Growing up working for the family business

Most Saturdays I’d join my dad in doing the Natte Yallock/Redbank paper run. I learnt to drive on the dirt back roads and after many bunny-hopping moments, I was driving a manual car at 12.

As a child, I didn’t really like the business because none of my friends had to work and I would miss out on things. I’d be jealous of friends who went on family holidays. But I think the biggest impact of living in the same building as your business is that you can’t escape it. In most workplaces, you knock off and head home, but you’d find my mother downstairs at all hours.

However, I wouldn’t change a thing about my childhood in the newsagency. I’m thankful that I learnt how to count money and give correct change without using a calculator. I’m thankful for my manners and the people skills I developed. I’m thankful that I got to work alongside my parents and grandparents. I’m thankful for the sacrifices my parents made to give me a happy, comfortable childhood.

Overall, I loved it.”

‘Once my siblings and I were eight years old, we worked’: Melissa Foster, 48

“When I was four years old, my parents decided to relocate from Sydney to the Gold Coast for a slower-paced life. With four children under 13, they bought a five-room motel with living quarters which they owned for 18 years.

Mum and Dad worked the business together – in the reception, the laundry, and servicing the rooms. My dad made breakfasts and also carried out maintenance jobs. Check-out was at 9am. Once the room was vacated, it was cleaned; the laundry was done on the premises until a service was used in later years.

In this situation, four children are four extra pairs of hands, so once my siblings and I were about eight years old, we also worked: answering the phone, booking in guests, cleaning rooms, doing the laundry. My brother usually cleaned the bathrooms and my younger sister would make the beds with me. We’d always watch Video Hits or Rage on the TV in the room we were cleaning.

Sunday was both family day and the busiest day for checkouts. The quicker we could finish our work, the longer we could have out swimming or on a picnic.

We loved and hated the home business. The best part was that our parents were home all the time; we are a close family and have many fabulous memories together. Also, we earned money for our family, not for someone else. Working as a unit positively shaped us all.

It also taught all us kids to be good earners and good with business – if the work is not done, then the money is not earned. We learnt about people, about different situations, and how grateful we were to have love and balance.

On the other hand, I definitely became tired of the intrusion of having strangers coming so close to our home, the way crazy situations and dramas became normal daily events, and the relentlessness that came with never really being able to switch off.

In the beginning, guests would stay for anything from one night to seven or so, depending on whether they were just passing through or on a destination holiday. They were interesting, friendly and trustworthy. But as the Gold Coast grew, hospitality changed. People started flying rather than driving. Flight and accommodation packages were introduced, and high-rise accommodation became more popular.

Eventually, most guests only stayed with us on a nightly basis. Crime became more prevalent and we began to feel unsafe in our home. Unbalanced personalities and criminals started to hire our rooms. The police were called regularly. It all changed.

I still drive past the motel daily and tell my kids, ‘That was my home. That window was my bedroom. My family owned that motel.’”

‘I loved the opportunity to interact with people’: Kirsty McRae, 46

“My family moved from Sydney to a small village in the Scottish Highlands in the 1970s, purchasing Kerrow House, a 400-year-old hunting lodge set in 12 acres of mature woodland. We lived there until I was 12.

While Dad worked as a solicitor in Inverness, an hour’s drive away, Mum ran the historic home as a bed and breakfast, hosting tourists from all corners of the world during summer. With four kids – I have two older sisters and a younger brother – plus chickens and ponies, and with the nearest supermarket an hour’s drive away, she worked endlessly.

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Mum did everything: bookings, front-of-house, chef, waitress, cleaning, laundry. We did have help from nannies sometimes, during the summer when my sisters and I were young, but mostly we’d be outside climbing trees, trying to catch rabbits and exploring the surrounding farmland on horseback.

I was conscious that the B&B was a demanding business that took up a lot of Mum’s time, and of its impact on our privacy, with people you don’t know in your family home. However, it was a sizable house with multiple living spaces.

On the plus side, I loved the opportunity to meet and interact with people. The experience taught me the value of listening as well as speaking, and that doing small acts of kindness for people could bring joy. It also helped me to gain confidence and become a good communicator. I now work in communications and PR and I’m able to forge relationships with my clients easily and naturally.

Being able to build meaningful connections with people in a short space of time is a very useful skill in both life and business, and recognising and respecting the nuances of different cultures, social groups and backgrounds has huge value.

The opportunity to meet people from all over the world was transformative, fostering a deep-rooted curiosity about other countries, customs and people. I had an awareness from an early age of how big and exciting the world was, and how much possibility it held.”

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