The formation of a funtrepreneur
Before we get to seizing your yay, I should probably share my own story to give you some context for the ponderings that lie ahead. The earliest of many defining ‘sliding doors’ moments in my life – one that formed the foundations for my stark inability to leave any opportunity unexplored (or any yay unseized, if you will) – was my adoption from Daegu City in South Korea. I spent the first six months of my life between the Eastern Child Welfare orphanage in the capital city of Seoul and a delightful local foster family until my wonderful parents flew over from Australia to adopt me. After a very lengthy and burdensome approval process, and an overwhelming flight back to Australia (my poor mum dropped me down the back of the airplane change table, which explains so much), I arrived in Melbourne on 29 August 1989 – just in time for my maternal grandfather’s birthday.
My ensuing perception of myself as a bit of a gift to the family lasted about four years, until my run as an only child was broken by the arrival of my younger brother, Alexander. Though born into a different biological family, like me, Alexander was adopted from the same orphanage in Seoul at six months old. Koreans believe that the child picks the family, not the other way around, and we were absolutely meant for each other; we even share the same birthday. Though a new sibling seemed like a major inconvenience to me at first, we quickly became inseparable. My parents had a lengthy, well-considered list of names ready for his arrival, but it was four-year-old me who obnoxiously announced that I wouldn’t call him anything other than ‘Alexander’. To this day, none of us know where I got that name from, but it suits him to a tee.
I had an idyllic and nurtured childhood in a loving household, where Alex and I got to enjoy the best of both worlds: the many benefits of city life in Melbourne as well as the strong, grounding country roots of rural Victoria since both of our parents came from small country towns (although I’m not sure we appreciated the beauty of the smelly, boring countryside at the time). We were constantly surrounded by a delightful extended family who were speckled across the state and could rival the closeness of any tight-knit ethnic family. Not only were our parents incredibly supportive of all our interests and endeavours, but we were also doted on by wonderful grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts (plus an army of honorary family members), whose love and attention supported us to explore our every interest and activity. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I can wholeheartedly say that this was the case for me and Alex – it led to who we are today.
Nowadays, my entirely Caucasian, country-bumpkin parents and my entirely Asian appearance generally give away my adopted status immediately, and of course it forms an important part of our heritage. However, adoption doesn’t come up in conversation nearly as much as you might think. That’s not because I’m uncomfortable with it; I never shy away from a chat or an overshare, as you’ll discover. Being adopted has certainly given my brother and me unique cultural identities and presented us with both benefits and challenges along the way. You can only imagine the fun I’ve had turning up at interviews where my very Anglo name has preceded me.
Because adoption has been an infinitely positive experience in our situation, I actually sometimes forget about it. Particularly as I have no memory of the parts that may have been disruptive or upsetting. (I mean, who remembers their life from birth to six months old?) So I don’t view it as a defining trauma or the hardship that some might assume. Instead, being adopted has given me a great appreciation for how singular decisions or events can dramatically change our life’s trajectory. Though I didn’t personally choose my adoption, it made me consider that perhaps other transformative sliding doors moments in life could be a conscious choice.
Being adopted has left me acutely aware of how easily we can coast through life without exploring how different (and better) things could be. This realisation helped me develop the drive to make the most of every opportunity afforded me, and to help spark in those around me that excitement and sense of possibility. So, as we proceed, this might provide context for my lifelong eagerness and over enthusiasm (even for things I turn out not to like). Please also enjoy the unique cultural challenge of envisioning me, your narrator – a fully blown Asian woman – telling her story in the excitable words of the country-bumpkin Aussie bogan she grew up to be.
It emerged very early on that I was equal parts nerd-burger bookworm and crazy, arty-farty performer kid. This contrast in my personality and interests continued to express itself all the way through primary school to my university years (and beyond). There’s pretty much no extracurricular activity or committee I haven’t been a part of. I cried when I came home from my first day of school because the teachers hadn’t given us any homework and continued to complain every day that didn’t involve some kind of academic rigour or stamp of achievement. But then I’d also arrange elaborate concerts for the family, and ended up dancing professionally with the Australian Ballet School until the middle of high school, when I discovered that boys and parties were more fun than training.
I’m skating over a lot of detail here, but sandwiched between my conscientious childhood and high-achieving university years was an uncharacteristically rebellious, wild phase comprised of lots of wagging school, drinking UDLs at ‘gatherings’ and all sorts of other teenage mischief that I won’t commit to writing. Thank goodness social media was largely unheard of at that point in time; the evidence died along with my obsessions with Champion jumpers and low-rise jeans.
Though dealing with the chaos caused by my developing adolescent brain probably took years off my mum’s life, she will attest that the misadventures of youth don’t preclude any later yay-seizing. Not all chapters of your way to yay will make the highlight reel. Luckily, I outgrew my hideously embarrassing gangster phase just in time for Year 12, which I completed at Mac. Robertson Girls’ High School, a selective girls’ school. The rigorous academic environment and wonderful teaching staff were enough to coax my inner nerd back out, along with a surprisingly high result that allowed me to enrol in a double degree with a scholarship at Monash University.
Without really knowing much about what life after high school entailed or the direction I wanted to pursue, I chose to study arts and law in order to satisfy both the artistic and the analytical sides of my personality. When I finished my degree years later, I still found myself in that incredibly common position of not knowing what I wanted to be ‘when I grew up’ or about the scope of jobs that existed out there in the real-life workforce. So, after a process of deduction, pursuing law seemed the best option to keep as many doors open as possible. I was fortunate to secure a graduate position at a top-tier international law firm in Melbourne straight out of university, for which I was especially grateful given the post-GFC climate into which I graduated. No matter what happened, I knew that qualifying as a lawyer would never be a disadvantage, and would give me broad, transferable skills down the track.
Things have changed now, but for my cohort, it was common to try to lock in your graduate legal position years before you would ultimately start. My pathway from work experience to internship (called ‘clerkship’) to fulltime law graduate was pretty clearly set out from early on in my university years. I just followed in the footsteps of friends in years above me. From there, the progression was mapped out: junior to senior associate, then all the way up the chain to partner. I very quickly became wrapped up in the safety of the five- to ten-year plan. Though I didn’t necessarily expect that I would be a lawyer forever, I also hadn’t ruled out that this could be my long-term pathway. So, suit-clad in a top-floor office in the middle of Melbourne, I got down to business and spent the first few years of my professional life working diligently to give myself the best chance to climb that ladder.
My match(a) made in heaven
While my story to this point might seem fairly jam-packed, I’d always been able to make room for boys. This dates way back to kindergarten, when I made my first ‘boyfriend’, Willy Carter, hold my hand at nap time (yep, I was an early starter). It wasn’t until well into my university years, however, that I met my true match – or, as it later turned out, my true matcha. Though my infamous wild-child phase took a timely hiatus during my final year of high school, it enjoyed a solid revival during my first few years of university. It might be hard to imagine if you know me now, but I dominated many a dance floor and added ‘nightclub host’ to my long list of random part-time jobs. In the highly sophisticated and classy environment of Melbourne’s Baroq House (back before dating apps when we had to meet people in person), I met my now-husband, Nic Davidson.
Nic would let me skip the queue at Baroq House for free (as I mentioned, I was super classy back then), but it wasn’t until much later, in 2009, that he struck up a proper Facebook chat with me (the then-equivalent of sliding into my DMs) in the middle of my law exams. I played it cool and kept things low-key, but I was instantly captivated by his adventurousness and charisma. He was my polar opposite in the most exciting way: a lifelong serial entrepreneur, having run businesses his whole life and never having what he’d call a ‘real job’. We’d stay up for hours chatting about all kinds of fun and nonsense. (I kept the cringe-worthy conversations for when we need a good giggle.)
While Nic was also always a bit of a nerd, learning early MS-DOS code as a kid, growing up in a sports-oriented family in Devonport, Tasmania, led him into his first real career as an international 400-metre hurdler. He trained alongside Jana Pittman, now our dear friend. An injury-related early retirement from athletics and return home from the European track and field circuit led him into a multi-venue partnership in high-end venues. This took him back to his techie roots, and he dove headfirst into the new world of digital, design, development and marketing.
Those new skills led to his entrepreneurial pivot into the comprehensive creative and digital agency he still owns today, The Bushy Creative, and, later, start-ups in helicopter-based aerial image capturing, artificial intelligence and prescriptive analytics software, matcha green tea (obviously) and tulip-based, clean beauty products called Bloomeffects. He’s a Nic of all trades, if you will.
Everything about the subject matter and structure of Nic’s working life was completely foreign and exciting to me in my little law bubble, and his spontaneous approach to life outside of work was even more intriguing. A movie night turned quickly into dating, which ultimately led to us becoming Facebook official, then settling down and slowly hanging up our dancing shoes and settling into parenthood of our beloved Golden Retriever, Paul. Over the next few years, Nic grew The Bushy Creative into a full-service digital agency while I finished university and jumped headfirst into life as a suit.
We embody the age-old adage that opposites attract, and our personalities have slowly rubbed off on each other in wonderful ways. Over the years, I’ve reigned in Nic’s spontaneous chaos while he’s relaxed my rigid need for certainty and planning ahead. I don’t think either of us expected that our contrasting compatibility would ultimately translate into the perfect business partnership, and, over a decade later, a beautiful marriage. But, as you’ve already read, one of my favourite sayings is that things don’t always turn out as you think they will – sometimes, they turn out better.
If Nic’s ultimate life plan was to balance his crazy entrepreneurial life with a sensible, consistently well-salaried lawyer for a wife, I definitely ruined his plans a few years in by jumping into business alongside him. And so, we come to our second major sliding doors moment on my way to yay – the one that led to us starting our first business together, Matcha Maiden.
The pesky parasite that changed everything
Given the picture I’ve painted of my former by-the-book, conservative lawyer self, it might come as a surprise that the defining happy accident in this story had its origins in Rwanda. The Bushy Creative had been supporting a brilliant Melbourne-based charitable organisation called ygap, of which our very clever friend, Elliot Costello, was CEO at the time. ygap’s 5cent campaign was collecting unused coins around Australia and directing them towards charitable projects in underprivileged communities, one of which was the Ntenyo School in the rural Muhanga District of Rwanda. Since Nic had provided all the digital and creative support for the campaign, we were both invited, along with a group of ygap’s other major sponsors, on a month-long field expedition to help build classrooms and teach at the school.
While I am always at pains to emphasise that my legal career was a wonderful launch pad and I was never sitting there desperately seeking a way to leave, the fact that I jumped at the chance to go on this expedition was probably a fair indication that I had an underlying curiosity for life outside the legal world. I hadn’t even been there long enough to accrue any annual leave, so I purchased a full month off before I’d hit the one-year mark – a seriously unheard of move among eager-to-please young law graduates.
Our month-long stay in Africa was absolutely worth the trouble, and every bit the transformative and eye-opening experience that you might expect. It sparked deep reflection and re-orientation for both of us. But the biggest takeaway, unfortunately, was a nasty little parasite that got an all-expenses paid trip back to Australia in my gut. This was the momentous surprise turn of events (now infamous among those that know me) that would eventually lead me away from that top-floor office towards the cafés, airplane tray tables, Ubers and other random places I now work from. What ultimately ensued sparked the beginnings of my transition from A-type to yay-type.
Upon returning home, I gave myself a grand total of half a day’s buffer time to unpack and re-orientate my mind before heading straight back to work. Despite my body’s very clear signs, for months I was completely oblivious to the strain my body was under, or the havoc my evil little parasite had begun to wreak on my digestion, energy levels and sleep. I’ve always had a naturally slender frame (one of the perks of my Asian genes), but I shed a whopping 15 kilograms in the months after visiting Africa before I realised that my body was compromised. While I consider myself reasonably intelligent, I’ve never been slower on the uptake than during that time. This was my introduction to the blind spot we often develop when we feel productive and fuelled by the adrenaline of being ‘busy’. I was so focused on work, and so out of tune with what I really needed back then that it took a complete breakdown mid-way through a team meeting for me to appreciate that something was awry.
I remember sitting with colleagues one morning, trying to keep up with our regular morning meeting, when I noticed my heart starting to race uncontrollably, my stomach starting to clench and curious tingles shooting up my arms and legs. I spent a few minutes in staunch denial, then confusion, followed by nauseous terror that I might embarrass myself by passing out or throwing up on someone. Finally, I excused myself and rushed to the bathroom to experience what I now know was a full physiological panic attack brought on by beating my poor body into the ground.
It took me several hours spent in varying waves of panic and faintness to emerge from the bathroom – weak, dizzy and confused by this apparently sudden onset of complete depletion. I was going to the gym regularly and eating all of my green vegetables, so why had my body rudely and abruptly decided to stop cooperating with me? Of course, I headed straight to the doctor, fully expecting a quick fix of some sort and a medical certificate that I could take to work the next day before getting on with it again.
Unfortunately (but, ultimately, fortunately), it took many weeks of appointments and time off before we figured out that I had a gut parasite with a delightful side of adrenal fatigue that had been a long time in the making. It was many months before I started to make headway with my recovery, realising the back seat that my health had been taking all this time.
I was soon initiated into the wonderful world of health and wellness and I quickly became intimately acquainted with the delights of holistic nutrition, alternative medicine and this brand new, revolutionary concept called ‘rest’ (my grasp of which still leaves a lot to be desired). This lifestyle overhaul necessitated, among other things and much to my devastation, a complete ban on coffee and other strong stimulants – a hellish fate for a mergers and acquisitions lawyer still working long hours propped up by a hefty ten cups a day.
Just when I was becoming well enough to manage a fulltime work load again, I was given an incredible opportunity to work in Hong Kong at my firm’s global headquarters for a few months. This was another of the universe’s many strokes of brilliance and fortuitous timing, and my expat stint in this vibrant city remains one of the most fulfilling and exciting periods of my life. It led me to discover the delights of 24-hour yum cha, mountain hiking and the life-changing answer to my coffee cravings. Enter the healthier caffeine alternative and superfood superstar that is matcha green tea.
If you haven’t heard of matcha green tea powder, it sounds fancier and more complicated than it actually is. Matcha is simply a fine powder made from stone-ground green tea leaves. Instead of throwing out the leaves after brewing the tea, like you do with a regular green tea bag, you dissolve matcha power in the water and consume the whole leaf. Regular green tea has been hailed for its many health benefits for centuries, but in the more concentrated form of matcha, it packs up to 137 times the antioxidants of a regular cup of green tea. Antioxidants are heroes in the health world because they help prevent or slow the cell damage caused by free radicals, which are produced by the body in response to environmental or other factors that cause oxidative stress. Free radicals have been linked to all kinds of diseases and inflammatory conditions including cancer and diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
'Matcha fast became a regular staple in my daily routine, providing me with a boost of sustained energy without sending my body into overdrive.'
Matcha also contains a unique amino acid called L-theanine that allows the still reasonable amount of caffeine it contains to slowly release into your bloodstream over three to four hours, thus avoiding the spike and subsequent crash often associated with coffee. This is why it gained favour among the Zen Buddhist monks who turned to matcha for their long and focused meditation practices, and it quickly became ubiquitous in the East. When I lived in Hong Kong, matcha was offered everywhere I turned from traditional teahouses to Starbucks coffee shops. It fast became a regular staple in my daily routine, providing me with a boost of sustained energy without sending my body into overdrive.
This wondrous green powder made the perfect match(a) for my recovering body, answering my need for a decent boost of energy without disrupting my fragile adrenal system. When I started to tire of the daily matcha latte, I started to get more adventurous, adding it to smoothies, bliss balls and even baking. On our return to Australia in 2014, Nic and I were hooked, so we immediately sought a reliable local supplier so we could continue our new daily habit back home. However, after searching high and low for an affordable and accessible option, we were surprised by the lack of a decent supply, especially given the booming health and wellbeing market sweeping the country. There were alarming numbers of people suffering the flavour of spirulina for its benefits despite it tasting like a foot, so surely the much more palatable matcha powder should also be taking the world by storm? Nonetheless, and fortunately for us in the end it was only available in certain limited contexts.
At that point, our options included an exorbitantly expensive ceremonial-grade matcha in a tin from a specialty Japanese tea shop (think Christmas present for your grandparents), which even my legal salary wouldn’t support on a daily-use basis. The other end of the spectrum offered a watered down, additive-filled variety sold from local Asian supermarkets – usually with no English on the label to indicate that it was actually matcha at all.
Given matcha’s many incredible nutritional properties, deliciousness, and the general population’s familiarity with the benefits of green tea, we couldn’t understand why nobody had closed this glaring gap with a beautifully branded, Instagram-friendly, wellness-oriented matcha offering. So we turned to Google, and a few frustrated, late-night sessions in pursuit of our own personal needs led us to stumble across a delightful tea farm in Japan harvesting a seemingly perfect organic blend in the uncharted middle ground of cost-effective but premium-quality.
It seemed we had found our perfect matcha, but our bubble was quickly burst by their minimum order quantity of 10 kilograms at a hefty price of US$5000. While that sounds like an incredible amount of money at face-value, once we discovered that matcha has a 12-month shelf life, we thought that 10 kilograms of matcha powder at US$1 per serve didn’t sound too bad for a couple who had come to adore it. However, when you do the math properly and realise that 10 kilos equates to nearly seven serves of matcha per day each for 365 days straight, you start to get a picture of the excessiveness involved. You can probably also understand the impossibility of stockpiling that much matcha comfortably in our house. Sure, we had a lot of snap-lock containers, but let’s be real, we never have the right lids for those anyway. More frustrated late-night Googling failed to unearth any similar alternatives, and also started to reinforce in our minds that there was a timely and sizeable gap in the market for a direct-to-consumer, accessible and affordable matcha supplier.
So, in that completely unexpected, but exhilarating light-bulb moment, the idea to become that supplier and sell some of that 10 kilograms to legitimise our own purchase was spawned. Just like that, the foundations for Matcha Maiden were laid. I was instantly intrigued by the prospect of having a side hustle, as I’d occasionally fancied myself a potential future entrepreneur, albeit many years further down the track. Nic loved the service-based businesses he already owned, but he was also excited about the possibility of working with a tangible product.
All we really hoped for at the time was to cover some of the costs of our own personal supply, even if we weren’t ultimately able to break even. This also gave us an excuse to spend more time together as our day jobs were making that challenging. Plus, I figured all I needed to do was to sell one single bag of the powder to be able to put it on LinkedIn that I was an ‘entrepreneur’ (yes, I openly admit I was a serial résumé padder back then); anything beyond that was a bonus. With this in mind, we ripped off the metaphorical business bandaid and bought our first 10 kilograms of matcha, forcing us into whatever chain of events would make our idea of on-selling a reality.
Over a weekday lunch date we furiously scribbled our ideas for names and logos on a serviette (in the most professional of inaugural meeting ‘minutes’), and discussed how we could launch the relatively unknown matcha powder across the vast interwebs through Instagram and an online store. I knew I’d kept Nic around for a reason because his creative and digital skill sets proved invaluable in building the infrastructure that would bring our little idea to life. A few nights later, I sat bolt upright in the night with the name of our new project on my lips. You’ll have noticed by now that I love alliteration, and we wanted a name that gave the business a personality, so our first business baby was christened ‘Matcha Maiden’.
Once we had the name for our side hustle, our next, incredibly advanced step was to search ‘how to start a tea business’ on Google. I know that probably sounds cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason: the humble Google search has delivered time and time again on our business journey, and it’s an alarmingly more common start-up tool than I’d ever realised. At the very least, this initial research task helped us form a very basic list of our next key steps (and looking back, I’m reminded that all you ever need to make any dream a reality is a basic list of next key steps). By looking at existing tea products available online, we were able to identify all the things we’d need in order to deliver our product safely to the public (aka our parents and best friends).
Aside from the tea itself, our research quickly revealed that we needed something to put it in, something to seal that vessel with and then a label to go on it. It also gave us a rundown of the broader tea landscape, which encouraged our decision to sell the matcha in 70-gram portions. We weighed these out with small scales from eBay (that I suspect were intended for other purposes), portioned them in ziplock bags from Alibaba, and then sealed them with a rudimentary heat sealer from … Neither of us remembers where.
I cannot tell you how many times I rushed to Officeworks to print our first rounds of DIY labels. I’d head off, full of the new self-importance of a legit businesswoman, only to spend hours lining up behind university students printing their exam notes. But these delightful runarounds were squeezed in between our day jobs, so Officeworks at peak hour was all I could manage.
Our next step was to form a very primitive production line to actually get the matcha into the bags and ready to sell. Not having near enough volume to warrant a third-party packing facility (or knowing where to find one or even that they existed back then), Nic and I hired a friend’s commercial kitchen to use after hours – as you’ve now read – to pack the matcha ourselves.
Years on, the incredible inefficiency of this set-up makes me laugh (and shudder); we’d have to pack every few days to keep up with demand, getting through less than 100 bags each time. Until we secured our first distributor, we would store the matcha there until ‘dispatch’ (code for one of us running to the post office in our lunch break). I’ll never forget the first order that came through from someone who wasn’t a supportive friend or family member. We were absolutely blown away that a stranger had paid real money for our product. But as it turned out, so many strangers had been waiting for someone to close the matcha gap that less than a week later, we had sold out completely and the Matcha Maiden journey had officially begun.