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Alice Moore, founder of Christchurch-based marketing agency Mint Design, talks about how her firm retains staff and why Christchurch businesses were more prepared than others for lockdowns and remote working.
What does the business do?
Mint Design is a digital marketing agency. We help businesses with their online presence andhelp them look good. People might come to us when they need a website built, and they also work with us to help their business grow online; so we help drive traffic to their website using platforms like Google and Facebook. We have about 500 clients working with us nationwide as well as some contracts throughout the South Pacific. We have an office here in Christchurch, where we are headquartered, and we've also got an office in Auckland which we launched last year just in time for lockdown.
The business has been in growth mode since we started - it has just been one big growth phase. We've featured in the Deloitte Fast 500 for the technology sector quite a few years running and we grew our revenue by 56 per cent last year and we definitely still growing.
My husband is the CEO and we started Mint together. Back in 2010 when we started we saw that a lot of Kiwi businesses weren't yet utilising the web in the way that they could to help their business grow and to be found online by new customers and new markets. We found that a lot of Kiwi business owners were hesitant to invest in online because there were a lot of fly-by-night businesses operating in the web space that weren't necessarily doing it in the right way and charging a lot of money. That's not the case now, luckily the industry has corrected itself and has become regulated by its own market, but that was the reason we started: to make it a lot more transparent and a lot more accessible for typical Kiwi businesses, and to demystify something that might have seen quite unknown.
We started the business just before the 2011 earthquake, so there were lots of lessons learned quite early on in the business for us.
Shayne and Alice, founders of Mint Design. Photo / Supplied
The business has all been privately funded. We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have any lines of credit or overdraft. A very generous family member loved our business idea and saw a lot of potential in us and loaned us $30,000 and we somehow turned it into a $3.5 million business, so that was a pretty good investment for them.
What's your current focus?
As we mature as a business for us now we are focused internally on boring things like standard operating procedures, but we're always wanting to grow as an employer. We are ranked in the top 4 per cent in our engagement surveys, so we're one of the best places to work in New Zealand; of those surveys. We want to go from 4 per cent to 2 per cent, which is a really hard thing to do; to go into that 2 per cent space, but it is something we are really passionate about. One of the next things we will be tackling is inclusivity and making sure that everybody at Mint knows that they are safe to come as they are and be who they are. We also have quite a strong focus on mental health, and I think a lot of employers would agree the lines of an employer responsibility with their team's mental health has shifted and that's something we like to put a lot of resource into.
We're in a lucky position that our industry in digital marketing in general is booming and we are in a position where we can invest in things like mental health resources. We find that investing in our team always pays off. We operate in quite a transient industry in terms of staff, because a lot of digital marketers are in a younger age group and they do tend to move around a lot, so we find we have to work hard to retain them and offer a great place to work.
What's the key to good staff retention?
We've found that over the last few years, the investment that we've put into our employer brand has paid off, in particular this year. We've been doing some recruitment and I've never seen conditions like it. We've found that we've been able to pick up some really extraordinary talent and senior talent too because of the work and investment we've put in over the years in our employment brand - it is paying off now.
Where do you see the business in three to five years' time?
In three to five years we are looking to go up to $5 million in revenue. We believe the bigger you get the more average you can become so we really want to fight that and not become an average company.
How has working from home changed the office dynamic?
We offer our team a hybrid model where they work from the office and home. We do like to have people coming in two days a week just so that we can retain culture. But I think it also beckons a broader conversation about culture not just being at the office now; culture is really every interaction and every project brief. I know that it can be a big struggle for some business owners. For us, the benefit to us as a business is the benefit to the team member. Some of our team really enjoy having time to stay home and focus and not have those disruptions - it can be really beneficial.
Here in Christchurch we've been working from home since 2011, we all carried our desktop computers home when we got booted out of offices that weren't secure from the earthquake so from that perspective alone, being able to work hybrid and from home just guards businesses from disruption. Businesses that can work from home should use it to their advantage in case there are changes in ways such as Covid to keep business ticking along. There is definitely a real resilient spirit here in Christchurch.
What advice do you give others thinking about starting their own business?
One of the things we were told is that everything would take twice as long and cost twice as much so be ready for that.
