High on the Blue Mountains among some of Australia’s most glorious National Parks and private gardens, live a couple who are helping to shape this natural wonderland.
Aaron and Rachel Hannay have a landscaping business, that services the local area. They cultivate young stock at their headquarters in Blackheath including succulents, cactus, herbs and cordylines.
And their business is growing almost as quickly as the plants they propagate.
When they started the business in 2017, it was initially mainly maintenance work but has since diversified into landscaping.
The extra work has allowed the business to expand garden equipment, and Aaron plans soon to upgrade his ute for a bigger truck and buy a wood chipper to process the tree cuttings.
It sounds like a dream tree-change lifestyle. However, it’s been a long, hard start-up journey for this couple.
About three years ago, Rachel started to feel fatigued and noticed pains in her legs. Extensive medical tests later revealed she had Multiple Sclerosis, a chronic, degenerative nerve disease.
“The disease attacks the brain and spine, and I now have plaques along my spine, and brain even the optic nerve which is part of the nervous system,” Rachel says.
Aaron and Rachel Hannay. Source: Supplied
The couple lived in Mudgee at the time and decided to relocate to the Blue Mountains to be closer to family.
Thanks to an employment scheme, they were also able to branch out in a new direction.
“The government pointed us towards the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme or NEIS,” says Rachel.
“That helped us start our business, Mountain Landscaping."
A total of 8,600 NEIS places are available each financial year.
NEIS is set up to help individuals who are interested in running a new small business.
“Candidates are urged to do market research to find out whether their idea is viable," says the CEO of NSW Business HQ, Bruce Buchanan.
NEIS provides accredited training, business mentoring and fortnightly payments, similar to the Newstart scheme, to help a small business get going.
Thanks to the NEIS, Aaron and Rachel were able to get back on their feet with their new business. Source: Supplied
At the same time, the couple learned about the benefits of business insurance.
“Insurance acts as a bit of a buffer,” says Rachel.
“So if something does go wrong … and you don’t have the money to pay for it, then you’d definitely be in financial strife,” says Aaron.
Rachel and Aaron chose BizCover for their business protection.
“It definitely gave us good options and great prices and we found it was the best way to go and we just re-used Bizcover because they were so easy to work with”, Rachel says.
With all the fundamentals in place, the business looks set to flourish.
“It’s a very successful business and that means we had the right financial model,” says Rachel.
“We’ve been able to re-invest $60,000-70,000 into the business in the past year."
Rachel and Aaron have finished with the NEIS program, and are now standing on their own two feet.
And, for the first time in several years, things are looking up.
“Long term it’s the right move, we’re back on top,” Aaron says.
