have said, I can change this for the better, and the industry doesn't care and they don't buy into it. And that goes across everything, sustainability, innovation, technology. I know so many people who have tried to implement change in areas where people have just not been interested. But the self-awareness to actually reflect, to do the market research, to have the conversations and to pivot so that you can build a profitable business that's just as you said, that's just the way the world works.
Christine Mudavanhu (41:25):
That is definitely the way the world works. So I think for me, it's just been that journey and also bringing alongside people who've got different skills to myself, to work alongside me through different arrangements and just growing and also just trusting myself. I think when I started initially, I didn't trust myself enough, doubted myself, and therefore I had to then retrace and reframe certain things. And I think as women, we don't trust ourselves enough. My brother has just joined me as one of my business partners in Tana Global. He is not doing that, no. And he has a quarter of the knowledge at the moment than I do, but the amount of confidence that he has, and in a short space of time, I've just pumped him with information to educate himself about this world. He comes from the finance world. So he's looking at the business from a finance perspective, and he's talking a whole different set of questions, which I don't normally ask, but the difference between our approach to new clients and just our approach.
(42:38):
It really is interesting to me because I work in DEI and I know some of the challenges that women we face. And as women, we have to be a hundred percent and a PhD and another de before step out the door just before we'll bother getting out of bed. Yeah. It's like I have to have 20 doctorates before I get up. I get out bed and do anything. And so with that, I've now learned to just have the courage to trust myself and really just have the confidence to build myself up as a speaker. That's my other journey this year. So I've joined a speakers bureau to really get myself out there speaking about my message, because that builds my brand as well, and really focus on building that brand, growing that brand, and not being afraid to do that. Because I've sat there and I've sat through people's trainings and I've been like, wait, I do this, I do this better. Not arrogantly, but I'm kind of like, you paid good money for that.
(43:51):
So it's kind of been really, really interesting that journey. But I think the things that I've learned since leaving government is to trust myself to half the time it takes me to do a task. In government, you have to do a task twice as long because the consequences are huge, right? When you write a cabinet submission, not even 50, a hundred people look over it before it gets anyway. It could even be 200 depending on the issue at hand. In business, you don't have that luxury. So learn how to make decisions quickly and move forward, fail fast, fail forward. Coming from a government perspective, you're very conservative, and so you don't want to fail. You want to make sure it's perfect. The world doesn't care. They don't have time for perfection. So put out your minimal viable product and just get on with it. You're competing with people who are putting quarter baked things out there and testing them and falling over and learning and learning. So by the time you put your perfect product out there, they've had so much market testing and so much, and your perfect product is redundant. So that would be my other big lesson that I've learned. And the other one is just be crystal clear what your product is and that there actually is the market for it.
Danielle Lewis (45:13):
You are so incredible. Christine. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your journey with the Spark community. That has been very impressive.
Christine Mudavanhu (45:24):
Oh, thank you. Daniel. I love, I'm very new to the Spark community, so I'm learning. I love the fact that we have, I've joined other communities before that are not as connected. There seems to be something on that I can tune in and just learn for the membership fee. I keep thinking, is that really all they asked me to make?
Danielle Lewis (45:43):
Amazing. Well, that's good. That's all we're here for. We're here to create value and to lift women up. So I'm absolutely stoked that you are enjoying it and getting value out of it.
Christine Mudavanhu (45:53):
No, definitely. Definitely getting a lot of value. Very new to the community, but looking forward to getting value and how I can also contribute to the community Absolutely. In the opportunity. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (46:05):
Absolutely. And that's it. There's so many opportunities to take everything we've talked about today and make sure that that message gets in front of more people. So thrilled to have you on the show, and we'll absolutely make sure 2024, we get you more ingrained into the Spark community.
Christine Mudavanhu (46:19):
Thank you so much. Lovely to be on your show today.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
