Sarah sat down with the lovely Tracy from Squoodles to talk all things business. Check out the interview below!
Sarah
So, first of all, hi, Tracy. Welcome.
Tracy
Hi, how are you? Sarah?
Sarah
Yeah, good, thank you. And you?
Tracy
Very good. Very busy.
Sarah
It’s awesome to have you here. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your business.
Tracy
I’m Tracy Morgan and I’m the owner of Squoodles Educational Toys. So we’ve been going for just coming up, ten years now. We’ve got a big ten year anniversary next year. We’re an online store specializing in wooden toys and sensory resources for children. Twelve months, ten years.
Sarah
Well, you’ve got that down packed, don’t you?
Tracy
Well, yeah, birthdays and marriages. It’s amazing.Â
Sarah
That’s a hell of an achievement, though, ten years. That would have been a wild ride with everything that’s gone on over the last few years and then from growing a business and everything like that initially, to where you probably got to.
Tracy
Absolutely.
Tracy
The way we started and where we are now are two completely different business models.
Sarah
I can imagine.
Tracy
I love where we are now. I feel like we’ve found our spot.
Sarah
Yeah. I guess that’s hope for anybody that might be watching as well. When you push through where you can actually end up and you can get to that point where you feel like you’ve got your spot and you’re like, yes, this is working.
Tracy
Absolutely. And to be honest, it doesn’t happen first go and probably doesn’t happen 2nd, 3rd or fourth go either. It’s a constantly evolving business, so you never, ever start with one and that’s where you stay. It is constantly changing and it’s constantly on the move. But we found our niche now and we’re really, really happy with where we are.
Sarah
Fantastic. So I guess when you initially started thinking back a little while ago now, how did it feel to take that first leap and to start your own business? Was this your first business?
Tracy
No, it was my first business. It started very quickly and started very oddly. Probably the best way of putting it was, in fairness, not a lot of thought put behind it, which I imagine quite a lot of people start businesses that way. I was literally we had kids a little bit later on in life, so my number two was six months old. We decided because we were a little bit later on in life, that I would be a stay at home mum, but I’d also come from a pretty high pressure corporate job and to be honest, I was struggling staying at home, just doing kid stuff.
So Squoodles came about literally after talking to some mums at one of the parent groups that I was involved with, saying that they could not find reasonably priced quality wooden toys. And I thought, well, I can do that. And that’s literally how it started. So the idea and the conversation, which happened in the February, we launched in the May, so I think it was four months.. Had the website built, had the Facebook page loaded and found the suppliers, which was the main thing, found the suppliers to supply us, and then from there, like everything, you just build and build and build, whether it be through referrals, word of mouth, email, newsletter, social media, you just build on top of that.
But as I said, from Wooden Toys is where we started and that is where we are still the strongest. But the baby side of it, we have left that to the people who completely deal with babies. We don’t stock items for under twelve months old.
Sarah
Yeah. Did it feel really new to you or did you feel like you could bring some of those skills from your previous corporate life?
Tracy
The website part was definitely new. I’m a very good consumer and I’m a very good online shopper in my own life, so I knew what it had to do from a customer point of view because I think like most of us these days, we’re all pretty active online shopping. But the back end was completely new to me. I had no idea how to operate the back end of website, so I needed to get a lot of training done on that, which I invested in doing. So I did manage to bring a lot of my skills through.
So my background was account management and marketing, sales and marketing, so I did bring that through. The one thing that I must admit I have found quite difficult in ten years is the fact that you’re not in a work environment and the fact that you’re pretty much by yourself most of the time unless you’ve got people helping you. We don’t have full time employees here at Squoodles. We were sort of just about to take that leap back in 2019 and when the decision was sort of made COVID hit. So we sort of, it worked out well for us not having to worry about employees over the last three years.
And of course we are pretty desperate to get a couple of people on board now, but again, we just sort of feel until the world settles down, we’ll just leave it for the minute. So when you get an order from us, more than likely 99% it’s from me. So if there’s an error that’s made, I fully own it.
Sarah
What about the name? How did you come up with the name Squoodles? Or what’s the story behind it?
Tracy
When I decided to start basically a mums and kids business, it very much was I needed to find a name that didn’t exist. There’s a lot of two little this, three little that, and there’s a lot of kid stores out there that pop up and then disappear and pop up and disappear. We wanted to be somebody who would stay. So Squoodles came about, actually, after talking to our lawyer when we were doing all our due diligence, believe it or not, and he said to me, two men walked into a bar. And I said, oh, gosh. He said, no. He said, Two guys walked into a bar, they had a beer, and they came up with Google. And he said, look where that is. And I went hmm. He said, you need to find a name that doesn’t exist, that no one else will have heard of and no one else will have. And at that time, when we were sort of going through it, my son, he was two, he had just been given this great big rainbow caterpillar, which we had called a Squoodle bug, because that’s what we called him when he was inside me.
So we went Squoodles. Perfect thing for a kid store. So Squoodles came about from that and as you know, no one else had heard of it. No one else had it.
Sarah
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. It’s amazing how many children related businesses, or even people with children and businesses, have it linked to their children or their names. It’s so common.
Tracy
Absolutely. We didn’t want to link anything personal to them. Like, we didn’t want to use the kids’ names or anything like that, for privacy reasons, of course, but we definitely wanted the kids to be involved because it is a family run business. So having it called Squoodles is pretty cool.
Sarah
Yeah, that’s so cool. Looking back towards those first few years, when did you really start to see things sort of ramp up and take off? And you’re like, Yep, this is going to work. We’re on to a winner.
Tracy
It really took, I can honestly say probably five years. Five years of hard slog, of building, building, building, testing the market, finding new products, finding exclusive products. That has been one of our, one of our main things that we try and have exclusivity on a lot of the products we stock. Definitely not all of them, but on a lot of them you can only get from us. That is something that we’ve always found really important. You won’t find the license name brand stuff at Squoodles. If you want things like that, go to Farmers, go to the Warehouse. They have much bigger buying power than what someone like us will ever have. But if you want something sort of a little bit different, a little bit special, then it is something we will have. But, yeah, I’d say ramping up. It took a good five years and it took a good five years for me to be able to start to pay myself something as well and actually be able to take money out of the business.
Sarah
And it’s a lot of commitment, isn’t it, to get to that point where you’re like, yeah, this is really going to work. And often people can give up too quickly because it’s hard.
Tracy
It’s not easy. You have to have a great support network behind you and you’ve got to be able to offload the kids to somebody while you’re working, because, to be honest, the business really is like another child. It needs nurturing, it needs love, and it needs time. And like every mum in the world, we’re pretty much time poor that’s pretty much where it comes from. You have to treat the business like another child and like everything, if you don’t give it the love and the cuddles, then nothing’s going to happen.
Sarah
If you weren’t running a successful online business, which obviously you are, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Tracy
To be honest, I think what I’d be doing instead of this if I wasn’t doing this now, but then I’m saying that it’s probably come from what I do here, is I would be some form of business mentor.
Sarah
That’s cool.
Tracy
I would take everything that I have learned and I would want to help people starting up their own ecommerce online businesses, because there is so much that you need to know and there’s so much that if I had known it prior to starting, I probably could have got everything going a lot quicker than what I did. I still went pretty quick, but it could have been a lot faster. So if I wasn’t doing Squoodles, that is what I’d be doing. I’d be wanting to help other people getting involved, starting up online businesses.
Sarah
There’ll be a time for that, I’m sure.
Tracy
I’m sure there will be, because I definitely, at some stage, do not want to be an 80 year old selling toys.
Sarah
Yeah, a bit much aye.
Tracy
Not a good look.
Sarah
This actually might look into potentially your answer to the next thing, too. Maybe. What would be the top advice that you’d give to someone if they were starting a primarily online business like yourself?
Tracy
If you were starting an online business, the first thing I would do is be very, very clear as to what you actually want to do. Are you a product based business? Are you a service based business? If your products like what we are, be very clear on what your products are. I would say don’t reinvent the wheel as in, if there are 30 other businesses out there selling bibs. Don’t start a business selling bibs unless your bibs have something absolutely amazing that nobody else has. Find a point of difference. That would be my first thing.
The second thing would be find a name and then make sure, of course, that nobody else has it. That you’re able to get the URL for it. And that would be your .com and your .co.nz. And, if possible, the .nz as well. And I would find a really good unless you’re really computer savvy, which I am now, wasn’t at the time. Be very, very clear as to what sort of platform you want to build your ecommerce business on. As a general, a lot of the product based businesses these days are Shopify. Ours is on WordPress., Woocommerce.
We’ve got three businesses run on the platform, and we love it. There are pros and cons to each. It will be WooCommerce or shopify. They are the two main ones there are others, but they are the two main ones. Just do your homework. And the other thing I’d say is make sure you’ve got some finance behind you because it costs to start a business.
Sarah
Especially product based.
Tracy
It is not cheap.Â
When you’re starting, you really need to rely on yourself and that’s the best way not to let customers down.
Sarah
When do you think, looping back to what you were saying before a little bit, when do you think is a good time to invest in a mentor or something like that? Because you sort of alluded to how much faster, even though your journey was fast, your journey could have been if you had that kind of support.
Tracy
I invested in a mentor for us using New Zealand business mentors. I used them I think we were in just coming into our second year.
Sarah
Reasonably early.
Tracy
Not too bad, but I did feel in that first year that I could do everything and you get brought down to earth with bit of a thump and you can’t. Yeah, I invested in that in the second year. And the thing I would say most about a mentor, and I fully believe this is really, really important, especially if you’re using business mentors New Zealand is treat it like a dating site. Go in again, with a very clear idea of what you wanted. Like, I didn’t need accounting help and I didn’t need sales help. I needed help with ecommerce. I needed to work with somebody who worked with websites. There was no point teaming me up with an accountant because I didn’t need that. So it’s a bit like a dating site. You may not hit it right on the first go, nor the second or the third, but keep it going and you will find someone to click with. And when you do, which is what I did on my fourth go.
I finally found a guy that I literally clicked with as a mentor and it just took off because we finally had the right relationship, I was getting the right advice, the right help, the person who was giving me the right direction, and it seriously made all the difference.
Sarah
Yeah, and it’s such a great way to start out in that space, too, because it’s so affordable and obtainable and it’s like mentoring life, almost.
Tracy
Absolutely. And of course, these days in various parts around New Zealand, there’s a lot of support available, financial support available to business that wasn’t available when we started ten years ago. But there are a lot of programs now you would probably know the name of the more than I would. You can apply for funding where, for example, ATEED Auckland, I know that they will give you 50% off your fees to go towards training or to go towards marketing or to go towards accounting. And you only have to pay the other 50%. And out of that you get a lot and a lot of information.
Sarah
There’s a lot of great programs out there.
Tracy
Absolutely. So, yeah, absolutely. But if that had been available to me sooner, I would have done that.
Sarah
Yeah, brilliant. I think that’s something that we all, most people in business would say as well. You look back and never regret getting support, whatever that looks like. You always wish that you’d done it earlier, but that’s one of those beautiful hindsight things, isn’t it?
Tracy
Well, it is. And also everything costs. There is a monetary cost to pretty much everything you want to do when it’s out of business. Even if you want to start a website, if you start with Shopify, you’ve got to pay for it. If you start with WordPress, you’ve got to pay for it. Like everything has a cost. And unless you have a lot of lot of money, a lot of time, and I might add a lot of energy into that as well, it’s really hard to do. And I was always told that if your business could last over five years, you pretty much had a sustainable business. And that’s why you do see, unfortunately, a lot of businesses who pop up with a hiss and a roar and then they disappear after sort of six to twelve months because they haven’t set that groundwork. It’s like building a house, you’ve got to have the groundwork and you’ve got to have that foundation to build on before, you just can’t. It’s a shame because it’s a lot of money that people could lose if they don’t do the right homework.
Sarah
It doesn’t just happen. Some people think, oh, we’ve got a good idea.
Tracy
Oh my gosh, no.
Sarah
Put the website up and it’s just going to happen.
Tracy
If that was the way there would be a lot more websites out there.
Sarah
I know right. We’d all have twenty websites, wouldn’t we?
Tracy
Absolutely. And of course these days with online, you’ve got to be really careful as a consumer as to which website you’re purchasing off. There are so many, what I call scam websites out there now which are saying that they’re shipping from New Zealand, they have the .co.nz URLs, and yet they’re either coming from China or they could be coming from somewhere else. So I would say as a consumer, definitely very much check the, I usually say check the Contact us page and the About us page to make sure that it is a genuine bona fide business. Because most of those scam businesses don’t have very good content for obvious reasons, oddly enough, to contact us details. Delaware in the USA, steer clear, because there you’re allowed to have whatever website you like in Delaware, but you might be based in China.
Sarah
Well I’ve learnt something new today.
Tracy
Delaware website, stay away. Don’t give them your money or your credit card details. Absolutely not.
Sarah
What do you think is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned over the past ten years? That’s a really hard question because it’s such a long period of time to look back on.
Tracy
Oh, you become very good at juggling your time. You also become very good at making sacrifice. And that can be sacrifice either way. It could be sacrifice on the business or it could be sacrifice on the family time. Because again, as I said earlier, the one thing as a woman in business and a mother in business is time. You need to find time to dedicate to everything. And there’s 24 hours in the day and you’ve got to sleep at some stage. So the thing I’ve probably learnt the most is very much time management and priorities. Family will always come first. But I’m also very, very aware that customers and people have trusted me with their money to provide them with a quality product and that they require that in a timely manner. So sort of like I said, your business is like another child and it needs to be treated as such with that respect because you’re dealing with other people. And I always sort of want to treat my customers the way I want to be treated. And we’ve done that all the time with Squoodles, which is why we do a little goody bag with every order so that our customers, hopefully when they open up their parcel, they feel that little bit special.
Sarah
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting topic, too, when you mentioned about the juggle and stuff, because there are some narratives out there that try and tell us that we can actually have everything and everything to a certain level. But it is actually more I mean, the reality is it’s more like what you said. Something is being juggled and sacrificed at any given time in order for another part of your life to be, you can’t be doing everything all at once.
Tracy
I find it very hard. Like, for example, my boys get on my Instagram stories today. My boys have a half day for the teacher union meetings today. And then my other oldest boy, he’s got one next week. And then one finishes on the 9th of December, the other one finishes on the 15th of December. And I’m going, okay, this is the busiest time for a toy shop. And everyone seems to be finishing school really early. And where am I supposed to put these kids while I’m trying to satisfy my customers needs and I’m trying to organize my children’s needs, let alone I even give a thought to my husband.
Sarah
Yeah, that guy.
Tracy
And I guess like most of us, somewhere right down the bottom of the line is us and me and my needs and what I need. Which I think, to be honest, when people say the juggle is real, it really is. Because as again, woman in business, mum in business, we just come last. I know we should look after ourselves better, but as a general, even with all the mental health talks going on in New Zealand these days, as a general, we know these things. But putting it into action is slightly harder when you’ve been pulled in so many different directions.
Sarah
And that’s the behind closed doors story, isn’t it, really?
Tracy
It really is and to be honest, you don’t really want to talk to people about it and you don’t want to tell people about it because you don’t want people to see either you or your business as a weakness. At least that’s how I feel, yes. I definitely don’t want to be perceived as weak because I’m not. But I’m thankful that I have a very, very strong support network behind me so they can help with kids, they can help with orders. I’ve got people behind me to help. People doing it by themselves, I really, really feel for them and just want to give them a big hug.
Sarah
Yeah, it’s a huge step and if you can get through that point where you can have support, like if that is hiring people within your business or whatever, once you get through that little part, it’s a whole another world because it helps to relieve some of that.
Tracy
Absolutely I mean we all want everything and we all want everything for our family and we all want everything for our business, but somewhere along the line something has to give and it’s usually us that does that.
Sarah
Yeah, exactly. Looking at Squoodles going forward, where would you like to see it and what are some of the goals that you might have for the future?Â
Tracy
I’m a pretty proactive sort of person anyway and I’m a doer. I’m not a talker. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. So I’m constantly, I’ve got a big whiteboard that sits behind me which is blurred out that you can’t see that literally when I come up with these great ideas, I jot everything down. Sometimes these things come to fruition, sometimes they don’t, but Squoodles it will be really cool to take it up to that next level. We are already in quite a lot of the early childhood centers and primary schools in New Zealand. I’d like to extend that because, you know, we love supporting supporting local schools, local business and yes, and we’ve got some really cool new product ranges that are coming on board next year, which of course a lot of them have been sort of delayed over the last couple of years due to that horrible C word that popped up. There’s a lot of stuff happening, there’s a lot of really good things happening and as I said, we can’t do it without the support of our customers and we really, really do appreciate every single order that is placed with us.
Sarah
Yeah, no doubt. You touched on something there where you said you’re a doer and so something that I’ve definitely noticed is the difference between, often the difference between the people that make it and the ones that don’t or the businesses that do, that really is a key aspect of action taking, people actually will succeed. It’s great to have ideas and it’s great to have dreams, but you actually have to go out there and do the hard work.
Tracy
Absolutely. And it’s sort of like what you said before about, what advice would I give to somebody who wants to start an ecommerce business, just do it. If you sit there trying to wait for perfection, it’s never going to happen. It’s not going to be perfect because things are always evolving, always changing. But if you don’t actually take the first step and do it then, that’s on anything in life, nothing will happen.
Nothing will happen unless you do it.
I always got told very early on in my 20s, when I was in my first sales job, finding my way, thinking I knew everything and found out very quickly that you don’t. But the one thing I got told by my sales manager at the time, and it has stuck with me for all these years, is make a decision. You have got a 50% chance of getting it right. You’ve got a 50% chance of getting it wrong. If you get it right, pat yourself on the back, carry on. If you get it wrong, tell yourself off, don’t do it again. But if you don’t make a decision, nothing will happen. And I have stuck with that throughout my entire working career.
I have bought products into Squoodles that I have thought would be amazing. They’ve been the biggest flop in the world. I’ve bought things in that I might have only bought ten of them and going, oh, these are horrible, they’ve sold out within the first five minutes. But if I hadn’t have done either, I wouldn’t have known. Squoodles motto, and we started this on the day we launched in May 2013, is, you don’t know what you don’t know.
That has been our motto from day one. So if you don’t make a decision, you’ll never find out. So for those people who want to start your business, just do it. The worst thing you’re going to lose is a bit of time and money.
Sarah
And no action is an action.
Tracy
Absolutely.
Sarah
Sitting back and not actioning that email or doing that is an action in itself.
Tracy
Yeah, absolutely. The only other thing I really do is I touch an email once. I do not go back to an email. I touch it once, I do it and it’s done. I don’t have the room in my head to have to carry things like that around with me overnight. I’d never get any sleep.
Sarah
Yeah. And you can, like I said before, about just getting things done and nothing will be perfect. You have to have that attitude or you won’t progress because you’ll get so stuck in the details.
Tracy
Absolutely. You can work through the details while you’re working. You won’t know if it’s going to work until you launch, until you’re in the midst of it. You won’t know all the research under the sun. It’s sort of like people who are professional students who can’t get a job in that field because all they know is the academics, they don’t know the reality. So it’s the same thing. You need experience in what you do and then go from there.
Sarah
And I think because you’ve been in business, the amount of time that you have too, you probably had a lot of different experiences within your marketing and not only like internally, but with other people that you’ve worked with.
Tracy
It’s been interesting. It’s definitely been interesting. Again, we waited until, I think year six-ish, we had the finance behind us to invest in outside help with marketing and that mainly came down to me being time poor. The other side of it, as most people know with social media, they change the algorithm every five minutes. So I have lost count of the amount of courses and money that I have spent on training myself how to do Facebook ads or Instagram ads or Instagram reels or anything, and creating audiences, etcetera, etcetera. Only to find that literally within a week or two, an algorithm changed and everything I learned is now obsolete and I now need to upskill.
So somewhere along the line, as you get bigger in business, you have to outsource. I think that’s just a necessary evil. Again, similar to the business mentors, I believe it’s a bit like a dating site. You have to find the people that you click with. I have worked with people that I guess like every relationship, it always starts off well and then maybe it does and this doesn’t sort of work out the way you think it will, which is sad for both and you end up shaking hands and parting and hopefully with no animosity.
But as you know, I’ve been working with Daisy Digital since I think it’s March this year and I can honestly say that the relationship is there. We have a good dating site.
Sarah
We have a good time.
Tracy
But the one thing I really love in particular about you guys is that you are proactive. I love receiving the emails that say, hey, had a thought and I’m like, awesome, do it.
Sarah
Yeah, what about this?
Tracy
It will either work or it won’t. I have absolutely no issues being a guinea pig for stuff like that because that’s how we all learn on both sides of little hiccups when you first start because you’re trying to pick up each other’s business. And I think as I said to you when we first had our interview, to see if we would be a good fit for each other, because you have to be a part of the Squoodles family. As much as I have to trust Daisy Digital with what I’m doing in the background, which of course you don’t really want everybody else to know, but there really is a huge trust aspect on that. But again, I still liken it back to a dating agency, you’ve got to find the right fit. And when you find the right fit, it’s amazing how many things just everything settles and life is grand. And to date, in the sort of seven, eight months that I’ve been working with Daisy Digital, I’ve been stoked with the results, to be honest, even if I didn’t like you guys, the results that you are getting me speak for themselves. So having really, really nice people who can also get you a good ROI, that’s just a bonus.
Sarah
Yeah. And that’s so true, isn’t it? At the end of the day, the results are so important, but you need to have that relationship. And like when you said it’s, like, from both sides too, that’s exactly how we approach it. It’s finding the people and the businesses that are the right fit. And there’s so many options out there for businesses and so many options for teams like ourselves, for people to work with, that it’s really on both sides.
Tracy
It has to be both sides. We get approached. I mean, the market is people are looking for business at the moment and I completely understand that. And of course, after Covid as well, you’ve also had a lot of people who’ve been working from home for the past three years, have gone, actually I don’t need to go work at a corporate anymore. I could start up my own business, which is great, they’ve done it. So there are a lot of people out there touting their wares. But it’s very important to find the right people to work with. And if you’re going to cold call people which people do, I personally hate cold calling, but people do. And I think it’s really important that if you are in that instance, you need to make sure that you’ve got the right thing to say to people. I have been approached by one other marketing company, which I must admit, I just had to laugh at because when I said, look, I’m really sorry, I’m not interested, I’m happy with the one I’m with, this gentleman turned around and he said, well you’re only a mum in business, you won’t last anyway. Now, the odd thing about that is that was this year. And yeah, I may just be a mum in business, but we all talk.
Sarah
Wow.
Sarah
I think it’s underestimated of that category too, in terms of what some of these small Kiwi businesses are actually turning over in a year and what they’re actually doing for their businesses and for their families as a result of that, without necessarily having these businesses with 20 staff. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t some exciting stuff happening there.
Tracy
Certainly. And bearing in mind in the world that we’re living in at the moment, with the economy the way it is and times are tough and we appreciate that. I mean, times are tough for us as well, both as a family and as a business owner. Like, money is not being spent the way it used to be and we appreciate that, which again, is why we appreciate every single order place with us. But as you’ve just said, it is actually the smaller homebased businesses that are keeping everything going because we don’t have the overheads and we don’t have the outlay of a lot of these big, big companies. I think it was yesterday on the news they were saying that I think it was Amazon are laying off literally hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve been mortified and devastated. If I ever had to do that in my business, whether I had one employee or 100,000 of them. You’d want them to be part of your family, your business family. I think a lot of people really underestimate the small New Zealand business. And even if you only had a small New Zealand business, they’re only turning over, I don’t know, $1,000 a year, $10,000 a year, $100,000 a year, whatever it is.
Tracy
Every single bit of that is going back into the economy with, well, you know, we all pay our taxes, we pay our GST, we still do everything that all the big guys do. But I think we’re really underestimated in this country of ours.
Sarah
It makes a huge portion I can’t remember the statistics off the top of my head but of our GDP as well.
Tracy
Absolutely. And that’s why I think it’s really important and there is, in my eyes, a huge differential between it is to support New Zealand business, not necessarily supporting New Zealand made. They are two completely different things. And I know over the COVID period, there was a real buy New Zealand made initiative, which was amazing. In my personal opinion, it should have been, you know, support New Zealand business, not necessarily New Zealand made, bearing in mind that we are a country of 5 million and the majority of New Zealand made products are made from overseas materials. It’s a catch 22, and it depends on how technical you want to get about it. But for me, if I can buy within New Zealand, I will always buy within New Zealand, and supportfavourite whatever New Zealand businesses that I can. That’s how I work as a person and how I work as a business.
Sarah
Cool.
Last one.
What are your favorite Instagram accounts? I know you spend a lot of time on there.
Tracy
I do spend a little bit of time. Well, I must admit from a business point of view, I do like, following you guys because you always come up with these,
Sarah
No pressure.
Tracy
With these tips and tricks and I personally love seeing the faces of the people that I’m working with, so that, I do enjoy you. I have another lady that I follow called Mermaid Mary. She’s awesome. She’s hard case. She is a mum to a little boy, I think he’s 18 months now. But she is also a wine taster for a variety of vineyards around the world. Mermaid Mary, go check her out.
Sarah
That sounds so interesting.
Tracy
She’s funky, she’s really fun, and her really just hilarious. Especially if you do wear a glass of wine at the end of the day. I actually really enjoy love from your dad. Mark, Frankie and Lulu. I do find them quite amusing. I do follow a few of my business friends who, again, do great reels, like Sleepy Tot New Zealand. They do the funniest reels. You’ve got to sort of take the piss out of each other a little bit sometimes, but no. So they’re really good.
Sarah
It’s quite a good list already. Just straight off the top of your head without even really thinking.
Tracy
Even people like prezzy box. I love following them because they have the most divine gift hampers and things like that. But the ones that sort of make me have a giggle, as I said, like mermaid mary and love from your dad. They’re probably my two main ones. But there probably are a heck of a lot more, and I’ll think of them all as we disconnect. If I’d known that was going to be one of the questions I would’ve looked it up. I would’ve been onto it first.
Sarah
the top things that come to your head, it’s like that’ll be funny, probably for most people that I think will laugh. That’s always nice to introduce people to other accounts that are you know.
Tracy
But no mermaid Mary she’s hilarious. Because you know, instead of drinking like a fish, she drinks like a mermaid.
Sarah
That’s so cute, I love it. That’s really good.
Is there anything else that you want to close off with around advice or anything you want to share about Squoodles?
Tracy
Squoodles is here for the long haul. We’re not going anywhere. I love what I do. I love working with who I work with, and I love my customers, and I love the emails I get. I love the phone calls I get. And if we do make a mistake, we fix it. That’s our one thing that we do pride ourselves on, because, as I said, perfection. It’s just not possible. You can’t have it. Again, if you’re looking at doing any form of business, service, product, whatever, just do it. You won’t know until you get in there, and then you get to come and work with really cool people like Daisy Digital and join some networking groups. Actually, that would be my other advice.
Sarah
Yeah, meet some people who get what you’re going through, meet them online.
Tracy
I mean, that’s how we do everything these days. But no, it’s good fun. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Sarah
Love what you do.. That’s really cool. Thanks so much for chatting today and we’ll talk to you soon.
Tracy
Look forward to it. Take care.
