From idea to enterprise: Small businesses in need of a helping hand are at the centre of this Victorian wellbeing initiative.

Melbourne music therapist Pip Reid is one of many small business solopreneurs who, faced with isolation and feeling overwhelmed, have sought the transformative support of the Partners in Wellbeing Helpline.

Source: Supplied / Timeless Images by Vanessa

As both a registered teacher and a music therapist, Pip Reid constantly found herself in the “space between” the two industries.

From her vantage point, she could see a business opportunity focusing on bringing music and education together - but had no clear idea how to get there.

Having registered Using Music as a business years before, Pip was ready to create a viable business around her program to help educators and parents incorporate music experiences into preschool settings.

She needed a website, a booking system and a marketing plan. She had also registered for the Victorian Government's Readiness for School menu and needed to prepare for the scheme. Her to-do list felt insurmountable.

“I was really overwhelmed. I didn’t have any of the skills needed to start my own business,” says Pip as she recalls July 2021 in her home city of Melbourne. Compounded by pandemic-related isolation and juggling two young children and three jobs, she says life was, “messy.”

Pip Reid said setting up a business while juggling a young family was "messy" Source: Supplied / Timeless Images by Vanessa

“It was a low point of not knowing how to take the steps to keep growing this business idea.”

Faced with an overload of information and no prior business experience, she made a booking with Business Victoria’s Small Business Bus which led to her making a call to the Partners in Wellbeing Helpline. Within days, she was introduced to business adviser, Valeria Ryavkina, who immediately began helping Pip.

“Small business owners can be quite isolated, they generally don’t have someone to talk to … and the processing is done in their heads,” recalls Valeria. “We sat down and I said ‘Tell me everything.’”

Over a series of fortnightly sessions, she broke Pip’s goals down into small, manageable tasks she could complete around her work and family commitments. They put together a strategy, assigning priority to jobs such as building a website and drafting how different scenarios might look.

“The first phone meeting I had with Valeria, she just made me feel so supported. She said something along the lines of ‘I’m on your team and we’re in this together,’” says Pip. “That was just what I needed to be able to keep going.”

She remembers tears, a sense of relief and the gratitude of having a teammate with no financial outlay attached. “A huge weight was taken off my shoulders because I didn’t have to carry the load all by myself.”

For many solopreneurs, the rewards of enterprise are often accompanied by moments of challenge. Having run her own start-up and with experience working across many sectors and for companies of different sizes, Valeria understands the value of sound advice and the tools that can help manage the demands of small business.

Partners in Wellbeing offer business advice, financial counselling and wellbeing coaching to the 605,000-plus SMEs that are a lifeblood to the Victorian community and economy.

Valeria says feeling overwhelmed is very common amongst her clients and that a big part of her job is about reframing what clients feel they “should” be doing.

Valeria Ryavkina - business adviser at PIW

“What is it that you need?” she asks clients such as Pip. “Not what is it that people tell you that you need, or what you think you should be doing, but what you need in your particular situation and circumstances.”

That might involve practical steps to address financial or business concerns, or being connected to wellbeing coaches who prioritise mental, social and physical health. As no two businesses are the same, the approach is tailored to meet the needs of each client.

Before their final meeting, Pip learnt she had 60 bookings - triple the number of what she thought was her best-case scenario. Using Music went from business name to a working enterprise in just three months. Less than a year on and she now has her first employee and says scaling her business will come with trial and error. As she learnt from Valeria: adjust, adjust, adjust.

In that spirit, Pip has made efforts to delineate her home and work lives, protecting the ‘free headspace’ that she knows is essential to her mental health. She credits Partners in Wellbeing as being instrumental to Using Music’s success so far, and plans to seek further professional guidance for different stages of its growth in the future.

“Pip did all the work but it’s interesting to see how the roadmap we created led her,” says Valeria. “Going back and seeing the first call log versus the last call log - the progress was just incredible. That was a proud moment for me.”

Pip Reid reflects back on what she was able to achieve Credit: Timeless Images by Vanessa

In an environment of recovery and growth, Pip is one of over 1,300 people from a small business who have accessed the Partners in Wellbeing Helpline. Valeria encourages others who are feeling the pressures of running a small business to join Pip in seeking free expert support.

Alongside Partners in Wellbeing, the Victorian Government funds other mental health and wellbeing initiatives for small businesses including WorkWell's Mental Health Toolkit for Small Business and Mindarma. Together with the Workplace Wellbeing Hub, they form Business Victoria’s Headway small business wellbeing initiative.