Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there. Catherine Langman here with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. Today on the show, I am joined by my guest Kate Sutton, who is the founder and owner of Uberkate, a beautiful jewellery brand. Those of you who see me on Facebook lives, or check out some of my video or photograph content, most days you’ll see me wearing a beautiful kind of orangy amber-ey colored earrings and necklace set. It’s been my favourite for several years. Kate, thank you for creating such beautiful products.
What I’m so excited about, there’s a few reasons I’m really excited to bring you this conversation today. Number one is that Kate’s been in business for 17, 18 years. In fact, she really was creating her products and selling them in an informal manner even before that. But, she’s been in business for a really long period of time. I think that when it comes to you guys hearing from different business owners, and getting inspiration, and hearing about successful product launches or strategies or this, that, or the other, sometimes it’s also really good to just hear about the ups and downs of a long-term successful business.
When it comes to e-commerce, 17 years is a really long time to have been in business. E-commerce hasn’t been around for much longer than that at all. Kate has definitely had her fair share of challenges as well as successes, and so she opens up and shares a lot of that with us in this conversation. She also shares some really tangible advice that I think would be useful for any business owner to hear. Especially if you are early days in your business, or you’re just looking to get started in business, and especially if you are also a product business, and you’re designing and manufacturing your own products.
Kate’s… She is a jewellery designer, she’s a creative. She used to hand make all of her products, now she has a warehouse, a manufacturing space where her team helps out with all of that, of course. She’s gone on to… Go into export and to opening her own physical store and all kinds of stuff. So, tune in, listen to the episode. It’s such a beautiful conversation. I always love having a chat with Kate. She’s a gorgeous soul. Without further ado, let’s welcome Kate to the show.
Catherine Langman:
So, welcome to the show, Kate. It’s really fantastic to have you here.
Kate Sutton:
Oh, it is so lovely to be talking about my favorite topic, which is business. One of my favorite topics, and shoes, and jewellery, and fashion. But yeah, I love, love talking business so thanks for the invitation.
Catherine Langman:
That’s so cool. And I love on that, that you’ve been able to combine some of your favorite topics into one profession.
Kate Sutton:
Well, that’s exactly what happened over the years. If you could follow your passion and you can make a living from it, then it’s an absolute gift.
Catherine Langman:
It is, isn’t it? Absolutely. So, I know that you’ve been in business for quite a long time now with Uberkate, but what was the background? What was your background that kind of led you to start the Uberkate brand?
Kate Sutton:
Probably two parallel loves. I am a trained journalist and TV producer. So, when I finished uni and started work, I worked in television for 12 years, doing a lot of really terrible Australian reality television, as well as some current affairs thrown in for good measure. And all the while through that time, I was handmaking jewellery as a hobby. And I guess as a young woman, I had no idea that you could run your own business, that there was such a thing. The word entrepreneur was not really thrown around or understood back then, and the internet didn’t exist and no one was selling online. So, I used to handmake these pieces of jewellery and I would take this beautiful suitcase to Channel Nine, and I would have all necklaces and earrings that I’d handmade at night and on the weekends in this beautiful box, and they would go around Channel Nine and the box would come back empty of jewellery and filled with money.
Catherine Langman:
That’s the coolest story. I love that.
Kate Sutton:
And then in 2002, I had some beautiful friends that I worked with who were all really creative, and we decided to do a photoshoot and start a website because people were ringing the station. Some of my girlfriends who were on air at the time were wearing jewellery that I’d made on air as was quite old-fashioned and people would ring the station, not email or on social media, and ask where their jewellery was from. And so, we started this kind of very… And I’ve still got the template for the first website. It’s hilarious. It’s fantastic.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, I’d love to see that. I always die when I look back at my first one.
Kate Sutton:
I know. When I started, I had a leather goods range, handmade belts, handbags, of course, the iconic personalized Ubercircles. And I had quite a big offering of so many products that I had no idea I’d be able to manufacture and keep up with the demand of it so we literally had to edit quite quickly down to that really iconic, personalized circle.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, yes. That’s when I first came across your brand. I reckon it would have been after I had my first son. You look at all of these-
Kate Sutton:
How old’s he?
Catherine Langman:
Ah, he’s about to turn 16.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yup.
Kate Sutton:
So, we’re heading for 18 years in business. So, that’s beautiful. I’m thrilled that you’ve known of the brand for that long because it’s such an interesting roller coaster ride from those early days of when Australians really didn’t shop online. No one trusted putting your credit card into a computer. I mean, a lot of people still don’t. But it was definitely not sit down at night with a glass of wine and go for a little shop on the internet.
Catherine Langman:
No, absolutely, exactly. So, when you set up that first website, was it just kind of like, “I’m going to give this a whirl and see if it flies,” or at what point did you really know that you were onto something with the-
Kate Sutton:
Not for years.
Catherine Langman:
Right.
Kate Sutton:
So, I worked parallel. It was very much this passion project where I started silversmithing in my twenties and I fell pregnant in my late twenties. And when I was pregnant with our daughter who’s 18, just this desire because I’d been doing a lot of traveling to have a piece of jewellery with her name on it and feel connected to her, it just started to grow.
And I had a set of vintage stamps that I bought at a flea market in… I couldn’t even tell you what country, but they were like a decoration on a shelf for the longest time, for probably 10 years. And I always looked at them and wondered what they were for. And one day when I’d been doing my silversmithing and I’d handmade silver circles that were half flat, half round which is very much the design style of a lot of things that were [inaudible 00:04:47] I can use those stamps and I’m going to hand stamp her name on to that circle. And then I did one for my partner and then I did one that had Uberkate on it, and I numbered each [inaudible 00:05:02]. And those first circles, I mean, I still have them. I still wear them. It’s really authentic, pure idea. There was nothing like it. There was no personalized jewellery. It just didn’t exist. It was just a really passionate idea from a garage from a soon-to-be mum to carry her daughter’s name with her when she went back to work.
Catherine Langman:
You really kind of kicked off a bit of a trend then, didn’t you, with the personalization side of things?
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, without really realizing it. And I mean, I remember I went to a function a couple of years ago and the whole thing was about personalization, and it was like, “Okay. So, we’re probably 15 years in at this point.” But yeah, over that period of time that we’ve been personalizing jewellery, it has become a global phenomenon. And I’m so proud of the part that I’ve had to play in that. I mean, no one gets to own anything, but I know that the authenticity of that design really resides in me and I’m super proud of it.
Catherine Langman:
Absolutely. It’s phenomenal.
Kate Sutton:
Thank you.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, I guess over those years, I mean, you would have been hustling on the side whilst you’re doing your day job, and being a mom, and trying to build the Uberkate brand. So that’s a few challenges just there. But what would you describe [crosstalk 00:06:31], yeah, that time?
Kate Sutton:
Just filled with excitement, joy, fun, hard work, and hustle. And I think for anyone wanting to start a business, you don’t go into it knowing everything. If you knew how difficult it would be at some times, you might not do it, but at the same time, the benefits. When you have the little… stop and celebrate the small wins and the first time that someone placed an order on your website or launching a new product, which we did last night and people’s feedback from that. And just that kind of energy that you get from putting yourself out there is incredible. I’m sure that there’s other things like it, but it’s a really beautiful part of owning a business that’s product-based where you’re sharing with people something that came out of your mind or your heart or your soul or sharing stories through jewellery, which is pretty much what we do. I had a bangle come back to the workshop this week and it’s probably, I think we worked out, it was 14 years old and it’s now got 17 small discs that have been added with 17 grandchildren’s names.
Catherine Langman:
Ah, isn’t that beautiful?
Kate Sutton:
And when these pieces come back, I mean, it feels like a purpose and definitely my life’s work. It’s pretty incredible.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, and what a thrill too when you… I mean, those stories, but also when you see someone you don’t know wearing one of your pieces, I always got a massive kick out of that.
Kate Sutton:
I get really shy though. I get starstruck. I’ll see someone wearing a necklace, and I’ll be in a cafe, and I’ll be like to Lulu, my daughter, I’ll go, “Oh my god, Look over there, quick, Ubercircles,” and we’ll both get really excited about it. It never gets old.
Catherine Langman:
No. Oh, goodness. So, I mean, having those beautiful stories and beautiful scenarios happen, that’s definitely a big thing that keeps you going through the maybe tougher times. Can you share a few of… Or maybe one or two of those challenges that you’ve gotten through in growing the Uberkate brand?
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, definitely. Look, I think for quite a few years there, I didn’t understand what I’d designed and created. And what happened during that period of time was that people did start to replicate what I was doing and they were perhaps better at business than I was. So, you’re starting to see this replication of your work that’s popping up on websites that are in America, websites that are in China, and people are taking your creativity and then benefiting hugely from it because they’re better at social media or they’re better at marketing themselves or they’re bankrolled by a startup company. And for me, when I started the business, there was no startup community. There was no seed funding. I mean, I’m sure there were angel investors, but I didn’t even know what one was then.
Catherine Langman:
No, and it wasn’t accessible at all. I remember that time.
Kate Sutton:
No.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Kate Sutton:
And so, for a couple of years there, we were continuing to handcraft these circles and our personalized silver and gold pieces, and what was happening was that other people were launching businesses that were undercutting what we were doing, and they were also able to automate some of the processes of how things were made. So, you’ve got a poorer quality product that’s coming onto the market that’s a bit similar to yours, but it’s maybe a lot less in price. And that really, that starts to undermine the fabric of your offering and you have to pivot.
And I didn’t do this on purpose, but I had started to fall passionately in love with gemstone during that period of time, and our sales had really started to slow, and we were really in a financial pocket where we just did not want to be. I think we broke even. One year we broke even, and I’m like, “Well, where does this go?” We’ve got this pressure up against us to kind of move forward in a way, and I’d designed the gemstone cut of what is now our most iconic gemstone ring, and that’s the Everyday gemstone cut which I think you’ve got a pair of earrings of.
Catherine Langman:
I do.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, it’s like a tri-cut, so it’s almost like a rounded-off triangle, but the facets on it, you won’t see that cut of gemstone anywhere else. And I have worked with a cutting family, a gemstone cutting family to design and craft that ring. I think we made 20 in the first batch and they were sitting in my cabinet at our storefront. We had a manufacturing studio but not with a shop or thing. And people would come to that manufacturing studio and they sat there for two years. Nobody wanted them. The stones were too big. And I eventually put them into an online sale at the end of… It would have been 2012. And they sold out, I think in like five minutes, and then because they then got sent out into the world, people started seeing other people wearing them, and then we started getting emails and calls about those rings.
And so, I got up enough confidence to make them in a beautiful green amethyst, which was a heat-treated purple amethyst because I couldn’t afford an emerald, and I really loved that emerald green so we made our own kind of color of stone quite common in jewellery making anyway. A lot of stones are heat-treated, and I then launched those with the green amethyst, and then they sold out. It started to twig with me that people really liked this ring, even though it had taken two years for it to start to trickle through. And I mean, we’re still making so many of those rings every week. If I was describing us in a gemstone ring, that would be us. And it’s a bit quirky. It’s a bit not perfect. It’s a bit cool. It’s a bit chunky. It’s a bit probably bold.
Catherine Langman:
People comment on them all the time when I wear them.
Kate Sutton:
That’s great. But again, that was almost like following what I was really loving at the time and what I was into, not realizing how much trouble the business was in. And so, over the next couple of years, I just worked really hard on replenishing, and supply, and sourcing of stones, and really working on what I was into, and luckily, the clients that I’d built up over that 10 years of personalized liked it as well. So, lucky us. Now we’re juggling both which we just love and also starting to do a lot more pieces that have got both personalization and the gemstones.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, I noticed that actually on your website yesterday.
Kate Sutton:
[crosstalk 00:14:05] good.
Catherine Langman:
I can only imagine that going through that period of time, the hardest thing must have been keeping your confidence even slightly intact.
Kate Sutton:
Absolutely. I don’t think there’s a person out there that runs their own business that hasn’t suffered from imposter syndrome at some time or some stage.
Catherine Langman:
Oh god, yes.
Kate Sutton:
But there was a period of time where I didn’t feel relevant. Okay, so I was a one-hit wonder, and I’ve designed these beautiful circles that are timeless, and people wear them for 15 years, 20 years, 50 years, and they don’t need to buy anything else from me.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, that’s right.
Kate Sutton:
And I thought that was my moment. And you do. Self-doubt is, unfortunately, a part of being a human, and I think any designer or creative goes through it if not daily, then at least weekly or monthly.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah, it’s a tough one, isn’t it? So, I mean, throughout that story that you’ve just shared, I mean, it’s kind of serendipitous that you’d made some decisions that really ended up moving the business forwards. Would you have one or two other strategies or decisions that you made, I guess through that time that really did catapult that business forward, discounting COVID, because, of course, that’s been a bit of an amazing time. We’ll get into that.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah. I think that’s a whole other conversation, isn’t it, COVID and marketing during COVID time. I mean, that was a shock and a surprise because we actually experienced growth, which is incredible, and we’re so incredibly grateful for that. Yeah, the strategic thinking is not necessarily something that I’m known for. I’m very intuitive with what I think and how I feel. I probably feel my business a lot more than I think it, and I tend to be really lucky with just my intuition on things, and if I’m following a pathway of something that I’m really passionate about and I’m amped up about it, then the energy from that seems to flow out into the rest of the business and our clients seem to like whatever it is that we’re creating.
I have designed a couple of collections over the 17 years, one in particular, which was called Fly. And that was an offering to a younger marketplace with a really dynamic concept of the chain with a screw thread in it where you bought the pendant separately and you actually screwed the little pendant onto the chain. It was really clever. And it absolutely fizzed. And the reason for that was that was me trying to be commercial, and it didn’t work for me. I’m still haunted by some of those pendants, and I do use them for things now and again. Every single year, I still have one big thing that I would call a failure. And I think the word failure, you can take it positively, you can take it negatively, but every time I have a failure, I turn that into something else the following year. So, let’s call it a lesson, a big lesson.
Catherine Langman:
Yes. It’s only a failure if you repeat it over and again. Right? You don’t learn from it.
Kate Sutton:
That’s right. No, I definitely learn.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. But that’s very cool. And I think what you’re talking about with being very intuitive and following your gut instinct, I mean, obviously, you’re a creative, that would lead you, I’m sure, but you must have a very good sense of what your audience does respond to, especially after this amount of time.
Kate Sutton:
We tend to ask a lot of questions. I honestly don’t have a level of arrogance when I’m designing because I want to know what people think. And we have an incredible group of VIP clients who I can almost ask them anything and they’ll give me honest feedback. Sometimes it’s brutal, but it’s always incredibly honest. And it just means that I am either slightly tweaking something or I’m on the wrong track or I’m on the right track. An example of that would be moonstones. So, I found a beautiful parcel of moonstone last year. Moonstone was not a stone I’ve ever loved until last year, and I found a parcel that had… It was a labradorescent so it’s like this shot of blue through white. It’s like an opalescent, and I hadn’t seen it like that before. I bought the parcel, and we cut it, and we set it into one ring, and we offered that to VIPs. And then they’re like, “We want everything. We want earrings. We want bangles in them.” I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t…”
And one of the difficulties that we have is working with natural stone, I’m never going to find that exact parcel ever again. It’s going to be slightly different. And it gives us, I think, a beautiful kind of side to our story because every piece of jewellery that you buy from us is a one-off. You’ll never see it again. That stone can’t be replicated. It’s yours. Your moonstone might have a flash of blue in the corner. Somebody else’s might only have it when you turn it sideways. And I mean, it’s just so mind-blowing the things that nature does. It also then means that it’s very difficult to be commercial because you’re dealing with natural gemstone, and if you photograph one piece that looks a certain way, like a dendritic opal, it’s black and white, and it could be white background with like shooting stars through it and then it might be white with black lines zigzagging. Every piece is so incredibly different, things that I love.
Catherine Langman:
Wow, yeah, I can see-
Kate Sutton:
[crosstalk 00:20:14] makes it difficult to sell.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, there’s two sides to the coin there. You can’t replicate that if you’re manufacturing everything in an automated manner and using plastic or artificial stones, but yes, if it’s all unique and different-
Kate Sutton:
There’s definitely a much easier pathway that I could have chosen.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, I have a musician and an artist, two brothers, one’s a musician, one’s an artist, and yes, it’s the same thing.
Kate Sutton:
Wow, very creative family.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, they have said that before. Yes, they could have taken an easier route, but it’s either in you or it isn’t, I guess, being that artistic kind of person.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
And at some point in the recent history, you opened a store, a shopfront.
Kate Sutton:
We did. After 16 years in business, we decided that right just when the world was completely turning its back on shopping and shopping centers that we would open our first flagship store. And I’d been to New York to do an exhibition there, and saw these beautiful wall hung cabinets, and I had these big, lofty dreams about how I wanted the store to look and to reflect us. And so, we built it and we called it The House of U, which obviously the U being U for Uberkate, and we have got on-site manufacturing. We’ve got jewelers. We’ve got a storefront. We’ve got shipping. We’ve got everything all together in this incredibly beautiful space. We’ve also got off-site fulfillment, but we have The House of U. I’m sitting upstairs in one of the offices having a chat with you, and it was so life-changing opening the door to people, and the first six to eight months was just incredible. The first Christmas was incredible.
And then eight months into the journey, COVID struck, and we had to close the store, and put up the covers, and shut down, and my background as a journalist kicked in at that point. My survival mechanism as a business owner and my staff who I’ve worked so hard to find, source, and keep over the years, I had to find a way to save the business, keep everyone employed. And so, we clicked almost the first week of COVID into live, virtual shopping. And so, my store manager who normally works in the store and greets people became very, very competent on Messenger, on FaceTime, on any of the channels that our clients wanted to use. And so, we started going live every day at lunchtime to Facebook and Instagram, talking to people. I forced my husband to sing songs on guitar. We did Friday Runway, we did storms the storefront up and down with the staff with their favorite pick.
Catherine Langman:
I love it.
Kate Sutton:
We did whatever we could without thinking or for me at the time, I got everyone together and said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But what I do know is that we’re going to keep on doing what we do, and we’re going to put ourselves out there as much as we can with no expectation of sales so that when this is over, people have got… They still connect with us. They know that we’re here. They still remember us.” So, that was the original goal when it all kicked off. I mean, the online shop, sorry, the virtual shopping just changed the face of the way we do business because we kept it, and now we’ve got tons of clients all over Australia and New Zealand in particular who purchase their product online, and then they book a virtual shop, and then they get a chance to choose their gemstones. So, it means it’s less-
Catherine Langman:
Really? That’s incredible.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, less returns for us. People get the exact thing that they want, and they get that kind of connection with a face-to-face with someone from our team. And it just was fantastic.
Catherine Langman:
It’s a whole experience then, and being able to have that interactive experience through the digital medium, I love it. It’s just brilliant.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, and I’m so lucky that it panned out for us. Everyone’s still here. No one’s left.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, good for you. That’s brilliant. And for your team, obviously.
Kate Sutton:
We’re very lucky.
Catherine Langman:
I think you’ve had some of your team members over a really long time, haven’t you?
Kate Sutton:
I certainly have. I’ve got one of our regional staff is coming up to 10 years.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, fantastic. Wow.
Kate Sutton:
I wish that I had known to bring people on quicker in the early days. I just didn’t know. I mean, often I get asked what advice would you give to other women in business or women wanting to start a business, and my first thing is that when you are earning enough money to start to scale, replace yourself in areas where it’s not the best use of your time. So, if you can get someone to come in and do your books or your admin, and you can be creative or selling or doing what you’re the best at, get both people in early because you will see a much quicker return on any investment that you make.
It took me four, five years to hire my first staff member, and I was doing every single thing from the photography to the Facebook, to the listings, to the social media, to the designing, we were manufacturing every single thing under my house as well.
Catherine Langman:
That’s crazy. You must have been exhausted.
Kate Sutton:
I was a bit crazy and I had young kids at the time, but I had this real passion to make, to use my hands. Now, I get ushered out of the workshop quite often [inaudible 00:26:22] and I want to go in and play. But we’re just setting up another jeweler’s bench in my new office. I’ve just got an office, my first office, after 17 years. I’m very excited.
Catherine Langman:
And you’re going to have your bench where you can tinker and design and make things.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah. Yep.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. That’s so good.
Kate Sutton:
Very excited.
Catherine Langman:
And I want to also just quickly ask you about when you decided to start exporting because I think that definitely came before opening your physical shopfront. Was that a moment of accelerated growth as well for you?
Kate Sutton:
Yeah. Look, I think that for all the positives and negatives of social media, I mean just the ability to sell globally for any brand is just an incredible gift. Originally, we were launching into the US via New York and that was a really, really exciting time, and we were looking at setting up a warehouse over there with manufacturing and replicating what we have here. And we discovered pretty quickly that we didn’t need to, that we could maintain the US site sales from here. And in actual fact, we ended up shutting down the US site and we handle everything through Instagram, Facebook, and the website. And so, all international orders get shipped from here and they’re pretty much four, five-day delivery now.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, isn’t that fantastic? It’s a bit different to [crosstalk 00:27:58].
Kate Sutton:
It’s incredible. It really wasn’t like that in 2012. You’d have people that had ordered from the Netherlands and they’d be ringing and going-
Catherine Langman:
Where is it?
Kate Sutton:
“It’s been 21 days and we haven’t got our ring for our wedding on the weekend.” It was a very stressful because the world was not established for that kind of export.
Catherine Langman:
No. I guess it was mostly Australia Post dealing with that and the bureaucracy that it is.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, which is still really is. I mean, they do a great job for us.
Catherine Langman:
Most of the time they do, yeah. It’s improved a lot over the years.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. So, our listeners here are typically like you, they’re brand owners running e-commerce storefronts majority, but oftentimes they’re wholesaling or they might have a shop as well. And a lot of the time they’re turning to us for ideas about their marketing. We don’t need to spend hours talking about this, but if you had a couple of things that have worked really well for you over the years, I’d love for you to share them.
Kate Sutton:
Oh, I love marketing. It’s one of the areas that I just can’t get enough of it.
Catherine Langman:
It’s creative, I guess.
Kate Sutton:
So, recently, a lot of that marketing was really, really organic. I think when you’re feeling like doing some natural marketing, I think talking to your customers about your products and what you’re doing, giving them a space, showing them inside what you’re doing and how you do it, and bringing them on the journey, that was… I only learned that huge lesson last year when we really got behind the scenes at The House of U, and we did live crosses from where we’re engraving to downstairs and split screens on Instagram, and really utilizing all of the platforms where their client base is. So, not everyone needs to do both Instagram and Facebook. We’re a jewellery manufacturer so we do, but there are some products that only need to be marketed on Facebook and some only on Instagram. And I think getting comfortable with stepping in front of your phone and talking about your story and telling it well is a really incredible marketing strategy to utilize, and anyone can do it. You just need a phone. Tell your story, keep telling it to yourself, and recording it until it’s good, until you get inspired by listening to yourself.
Catherine Langman:
A story, as a means of communication is incredibly powerful in words, as well as visuals. It’s what people engage with and remember, really, isn’t it?
Kate Sutton:
We’re all storytellers. We’re all wanting to connect with a story. And we help people tell their stories through the jewellery that we make with them for them to wear throughout their lives. Other people that are selling other products are telling people and sharing their stories with them. It’s making your clients feel like they’re part of your story is what builds really strong bonds and long-term. I’ve been making for some families for 15, some families 20 years. Before I even started Uberkate, I was still making a lot of jewellery. And people pop up every now and again with here’s a beaded necklace that you made for me in 1995.
Catherine Langman:
Oh my goodness.
Kate Sutton:
It’s really that things can last the distance. Yeah, but storytelling is definitely part of being human, and I think it’s probably the most important and powerful platform that we can use as marketers.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, it’s so good. So, where to next for Uberkate? You seem to keep evolving and growing.
Kate Sutton:
I’m so happy in my little pocket right now. I [inaudible 00:31:59] all my traveling. Last year was going to be a really big year of me delving back into a little bit of or a big bit of storytelling. I had a lot of trips that I was going to some of the mines where we source some of our stones from, and I wanted to show people the communities and what sustainable mining can look like. I wanted to show the stories of other people and parts of what ends up on your finger. And so, that’s all been halted for the minute. And now, we’re probably focusing more on bringing back some of our designs from the archives over the lifetime of the business. So, we’ve been getting a lot of requests for, “Oh, my friend’s got a pair of peacock earrings,” which I know sounds weird but I probably made those in 2008. So, me collecting a lot of history which is really fun.
Catherine Langman:
That’s so cool.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
You’re going to need that table where you can tinker and design and play around.
Kate Sutton:
We’ve literally just installed it before you and I started speaking. It’s on our Instagram Stories now.
Catherine Langman:
I’ll have to go check it out.
Kate Sutton:
Yeah, fantastic.
Catherine Langman:
Ah, that’s so cool. It’s really fantastic to hear your story and to be able to share it with our audience. I will obviously share all of your links. So, we’re going to share your website and your social media handles on our podcast notes. And just give you one last chance, I guess, is there anything else you’d like to say to leave with our audience before we wrap up today?
Kate Sutton:
Just to celebrate the small little joys each and every day in your business, the great feedback from a client, someone’s super happy with something you’ve done. Don’t think that there’s big, big milestones that you need to keep on reaching. I think enjoying the daily grind of your own business is such an incredibly important thing because otherwise, why do we do it. I guess we all need to earn an income. We need to pay our mortgages. We need money, all those sorts of things but that’s not the only reason that I think we run our businesses.
So, just stop each time or at least once a day, or even at the end of the day, and think about the great things that happened. We do it with our staff weekly. Everyone brings something. Oh, I read this about such and such or I had a client in the other day, he said this about that person. And the joy on everyone’s faces when they’ve done something great is really phenomenal and just enjoying… And I hate to use this word because I think it’s overused, but enjoying the journey is really important, as well as whatever success you’re looking for.
Catherine Langman:
Such an important message. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs who go really hard and burn out quite quickly, whereas if you can fall in love with the process, as you’re saying, you will be around for the next, well, what is it? Year 18 I think for Uberkate?
Kate Sutton:
Year 18. I’m going to have my 18th which meant I’m coming of age.
Catherine Langman:
That’s sensational. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show today, Kate. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Kate Sutton:
Thanks for having me, Catherine.