Podcast - Episode 30 - Naomi's Nutritious Meal Delivery Service
Interview with Naomi Chrisoulakis
I chat with Newborn Mothers graduate Naomi Chrisoulakis from Cocoon by Naomi. Together we discuss self-doubt, rest and momentum in business. At the core of this conversation, we explore how we can sell people what they want and give them what they need. The way Naomi does this is by offering food and adding on postpartum education and care.
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Naomi is a certified postpartum doula and cook who lives with her husband and three year old daughter in Sydney. Believing that every woman deserves a postpartum experience that’s restful, rejuvenating and respectful of the massive transition into motherhood, she delivers delicious food specially designed for the needs of new mums and offers in-home support. Naomi's food and care is all about giving mothers the nourishment they need, the nurturing they deserve and the support that will help them thrive.
You can find out more here: https://cocoonbynaomi.com/
We Explore the following Questions:
What motivated you to change careers and move into postpartum work?
Why do you think our mainstream women's wellness literature leaves out so much about motherhood?
How has starting a business been similar to having a newborn, especially emotionally?
What is one of the biggest things you’ve learnt about rest within your business?
What is the idea behind your meal packages?
What preparation have you done for launching your business as a success?
How did you build momentum by taking small sustained actions?
How do you sell people what they want and give them what they need? How have you offered food and also given postpartum care?
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to the Newborn Mothers Podcast, and today we are interviewing one of our collective graduates, Naomi. Naomi does meal delivery and some in-home postpartum support in Sydney. And I'll let her tell you a little bit more about what she does, but why I wanted to invite her on the show is because I'm really interested in exploring different ways to be a doula because a lot of people say, "Oh, well I don't do this, or I can't do that, or I want to do such and such," but that's not really being a doula.
And I kind of want to let you know that there are lots of different ways of being a doula and your way of being a doula is going to be different than someone else's. And Naomi's got a really beautiful example of a meal delivery service with a bit of doula work, conventional doula work on the side as well. And I'd love to hear your story, Naomi. So do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Sure. Thanks for having me. So yes, I have a business called Cocoon, and there are kind of two sides to it. So I'm based in Sydney and I deliver nourishing food to new mums every week. It's food that is based on traditional ingredients and dishes that have been used for hundreds, probably thousands of years to help new mums get back on their feet and support their milk supply and all of those good things.
The other side of the business is I bring the food and then I stay. So I'm there for a couple of hours doing them all like you said, traditional postpartum doula work where I might be giving a massage, I might be doing some laundry, I might just be listening to mama talk about her birth, I might be holding the baby while she sleeps, all of those kinds of things. So I've kind of got two options. It's food or it's food and in-home support.
What motivated you to change careers and move into postpartum work? (02:25)
Julia Jones:
I love it. Do you want to tell us, before you did this, what did you do and maybe what motivated you to change careers and come into this work?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Sure. That's a big question. So I was a journalist for over 10 years. I started my career working at Marie Claire Magazine and I was a features writer, editor, deputy editor. I worked as the wellness editor at Marie Claire. I worked at Cosmo where I got my head around body literacy and sex and periods and got totally comfortable talking about all that. I went to L.A. for four years and was doing all sorts of work over there for US and Australian publications, including meeting lots of famous people and interviewing them. And I worked at Women's Health for a year and then I had my baby.
So really, that's what got me into this work. I think I was that typical first time mom. I was very focused on building a beautiful nursery and having all the right things. And I had my Pinterest board going and I knew that I needed to have good support, which is why we moved back from L.A. to Sydney to be with near my family. But I really didn't understand just what a fundamental shift in my identity motherhood was going to be and just how bloody hard early motherhood is. I just kind of felt like I'd be all over it. I'd been around babies before and I'd just be fine. I'd just go with it. I was a capable woman. I coped with things. I liked being in control. I liked having a plan.
And of course, I ended up with a baby who really didn't want to have a plan or sleep or be in a pram or be in a car seat. And I really, really struggled with that. It was just not what I expected. I developed post-natal anxiety. I found that the people around me, I got some great support from some people. I got some not great support from other people. I was just in shock, I think. And it really made me realize that it was so, so hard. At that point, I hadn't even heard about the different cultural practices around the fourth trimester for women in different cultures. All I'd heard of was the fourth trimester for babies.
And I remember around four months postpartum, I read the first 40 days mainly because I had friends who were getting pregnant. I love to cook, I love to bring food for people. And I saw it somewhere and I was like, "Oh, that's great. I'm going to get that just to get some recipe ideas." And when I was reading all about the different cultural practices around the world and how people are really, women are really looked after deeply and fundamentally in that first sort of six weeks after birth. I felt ripped off and I felt ripped off on behalf of all the other women in this culture. I just was like, "We're getting absolutely rorted." And I knew from my own experience of anxiety, postpartum anxiety and depression, it's one in six. It's crazy, and I really think that a big part of that is because of the lack of support.
So reading that book and there was a section on postpartum doulas made me kind of have this aha moment of, "Maybe this is something that I could do," because I was starting to get a bit disillusioned with journalism and I thought that I wanted to have a change and I never want to give up writing, but I just felt like I wanted to do something that helped people. So I found your course just through Googling. I was like, "Right, I'm going to find out how I do this postpartum doula thing." Found your course, thought about it for a long time. Talked to my husband, I was ums and ahs and do I do this? Do I not do this? In the meantime, I was just cooking for friends a lot and taking food around to them because I think I've always been a feeder. I love having people around to feed them. I love dropping food off to people who maybe aren't well have come out of hospital or had a baby.
And I just felt like it was this amazing kind of dovetailing of two things I love, which is food and cooking for people, and also being passionate about this idea of having a fourth trimester that is nourishing and nurturing. So yeah, that's where it really came from for me. And it took me a good year at least, or maybe even 18 months from reading the first 40 days and actually leaving my work. Maybe it was even more closer to two years now than I think about it. No, about 18 months, leaving my journalism job and a good stable income to take a leap and try and do something totally new. So I don't have a business background. I don't have an entrepreneurial background, but I've been fortunate enough in my career to interview a lot of people who have. So I was like, "Right, I'm just going to pick all their brains and just try and do it." So yeah, that's it.
Why do you think our mainstream women's literature leaves out so much about motherhood? (07:41)
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love it. Also, what really strikes me about that story, the fact that you can work for women's magazines for... Did you say 10 years?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah.
Julia Jones:
And not be introduced to any of these concepts. It shows you what a gap it is in feminism and sort of mainstream literature for women, even prior to motherhood. I know they're not magazines for moms, but this is something we should be preparing women and men from day one.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
I 100% agree. I think it's part of the problem of not seeing women as whole people and having a parenting magazine for when you're a mom. Well, you don't read that until you're pregnant maybe or afterwards. I think things are changing with Instagram and Facebook and that sharing of real stories, which is probably why magazines are going down the gurgler because it's kind of... people aren't seeing their reality reflected in it so much.
But yeah, I knew so much. The thing that I am grateful for is because I worked as a wellness editor at Mary Claire and the deputy editor at Women's Health, I had a really strong understanding of nutrition and how food can be medicine. So that's what I really brought as well as writing skills and stuff, that's what I got an appreciation of, which allowed me to bring that over into the work that I'm doing now.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Which was the other thing that really striked me. I love that you say that you love feeding people, and I am definitely one of those people too. I can always cook more food and I can always stretch a meal to fill as many people who turn up at my table. I'm always giving leftovers to friends and neighbors, and it's just what I do. It's part of who I am, but not everyone's like that. But I'm sure that anyone who's interested in postpartum work can find some way of bringing their own passions, their own experience, their own skills to find their own unique way of caring for mothers and making a difference. So I really love that you pulled all that together.
How has starting a business been similar to having a newborn, especially emotionally? (09:41)
It looks like from the outside that your business just boomed. I think you launched about four months ago and you had clients almost immediately and steadily ever since, but maybe you can tell us a little bit behind the scenes how that felt and what was actually going on?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, like I said, it was a long time in the making and I spent a lot of time working on the business before I launched it. I also been lucky enough to have people with great skillsets around me. My husband's a video editor, so he's been able to help me. He's like my sound guy, I call him. He's been able to help me put a video together and I've got a podcast as well, tales from the fourth trimester, and he's been able to do that for me. I've had friends who are graphic designers help me. So it certainly wasn't just me doing it.
And yeah, I was so nervous. I was just so nervous to take that leap that I knew that I had to. I spent basically a year psyching myself up to do it and I was lucky enough to have support from the start, from people actually ordering my food. A lot of it was friends buying food for friends as care packages and signing up for in-home support. I'm lucky enough to have clients now up until almost the end of the year.
But behind the scenes, there's at least one day a week where I feel like... Well, I feel every day that I'm a fraud, but there's one day a week where I go into the depths of despair of, "This isn't working, it's never going to take off. I'm never going to make enough money. We can't afford the things that we used to afford when we were on two good incomes."
Someone actually said to me the other day, "It's like having a newborn." I'm in the newborn stage of business where needs feeding a lot. So there's a lot of outgoings. Even just things that you don't think about, like how much it costs to print stickers and labels for bags of lactation cookies. And I'm trying to do everything really sustainably. So I'm doing compostable mailer bags, and I'm doing glass bottles over plastic. All of that stuff costs more, but it's something that I'm really determined to do and which is why I have a bit of a higher price point.
But yeah, there are so many occasions where I'm calling a friend. I've got a friend who is an artist and an entrepreneur, and I'm always calling her and being like, "No one's interested. No one's responding to that. I got 20 likes on that photo on Instagram. It's not resonating." It's an absolute rollercoaster of emotions to be an entrepreneur. It's definitely started to even out a little bit now. But yeah, it's still there for sure.
Julia Jones:
And I think all that happens really as you get more experienced is you kind of go, "Oh yeah, here we are again. Hello old friend." I remember this feeling. So you don't ride the wave so much, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. And particularly with things like social media, it's so fickle. You can share one article on one day and it'll get read and commented and shared a 1,000 times. If you share it a few weeks later, it just doesn't pick up. And that's not the quality of you or your work or the article or anything. It just is sometimes a bit random so it's important we don't kind of get too down or even too up about these things.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yes, that's the other thing.
Julia Jones:
Just keep putting the work in. Yeah.
What is one of the biggest things you’ve learnt about rest within your business? (13:25)
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah. I'm just trying to continue to put things out there and trust that everything is unfolding as it should. And I think one of the big things that I've learned over these last four months is that there's usually a reason when things go a bit slower, a bit quiet, and it's usually because I need to have a rest. I don't know if it's the universe, I don't know what it is, but whenever it's a quiet time, I'm like, "This is because I really needed that downtime." So I try to remember that too.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I find exactly the same thing sometimes. I'm like, "Why aren't I getting any clients?" And then August rolls around and one of the kids gets sick and something else happens to the nanny and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "Oh, this is why I couldn't have any clients in August. It was all just the universe looking after me." So often we don't really know how these things work, but like we say, you just keep feeding the business and keep your eye, I guess, on the bigger mission. You and I are obviously very passionate about our work and caring for moms, so that can keep us going in a more long-term and sustainable way.
What is the idea behind your meal packages? (15:02)
Now, I had lots of other things I wanted to ask you about, and one of them was, here we are talking about how you don't feel like you're a success, but you are very successful. And if anyone wants to, go and have a look at your website, they will see. And you are already almost from the beginning getting... correct me if I'm wrong, but doing five meal deliveries a week.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah sometimes it's nine, sometimes it's two. But on average, like this week I've got seven. So I do a full meal package, which is a week's worth of postpartum power foods, I call it. So the idea is that you do it as an add-on to your... instead of having a piece of Vegemite on toast, you might be having a piece of toast with organic chicken, liver patte, sauerkraut and a cup of bone broth on the side. And that immediately amps up your nutrient intake to a point where... and it's easy, you don't have to cook anything. You might have to reheat something, that's as complicated as it gets.
So yeah, I've got meal packages and people often like to customize that. So this week I've got people who are like, Okay, I'm going to get the calming cacao drink, the chicken broths, lactation cookie, and the red date and goji berry infusion. So it's a bit of a mix and match situation, or you can just buy the full package.
What preparation have you done for launching your business as a success? (16:26)
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love it. I love it. So to my mind, and I'm sure all of the other listeners were all going, "How could she say she's not successful? That's completely amazing and mind-blowing." And even there'd be a lot of people thinking, "I can't even imagine this ever happening for me." People who are in their day jobs going, "It's not possible." But what do you think you've done in all that preparation time? What do you think you did so that when you did launch, you could hit the ground running?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
I spent a lot of time... Well, first of all, I looked at what people were doing, who I thought were resonating with people and being successful. And a lot of that... Because I feel like social media is a big driver these days of sales. So I looked at a lot of what people were doing and I really noticed that they had... usually had strong personal brands and were really good at sharing. Unfortunately, I am an oversharer, so I was like, "Right, okay. I've got to think really hard about who I want to appeal to, who's my dream client is, what do they wear? What do they eat? What shops do they buy their clothes at and buy their latte? How much will they pay for calming cacao?" And looking at, not even competitors, but places and people and brands that my ideal person would buy from, and what sort of price points were they?
So I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could appeal to those people. I read a great book called This is Marketing by Seth Godin, which I highly recommend if anyone wants to do any kind of business and-
Julia Jones:
All of his books.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
I haven't read the others, but I just-
Julia Jones:
Oh, everything he does is mind blowing. Even just his blog here. He's such a-
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah, right.
Julia Jones:
Such a unique mind.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Well, he says the thing, which I thought it stuck with me, the idea behind every purchasing decision that you make, whether it's like a Prius or a pimped out four-wheel drive or whatever, the idea is “people like us do things like this”, and I can't articulate it as well as he does, but it's about showing those people that you are part of their world. You are like them, essentially. So for me, it's not about changing who I am because I haven't, but it's about signaling through my logo, colors, fonts. I'm so passionate about fonts.
Julia Jones:
Oh, me too.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
If I go to a restaurant where it's a bad font, ask my husband, I'm like, "No, we're not going."
Julia Jones:
Oh, so many restaurants have bad fonts though. Restaurants are notorious for bad fonts.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
I can’t! I don't go to places with fonts like that.
Julia Jones:
Yeah.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
So all of those things, I think I've thought a lot, maybe overthought a lot about. I did a lot of research into being... As well as doing your course, I was reading a lot about postpartum practices around the world and getting inspired by that. I think I also noticed that Instagram stories do really well for me and have from the beginning, and I'm always getting people telling me how they enjoy that. So probably because I overshare, and it's funny, my husband's so not an oversharer, and so at first he was a bit like, "Oh." And I'm like, "I'm sorry, you just..." I still have boundaries, but I don't know. I wish I could tell you what the secret, but I don't feel like I've done anything particularly. I've worked hard, but I haven't done anything that's rocket science or that someone else couldn't do.
How did you build momentum by taking small sustained actions? (20:34)
Julia Jones:
No. And I think maybe the secret is just a sustained action. You just get up every day and do one more step.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Honestly, that was my thing last year when I was still working. So I was working four days a week. I have a three-year-old, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to launch this overnight. So my motto was chip away. And so I would try, it wasn't every day. It was probably once a week. I'd be like, "Okay, do that one thing, register that trading name, talk to the graphic designer about that label." So it felt like there was momentum. Even though things were happening pretty slowly, there was momentum. And I also, that was a big thing for me. I knew that I was leaving my job in December, and then my yoga teacher, who's become a friend, she got pregnant with her third child and she said to me, "I want you to look after me. He's due on Boxing Day."
And so I was like, "Oh my God, I'm going to have to get everything to..." And I was still doing your training at that point. I hadn't even finished it. So I was like, "Right." And I think for me, I work well to deadline, so that helped.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I'm the same too. I definitely need deadlines or I wouldn't get much done. The other thing that really strikes me about what you're saying though is that really understanding your target audience, really getting into their shoes and understanding how they're feeling and what they're looking for. And when I started out in business, there weren't much social media at all. Instagram didn't even exist. Facebook was a baby. There were no ads or even business pages or anything, and what we were taught to do way, way back then was to look at magazine covers because magazines do so much research on the colours, the headlines, the layout, the fonts, all of those things. That used to be the gold standard of how you get your data on your audience.
But now, that's freely available on social media. You can see exactly which blog post, which headline, which photo, all of that stuff is, it's so easy now to find out what is it that people are looking for.
How do you sell people what they want and give them what they need? How have you offered food and also given postpartum care? (22:49)
And I think something you've mentioned as well, maybe we can talk about it now, is that you sell them what they want and you give them what they need. So maybe talk a little bit about food as a kind of entryway to a bigger conversation about postpartum.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah, so that is something that I think pretty early on, I always knew I wanted to do something in food. For many years I've wanted to do something in food but haven't known what it was. And when I came across the idea of a postpartum doula and the food aspect of it, I talked to my husband, I was like, "Do you think people are going to get what a postpartum doula does? Will they pay for it?" I think while I'm hoping that in a few years time it becomes kind of normal, it's still something I tell people, I'm a postpartum doula and they kind of go, "What?" Or they assume I'm a birth doula. I just felt like I needed to find a way into it that people could get and people get food. We already have a culture of food delivery and convenience, and we have a culture that understands that after birth and in general, you want to have good nutrition.
So we know the importance of good food. We know the concept of food is medicine, all the women's magazines and everywhere you look, it's like eat your fatty fish for your Omega-3. That's just part of the vocab now. So for me, I was like, "Right, if I can tap into that idea that people already know about, that food can be functional, and then use that to talk about how you need to nourish and nurture yourself in the postpartum period." So both through what you're putting into your body, but also how you're treating your mind and all the things around that. I think food is kind of... People get it, and culturally it's kind of normal now to bring food to someone's home when they've had a baby, drop off a lasagna, those kind of things. So I'm really not changing that.
I'm just tweaking it to say, "Yeah, cool, that's beautiful. And the sentiment is wonderful. How about you think about the types of foods that are really good for postpartum women?" So your lasagna, delicious. I had lasagnas in my postpartum, great, but you could be giving them, whether you cook it yourself or you're getting it delivered, something that has really targeted ingredients for their recovery and their milk supply and all of those things and it's still really good.
So yeah, I think that that's kind of an easily translatable way of getting into the concept of postpartum care. And from there, I can kind of talk about the need for psychological support, moral support, practical support, all of those things. People get it. When you say to anyone, "Oh, I might just hold the baby while you sleep." If someone's had a baby, they know that that is worth its weight in gold. When you are sleep deprived, if someone comes and feeds you and lets you rest and have a shower, maybe even gives you a massage, they get it. If you haven't had a baby, maybe you don't get it as much unless you haven't done a lot of reading or have friends or all of that. So I'm still working out how to get that message across. But yeah, food is a pretty good way in.
Julia Jones:
I love that. I love that so much. Now, I don't think I've got anything else I want to ask you, but let me know if there's anything else you want to share. Otherwise we can just jump into letting people know a little bit more about how they can actually try some of your delicious food.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah, sure. No, I don't think... Other than to say thank you to you for the great training and for teaching me how it's done. It's still something that I feel like I'm... Every person that I look after and every family that I meet, whether it's just dropping off food or whatever, I still feel like I'm learning things. But that gave me the confidence to go for it because I knew that I could probably do it without the training, but I didn't have that confidence and felt like I had that credibility and knowledge base. So I really needed that. So yeah. Thank you.
Julia Jones:
Oh, my pleasure. I think a lot of it is just having a community of like-minded women too, isn't it?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yeah.
Julia Jones:
To be able to share with and ask questions. So no, we're very happy to have you in our community. And if anyone's looking for you, it's cocoonbynaomi.com. We'll put the details in the show notes. And you are based in Sydney?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Yep, that's right.
Julia Jones:
Do you deliver all over Sydney?
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
I deliver within 15 kilometers of the Sydney CBD, which covers a big chunk of Sydney. And if you're a little bit outside of it, just contact me and I'll see what I can do. I also post my lactation cookies all around the country. I'm also coming out with a breastfeeding tea. I'm not sure when this will come out, when the episode will come out, but hopefully by the time it does, my tea will be on the market.
So yeah, I'm doing a tea and cookie bundle, which I think will be a beautiful gift for friends who might live in a different city and who you just want to send some love too.
Julia Jones:
I love it. That is such a beautiful idea. Thank you so much for sharing, and definitely go and check out Cocoon by Naomi. And you'll see her gorgeous branding and a beautiful video and you'll see why her work's really taken off.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Thanks so much, Julia.
Julia Jones:
Thank you. Bye, Naomi.
Naomi Chrisoulakis:
Bye.
