They say in small business you never stop learning and this has certainly been the case for my family. We never had a grand plan in business, but today we export our products across the world and we are expecting our turnover to grow from $5 million to $20 million in the coming years.
The start of any small business is littered with challenges and we were no different. We were a family of yoga teachers who had developed a naturally occurring painkiller using high purity magnesium chloride, originally from our kitchen sink at home. We needed direction and found it using the Australian Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Programme.
The Entrepreneurs’ Programme offers assistance and tailored support to startups to help improve their capability and competitiveness. Eligible businesses can receive support through four elements; including business management, innovation connections, incubator support and accelerating commercialisation.
I like to call the Entrepreneurs’ Programme an intellectual cross-fit – the advice provided helped us to think differently about the possibilities of our business, including how to identify potential barriers to success and the strategies we needed to put in place to overcome them.
We had a business advisor who taught us about the benefits of building a strong and sustainable professional network to help market our product range. The help we got at the start of our journey was crucial in creating a strong foundation for our business, and the lessons we learned continue to help us at Amazing Oils.
Today, we are excited about the future. We are exporting our product to New Zealand, South Korea and Thailand. And now we are looking at export opportunities in the Middle East, alongside our work in Australia.
There has been a lot of hard work to bring Amazing Oils to the position we are in today. My advice to any Australian small-business owner is to keep an open mind; you never stop learning and there is always support available to help you pursue your dream.
You can visit www.business.gov.au/smallbusiness to discover all the Australian Government initiatives available to you.
Lee Harold, CEO, Amazing Oils
