#awinewith Mikheala Davies
MEET Mikheala, Founder of Twenty Fifth
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
And Mikheala, thank you so much for joining us on Spark tv.
Mikheala Davies (00:11):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
Danielle Lewis (00:14):
I'm so excited because I was stalking your website and I think your name, the business name is so clever, but I don't want to give anything away. So let's start with who you are and what you do.
Mikheala Davies (00:28):
Yeah, yeah, so my name's Mikheala Davies. So basically I created a company called 25th and 25th. We've created a platform that basically connects our very busy clients with on demand errand runners and personal assistance as well. So you can kind of think of Uber, but instead of ordering a ride, you're actually ordering for somebody else to take care of your to-do list for you. So the premise around 25th is that we all have 24 hours in the day, but when 24 isn't enough, we can be your 25th.
Danielle Lewis (01:10):
I love that so much. I'm like, sign me up. So thank you. So good and so clever on so many levels. I absolutely love it. How did you get into this? How did you start the business?
Mikheala Davies (01:26):
Yeah, so basically I started my adult working life as both an artist and illustrator and that took me over to London in the uk. Then I had a bit of a family emergency that brought me back to Australia for a while. And because I wasn't exactly planning for that, there was sort of a transitionary period where I was still servicing my English clients, but still needed to create a bit more of a base back home just with the time differences and whatnot. So to do that, I would supplement my income a little bit just with odd jobs, and that was mostly kind of supporting single moms who were in very demanding jobs and careers. So they were in exec level decisions but didn't necessarily have family support or maybe they were single as well, which kind of posed the question to me, how do single moms and parents in general, if they have very demanding careers or they just don't even have flexible working hours, how do they manage to also keep up with those domestic duties as well and make sure that they left their children when they want to or need to? Yeah, it just didn't make sense to me unless you've had family support, which is just sometimes not available to everybody, but it's also in some cases not exactly desirable as well. So we just sort of thought, well, you know what? There really needs to be a trusted service and system in place for that demographic. And so 25th was sort of our solution to that.
Danielle Lewis (03:25):
I think it's so cool because you're so right. I mean, I think about myself and I'm not a mom, but I can't even keep working up with my own life.
Mikheala Davies (03:35):
Me too. I really am baffled by it. I just don't know how you do it. And I think probably the answer is, well, it just comes down to sacrifice and that's just not fair really, in my opinion. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (03:50):
I love it so much. That's so cool. If I wanted to get help, get some errands run or anything, what's the scope of what you actually can offer people?
Mikheala Davies (04:02):
Yeah, it's really, really broad. So our target market I would say is probably single moms probably in their forties or so, just with those demanding careers, but we also do B2B services as well. And also one-off events as well. If you need bar stuff, you need dry cleaning, you need your kids picked up and taken off to swimming lessons or what have you. It's very, very broad and that's because we're able to keep a really diverse team as well with different experiences, different kind of skill sets so we can just kind of draw from that where we need to. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (04:42):
That's so cool. I love that too because you're right, it's not, sometimes it's not just the business things that we need help with, it's also the personal things as well, and I just think in this day and age, everything just blends. So it's just a matter of I need help with something today, otherwise something's got to give.
Mikheala Davies (05:02):
Yeah, that's exactly it, and that's kind of what we're finding in our client base as well. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (05:08):
That's so cool. I love it. And how did you go about that transition? So moving from the creative side to this kind of platform business, what was that like for you becoming a business owner, transitioning maybe from less creative work? How has that been?
Mikheala Davies (05:28):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think I did things just a little bit backwards where I would kind of consider that business was sort of a hobby for me. And then my full-time work was in creative fields, so I was just constantly listening to podcasts and reading books and not really doubling in business at all, but just finding it really interesting and a really different form of creativity as well. I think it creative and exciting, and so it just sort of captured my attention. And then, yeah, it wasn't a drastic change to be honest, because both of these are fairly flexible on my time as well, so I can still get through those art commissions, but then also taking on 25th side of business as well. So yeah, it wasn't too jarring to be honest with you. It was fairly smooth.
Danielle Lewis (06:29):
I love what you just said though, that business is creative and I guess I tend to think of myself as not very creative, but you're probably right, the amount of things that you have to problem solve, come up with ideas, there is inherent creativity in that, isn't there?
Mikheala Davies (06:46):
Absolutely. Yeah, I think so anyway. I think, yeah, if you've got sort of a bit of a creative edge, you're probably going to go buy in business as well.
Danielle Lewis (06:56):
I love that. That's so good. It's nice to know that a lot of people come into business without having I guess the formal business training and it's kind of nice to know that, I dunno if you need that, you can kind of learn that stuff. There's blog articles, there's videos, there's consultants. It's like being able to show up every day and bring your perspective and be creative and come up with the things and the solutions is probably the important ingredient.
Mikheala Davies (07:22):
Yeah, exactly. I think if you want to learn something in this world, it's just never better. It's so exciting. So if you've got that driver already in you, you will find the answers. It's available to you. It's really not like there's huge costly overheads to make that happen as well. If you've got a question, it's pretty much a Google or YouTube video away. Yeah, no, I think it's a really exciting time.
Danielle Lewis (07:52):
I totally agree. People often ask me, where do I start? How do I start a business? And it is funny. It's like there's never been an easier, or maybe it's not easy, there's never been a better time to launch into a new business because everything you need is at your fingertips. Everything in a decade ago, you'd have to pay for web servers and be coding websites, and it was crazy. Now it's just like, oh, I can make one in an hour templates. There's so many tools and resources out there.
Mikheala Davies (08:23):
Yeah, exactly. And you think about the cost of making a business. Previously it was tens of thousands of dollars just for a website, and there wasn't really a DIY kind of platform that you were going to. So unless you had the skills, which again, you would've probably needed a formal degree to get that skillset. Yeah, it's just awesome.
Danielle Lewis (08:50):
Yes, I love that so much. That's so good. And so I guess, yeah, just reflecting on the growth of 25, sorry, 25th, how has that been for you? So what have you done to I guess grow awareness and on the sales and marketing side, how have you tried different things and experimented with different things to help it grow?
Mikheala Davies (09:16):
So on that, I'm actually really big on sustainable and responsible scaling. I think there's a little bit of a narrative in particularly startup culture that's as big as you can go scale, scale, scale for what reason? We don't know, but just do it as hard and fast as possible
Danielle Lewis (09:43):
At all costs.
Mikheala Davies (09:44):
At all costs, at all costs. And particularly to your team as well. Yes, bear the grunt of that. You
Danielle Lewis (09:51):
Should not sleep. You should describe
Mikheala Davies (09:53):
This business exactly like the whole 10 x thing. So I'm not really deterring from that if that's what gets you going, more power to you. But I do think it can be a really dangerous method of business as well because you can really let things slip very quickly and I think it can really be the death of a lot of companies. So yeah, I haven't been too focused on scaling for scaling's sake and also being a marketplace, you kind of need to control both the supply of what you're providing, but also the demand because you need to make sure that you have both ends kind of on a fairly balanced scale. So if you go really hard at marketing, you just might not be able to supply all the work that you just did and that came through and internally just kind of wrecking your reputation a little bit, which yeah, we really value. So it is been pretty, well, I say slow and steady, but that things have been, it's
Danielle Lewis (11:11):
Still been crazy.
Mikheala Davies (11:14):
It hasn't been with real intention there. But something that I would say on that is probably the biggest and maybe more surprising kind of growth that we've had is just making sure that we partner with other businesses that are also doing really well. So they're kind of in their younger years, but you think, oh no, you guys are serious. You're really doing well because then you are not doing things that are quite jarring to the business. It's actually quite natural growth where they're expanding. So you are meeting their demands so that we're already there. You're not kind of hitting the ground running, going into something completely new. It's those partnerships that when you're going really well, I think it's a really great thing. So yeah, we've benefited from that. Definitely.
Danielle Lewis (12:07):
I love that. I think that partnerships are underrated. I think a lot of the times we think that we've got to spend money on ads or post a reel every day or whatever it is, but I love that aligning to people who are complimentary obviously, but also doing great things and will align to your brand as well.
Mikheala Davies (12:33):
Yeah, exactly. And you must have found that with your brands as well. It's a really good thing.
Danielle Lewis (12:39):
Totally. And it's so nice because I love, it's on the similar vein of why scale for scale's sake. It's such a nice collaboration of a competition. It's such a nice way to do business as well, just thinking about that there are other people that will succeed if you succeed. So being able to partner with another business and have each other's interests at heart is so good. I mean, I've just come off the back of, so Spark is obviously a community for women in business and we've just partnered with another community for women in business and sponsored their annual pitch competition. We have the same goal. We want to support women and it's not competitive. We both have our different approaches to the way we run our membership communities. And I'm personally a part of four different membership communities. So it's so nice that you can actually work with people who are in your industry and it's like we all have a common goal. We can all help each other succeed. So it actually just feels better as well.
Mikheala Davies (13:43):
I like that a lot. Yeah, I really like that. It feels much better. It seems much more aligned and probably a better way moving forward. I think maybe we're sort of transitioning out of competition and me against them, it's a bit more collaborative. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (14:03):
That's so good. I love that. And it's just, I guess sales and marketing is one of those areas where I think you're right, it does have a lot of that scale for scale's sake, vibe to it, and people are kind of sitting at their desks every day going, what the hell do I do today to make more money and grow and get sales? And it's nice when you find the couple of things that work that feel good that you can just chip away at or do more of. And if partnerships is such a great example of one of those things where it's like you could do a partnership every week if that was something that worked for you, there's no reason why you can't just double down on that. It's your strategy and have a fantastic feeling sales strategy. It's awesome.
Mikheala Davies (14:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Danielle Lewis (14:51):
That's so good. And what about, I always like to ask people if over your time in business you've come up against any challenges that you've faced that have kind of, I guess changed the way you do business or lessons learned that you can impart with the Spark community?
Mikheala Davies (15:09):
Yeah, definitely. So probably our biggest challenge to date is probably just navigating a really tight labor market that's kind of been there since we started. So we started really late 2019, so that was pretty much spot on covid.
Danielle Lewis (15:30):
I was like, great timing.
Mikheala Davies (15:32):
It's perfect time to start. So yeah, that's kind of when we got going. And then I think we've seen sort of the labor market ramifications pretty much from then on. In saying that, it's probably managed to be our best opportunity though, because once you do get that team, once we procure the dream team and we're ready to go, everybody else is in the same boat. And so you can say, oh yeah, we've got labor, it's available, and the team is more than happy to do it. That can be quite beneficial. So yes, sort of a double-edged sword for us.
Danielle Lewis (16:15):
Totally. So how have you gone about recruiting the dream team and do you have any strategies that you have used to attract great talent to the business?
Mikheala Davies (16:28):
So I think we were just really lucky to begin with and we found a few people on just a little bit more of a random basis, but something that I'm really big on just philosophically to be honest, is rather than I think a better method than having a high turnaround, it's just making sure that your team wants to stay. So that obviously comes down to pay. That's a really big thing, but there's other ways you support your team as well, really on a day-to-day basis to make them feel really valued in what they're doing really contributes, but also that at the end of the day, somebody's got their back as well. So we were actually probably most of our team is made up from people that work for us that recommend that to other people as well. Which you would only do if you kind of felt like it was a good situation, I guess.
Danielle Lewis (17:27):
Yes, totally. Referrals are the best. Yes,
Mikheala Davies (17:30):
That's kind of been our method as well. We've also looked at making sure that we're partnering with other local community groups that are helping out those who have newly migrated to Australia or refugee women who really do quite well with flexible working hours. Maybe the nine to five is not soothing them just yet. So yeah, that's how we've collected the team so far.
Danielle Lewis (18:04):
I love that. That's really interesting, isn't it? I feel like there's just the old way of doing things, which is like, I need someone, so I'm just going to put an ad on Seek or I'm going to put something on LinkedIn. But I love that actually thinking about who would be suitable for your business and going to places where you might find them that are a little bit different. It reminds me of, I had a great conversation with someone about attracting more women to tech roles, and they were kind of like, well, we just don't get the applications. And it's like, well no you, you're just not going to places where women in tech. Are you going to their networking groups, their meetup groups to the universities? No, you're just going through the old model, which is put a job ad up, and that's not attracting female applicants. So it's like if you really care about changing things, then you have to go to where they are. You actually have to go to some effort. So I love that you're doing that and actually thinking about who would be right and how you can actually get in front of them.
Mikheala Davies (19:08):
And just again, a little bit of creativity goes really far as well. If you are looking for a very select group of skill sets and you're just really struggling to find that, create it just to get those people who at least have the interest there and you can see the spark that's there and just support those people in gaining that skillset that you are after and create that environment where people do want to stay. And you'll probably have much better returns doing it that way, I think. Anyway.
Danielle Lewis (19:43):
No, I totally agree with you. I love it. So what's next for you? What do you see coming up in 2024 for the business?
Mikheala Davies (19:53):
Yeah, so it looks like we're probably looking at, we're mostly Canberra based in the A CT and we'd like to expand much further, but mainly focusing on Sydney and Melbourne and a few other places as well. And so yeah, it looks like that's probably on the cards for us,
Danielle Lewis (20:12):
So good. I love it so much. And last question for you, I always like to leave the podcast and our community with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, has there been a piece of advice that you would impart to other women in business to help them on their journey?
Mikheala Davies (20:36):
Yeah, so I think so on that, I think the first piece of advice that I would give is that it's probably best to go into business when you really kind of have an niche that you need to scratch for whatever reason. There's some kind of driver there that you think it's just bothering you and you kind of have to do it. I think follow those impulses rather than ones like, oh yeah, it's a good idea for X, Y, z. I think it's one that just really grabs you for whatever reason. You don't need to rationalize that. But yeah, something that's got real pull to it I think is a good one. Maybe the second piece of advice that I would give as well is I think for small business in particular, it's quite a bad way to make money, in my opinion.
(21:35):
Yes, it can be really tricky. So if you've got some financial constraints or you've got a lot of responsibility, you've got a family or you've got a furry family, even that feels can be really bad. Yes, totally. I would just say question, the narrative that's kind of thrown around at the moment, because I feel like a lot of that is around, if you give yourself a plan B, you're giving yourself a way out, you're planning to fail, essentially. I would just say just give it a go. Give yourself the grace where you can just experiment and work on that on the weekends and after work, because at the end of the day, the data isn't really in your favor and that's not necessarily up to you as well. Most businesses fail, they fail pretty quickly as well, and that's not always just going to be up to you.
(22:40):
So yeah, if you could just give yourself the grace of a bit of flexibility for the future, if this idea doesn't work out, you can pivot to the next, you can do the next thing, you're not totally out of the game would kind of be my advice. And the third piece of advice that I would give as well, and the final one I promise, is just making sure that you choose your romantic partner really, really carefully. And I think it's even more important than choosing your business partner because it's just so foundational. And if you have somebody in your life who's making that life a lot harder or just not being supportive, I really think that can make or break things for people. So that would be kind of my advice. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (23:36):
I love those pieces of advice so much. I could not agree with you more. I know it's really interesting, the narrative, exactly what you said, that you've got to go all in, you've got to burn the bridges, you've got to whatever, whatever. But a lot of businesses don't make money in the early days. There's so much foundational work that you've got to do. And if you don't have that runway, don't have that cash coming in to pay the bills. There's so much more stress on yourself on the business to make it work when there's plenty of things that you could be doing to start smaller to chip away, like you said before, work after work on the weekends, whatever that looks like before you actually take the leap. And I do love that as well. So many times people are like, well, if the idea didn't work, then I'm a failure, but it's so many ideas don't work.
(24:33):
So if you've given yourself that foundation and flexibility to move to the next one, how cool is that that you've got that backing you back yourself to then switch up, oh, okay, that didn't work, but I learned X, Y, Z. Now I'll try this. Okay, that didn't work, but now I know X, Y, Z. Now try this. And then that's the thing that works. And then you take the leap. Oh my God, you've just given yourself so much more space to make it happen, and you may not have gotten there if you then went, oh my God, the first idea didn't work, so now I have to go and find another job. Yeah, I think that's the best advice ever for people starting out.
Mikheala Davies (25:09):
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And consequently as well, you're probably less likely to double down on an idea that's not working if you don't feel kind of in the corner. So that would be it for me.
Danielle Lewis (25:25):
Yeah, that is so good. You are right too. I think you're right. If it's like, oh my God, this has to work, then yeah, you can back a bad idea because you're just like, I don't know what else to do.
Mikheala Davies (25:35):
Exactly. You're all in sunken. Cost fallacy is really raging, just
Danielle Lewis (25:41):
Oh my God. Totally.
Mikheala Davies (25:43):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (25:44):
Oh, I love it so much. You are absolutely incredible. Mikheala, thank you so much
Mikheala Davies (25:51):
For
Danielle Lewis (25:51):
Sharing your insights and wisdom with the Spark community. So impressed. And yeah, can't wait to check in again in 12 months and see how world domination is going for you.
Mikheala Davies (26:02):
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Danielle.
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