Turning your passion into your path with Andrea McKay

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[00:00] SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_03: Hi, this is Celine Williams hosting for Monterey over Canada's podcast.
[00:09] SPEAKER_03: My guest today is Andrea McKay, founder of B Half Moon. Welcome Andrea.
[00:14] SPEAKER_00: Well, I thank you. It's so nice to be here.
[00:16] SPEAKER_03: I'm very happy to have you here. I'd love to...
[00:20] SPEAKER_03: I'd love to know a little bit about your journey to becoming the founder of B Half Moon
[00:26] SPEAKER_03: and what that experience has been like and looked like for you.
[00:31] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. It's a big question.
[00:33] SPEAKER_00: Where do I begin? We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary in April.
[00:38] SPEAKER_00: Congratulations.
[00:40] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's actually shocking to me that we've been around for almost a decade.
[00:45] SPEAKER_00: But I mean, truly my journey, my entrepreneurial journey started far before that.
[00:51] SPEAKER_00: And I would say it dates back to my postgraduate degree.
[00:55] SPEAKER_00: When I went to Australia, after graduating from my B-com at McGill,
[01:01] SPEAKER_00: I moved to Australia. I wanted to travel, like go somewhere different,
[01:05] SPEAKER_00: but come home with something productive, which in my eyes was a degree.
[01:10] SPEAKER_00: So I did my Masters of International Business and was stationed in Manly Australia.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: It turned out that I was the only Canadian in the program there.
[01:20] SPEAKER_00: And that was really daunting for me. I was in my early 20s.
[01:24] SPEAKER_00: Very shy, not like 100% sure of myself yet.
[01:29] SPEAKER_00: And what really grounded me in my experience there and kind of gave me the strength to connect with people from all over the world was I found yoga.
[01:39] SPEAKER_00: And like Australia, this was 21 years ago. Australia had this wellness culture that I had never experienced before.
[01:47] SPEAKER_00: And I just caught the bug. There was yoga at every street corner, bookended by crystal shops that were bookended by smoothie bars, one of which I worked at.
[01:59] SPEAKER_00: People were always out for runs and surfing. And of course the yoga and meditation.
[02:03] SPEAKER_00: And it was just like this beautiful culture that I became a part of and supported me through that time.
[02:11] SPEAKER_00: And that's when the seed of integrating wellness and business was kind of forged and planted in my mind.
[02:20] SPEAKER_00: So it all started 20 years, 21 years ago with that.
[02:25] SPEAKER_00: I came back to Canada with my degree in international business.
[02:29] SPEAKER_00: And truly like many post graduates, like I had no idea what I wanted to do.
[02:34] SPEAKER_00: And embarrassingly I took like basically the first job I was offered, which was through networking. I got a marketing agency job.
[02:46] SPEAKER_00: And I stayed in the marketing agency world for about seven or eight years.
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: And I really learned a lot there. I excelled there. It allowed me to exercise like my creative self while kind of integrating that strength with business development and like client services.
[03:03] SPEAKER_00: And I can be very professional and corporate. So it was a good experience from that perspective. And I like rose in the ranks.
[03:11] SPEAKER_00: But I felt like I was kind of like there's a glass ceiling and I just didn't have enough control over my destiny.
[03:17] SPEAKER_00: So after about I guess it was eight years there jumping. I did I went to about four agencies over eight years. I was ahead of my generation stayed in jobs for a long time. I did not I jumped around a lot.
[03:30] SPEAKER_00: And then I took a hugely buff a faith and joined my father's business.
[03:37] SPEAKER_00: Which was a huge move for me. And I went from the marketing world in marketing.
[03:44] SPEAKER_00: I mean, see to see. So consumer facing brands like I worked for you know, proctor and gamble and big brands like that.
[03:51] SPEAKER_00: To working for my father's business where it was all B2B industrial. I was the only female. And everyone was a male over 50 or 55.
[04:02] SPEAKER_00: And I was the boss's daughter. So I walked into this foreign world with a totally different cultural element to it.
[04:10] SPEAKER_00: With a bit of a label being like you're you're a young lady who's the boss's daughter.
[04:16] SPEAKER_00: So I really had to learn a lot. I had to put my head down and prove that I'm not just the boss's daughter and that women can do this stuff too.
[04:24] SPEAKER_00: And I did that. I put my head down and I busted my bum as I always do. And kind of you know paved away for myself within my dad's company.
[04:34] SPEAKER_00: I was fifth generation. The company's over 120 years old, which I'm very proud of and very honored to have been a part of.
[04:42] SPEAKER_00: And it's with that that I was eventually handed the role of running one of his subsidiaries. And that subsidiary, his oldest subsidiary is a full manufacturing business.
[04:57] SPEAKER_00: And so I started I became the president of this rubber manufacturing company.
[05:03] SPEAKER_00: Truly felt out of my comfort zone out of my league in the sense that like my strength is not in manufacturing or operations or industrial.
[05:12] SPEAKER_00: But again, I have the work ethic and I worked hard. But that's where I was in the R&D lab.
[05:20] SPEAKER_00: I was with a gentleman named Sathy who was in his 60s at the time and my dad had signed his immigration papers in 1990.
[05:29] SPEAKER_00: Like this cool heritage R&D lab technician. And I stumbled across a really sticky rubber compound.
[05:36] SPEAKER_00: And I said half jokingly to Sathy, hey, this would make an amazing yoga mat. And he was like,
[05:43] SPEAKER_00: I'm like, sure, whatever. And the moment I said that I couldn't get it out of my head.
[05:50] SPEAKER_00: And that is when the true inception of behalf moon really started, although the seed, as I said earlier, that desire and passion to do something in the world of wellness started when I was doing my degree in Australia.
[06:11] SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know, I could keep going forever.
[06:14] SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, it's really it's it's interesting. And I think it's your journey is already. And I get that there's more elements to this.
[06:22] SPEAKER_03: But go. So first off, I think so many people can resonate with you get a degree.
[06:27] SPEAKER_03: You really don't know what you're going to do with it. And you're the first off or you're like, sounds great.
[06:33] SPEAKER_03: Let's do that. So I think that is so common for people. I appreciate you saying that.
[06:39] SPEAKER_03: But then to spend that time in the world of marketing. And then to have the experience in a family run business, which I can only imagine the dynamics of play there.
[06:51] SPEAKER_03: And there's some families have specific challenges not when working together.
[06:57] SPEAKER_01: Right. Yeah.
[06:57] SPEAKER_03: Let alone when working together. And then to have.
[07:01] SPEAKER_03: Part and parcel of that be the nugget for this business. It's almost 10 years old. It's it's very interesting. So.
[07:09] SPEAKER_00: Very special. Yeah.
[07:11] SPEAKER_00: I can appreciate that more now. 10 years in for sure.
[07:15] SPEAKER_00: And you learn something from every experience, whether it doesn't feel right or it feels a miss or challenging at the time. Of course, we know we learned so much from every experience.
[07:26] SPEAKER_00: So I've taken so much away from each chapter.
[07:30] SPEAKER_00: But whenever I found that rubber compound and uttered that as a thought and passing, you know, this would be a great yoga mat.
[07:38] SPEAKER_00: As I said, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
[07:42] SPEAKER_00: And I was in my mid to late 20s at the time and my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband.
[07:48] SPEAKER_00: We were in the life stage where we were going to a lot of like wedding parties, rehearsals, dinners, all those fun social engagements.
[07:55] SPEAKER_00: Such a fun time. And I remember I started leaving these parties early to go home and write this business plan, which is unlike me. Like I love a good party.
[08:06] SPEAKER_00: And so, but that happened. And I just I was so enraptured in this idea that I was choosing it over things that I always put first.
[08:14] SPEAKER_00: So built a business plan, really coming from a place of passion and of course knowledge and presented it to the board of my father's business.
[08:26] SPEAKER_00: And truly, they were sold on my passion and conviction because they they're core competencies were so different, you know, industrial B2B manufacturing versus building a wellness yoga business that's B2C.
[08:41] SPEAKER_00: But anyway, they obviously felt the passion and conviction and believed in me. And I think it was like I got $30,000 from my dad's business and I was off to the races.
[08:53] SPEAKER_00: So it started with the product. And then I built a brand that I really believed in, which at the time, 10 years ago was B yoga, B is in bar yoga.
[09:02] SPEAKER_00: And then the sub product brand was B mat. And I really felt deeply for the brand and the visual identity.
[09:11] SPEAKER_00: Then I built a website and then I just started seating this beautiful product with people in the yoga world that I knew. I mean, I was yoga was my hobby. I was going on retreats. I knew teachers and studios and such. So I just planted the wonderful product with individuals in Toronto.
[09:28] SPEAKER_00: And then we officially launched 10 years ago at the Toronto Yoga Conference early April, 2014. And that was my test. And I remember it like I'll never forget it. I was six months pregnant, set up the whole booth by myself.
[09:44] SPEAKER_00: I was slinging these mats and I had a platform with a mat laid out and I just said to people, you want to believe in this product? We'll try it. Try it for yourself and people go into their downward dogs on the demo platform.
[09:59] SPEAKER_00: And their feedback was resoundingly positive and just like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Oh my gosh, this is going to change my practice. And we.
[10:09] SPEAKER_00: I just knew coming out of that trade show our lunch that we had something that confirmed it for me. That was the witness test because all these true yogis were trying the product and really felt how great it was. They felt the quality.
[10:26] SPEAKER_00: And then I think they felt the passion and the brand, the truth and the brand. There was also a really interesting time in consumer branding and almost like pop culture where independent brands were increasingly coming out of the woodwork.
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, 15 years ago, it was like all the Starbucks chains were predominant and all the restaurant chains were predominant and the big box stores were predominant.
[10:54] SPEAKER_00: And if we look back over the past like 10 years, we've seen such a surgeons are such a surge of independent coffee shops, restaurants, brands coming into our marketplace into our economy into pop culture.
[11:12] SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of part of that wave and that was really fun. It's like people are inspired by local independent brands more than ever and big companies like Shopify have made that more accessible, the barriers to entry or lower people aren't having to spend like millions of dollars on mass media to make a mark.
[11:31] SPEAKER_00: So people say timing is a factor for sure there's a timing element in this and that I was on that wave of like independent brands coming into the economy, which I'm so grateful for and just inspired by because I'm such a creative.
[11:48] SPEAKER_00: That's how it started 10 years ago. And I mean, it's been a ride as you can imagine since then.
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[12:03] SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can only imagine the ups and downs that come with 10 years in any business, especially a product-based business because...
[12:14] SPEAKER_03: And I'm saying this not knowing, excuse me, how it would affect yoga mats and things like that, but there are so many trends that happen in 10 years in products in general.
[12:25] SPEAKER_03: Like people like this, people like that, this comes up, this is more important, whatever the case may be. And I'm wondering how...
[12:34] SPEAKER_03: If you saw any of that, if it affected your business at all in reflection,
[12:43] SPEAKER_03: you know, what you... I'm going to say learned from it, but in the sense that it's like, oh, these are the things that I did that were really effective or less effective, because we always have those as well.
[12:57] SPEAKER_00: 100%? Much time do you have? Hit me.
[13:00] SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, I think from a brand perspective, we've maintained relevance over the decade, because the brand is all about B, is all about B yourself, whatever you need to be, whatever you need to be on any given day, and we're here to support you.
[13:20] SPEAKER_00: And I think that individuality supporting support is something that has just increased with relevance over 10 years.
[13:32] SPEAKER_00: And but from a product perspective, we've really evolved with the trends and wellness. For example, 10 years ago, it was like you're going to a yoga studio.
[13:45] SPEAKER_00: Today, the studios are hybrids, yoga, latis, hit, meditation, breath work, the list goes on bar, which I love, and my practice has changed so much over the past 10 years, my wellness practice.
[14:01] SPEAKER_00: And our product offering and even our messaging has kind of evolved with that. So for example, like four years ago, we were really intentional in that.
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, people are doing these hybrid practices. So we want to offer products that support that. So now we have Pilates mats. We have strength strengthening props like weights.
[14:25] SPEAKER_00: So we've really evolved from that perspective to offer products that support the modalities that people are really exploring. And I'm very proud of that.
[14:36] SPEAKER_00: And six years ago, we were trying very hard to get into like meditation, breath work, supporting type products. So I'm sitting on a meditation cushion right now.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: We got into that actually through acquiring another local on this business called Half Moon, which was a huge moment for me and for the business.
[14:58] SPEAKER_00: Half Moon is actually 35 years old. And yeah, and the founder of half moon is from Oakville, her name's Beth. She started half moon again 35 years ago in Vancouver.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: And she was inspired by a yoga trip she did in the 80s in India and came back to Vancouver. She was working for a futon manufacturer. And she said, there's no props in available in North America.
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: I'm going to make meditation, Christian's bolsters and stretch straps through what I've learned at this futon shop. And so she started making these what we call soft goods in the industry.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: And that became half moon yoga products as a yogi as you know, I've been in that world for since Australia.
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: Half moon is the institution. Half moon is the brand for yogis. So Beth, five or six years ago was nearing 60 and looking to retire. So she took a leap of faith. There's a thread of taking leaps of faith in the story.
[16:07] SPEAKER_00: And she reached out to me and just said, Andrea, I love what you're doing with the yoga. I see there are ethos and our brand values are aligned.
[16:16] SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to retire. I'm looking to sell my business. I have two suitors, but I feel like you might be a better fit because you get me and you get what's going on. What we're doing here.
[16:29] SPEAKER_00: And getting that email is April seven years ago was such a moment for me because I was at the same time trying to get into the soft goods and hitting like bumping up against walls. And here she was knocking on my door at the same time.
[16:43] SPEAKER_00: So that was a big milestone and that allowed us going back to the story of like evolving our product offering with to evolve with my wellness practice and others in the world in acquiring half moon six years ago in February.
[17:01] SPEAKER_00: We expanded our product offering to soft goods, which as I said, it was like blisters blanket straps meditation cushions, which was a huge moment for us.
[17:11] SPEAKER_00: So maintaining relevance for us has really been through our product offering and just ensuring that our platform and our messaging is resonating with our community and always having that gut check.
[17:27] SPEAKER_00: Like are we being real? Are we being authentic transparent? All those things.
[17:33] SPEAKER_03: So you mentioned a number of leaps of faith that happened.
[17:40] SPEAKER_03: And obviously many of them turned out positive and wonderful.
[17:48] SPEAKER_03: Were there any excuse me leaps of faith or lessons where you were like, I would not do that again or that was a lesson that I definitely learned along the way.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: With every leap of faith has come extreme challenge.
[18:04] SPEAKER_00: And that's the side of the story that people don't hear as often.
[18:10] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the leap of faith in joining my father's business. Well, it's less than my father is probably my biggest mentor, but like it was a very patriarchal culture and company they had never had a mat leave.
[18:26] SPEAKER_00: I've had two kids while I was there. And I had no support in that.
[18:32] SPEAKER_00: I had to really advocate to have a voice in a culture with men over 50 and actually really be confident in using my voice. Well, there may have been doubters in the room.
[18:45] SPEAKER_00: So that was a huge challenge for me in that chapter as a result of that leap of faith in the leap of faith in acquiring half-minute faith.
[18:57] SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was more best sleep of faith, but acquiring half-moon opened our corporate world to offering so many more products. But I ended up acquiring a business that was larger than the incumbent business.
[19:12] SPEAKER_00: I acquired a business that had team and culture in Vancouver and my team at the time was in Toronto.
[19:20] SPEAKER_00: As you can imagine, that would be fraught with challenge.
[19:24] SPEAKER_00: Once again, I had to go into this new setting, prove myself to this team who's like, who's the kid who just bought Beth's business, who has a smaller business, who's from Toronto.
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: I had to learn a lot about the cultural differences between two geographical regions in our own country.
[19:44] SPEAKER_00: I've learned so much and that was really, really, really hard.
[19:50] SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like everything has the end in the long or the double-edged sort. Every experience has had a challenge.
[19:59] SPEAKER_00: But I've won major learning. I've accrued through experience over 15 years as, you know, every challenge in the end is an opportunity in disguise in some way, shape, or form.
[20:14] SPEAKER_00: And I've learned that time and time again. And some challenges are way bigger, but in the end, they bring up some light, some opportunity, some learning.
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[20:35] SPEAKER_03: I'd imagine that would be great advice to give to one's younger self, your younger self, where we're like, we can't always, first off, we can almost never see that when we're in the thick of it.
[20:49] SPEAKER_03: And especially when we are starting out younger in the entrepreneur journey, whether or not it's an age thing.
[20:58] SPEAKER_03: Besides that, I'm curious if there is any advice you would give yourself if you were to go back in time or do an entrepreneur starting out today who's thinking, you know, who's taking on new challenges and stepping into the world of the unknowns of running a business.
[21:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, so many definitely the one we just discussed is a big one, you know, taking pause and recognizing that every challenge is an opportunity in disguise and just sitting with that and reassuring yourself of that.
[21:37] SPEAKER_00: I'd say I think one of my weaknesses is, again, it's like a strength and a weakness in one is that I do move pretty quickly and I make decisions really rapidly.
[21:52] SPEAKER_00: And I think there are a few decisions where I kind of wish I sat in them a little bit more and just took a little bit more time to deliberate them.
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: To say whether I would have changed those decisions, I'm not sure, but I do move pretty quickly.
[22:09] SPEAKER_00: That being said, I've also learned to trust your gut and your intuition and but to realize that your own intuition can fool you.
[22:19] SPEAKER_00: You can fool yourself out of convenience or whatever it may be.
[22:30] SPEAKER_00: And I think there's great value in following your passion because we spend so much time our work life is such a huge percentage of our overall life. So why not pursue something that you're in passion about passion by while recognizing that entrepreneurship is really, really hard and.
[22:48] SPEAKER_00: And you got to be ready to roll up your sleeves and do the work, but I think most entrepreneurs know that.
[22:58] SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a running list of insights and recommendations and feedback.
[23:06] SPEAKER_03: And it's all that it's all of that's valuable to people who are starting out and I think a lot of people.
[23:17] SPEAKER_03: I talk about this a lot on this podcast and elsewhere.
[23:21] SPEAKER_03: We glorify the idea of entrepreneurship and we don't talk about the hard stuff.
[23:27] SPEAKER_03: And we don't talk about the fact that it's not for everyone.
[23:33] SPEAKER_03: It isn't easy. It's very, it can be a lot of work.
[23:37] SPEAKER_03: And it can be very lonely and it can.
[23:40] SPEAKER_03: Yes.
[23:40] SPEAKER_03: You know, all of that is also true. And so I think having that the list of here's things that I've learned that I think are valuable to other entrepreneurs while also recognizing there are challenges and you will see those challenges, whatever type of business you are going to get into.
[24:02] SPEAKER_03: I think it's really important because my experience has been that too often entrepreneurs.
[24:08] SPEAKER_03: Think that it's going to be easier or sexier than it actually is when you're.
[24:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's really hard, which is why the passion piece I think is important.
[24:20] SPEAKER_00: You really have to believe in whatever you're setting out to do in the crux of it and the core of it.
[24:26] SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful that I do. I mean spreading wellness. I feel so lucky to be offering that to the world and especially during COVID I felt that.
[24:35] SPEAKER_00: So despite the immense challenge that entrepreneurship is without question.
[24:42] SPEAKER_00: At least I of course like I have to believe and have that deep passion for what I'm doing. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth it.
[24:49] SPEAKER_00: Frankly, it wouldn't be worth it because it comes with a lot of sacrifices, especially when you have a young family.
[24:55] Speaker UNKNOWN: 
[24:56] SPEAKER_00: So for sure, and I think like one big learning for me over the past.
[25:02] SPEAKER_00: Really a couple of years is that I think I've been socialized through my business degrees and just like what I've been surrounded by my whole life to like always want to grow and be bigger.
[25:15] SPEAKER_00: And in subconsciously, I had that mentality for the first kind of five to six years of this business.
[25:24] SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of entering a different stage right now partially because of the economy. The economy has slowed down.
[25:30] SPEAKER_00: And therefore our business has slowed.
[25:33] SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like kind of resetting in this like, why do I have to keep chasing for more like why do I have to keep growing, growing, growing at what cost.
[25:43] SPEAKER_00: That's a big reset for me that I'm going through right now that frankly I haven't really shared much of because I'm going through it right now.
[25:51] SPEAKER_00: So I think one other, you know, piece of advice for any entrepreneur is just kind of why I said earlier like really sit in your decisions and make sure you're doing things for the right reasons and that you, you know, you can make the sacrifices you'll have to make and you have the bandwidth and the resources and all those things.
[26:09] SPEAKER_00: So that's a big reset that I'm kind of going through right now.
[26:15] SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you sharing that. I think it's that intentionality is really important and it is.
[26:21] SPEAKER_03: Yes.
[26:23] SPEAKER_03: It makes a difference.
[26:25] SPEAKER_03: It makes a difference to be intentional that way and to not just do the thing that someone tells you is the thing you should do to grow or be successful or whatever.
[26:32] SPEAKER_03: To get in my opinion is a lot of the glorification of entrepreneurship we do.
[26:38] SPEAKER_00: For sure. And I love that word intention intentionality.
[26:43] SPEAKER_00: It's maybe that'll be my word for 2024. It's so powerful and even in our product offering that's been a huge source of inspiration in my wellness practice.
[26:56] SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be as a age as I grow into a new stage of motherhood and new stage of entrepreneurship.
[27:02] SPEAKER_00: My wellness practice is that much more intentional from like the type of tea I'm drinking, which will be offering to, you know, I use crystals.
[27:11] SPEAKER_00: My wellness practice has really rounded out with greater intention over the decade and beyond.
[27:18] SPEAKER_00: And that's reflected in our product offering in our brand communications and even in the ethos and the mentality of how the business is going to evolve.
[27:30] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[27:32] SPEAKER_03: I love that. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today to tell us about your journey. It's super interesting.
[27:43] SPEAKER_03: Your openness around that and also willingness to speak into the fact that you are processing currently, you know, what you really want this to look like in terms of growth, et cetera.
[27:57] SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate you sharing that because I know it can be tough if it's not something you're you've been talking about for ages. It's not the most comfortable things that thank you for sharing that.
[28:07] SPEAKER_00: Thank you for recognizing that.
[28:08] SPEAKER_03: Absolutely. And for any of our listeners, the link to Andrea's website will be in the show notes, but it is also B is in the letter B, half moon dot com.
[28:21] SPEAKER_03: And for those listening and watching, thanks for listening to Hans podcast, like comment and subscribe to all our channels to get the latest podcast from entrepreneurs across Canada.