Anne-Marie Walton On Strengthening Bonds Between Parents And Their Children Via Social Enterprise

Anne-Marie Walton is an example of how technology and caring can enable anyone to make a positive impact in our world - through community, business and career.

From the Ipswich region in Queensland, Anne-Marie is a proud, mature-aged, non-technical female founder.

Anne-Marie is the sole owner of KidsWantU a tech-based social enterprise supporting parents and carers to engage face-to-face with their kids “in real life”.

Anne-Marie is the Qld Social Enterprise Council Regional Champion for the Ipswich and West Moreton region.

She is also employed as an Entrepreneurship Facilitator under a Federal Govt initiative, providing free business mentoring, training, and networking events to her region.

Anne-Marie discusses her journey of founding the start-up KidsWantU and insights into supporting small and regionally based social enterprises.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Anne-Marie to kick things off, can you please share a little bit about your background and what led you to your passion in social enterprise and small business and starting up KidsWantU?

[Anne-Marie Walton] - Well, I've been on this planet a while and I've got many years’ experience, originally in human resources and business operations across corporate, small business and volunteer community work. But, what I'm most proud of is being a mum, and I probably spent about 20 of my years primarily being a full-time mum, and I'm proud of the wonderful adults our kids have grown up to be and the relationship I have with them.

That's what took me to taking the success I've had and working out how to share that with other families and parents who asked about all these activities, ideas and things we did together. I just realised that now is the time that technology allowed us to get these clever ideas and share them with the world.

As a parent myself, I can certainly relate to some of the value that you offer with KidsWantU. You're the CEO there, you've been working on this for a while now Anne-Marie, so tell us a little bit more about your purpose with KidsWantU, and how this platform operates?

Sure. It's been a slow long side hustle, but I think that that's important because the longer it's taken, the more learnings I've had. The premise of what I want most is just to help parents and carers do the best that they can. For those of you who are parents out there, we all love our kids, but sometimes we have those little moments where you might not necessarily like them that much or you're really exhausted, and you just can't think anymore. But you want to have that engagement.

I remembered those moments, and I see a lot of younger parents out there now who've been brought up as a screen generation haven't necessarily had the benefits of increased face-to-face one-on-one engagement that those of my era did. I wanted to make that accessible to anybody, no matter what their culture, background or financial situation is.

Tell us a little bit more about the platform, how we access this and unlock some of those activities or things we can be doing with our kids?

It's a nice, simple four step mobile app, and it provides customised ideas, but for fun activities that you can do together anywhere with kids away from technology. We're using technology to help you for ideas in real life. There are activities or fun games you can do around the house, just with everyday items or even the imagination that run for 15 minutes and up to 30 minutes. The way it works is it's personalised for each family.

You pick whether you're doing an activity of one or multiple kids, the app knows their general age, whether you've got that 15 or 30 minutes, whether you want to do something inside or outside, and then the clincher is what topics are of interest to you as the adult that you would like to do.

Then we use the algorithms to go through and suggest fun things that everybody is going to enjoy that is going to match the family. You can go through and have a look at the steps, there's a bit of gamification in there for the kids, and then once you've had a look at those steps, you can put the phone down, have that engaged face-to-face time together and feel a little bit less guilty if they're going to jump back onto the computer or watch two movies in a row!

There's no doubt you've hit a few hurdles along the way in developing this app. Tell us about a big mistake that you've made and what you learned from it, because so many of these founders that we have come across really do find themselves in some sticky situations? I think we can all learn a lot from them.

I have to choose between two. I mean, there have been multiple mistakes, but when we come to the biggest, probably the first and foremost was early on. I built our first version, like our first beta product and got it in the app stores too early. I didn't test it well enough beforehand with parents. I'd run some focus groups, gotten some feedback, but it didn't work well enough and it was an expensive lesson in time and in dollars. I shut that down and I got busy with life, work and opportunities, which takes me to my second mistake, which was probably helping others before me. Trying to balance the need for income and having a roof over our head and living the life that we want to versus the commitment to the business.

My next version is on its way very soon, thanks to all those long-suffering crowdfunding supporters. What I realised is I needed help. I couldn't just do it by myself, and my mistake was taking too long to do that. I positioned myself where I could afford to bring on some team members.

I've done that recently, and I should have done that a long time ago. But mistakes aside, I am excited for 2021.

Absolutely. I think we all are, after what's been a shocker of a year for many of us internationally. Now we spoke a little bit earlier about your federal government assisted role as a regional supporter of other businesses. You have supported a lot of entrepreneurs along the way, so what steps then would you recommend any impact-led entrepreneur consider at these early stages of starting their own enterprise?

It's pretty easy for me, and I learned from my experience, but that word 'learning' is key.

Learning through research, others, educating yourself and investing time into knowledge [is important]. You can do that by asking the internet, and also by talking to people face to face including potential customers or going to networking events or doing online workshops, you name it.

But even with networking events, don't go along to sell, but to build confidence. Talk about yourself, engage with others and draw inspiration and knowledge from others. For me, anybody, no matter what stage they are at in business need to be learning, I think that's really important. Then the other aspect for me personally, and I've noticed that I can see people move faster, is when they check their mindset.

For me, I live by the motto of embrace change. If you're aware that if you want to move, be successful in business, life or anything, things are going to be different. You have to be willing to embrace that things can move a lot faster.

Tell us about a few inspiring projects, initiatives or other social enterprises that you've come across recently, which are creating some great positive social change?

There are many, but I suppose I have one favourite, and I know that she would be well-known to you; Helen Black and her team at WorkRestart. They run a program in local prisons where they help those on the inside better prepare for being outside to gain sustainable jobs or self-employment opportunities. Knowing and understanding the benefits that can come not only to those people, but to society as a whole, is quite extraordinary.

Helping people understand what their strengths are and what they can do to leverage it for a better life for themselves and all of those that they interact with, and then the financial benefits and savings that they can bring to government and society.

It's probably easier if I say that Helen and WorkRestart are up there. Another thing I'd like to say rather than naming specific individual social enterprises is I really like those who have a one for one or similar model, whether it's a product or service, they're getting on with their business and they're doing something that is adding value to business or society. But they are also providing access to their product or service to those who might not otherwise be able to access that. There's too many examples, so I don't want to name just two or three and then feel bad at missing out some others!

It's very wise. Helen has been mentioned recently a few times in our other podcasts too, and she's certainly doing some great work out there. The team at WorkRestart showed me their projects at the Borallon Correctional Centre and some really interesting initiatives. Great to see that all unfolding out there.

Finally, Anne-Marie, let's talk about some books, blogs, resources or podcasts. What would you recommend to our listeners?

I have a big spreadsheet with all these podcasts, books and webinars that I want to get to. I'll pop them in the spreadsheet and I'm going to go back to them! The list is growing longer and longer, but one of the things that I have found that I go back to is Startup Focus, which is a book by two very successful Australian entrepreneurs Mick Liubinskas and Phil Morle.

[I go back to it] because it takes lean and agile thinking that people talk about in the innovation and technology sector, puts it in easy to grasp and understand snippets and makes you face those hard questions when you're growing a business or business idea, but in a friendly way.

I really liked Startup Focus. Anything, whether it's a webinar, podcast or book by Seth Godin around that marketing and understanding customers and users [is also fantastic]. Then, this one isn't necessarily a business book, but it makes me feel good. Zen Pencils is a publication (or publications) by Gavin Aung Than, who is a Perth based illustrator. He creates cartoon quotes from inspirational people, so if you think of some amazing quotes or short speeches that you may have come across in the past, he turns them into visual cartoons. You can just grab one out, open it up, and within three to four pages, you can leave feeling inspired and positive about moving ahead.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insights today, we really appreciate it. We'll look forward to following your journey as you progress with KidsWantU.