the full story

I still struggle to believe it myself sometimes.  How I went from a corporate marketing career to chief relish maker…  and haven’t looked back!  Here is how it started…

I pulled the plug on my ‘corporate high-flyer, ceo wannabe’ career path in 2007 to start my own ‘thing’. At the time of leaving I didnt really have a clear idea what this ‘thing’ was, but I had a little hunch. It was really hard to walk away from the security of a salary, and looking back I’m lucky I didn’t have as many of those big financial responsibilities like a mortgage or children to worry about at the time. After some much needed ‘timeout’ to rediscover how to r-e-l-a-x and just ‘be’… (a period of time I now phrase as “allaboutme”), I found my ‘thing’. Well, actually, it found me. I spose it had already found me a long time ago (see related post: chocolate sand-cakes) but it was only now that I had the emotional, mental and physical space, I finally had the chance to see it and feel it, is probably a better way to describe it (see related post: finding ur passion).  And yup, it was food.

I began cooking three course meals, baking cakes n desserts, creating fancy glazes n sauces from scratch and more.  I was able to create the type of gourmet meals I never had time to do before and always wanted to. I was lovin’ it! My now fiance was most impressed, and I fed him like a king (perhaps how I secured the rock I now have on my finger ). It was during this time my mum sent me her copy of a red capsicum relish recipe from NZ, one she had developed over time and really loved. I made a few batches, tweaking the recipe and playing around a bit with the flavours, and gave out old-school preserving jars packed with relish to friends and family – or anyone who’d eat it (see related post: my first relish batch). The two of us could barely get through a couple of jars let alone a couple of batches.

After a couple of months of all this ‘edible creativity’, I began to feel financially unproductive and lazy, despite all the planning, researching and thinking about business ideas . Good food is not cheap and my salary was starting to be missed. I really wanted to get my teeth into a business venture and only realised I could do it with ’seera’s saucy jars’ of relish when a couple of my friends started asking for more of the relish. And that yes, they were willing to pay for it! After researching the gourmet food industry and looking at retail/consumer trends, I began documenting my plans to take relish to market. I had to physically register a business name and remember walking into the Office of Fair Trading already hooked on my biz name, waiting as the agent checked the availability in the database. That was October 11th 2007. I remember bouncing outta there in excitement knowing I had the go ahead. I had to ring mum!

Within a few weeks I received a couple of casual orders from friends and my first big order was for personalised jars of relish to be given as bonbonerie for a good friends baby shower (see related post: babyshower of the year). This really kicked me into gear. I managed to source my first small jars from Adelaide and created a front and back styled label in red and white (see related post: the jar label journey).  A few Christmas orders came in through friends and I slowly started to gain confidence in my product, especially when people were willing to pay for a jar of relish made by me, in my humble kitchen!

It was around this time I was asked to attend a Christmas networking event with a friend, hosted by the Australian Businesswomens Network (ABN), and is where I discovered the MentorNet program. I felt a mentor was just what I needed to help with my brand new start up and ended up applying, and was accepted into the six month program beginning Feb 2008…(to be continued).

You can read on from this story via the posts available in the biz thoughts>>relish this. section.

coming soon. the full story UPDATE “one year or so later…”