In July 2009, I closed down my naturopathic clinic in Brisbane, my hubby quit his job and we headed off around Australia for an adventure in Morrie the campervan! Morrie was short for Morrison...as in Van Morrison (get it?) and was our home for the next year as we took in the amazing sights of Australia. The only thing I took from my clinic with me on this trip around Australia was my flower essences kit! Although I didn't get it out and start playing with my essences again until we had ended up in the southwest of WA (hello Bunbury) and I was pregnant with my first baby! I had to go off a lot of my supplements when I found out I was pregnant (as you do!) so I was so glad to have the emotional support of my flower essences which I knew were safe for me to take and that's when I started making blends up again for myself and others...and it strangely grew from there!

So up until I was living in WA, I had only made custom made flower essence blends for myself, my family and my patients. When I first became a mum I made myself up a blend that I called 'Mumma Magic' as it helped me with the feelings that parenting was bringing up in me so much. A lady in my Mothers group saw me taking it and after I had answered what it was for, she asked me for a bottle too! So I ended up making a Mumma Magic for everyone in my group and they all felt so much better that word spread and I started making up many more Mumma Magic after that....

Back in the early days I made all my blends by hand, drop by drops, which was quite time consuming! So for example, If I made a blend up with 7 essences in it (like Mumma Magic for example) I would have to use 7 drops of each of the 7 essences so that's 49 drops into the bottle! And that was fine when making up one or 2 bottles but when I started making up to 30 bottles at a time of each blend that's hand dropping 1,470 drops! We now use a bulk made recipe formula (which still calculates 7 drops of each essence per bottle!) and dispense with special laboratory grade pumps from France! This way we can make up to 150 bottles at a time in no time at all!

After selling my blends through Facebook for a couple of years while popping out two babies, one of my husbands close friends who works in the website business suggested it might be time to actually build a website to sell these blends more professionally....as up until then I had just been selling through my facebook page and giving out my bank details for people to transfer money before I sent them out. He also had a sister in graphic design who helped me with my first logo for this new website he built for me (Adam, I will ALWAYS be grateful to you!) and so the launch of the Naughty Naturopath Mum website is when I count the Business Birthday from. So we are currently turn 10 on September 30th even though I have been exclusively making flower essence blends since my daughter was born and she is turning 13 this year!

We now have 28 different flower essence blends in our range and each blend has been born from a stage of my life as I have evolved as an adult and as my kids have grown and needed support in different areas. So Tantrum Tamer came about when my son was around 2, Fussy Eaters when my daughter was around 5, Like A Boss when I first started realising what my new career path involved, the chakra range when I started doing some deeper healing and did more studies in energy healing, Protect when I realised I was an empath...are you getting the picture? Lol! And all formulas were re-formulated and made again and again until I hit on the right combination of essences after they were tested on me, the kids and countless other guinea pig friends and family along the way!

So when I first started out, I would take my bag of parcels down to my local Post Office every few days. When I started getting busier and opened up an e-parcel account with Australia Post I was assigned John the postie who would come and do a parcel pick up from my house 3 times a week. Working on my own, he was like my only other team member for that first year and I loved to see his smiling face and have a quick chat when he would do his pick up. Over the last 10 years we have moved the business as it grew into 5 different premises, the first 2 were from my home and the most recent 3 have been commercial spaces. I always stayed in the area and requested John as my postie! He has been doing daily pick ups for the last 9 years and seen my business and team grow the whole way along. This pic was taken just this week as he did his very last NNM pick up! John is headed for retirement so massive love and shout out to John for the last 10 years of order pick ups!

I kept a vision board before we left on our big trip around Australia and everything that was on the board (apart from a pic of The Maldives!) has come true so far! When I packed that vision board up to go on our travels, I took a photo of it and can now see what has come to fruition (and I have no doubt I will get to the Maldives one day!) It made me realise the importance of visualising what we want in our life so when I started sending out orders, I wanted to remind my customers of something they might need to see daily in order to bring that to them. So that's how my affirmation postcards were born. Just a short reminder like 'You Are Enough' or 'You Are Amazing' to pop on the fridge or somewhere they are reminded of this fact daily. And sharing so many affirmations on my social media pages culminated in me bringing out my Note To Self Affirmation Cards in 2018 so I am so happy to be adding to people's vision boards and affirmation rituals in their homes now 💛

So since we launched the Naughty Naturopath Mum Website and online store, at the time of writing this we have:

~ 63,234 customers

~ fulfilled 103,274 orders

~ sent to 35 different countries including places like Cyprus and Peru!

~ employed 48 people

~ planted 4,600 trees with Carbon Neutral

~ had 5 different offices

And I've only had maybe 2 mental break downs 🤪

We launched our wholesale website in 2017 and I am so proud that we have over 100 active wholesale customers. The majority of our wholesalers are practitioners who stock our blends and mists in their clinics! So we have chiropractors, naturopaths, kinesiologists, massage therapists and energy healers who have our range on hand for their patients. As a former practicing naturopath who worked in many clinics over the years including my own, it thrills me no end that my products are being recommended my health practitioners within consultations. We are in some healthfood stores too!

When we moved into our first commercial property space (it was amazing not working out of my home anymore!) I bought a beautiful piece of furniture to commemorate the occasion and christen new the space! It's an old Australia Post counter that had a new counter top added made of recycled wood. It has travelled to each of our new premises so far and is always the feature piece of the office. It became our display counter where we have our products proudly on display and and also the welcoming counter as you walk in the door. It's always had great light in all it's many positions as it has always been at the entrance...so the recycled wood counter has become the backdrop for many of our product photos. I also sought out the man who restored this beautiful counter and got him to custom make our packing benches from recycled timber as well. They have deep drawers to store our satchels, storage underneath for our Australia Post containers and heaps of space for our environmentally friendly packing materials. And I got him to put the legs on wheels so we can easily manoeuvre them into place when we move office or reconfigure our space.