If you’ve been listening along for a while, you’ll probably know me well enough to notice when I get totally carried in someone’s story and suddenly we’re 50 minutes in and I’m still on their way to yay. It’s generally because our guest has such a densely interesting story that we could do a whole podcast on each theme, which I definitely felt for today’s fabulous guest and I still feel like there are so many things I could have asked but didn’t get to. Despite, hilariously, not having met in person, Kim van Haaster has become my work wife in law since Nic joined the founding team of her incredible clean beauty start-up Bloomeffects and someone I admire immensely. I posted a video recently sharing some of the headlines of Kim’s story and LOVED fleshing out all the chapters in between.

Kim is such a great reminder of one of our favourite themes that life doesn’t always work out how you planned but it often works out better and that finding your dream life takes lots of patience, trust and chipping away. From 10 different primary schools and even more random jobs earlier in her career including as a mattress saleswoman, pure grit and hard work led Kim from Frankston to become a hugely successful corporate in New York becoming Head of Marketing for personal healthcare giant PZ Cussons. Kim was the brains behind St Tropez’s incredible growth globally doubling its space in ULTA and winning brand of the year in 2017 (for all intents and purposes living a Sex and the City-esque dream life so early in her 30s). And yet, she walked away from it all when she met a Dutch tulip farmer on an Ibiza dancefloor and moved to Amsterdam to start a family.

I thought I knew the story of how she ventured into entrepreneurship with Bloomeffects but I didn’t know the half of it. This episode felt like reading a captivating novel while also teaching me SO much about the tulip farming industry, business in Australia vs the US vs the Netherlands, the many uses for sawdust - you know I LOVE diving into a niche community - and also squeezing in lesser discussed themes like divorce, miscarriage and creating change in a patriarchy. Kim is endlessly interesting and I hope you enjoy this one as much I did!

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