OKOROIRE dairy farmer Laura Mitchell is all about tackling a challenge. And, growing a successful business during a pandemic is definitely that. Throw in a new career path in dairying and raising her three-year-old daughter Amber, and you could say Laura has her hands full.
The idea of being a farmer herself was never really on her radar despite always being drawn to the land and growing up on her parents dairy farm. At 16, she decided school wasn’t for her anymore and opted to leave and gain qualifications in a trade.
“I knew I needed a qualification of some sort. I knew I wanted to work outdoors, that’s probably the farmer in me, so I looked at trades. Electrical work sparked, no pun intended, my interest, so I went for it,” she says.
Ten years ago when Laura entered the industry, it was definitely a male-dominated world, with only one or two women on work sites. Not long into her apprenticeship, she discovered a love for lighting and took up part-time study at Massey University in lighting design.
“There’s more to it than people think. The art of lighting a room can be tricky and it’s so important to get right. It sets the tone and feel of the room,” she says.
Four years ago, she decided to start her lighting design business Social Light, running it as a part-time hobby alongside contracting as an electrician. The business pulls together her skills as an electrician and lighting engineer to offer customers personalised lighting plans. Slowly but steadily, the business grew.
“The first year or so was a slow start. I took on a lease of a building to start to build a showroom, three months later I found out I was pregnant, but I chipped away at it. Slowly it morphed into a full-time job,” she says.
“You don’t have to invest tens of thousands when you first start. Starting small, growing organically and seeing if your idea is going to work is important. A lot of its trial and error as well.
“At the start, I spent a lot of money on ads through social media, magazines and Google – I don’t know that it ever paid off. What did was word of mouth.”
A year ago, Laura made another big life change.
Wanting her daughter to grow up rurally and have a support network around her as she navigated the tricky waters of business ownership, she decided to move back to the family farm.
“It was a family decision, mum and dad needed to employ a sharemilker and I wanted a place for my daughter to grow up,” she says.
“I’ve always been drawn to the farm, so the timing just seemed right.
“We live on the farm, and my parents live on another block of land 700 metres up the road, which is awesome – I couldn’t do any of this without them.”
Laura bought the herd and is 50:50 sharemilking the 180-cow, 59-hectare farm with the help of a manager who runs the day-to-day things on the farm. Laura works on all the manager’s days off and deals with the business side of running the farm, along with calf rearing.
Although she never took too much interest in the farm growing up, she was amazed by how much knowledge she had that came like second nature to her.
“It’s surprising how much you know, without knowing you know it. I picked up on things really quickly,” she says.
Laura bought the herd on the family farm and is 50:50 sharemilking the 180-cow, 59-hectare farm in Waikato.
On the farm, Laura set her plan in motion to knock off her production target for the season and is setting up goals to make the farm the best it can be on all fronts, from environmental to animal welfare. She’s also hoping to lease the farm from her parents one day, but says a lot will depend on what happens over the next few years.
For Social Light, covid-19 put a halt to things for a while, but it didn’t stop things starting back at full force once lockdown restrictions were lifted. Currently, she is in the middle of moving her showroom to a bigger building and launching her new website. But the biggest goal which started years ago, was to design and make her own pendant lights.
“It’s been a lot of figuring out. It’s taken a few years of developing the lights. It’s always been a dream of mine, and that’s now starting to come to fruition. We’re taking on another employee as well, so I’m hoping to continue to grow things,” she says.
Laura says that behind the success and growth of her careers, there’s been plenty of hard bits along the way. It took time to figure out a way to juggle everything, and she says that some days she doesn’t do it well. But at the heart of everything is a want to create a happy, fulfilled life for her and her daughter.
“To anyone wanting to start a business, just go for it. Trust yourself, and you’ll figure it out along the way,” she says.
“No one knows how to run a business right off the bat. Keep talking and asking questions.”
