#awinewith Pru Raymond
MEET Pru, Founder of Dear Pru.
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Pru, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Pru Raymond (00:11):
I'm excited to be here. Danielle, thank you for providing this opportunity. It's so great.
Danielle Lewis (00:18):
Oh, so good. And yeah, we had to hit record because you and I are talkers and we just started obsessing over meetings, so I'm so excited to share your business. Let's tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Pru Raymond (00:34):
Great. So my business name is Dear Pru. I'm a n entrepreneur, which means I design patterns.
Danielle Lewis (00:42):
Oh my God, I love that. N Entrepreneur. This is amazing.
Pru Raymond (00:46):
I've coined a new term to, I love it. A wide range of things I do within the universe. So I teach workshops, I design patterns, I coordinate tours for international designers to teach in Australia. I write for knitting publications. I've had a feature in a quite high profile knitting magazine this year and a bunch of other stuff. But yeah, the teaching is the focus. That's where it started.
Danielle Lewis (01:20):
This is so cool. So we just started geeking out because I started a knitting project on the weekend. And it's funny because my husband was like, I didn't know you knitted, and I feel like he was like, you are not a grandma. What is going on?
Pru Raymond (01:36):
Oh, I hate that serious part. Oh man.
Danielle Lewis (01:40):
I know. So as I look at you like young, gorgeous, very intelligent, how did you get into knitting? Because it does have that funny stigma around it.
Pru Raymond (01:51):
It's really terrible. And in fact, I just want to unpack that it's a bad thing to be a grandma, and it's not a bad to be an older woman engaging in something, and I think, but it has a connotation when people say, oh, that's such a nana thing. They do it in a disparaging way when we should embrace the fact that it has a female identity, and it often links us to our matri lineage heritage and so forth. And so yeah, I learned through a female neighbor, and then my grandma was the one that really kind of encouraged me through the ritual of tea and cake and getting out the English women's magazines, English Women's Weekly magazines at the end of the lunch, every sort of fortnight or so when we'd make them travel about an hour down to their house. And it was through picking over the patterns and trial and error and so forth. I developed my own kind of skills, but then as an adult through friendships, finding my people that I could knit with and matching that up with knit, sorry, my teaching profession. So I'd been a teacher for some years and then I thought, oh, I could actually maybe share some of these knitting skills that are so much a part of my life with my community, and then it rolled away from there.
Danielle Lewis (03:18):
I love that so much because you are spot on. I was just thinking about, you're talking about learning from your grandma and passing on the skills. And I do wonder if why there's a bit of a stigma is because we see our grandparents do this art, this craft, and it's not being passed down as much. So I don't know. And I think I wonder then if maybe guys see the grandmas doing this activity and have that connotation, but I'm the same. So my grandma taught me lots of crafty things, so tapestry and cross stitch and crochet and knitting. And then my mom taught me how to sew. And it's really interesting. I feel really grateful that I have, and look, I don't pick up, I don't use the skills very much. And I think I was just saying earlier before we hit record was I am getting back into it because I'm looking for an activity that is away from a screen that is more meditative. I feel super grateful that those skills are passed down to me and it's something that I can just go to and lean on as an activity that's, it's a really beautiful thing to do. I think.
Pru Raymond (04:36):
I agree, and I think that's all the reasons you've named Danielle, the reasons why this is a great time to be an entrepreneur because there is this real resurgence in interest in any kind of art or craft form because people want to switch off from their screens. They want to reconnect with themselves and with others. They want to be creative or to express themselves creatively, and then also to find new people that also are drawn to these things. So that connection, which is so much a part of being human that we crave and we can knit and we can chat at the same time. That's the other thing. It is a focused activity, but it's the kind of activity where you can pause and chat and you can work on something together and connect and vibe over it. So yeah, it's really positive.
Danielle Lewis (05:26):
Well, I'm not going to lie, you said tea and cake and I feel like I'm doing it wrong. I haven't got tea and cake in my life.
Pru Raymond (05:33):
Yeah, come on, you're going to have the snacks. There's a whole genre out there of knitting photos with coffee or tea and cake positioned, but also there's also people into other kind of snacks. So they'll go for the Cheetos or the Doritos or whatever, but they'll use tongs so they don't get,
Danielle Lewis (05:53):
Oh, of course. I would be the person that just gets food all over my project. Oh my God, that is amazing. I love it. I love it. So you said you were in teaching before this, is that right?
Pru Raymond (06:08):
Yeah, so I am a qualified teacher. I've been a teacher for 17 years. So my areas of specialization in the education field are learning design. So I was an education consultant most recently. So I taught teachers how to design their learning at a university level. I also taught history for a long time and English to high school students. So that's still kind of ticking along. I still do a bit of consultancy in the education space, and I teach a bit of relief teaching because such a need for it. And I really love being in the classroom with the kids. And let's be honest, while I'm making my business is in the black and I'm making quite a bit of cash doing what I'm doing, it's still not quite enough for a living wage. So I'm just topping up, especially because planning to go to the US in January, attend meeting conference, so Vogue meeting live in New York, and I've also got a couple of engagements in Boston and San Francisco or Santa Rosa, just an hour out of San Francisco. So that trip is quite an investment. So I've had to kind of go back and do a bit of relief teaching, but that's okay. It's good. It's good to have that in your back pocket to be able to.
Danielle Lewis (07:32):
Absolutely. I think that there's a really funny, again, I don't know why I keep using the word stigma today, tell what I learned for the day, but it is funny. I remember when I started, so scrunch, my first business, I worked, so I had a corporate career before being a business owner, and I worked all the way up until we ended up raising capital for the business and I kind of had to then go all in on it. But I always say that to people, if you have a job, don't quit. If you have an income coming in, build your business up because it's just not an overnight thing like building businesses.
Pru Raymond (08:13):
But sometimes you get those moments where you have to make a call to back yourself or to dial it back. So I had that moment about 18 months ago. So I've been doing my business as a side hustle for four years, and I kept getting these requests to go teach interstate to do more workshops locally, to put out more designs. And I approached my boss and said, look, these things are happening for me and I dunno how to juggle all of these things and to meet my other requirements in my substantive position. Anyway, they refused. The leadership team refused to give me part-time. And so it was a really tricky moment. I was working in education leadership, which is the highest level in my state, and I was really loving it, but I just had to back myself basically. I just had this moment where I'm like, I don't want to give up what I've worked towards and I can see that if I keep going that it's going to keep building. It was probably just a little bit early in the day to step away from full-time work or step away from a wage. But it was a really powerful moment to say, you know what? I believe in myself and I think there's a future in this for me and I don't want to dial it back. How did that
Danielle Lewis (09:41):
Feel? How did it feel making the decision?
Pru Raymond (09:45):
Actually, it was surprisingly easy. It was actually just hard making some other people understand what, including my husband, he was like, can you take it back? Can you just go back
Danielle Lewis (09:58):
To work so
Pru Raymond (10:00):
I can take back? And I'm like, no, it's done. It's done. But yeah, so no, it felt really, really good. And I did have a lot of support too. I had mentors around me who were saying, yep, you're making the right decision. No, I know it's going to be a bit scary, but also this is the right decision for you. And I had not heaps, but I had a little bit of cash in the bank and having that kind of, there's no parachute apart from being able to go back and do relief teaching meant that I really had to work hard and really be focused about chasing those opportunities. And I think, yeah, side hustles are awesome. I a hundred percent agree with you. You don't have to quit your job and start a new thing side hustles a great way to trial different ideas and practice and see what's possible and what the market's taste different options for yourself. But if you really want to grow a business fast, stepping away and giving it everything, it really did made huge difference in the growth and the impact of my business. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (11:07):
I love that. And I think I'm really interested. So when you did make the leap and you said there's nothing like not having a parachute, it does walk us and focus, did you notice a change in the business at that point?
Pru Raymond (11:23):
A hundred percent, yeah. So I had to be a lot more, maybe not in the first few months. I was still kind of just working out what my week looked like and how did I organize my time. I was basically doing everything sort of before work after work on the weekends. So now I nine to five maybe, or did I have a six till midnight?
Danielle Lewis (11:47):
Yeah, 24 hours a day now. Great.
Pru Raymond (11:50):
So yeah, I really had to think about workflow and also just chasing opportunities and thinking about cashflow as well. So I am not getting a wage fortnightly, so how am I going to ensure that things are coming in so that I can continue to live and so to manage not just my input of cash, but by input and output of energy as well. So yeah, so I think I've learned a lot. I made a lot of mistakes, but I've definitely developed a much better system and really even setting calendar reminders for doing my counts and things like that. And I joined an incubator, I forgot to mention that. That was a huge thing. Oh, cool. Huge thing. So I joined an incubator for creatives and we focused on business skills for creatives, and that was a massive thing. It was a three month program called Vaulting Ambitions through, so Libby, now this is the name I can't remember,
Danielle Lewis (13:01):
That's
Pru Raymond (13:02):
The prompt creative center in town. And Adelaide, Libby and her husband that Matt, they run it. And it was fantastic. It was the best thing for me. And I'd say finding that community who can support, you aren't necessarily in your field, but you are able to help you develop skills and feel part of a business community so that you can keep growing and keep connecting and you're not just stuck in your home office.
Danielle Lewis (13:30):
And I do love that. And you've mentioned a couple of really interesting things there. So I want to go back to when you said you kind of needed to organize your day and implement some systems and processes. You mentioned the calendar reminders, which I'm a huge, huge believer into. If it's not in my calendar, it literally doesn't happen. But yeah, I'm keen to know how you went through that process. Was it complete trial and error or have you got any advice that you would give people when they're looking at their week and going, how do I actually organize my time?
Pru Raymond (14:04):
Well, it was something that I'd been doing when I was working in consultancy because I would keep getting meeting requests and I was like, well, when am I going to do the work that's coming out of this meeting? So I would set time for each of the actions that needed to happen from that meeting. So I developed that over a few years, but somehow I hadn't worked out that I could transfer that insight from my corporate world over into my life. And the other thing around having regular engagement with things that I'd learned the teaching world as well, that that's why you have math three times a week or you do English and you have assignments. And even my study, I did a master's of educational leadership and I had had to balance that with full-time work. So I had this moment where I actually have some skills and some experiences that might be useful if I transfer them over here, but I had a few months there where I was just flying blind and didn't bother to organize myself at all. So once I'd put systems back in place and I'd use a color coding system, all my actions, all my activities were calendarized as events. And I also was checking and evaluating the color spread as well, making sure that there was, because I wanted design and teaching to be the core, but somehow I had a lot of blue, which is my email and accounts.
(15:44):
So I'm like, well, I've got to somehow address this and bring it back into balance so that my values as a business person are reflected in how I spend my time as well.
Danielle Lewis (15:56):
I really love that. So that's really hitting home for me right now because one of the things I've been thinking about as I reflect on 2023 is that I haven't done enough of what I want to do. So I have been complaining about doing too much of something that I don't like, but then I'm going, well, I haven't calendarized space or created space for myself to do those things, which I believe are the things that I need to do to grow the business that I want to grow. So it is really interesting. You'd really have to be careful and intentional about how you spend your time and how you map things out. I really love that.
Pru Raymond (16:40):
And it's data that you can then analyze and make different decisions about your action might be, oh, look, I'm spending a lot of time on my emails. Do I need to get a VA to filter my emails? Or I'm spending a lot of time on my marketing stuff and I'm not enjoying it. Should I outsource this to someone else so that then I can open up space in my diary to do the things that I'm meant to be that are core to my business or the things that I value? And that drew me here in the first place.
Danielle Lewis (17:11):
I love that. That's amazing. Now the other thing you just mentioned before was community. So I'm really keen to understand how that has shifted things for you in business.
Pru Raymond (17:22):
So I think community is such an interesting concept. Some people link it with a geographical location and that's it. I live in X community, but the knitting community is kind of, for me, it's quite sort of diaphragms. It's an online community. It's a physical community that I engage with monthly or weekly when I teach classes or I attend a knitting group. It's also, I think also goes across time. So I sort of see myself as connected to a knitting community across back to, like I said, the MA lineage set. So yeah, it's a much sort of broader thing than just I go to this knitting group weekly or fortnightly some people might consider, and it has cultural historical context, and it has its own language. It has its own kind, complete identity as a community, you would have the gaming community or the Italian community. It sort of has a similar kind of broadness to it.
Danielle Lewis (18:39):
I love that. And I think it's really interesting. You mentioned community around knitting obviously, and then the accelerator that you joined. From a business point of view, I think that we can be a part of a lot of different communities in our life and they all bring us different value and solve for different needs.
Pru Raymond (18:59):
Yeah, totally. And I think the other sort of community would be, I live in the city of Charles Stur and there's a women in business networking, a regular event that occurs as well as just a general, everyone's invited business networking event that happens monthly usually. And no one there is knitting as far as I can tell, but it's such a great way to meet other people who perhaps at the same point in their business, even if they're working in a completely different industry, or you'll hear from someone talking about email marketing from, and they work in hospo and you are making connections and analyzing it from your own context and learning something new or a new approach that you hadn't considered might be relevant in your context. That's been really positive too. Hasn't all been just within a bubble of the creative kind of businesses, but really looking across and learning from, oh, that's what they do over in events or that's what they do over, and that's relevant to me in this way and that way and take what you need from it.
Danielle Lewis (20:13):
I love that so much. There's so much to be learned from other people with different perspectives. It's really interesting. I really love that point because sometimes when we just look to our, I guess, related communities or even our competitors, what are they doing? I feel like I can really stifle our creativity.
Pru Raymond (20:35):
Yes. Because we are doing a one-to-one comparison when it's for competitors and you're saying, I'm not doing that well enough, or I should be doing that, rather than going, what's the big picture here? Who the people I'm trying to serve? What's the problem I'm solving? What's my value? What's best practice? When you are looking at customer user journeys or what's best practice in communicating regularly with my customer? And it might not be evident within your niche, it might actually be in a completely different field that you start to understand something or learn something that's going to set you apart from your competitors, even though that wasn't your starting point.
Danielle Lewis (21:16):
Yeah, I love that. Has there been anything for you this year that has really stood out as being critical to your business growth? So whether it be something that you've learned from one of these communities or just a new experiment you've tried, a new marketing channel, anything that's helped you grow this year?
Pru Raymond (21:35):
Oh, so much so I really love Gary V.
Danielle Lewis (21:39):
Oh my God, me too. I know he's polarizing, but I laugh,
Pru Raymond (21:45):
But he's such a guru. And I think sometimes it was things that I needed to hear to confirm I was on the right track or something. And other times it was a reminder to recalibrate where I needed to be at and what I needed to be posting. So one of the key things was, and it was something around not you're focusing too much on the product or whatever it was something along those lines. And it made me realize, yeah, I need to do, and I've heard it before, but it sort of helped from even from the vaulting ambitions program, don't be all about the selling, be about the story, the storytelling. Who are you, what are you trying to do? Who are your people? How do you celebrate their successes with working with you and so forth. And then the product selling should actually only really be about 30%. So tell stories, did this a digital storytelling workshop, which was fantastic, and she talked about, yeah, tell the story, then do the sale or the call to action, but don't do just sell, sell, sell, because you'll lose people.
Danielle Lewis (22:53):
Yeah, I really love that because such a big proponent of the soft sell. So how can I give value and talk about a topic and then the link to buy is somewhere on the page. And if you happen to stumble across it, I do actually love that. It helps people really connect with what it is you're doing, really connect with the story and then go on their own journey of wanting to find out more and wanting to buy into something that you're doing. So I do love that. I think, don't get me wrong, I think it's hard sometimes to figure out what your story is and to show up and tell your story, but I think you're spot on when you can articulate why you're doing what you're doing or the journey or the education for the customer, depending on what field you're in. It is really powerful.
Pru Raymond (23:46):
Yeah, I agree. And it builds loyalty and people want to see themselves or their friends online or they want to see people like them. So really celebrating. I really share a lot of photos of my community in my feed as well. Whenever I have a class, their photos are up there. I think the other key thing was around really backing myself in terms of my product and my value and my pricing. So it was very scary to put up my prices midyear, but really being firm on what it is that I'm offering and being clear about my terms and conditions, and I didn't get pushback. People went along with me and said, yep, yep. No, I'm happy to do that.
Danielle Lewis (24:38):
It's funny, I think sometimes we build up the stuff in our heads more. We build up all of the, oh my God, they're going to say this. They're going to hate me, they're going to leave the business. Oh my God, oh my God. And then it's like, no. They're like, whoa, we thought we were paying too little for all this time. It's like, oh, damn it. So it is interesting. I think sometimes when we're embarking on something new or we're putting up our prices or doing anything where we are, I guess impacting our community, sometimes it can be a bit scary. But I love what you said around just backing yourself and knowing your value.
Pru Raymond (25:11):
Yeah, that's right.
Danielle Lewis (25:14):
So good. No, it's incredible. So talk to me about the journey from employee to business owner. So obviously being employed as a teacher, employed as a consultant, you've got a little, some say stability, but it's different dynamic. Moving to business owner, what have been some of the challenges for you around business ownership versus employee?
Pru Raymond (25:40):
So I think first of all, I think you'd have quite a few teachers or former teachers in your community or people and teachers have an amazing skillset. We are not just educators, we are counselors. We're HR people with stake managers, we're content producers. We are communicators, we are marketers. There's so much of it and it is quite autonomous. Like yes, there is a lot of influence and a lot of input from leadership. And if you are in a school that doesn't have good leadership, you really feel it on the ground, but your classroom, your manager of that classroom. So I think I took a lot from that experience and from my experience working in consultancy and I'd learned a lot through, I'd worked in an agile methodology, I'd worked in various other kind of settings, and I really loved the freedom to take worked for me and plug it in.
(26:45):
As I said, I went a little bit too free and I had to like, okay, let's put some strategies and some organization in place. And that idea of a self meeting of sitting down and going, so where are we at this week? What are the goals? Let's look at the calendar and analyze what the color mix is. Is there enough of this, that and the other? Or do I need to sort of recalibrate what my week should look like? So yeah, I really enjoy that side of it, and it hasn't been as much of a crazy shift, just that little wobble where I went, I can do anything. Okay, let's get back into line.
Danielle Lewis (27:31):
It's so good. And it is so good. I love so many skills are transferable when we are moving from corporate to business. I love that. I do agree with you. I do think we all tend to go a little bit wild in the beginning, but if you kind of reflect on all of the things that you've learned over the years, you are so right. They're so applicable in business. It's a nice way to kind of shortcut success. You don't have to start from nothing. You do have however many years of experience.
Pru Raymond (28:04):
Exactly. And I think Danielle, that's why I found it quite frustrating. A lot of the discussion around these grants. The Women in Business grant, the family is more business brought in, and there's other local grants that really were like, oh, we want women to succeed, so we're going to give them heaps of mentoring and heaps of training workshops and so forth. And I think to me, it sounded a little bit condescending and didn't recognize the huge backpack of skills and experiences that women, especially when they're transitioning from employee to a small business owner or solopreneur, whatever, that they carry with them, and really they actually just need capital. So that's why I think this Spark Grant is fantastic because you are one of the few that are recognizing that implementation money is key. You can have these great ideas and think you can look at your calendar and go, yes, I could outsource my marketing to someone, but then who's paying that? How are you funding that transition?
Danielle Lewis (29:09):
Oh my God, I love it so much because this is literally the rant that started it all. This is literally, I totally agree because I've applied for so many grants on the scrunch side over the last decade, and it was so soul destroying because it was just mentoring or you've got to spend the money on an external consultant or I wasn't innovative enough or I wasn't enough because I had male investor. It was just so, or you didn't live in the right state. I was like, what the heck? People say the words that they want to support women in business, but their actions and the criteria don't support that. It drives me
Pru Raymond (29:58):
Very frustrating. So I think there needs to be a switcheroo or a, again, I love this word recalibration to, okay, yes, there are women who need training or support to a coach to unpack the things that they have brought with them from other businesses or other workplaces or even to sort of reset where they're going in the future or what strategies they're going to apply. But there's plenty of that out in the marketplace, and in fact, there are other women who are trying to make that their business, and
Danielle Lewis (30:37):
If
Pru Raymond (30:37):
We could put money in their pockets,
Danielle Lewis (30:43):
Oh my God, I love it so much. It's so true, and it's something that I was getting really frustrated with the people offering mentoring and what have you, and I probably hadn't connected it with the fact that women already have so many amazing skills. I just think that's such a good thing to put a pin in that we underestimate the value that we bring to a business and we underestimate the value of the corporate career beforehand, or being a mom and having to freaking manage that all day. The skills women have and the lens that they can bring to business is just incredible. And if we can get more money in the hands of women, it will not be a bad thing.
Pru Raymond (31:26):
I agree. I agree.
Danielle Lewis (31:28):
Oh my God. Well, we could talk all day through, but let's leave the Spark community with one last piece of advice. So I always like to ask our Spark guests. So if you could reflect on your time in business and give one piece of advice to another woman in business to help her on her journey, what would it be?
Pru Raymond (31:50):
It would be to trust your gut and back yourself. One thing,
Danielle Lewis (31:57):
I love it. I think you are so right. Yeah, just do it. Just get in there. You've got it.
Pru Raymond (32:04):
It happens totally.
Danielle Lewis (32:06):
Like you said, you just go back to find another job or you do another side hustle or do something, but like, oh my God, I love that as a piece of advice to end on. It's such a nice inspiring thing for the end of the year or the start of the year, depending on when everyone's listening to this. Just if you've got a little inkling that you could do something, get out there and back yourself. That's incredible.
Pru Raymond (32:27):
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Danielle. It's been so nice chatting. And you're right. You're the best. Keep going.
Danielle Lewis (32:36):
No, you're the best. Pru, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the Spark community. You are incredible. Thanks so much.
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