Mum of six Kylie Keher is passionate about filling her children’s lives with fun, love and adventure. Wanting to extend this passion into her working life, she set out to combine her love for healthy, active families with her business skills and created The Thriving Family Store, providing products, education and inspiration for raising healthy, active, mindful families. The Thriving Family Store aims to bring you the latest in quality products and information to help you lower your carbon footprint, live simply, raise a healthy, connected family and encourage active lifestyles.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
Nothing makes my heart happier than seeing my 6 children healthy and active and living life full of adventure and experiences. For a while I searched for the ideal job to support my values in raising my family, but also to excite me on a creative level. After a few failed attempts at different ways to achieve this, all my ideas came together and I put my love for healthy, active families together with my passion for business and created The Thriving Family Store. A place to come for products, education and inspiration for raising healthy, active, mindful families.
The Launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
Once I had the idea burning inside me to create my store, I searched around for the ideal products and started gathering information for blogs and content. I launched my website and my social pages and just let it grow organically. I’m still at the early stages of growing stock levels and trying to bring about brand awareness, but my community have been so loving and supportive and I can see the business growing further each month.
The Innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
I think the biggest breakthrough for me was when I initially realised that there are no rules to how I choose to run my business. Sometimes I think we look for permission to do something or try and find someone else doing it before we realise it’s OK to do. I still can remember the feeling of relief and excitement I felt when I realised that I don’t have to grow as fast as other people and I don’t have to post content every day or stay up late at night for hours trying to get to the same level as everyone else. I chose to start this business to best suit my family’s needs, so I get to make the rules.
I often have to remind myself when I’m getting worked up or in a panic to be at a certain level by a certain time, that I’m the one calling the shots so I can go at my pace. This mindset really helps me love the business even more.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
OK, this is certainly a fun one. Having 6 children aged between 5-13 and trying to grow a business is certainly full on. All the children are involved in sports and I’m an active member of our community when it comes to being involved in our school and sporting clubs, so there is a lot to balance. I think the thing that helps is that I love it. I want to raise my children to be out exploring our natural world, I want them involved in team sports, I want to contribute to making their school or sporting clubs better environments by volunteering my time and I want to run a business that helps other families meet their health goals. So therefore, I make it all work the best I can. I try and keep life really simple and know that as long as I’m doing something, then something is getting done. Even if it is only baby steps forward.
Again, it helps for me to keep my mindset focused on “there are no rules” and I don’t have to do it anybody’s way except mine.
