August 2008 Issue - Subscribe Now
Babette Cole
With 70 published books to her credit, Babette sure knows her way around books.
Theresa Brady
Theresa has to be one of New Zealand’s hardest working designers.
Plug the Holes in Your Money Bucket
Do you find yourself wondering where all your money goes?
her wellbeing
Dr. Vasu Iyengar .pdf
Pelvic floor dysfunction, prolapse and incontinence, costs, demographics and the importance of appropriate assessment prior to repair.
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her inspiration
Publishing Success In A Declining Market 
Lunching with international children’s book writer and illustrator, Babette Cole, is like catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in a while.
For an Englishwoman, Babette Cole is alarmingly frank. During the course of a recent lunch she divulged how much her Dorset farm is worth, what she owes the tax department and even the state of her spousal relationship. She also confided that not very long ago she was rather rich. Now she’s not! Not as the result of a financial disaster, rather because writing books no longer makes you wealthy (unless you’re J. K. Rowling of course, but there are precious few of her). You need, says Babette, other sources of income to supplement the now paltry amount you earn from book royalties. This seems to be the case even if you’re someone as well known as Babette Cole, with 70 published books to her credit.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Babette is so candid. The same frankness comes out in her books, especially the hugely successful child’s sex education book, Mummy Laid an Egg, which has sold more than two million copies. She does, she admits, get into trouble with the PC brigade, but this is water off a duck’s back to her!
She shows me the hand-drawn illustrations of her new book in which her well-known character, Princess Smartypants, is sent to finishing school. Once there, instead of learning quietly how to curtsey and wear a tiara, she creates an entirely new range of behaviours, none of which is deemed acceptable. Young Smartypants is sent packing!
Even though the money to be made from writing (and in Babette’s case illustrating) is slowing alarmingly, it’s clear she isn’t giving up. She still produces two books a year, despite travelling a great deal to promote her books, and as she is doing in New Zealand, taking part in book festivals. She has come downunder to participate in the Storylines festival as one of the featured writers.
I imagine that children love her. A diminutive physique means she’s not much taller than them and I can see from the way she explains the plot of her new book that she acts out the part of her characters.
Horses feature strongly in her works because Babette is horse-mad. She owns 15, including a Holstein stallion, and she breeds ladies hunters. But her reduced financial circumstances mean some will soon have to go as well as her lovely little Dorset stud farm, which isn’t little by our standards and according to her not lovely, as she complained several times of the mud. She just adores the Dorset countryside, but may move to somewhere a little less wet and muddy.
She confesses to spending every moment that she’s not writing or travelling with her horses. She rides side-saddle and is a member of a woman’s side-saddle chasing team, which competes for charity by careering around fields and galloping over hedges.
It’s not clear from her rapid conversation whether there is money to be made in horse breeding or whether she is in the game simply for the love of it. What she does say is that in order to retain her standard of living she’s had to diversify. This means lecturing about writing children’s books, running workshops and generally talking about the areas in which she is both knowledgeable and experienced. Her reputation makes her a popular presenter who is much in demand.
Despite the general negativity about book publishing, Babette remains positively upbeat. “There were predictions that books wouldn’t survive,” she says. “But we still tell stories, so they will stay with us. But books aren’t just books anymore. They’re interactive. Just look at the novelty books you can buy today. They’re so much more than simply words on a page.”
She points out that those who are older among us still like to hold a book; youngsters today grow up with a keyboard or phone in their hands so they’re more comfortable reading from a computer screen. This means that in order to connect with their children, parents need to embrace the new technology. Babette certainly has. She has uploaded her works onto youtube and her own website has a video of her reading Princess Smartypants. Children can listen while following their own copy of the book. “The web is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a new medium,” she enthuses. “In fact, it’s a great way to reach a whole new audience.”
Describing herself as a ‘trendy extrovert’, Babette enjoys trying new things, and that means new ways to reach her audience in order to promote her books. “It is very important to keep abreast of changes. Some people are in despair in the publishing world, but I believe there’s hope. If we [authors] don’t give books to kids in new ways, their parents won’t.”
The skilful marketing ploy here is that in order for children to make use of this form of delivery, they still need their own copy of the book.
It saddens Babette that even in England, 20 percent of children leave school without being able to read. This, it transpires, is the only negative note in an otherwise upbeat and entertaining lunch.
By Lynnaire Johnston
her insight
Urban Creative Designer - Theresa Brady 
Theresa Brady has to be one of New Zealand’s hardest working designers. She is passionate about many things. This is clear when you meet her and interprets clearly in everything she touches in her role as businesswoman, employer and successful fashion designer.
Not only does she direct her business ‘Urban Creative’, she also comes up with ideas and is present through the whole design process for all the ranges. That’s for both Doosh and the entire Sable and Minx range.
Every season, Theresa designs three ranges: Doosh men’s, Doosh women’s and Sable and Minx, with over 120 outfits and different styles to co-ordinate in three months. She has established a reliable team of people with eight staff and suppliers. This includes her talented design maker Lauren, who is so efficient and calm she makes the pattern-making process, and working with fiddly fabrics, look so easy.
2. At Urban Creative HQ, Theresa has a team of creative people to assist her busy schedule. This is one of the aspects that she always mentions as being the key to a successful company. Without a team of people behind you who are skilled in what they do and with the same vision, the company just would not work.
“I find it as much of a challenge to design the business model as designing the next season’s fashion.”
Theresa has been passionate about designing garments since a young age, op-shopping for vintage pieces and making her own clothes. She would hunt for anything with classic lines, either modifying them to create her own style or leaving them as retro pieces.
Theresa refers to her grandmother as being an inspiration for her to pursue this industry as she was a seamstress and always wanted to make and design her own clothes. Due to the times in which she lived, she never had the freedom to pursue a career in fashion. Theresa is proud to be able to fulfil the dream of her grandmother, which she is doing with much success.
Her journey into the fashion industry began as a freelance stylist. Steve Ingram was the creator of the Doosh label. Ingram met her on a shoot she was working on as a stylist and immediately saw her potential and loved her warm personality. The timing was perfect as he was looking for a new salesperson and general manager to market his street-wear label Doosh. In this position as the Doosh sales rep, she constantly asked the customers what was missing in the market; what other products and styles were the public asking for?
She began to help in design concepts as the feedback came in, making sure that the designs were aligning with their customer input. With her market instincts very sharp, she soon saw a gap and a potential market for good fitting, classic, but still fashionable, street wear for the slightly more mature women’s market.
Within two years, Theresa had started to see this need for a new range to be developed, building on the existing Doosh label. With all the resources in place and Theresa’s fabulous motivation, Sable and Minx was created. Her influences included screen sirens of the 1930s and 40s and classic styles of fashion icons like Jackie O and Gloria Vanderbilt.
The two years to follow would see Theresa learning from Ingram and stepping into all aspects of the business such as business strategy then further into the exciting area of design. Recently, Theresa has taken ownership of the company from Ingram as he ventures into new avenues. Her business partner David Bennett runs the finances for the company, while she focuses on design and strategy.
This allows Theresa to journey overseas to places such as Asia and Europe to source fabrics, design ideas and also for a holiday as she works incredible hours on designing, the day-to-day running of a business and also hiring new people as their range expands.
What’s in store for the future for this talented lady, interesting team and expanding labels?
Theresa is already establishing international connections with plans to expand the ranges offshore. The evolution of a larger men’s range for Doosh and developing a distinct flavour for Sable and Minx, with stronger styles each season, are in her sights. Her labels can be seen in many places on personalities such as on C4’s Jermaine Leef, Reannin on Juice TV, and are distributed to over 100 outlets nationwide.
Doosh has been in existence for 14 years now with many of the same drill range selling just as well due to the good quality of the clothes, comfortable designs and earthy colours. Sable and Minx is growing every year with ranges being both feminine and practical with elements of the Art Deco period.
As her designs concepts are created seasons ahead, she is constantly watching other people’s fashion for inspiration. Theresa has made the comment that sometimes people think she is judging them when, in fact, she is just looking at their style for ideas!
All of her designs, both Doosh and Sable and Minx labels aim to flatter the figure and inspire rather than follow short trends and fashion icons.
In her own words “they should be enjoyed!”
By Huia Hamon
her inform
Plug the Holes in Your Money Bucket 
Do you ever find yourself wondering where all your money goes? Of course, it doesn’t help when food and petrol prices keep going up and mortgage interest rates are high but even so, it should be possible to get ahead financially rather than just treading water.
The reason most people are short of money is not because they spend their income on big expensive things but because they spend little bits here and there. Imagine that every payday your money goes into a big 'money bucket'. At the end of each pay period, it is as if your money has disappeared through holes in the bucket. It’s what I call 'Leaky Bucket Syndrome', spending $5 here, $20 there. Small amounts spent can add up to hundreds of dollars each payday. This is money that could be used to achieve the things in life that are really important to you, rather than disappearing on relatively unimportant items. If you want to make progress financially then you need to plug the holes in your money bucket. It’s a bit of a tedious job finding where they are but it’s something that you usually only need to do once to be able to make a difference.
Start by finding your bank and credit card statements for at least the last three months. On a piece of paper, make a list of headings that you spend money on.
For example you might have: rent or mortgage , insurance, rates, groceries, phone and Internet, power, entertainment, chemist, medical expenses, dental expenses, petrol, car maintenance.
Go through your bank accounts and credit card statements and put each transaction under one of the headings on your list. When you have gone through all the transactions, add up the total for each heading. You’ll probably find that there are a lot of small, general items – mostly from when you have taken out cash to spend. Put these items under a separate heading called ‘general’.
Now organise your list of headings into three groups:
1. Fixed expenses that you can’t do anything about such as rent, mortgage, rates, insurance
2. Other household expenses that are essential but where you have some control over how much you spend such as food, power, phone, petrol and children’s clothes
3. Discretionary spending, that is, non-essentials and personal items such as entertainment, gifts, haircuts, beauty treatment and clothes.
Add up all the transactions for each heading. Now change the three monthly totals for each heading to an amount per year by multiplying by four. Add to your list any annual payments that you make that might have been missed in the three-month period you look at, for example, an annual insurance payment or licencing for your car. Compare your total spending to your annual income. You’ll probably find that there’s some money you can’t account for! Have a look to see if you can find the leaks in your money bucket.
Your leaks will be:
- Spending that you can’t account for as you simply don’t know where the money has gone
- Money that you have spent on unessential items
- Excessive spending on household items such as food, power and phone.
According to the household survey done by the Department of Statistics in June 2007, the average household spends around $980 a week, broken down as follows:-
Food $155.60
Alcohol and cigarettes $26.50
Clothing and footwear $32.80
Housing and utilities (mortgage, power, etc.) $223.90
Household contents and services $50.60
Health $22.60
Transport $136.00
Communication $31.20
Recreation and culture $96.70
Miscellaneous and other expenses $191.40
Total $980.00
Source:
www.stats.govt.nz
This table is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it gives you a guide as to whether the amounts you spend in your household are more or less than what others spend on average. Secondly, it shows just how much gets spent by New Zealand households on miscellaneous items. Obviously, you will need to take into account the number of people in your household and whether you live in a more expensive city when comparing your expenditure with the national average.
To be able to achieve your goals in life and to get ahead means that you need to be able to save. By definition, saving means spending less than you earn. Following this simple principle means the difference between leading a stressful life struggling from payday to payday and being able to enjoy life. If you are on a low income or have high expenses, try saving a small amount each week towards a goal that is important to you and gradually increase your saving over time. If you’ve found the leaky holes in your money bucket and plugged them, you’ll be able to achieve your goals without having to make any major sacrifices.
By Liz Koh
Financial Planner, Money Max
Liz Koh is a financial adviser. Her disclosure statement can be obtained free of charge by calling 0800 273 847.
Visit:
www.moneymax.co.nz
Do you find yourself wondering where all your money goes?
