Episode 91 – Corinne Noyes | Madame Flavour

In this episode I speak with Corinne Noyes, the owner and founder of popular Australian tea brand, Madame Flavour. Corinne speaks regularly at women’s business and industry events, is featured in articles on all things tea, slowing down, meditation, work-life balance; and was selected Telstra Businesswoman of the Year finalist. The success of her business has been in its personal approach, authenticity, and stand for the right to a beautiful experience.

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Transcript

​Murray Guest  00:01

I’m really excited Corinne to be talking to you on the podcast. I am a tea lover. But not only that I got to meet you a few weeks ago, and really loved your energy and your passion. And even taking me back in my previous life in the food industry, for your passion for flavors, so had to get you on the podcast. But before we get into all that, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to join me and I hope you’re well.

Corinne Noyes  00:32

You are welcome. Thank you. I appreciate that. And yes, I’m very well. I am at my place in Gippsland at the moment, which is 50 acres of mostly rainforest and looking forward to a few days of of grounding here.

Murray Guest  00:49

And can I ask the 50 acres, are they cleared, uncleared? What are they like?

Corinne Noyes  00:53

Most of it is uncleared temperate rainforests. So it’s up in the Gippsland Hills. It’s at Mount Nash and ferns and it’s really remote. My neighbors are kilometers away.

Murray Guest  01:07

Oh, that sounds so magical. Such a beautiful part of the world as well. And can I ask when you’re there, what’s the shift? I was talking to a client this morning about going to the gym. And the conversation we’re having is when she goes to the gym, even if she doesn’t work out, she feels the difference. And for me, it’s like when I put on my mountain bike helmet, I could just walk around the house with it on but feel different you know, so tell me what happens to you do you think when you go out to the Gippsland area?

Corinne Noyes  01:38

For me the transition is as I’m driving, it’s about two and a half hours. And I literally hit a certain point in the road where there’s this turn off to the left, and everything settles and I feel a peacefulness. The stress mostly evaporates, things don’t matter so much. And it’s partly a physical moving away from the city and the source of some of the stressors. And it’s the green hills, Gippsland’s a very, very green place. It’s the green, it’s connecting also back to my childhood, because we did do family things in Gippsland. And they were happy times.

Murray Guest  02:19

Yeah. Can I ask as a business owner, what does it mean for you to have this time out in Gippsland? What what how does that impact you in running your own business?

Corinne Noyes  02:34

It allows me some perspective, which is really critical, because it’s so easy… I mean my business, while the brand is well known, I’m still very hands on and I always have been. And I think for me, that is the way it needs to be, I actually enjoy that. But that can also mean I get very lost in the detail. So being here gives me time for reflection, which is critical, perspective, I feel less concerned about things I can make better decisions. And, and it is also just my thinking time in terms of strategy, in terms of what I want for life and therefore the business. All of that stuff that’s hard to get to when you’re very busy.

Murray Guest  03:27

Yeah. And so Madam Flavour has been in operation now for over 15 years. I’m going to put you on the spot, do you think this practice of taking that time out for yourself and recharging like you do, is this something that you’ve been doing the whole time? Or is it something you needed to learn along the way?

Corinne Noyes  03:46

I have learnt it, I’m gonna say I actually needed it. You know, it was like, there wasn’t there was no choice, I had to find ways to relax because and also as I’ve as I’ve now 15 years, it’s quite a lot of an adult lifetime. So when I started, you know, I just wanted and needed different things, you know, I was just coming out of corporate marketing, you know, around 15 years of that, and that had been all about the thrill of the pressure and the drive and, you know, working really, really hard and long hours and you know, and to some extent trying to prove myself and as I have become older, as the business has matured, I’ve just become more aware of my need to have some stillness and connect with nature and actually enjoy my own company, which is a different conversation. An interesting one.

Murray Guest  04:59

Yeah. Now I just want to go back. So 15 years ago, obviously, Madam Flavour started. Tell me what was it like to actually make that transition from corporate life, you said 15 years in marketing roles to starting your own business, your own brand, what was that like?

Corinne Noyes  05:24

I had been in corporate roles and really enjoyed the startup, you know, in each of them. I’m really also with two sort of major large businesses and I came into problems to be fixed type situations. And there’s three or four years of that I loved it, I really thrived on the problem solving and, again, the energy. But I noticed in both cases, as things settled, I just, I was itchy for something more or different, I was challenged by how hard it was to make things happen in harsh environments, and you know, the decision making process and things getting watered down, and just, you know, things not being exactly how I wanted them. So, I was looking for ways to get out. And it’s not easy when you’ve been in a corporate role and become reasonably senior, and, you know, it’s quite niche stuff. So I was starting to look at what else could I do? I was, I was lucky in my last role that I, there was, because I guess, you know, 15 years ago, there wasn’t so much part time flexibility, remote working, when you think back, and I was lucky enough that I negotiated to move into a role three days a week in corporate development. So that was my first the transitioning out and then move to one day, and then got pregnant, which was the perfect way to, you know, really start to cut the cord. And one of my daughter was nearly one, I started to think about what’s next? And so it’s sort of transitioned out in that way. I never really planned to start my business. I was actually looking to do not for profit work.

Murray Guest  07:12

Yep. Okay.

Corinne Noyes  07:14

Just via a fork in the road, heard about fair trade, started to help someone with their business that was fair trade, there was tea involved, I looked at tea in the supermarket, and the marketing brand kicked in around wow this is slim pickings, which is how it was then. And I just felt the need to make it better for the consumer. I knew I could. And then the passion drove me forward. So there was no real planning around it, starting my own business. It was a path and a journey and a following of what I felt and what I was inspired by.

Murray Guest  07:55

Yeah, gotcha. And it’s great to hear that. And I’ll be honest, over the past six years of running my own business, and traveling and seeing your tea in airport lounges, and the unique pyramid shape of the tea bags, and you talk about fair trade but the other element that really stands out to me is the quality. And you know, go back 15 years and some potentially generic brands in stores, and then your brand comes in, what was some of the key things that you really wanted to make sure your brand stood for?

Corinne Noyes  08:36

So it was really about what is the most most beautiful and complete sensory experience I could possibly put together in a little package for the supermarket, for the consumer, for the broader to consumer. So it was really about kind of packaging up something that is more personal, more beautiful, better quality in terms of the sourcing and the blending site, I was really just it was it was actually a form of self expression. And it still is a form of expression. And that involves all that involved at the time, you know, looking at what are the types of blends people like, okay, I wasn’t a tea blender, however, I’d had a lot of experience in food marketing. So I started to just experiment with ingredients and you know, getting an Australian component in with Lemon Myrtle and mountain peppers, and obviously the longer leaf tea which was what everyone used to love. And now everyone was drinking tiny little bits in paper tea bags, because that’s all it was available and it was too hard to make pots. So the pyramid as you said, I just by chance came across and I thought this is perfect, I could put leaf tea inside it. It looks beautiful and people can make it in their cup. So it’s still convenient. And then there was the whole making connection through the story. You’re reading a letter inside the pack from Madame Flavour talking about her travels to Sri Lanka and the mystery and the exotic and her children. So making a connection because one of my beefs about you know, supermarket products at the time, which has really shifted since was, you know, it’s been soulless, it’s a bit disconnected, it’s a product in a box with, generic,  well pretty much no words, no sense of love really. Now, you know, skip 15 years forward, and, you know, it’s all about the personal touch or the personal connection and the personal story. So yeah.

Murray Guest  10:43

Yeah. And what just rang true to me too, and I actually could feel it in my being when you said it, that beautiful experience that your tea is about. And the thing I’m thinking about the analogy of, do I just grab a bag from the cupboard, make a cup of tea and bang, move on to my next thing that I’m doing? Or do I pause, stop and appreciate the tea, smell it. Which links to something else you’re passionate about. And that is that slowing down and, and investing in our health. And I think that when you’ve got that quality, when you’ve got that messaging, and you’ve got that passion, I think it drives the consumer to stop and say, I really want to, you know, appreciate this moment.

Corinne Noyes  11:27

I think it encourages that. It makes it a little easier. Because it does, it does stop you when something is from a sensory perspective, just more you know, there’s more love in it, it’s more beautiful, it smells different, visually, it’s capturing you, there is a natural tendency to then connect with that. And, and I’ve used it to really try to encourage that through creating, for example, a tea meditation, which we did at the time with smiling mind. And because leaf tea takes a little longer to infuse, so it’s maybe three or four minutes versus you can almost do 30 seconds with a strong tea bag and get something, we recorded, or I recorded a tea meditation, which was the boiling water and then close your eyes, inhale, notice the aroma, feel the warmth of the cup, you know, it’s some some words that are just a really quick grounding. And then at the end it went “Bing, your tea is now ready.” It’s really cool. And it’s so easy, because the tendency these days with that three minutes is like, well, I can’t just stand here at three minutes, I gotta go and do a couple more emails. You know, it’s like a waste of time to stop.

Murray Guest  12:59

I’m going to scroll through Instagram and look at my phone.

Corinne Noyes  13:02

Yeah, well, that’s that’s the most recent, isn’t it? So yeah. Yeah, just encouraging that little moment, to take advantage just just real quick for yourself. Because we know it does make a difference to be to ground yourself. As in not only from a personal health perspective, but you just do your job better. And you don’t realize often you’re so caught up in the busy, slightly frenetic way that we live, you just actually don’t notice that you’re there.

Murray Guest  13:35

Yeah, well, I’m just I’m sure you and I are aligned in this in our experiences in corporate offices, where it’s between meetings, people might grab a cup of tea or grab a cup of coffee, and it’s like a just quickly go there, go to the next thing, go to the next thing. And if there was a three minute mindfulness, enjoying and appreciating acknowledging that cup of tea, and then that three minutes you take out is going to flow into that next meeting so much better.

Corinne Noyes  14:05

In fact, I think a brave person would start a meeting with a minute of, you know, we’ve all got our cups of tea, put your hands around the cup, close your eyes, and let’s just be still for a couple of minutes and notice how we’re feeling. And the meeting would be different. I’ve done versions of that. And the meeting is different because everyone kind of it’s like, Oh, hello. 

Murray Guest  14:36

Yeah. So I invite and encourage listeners to actually do what Corinne just said, take the time out in your next meeting. And, you know, invite people to have that hot beverage, preferably tea as you can hear, and, and take that time to actually centre everyone because that’s what I feel like. There’s a centering that happens and a clearing of the mind. Yeah, I want to ask a prior to Madame Flavour, were you a tea drinker, were you a coffee drinker? Where were you?

Corinne Noyes  15:12

Yeah, I was both, but more coffee. And again, if you think of tea and coffee, coffee because it has a quite a lot higher caffeine content tends to be about, you know, waking us up, speeding us up, keeping us going when we’re exhausted, but we have to, you know, it’s become that kind of tool, whereas tea is more around calming, relaxing at the at the source, when I’ve looked at need states in research, it’s about comfort and so they have different roles. For me, I was drinking a lot of coffee partly because my family did and partly because it just kept me going. I did, though, love a cup of Earl Grey. I know it’s a bit traditional, but that was my tea of choice at the time.

Murray Guest  16:08

And I need to just build on that. Do you have a couple of go-to teas, more than others?

Corinne Noyes  16:16

Still, our Grey Deluxe is my Madame’s Earl Grey, which one of the particular differences is the Lemon Myrtle, from Northern New South Wales, Australian native herb just makes it wonderful. But the tea itself, you know, comes from Assam and there’s some Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka. So it’s, it’s such a wonderful Earl Grey blend, I think you know, of all the teas I’ve tasted, I’ve tasted most of them, it is possibly the best in the world. So the Grey when I am after black tea, and then I love, terms of herbals, the lemongrass lime ginger is wonderful. And then our luscious licorice. So they’re both herbal, which means they have no caffeine. The luscious licorice has licorice root, and a myrtle from Australia. So it has this natural sweetness, that’s really surprising. And it’s going to work when you got a little sweet tooth craving.

Murray Guest  17:20

And you’ve got a real passion for Australian native foods. And you’ve obviously talked about a few there that are in your tea blends. And you found Australian Mountain Pepper on your property some years ago, didn’t you?

Corinne Noyes  17:31

I did. I did. In fact, I have it in a vase just over on the table. So yeah, Australian mountain pepper. My neighbor came over when I first moved here, and he’s like, oh, and that’s dadada and that’s Black Wattle and that’s Blanket Leaf. And this is Australian mountain paper. And it’s an indigenous plant that has peppery leaves and berries during March, April. And it’s all over the place. And I got very excited. And that’s that was my entree into the whole Australian native food scene. So I use the mountain pepper leaf in our Chai, because Chai traditionally has pepper.

Murray Guest  18:09

Yeah. I could ask you so many questions. I’m wondering if you could share though. You’re taking me places as you’re describing the teas. Which is again, the journey when you you have tea, where have these ingredients come from, in your own experience, where has tea taken you physically? Where have been some of the places that you’ve been, you’ve gone Oh, this is such a great experience?

Corinne Noyes  18:38

Oh, look, I spend. I’m in Sri Lanka, generally, two to three times a year. That is a beautiful island where in fact my parents met and married. So there’s this lovely personal connection for me, and that’s where our blending is done. And I chose it because it’s the best tea in the world. And there’s that family connection. So there it’s you know, you get into Columbo, you get in the car, and you’re driving, it’s only a couple 100km absolute max, but it’s you know, an eight hour journey, no matter what the conditions, because it’s a rickety road, and you’re going up and up and there are trucks and you know, it’s just chaos, animals and you finally get right up to the top neuroglia where you’re just in amongst these incredible green tea fields, looking out, you know, way, way down because you’re very high altitude. So that is incredible, having cups of tea in a bungalow in a place like that and staying overnight. But then equally, you know, parts of China, I did 1,000km road trip through these incredible remote parts of China, too, because I visit all of the sites that we buy from, and we went into the small restaurants on the side of the road where it was just a fire and they cook with incredible ingredients. And we had delicious meals, the tiny little plastic tables and yeah, I mean, I’ve been really, really lucky. And then, of course, lots of Europe more just to experience. I mean, my mum’s French. So I do enjoy France anyway, but to experience different tea brands, different ways of drinking tea, Japan it’s such a rich wealth of, of different ways of enjoying tea, different traditions around the world, that it’s really interesting.

Murray Guest  20:34

Yeah, I mean, just thinking about what you just talked about there so whether it’s in parts of Southeast Asia, Asia, or over to the mainland Asia, or up into Europe, or even if we go into I can imagine some parts of America and other parts of Europe, we’ve got…

Corinne Noyes  20:53

Yeah, yeah iced tea in the states more so yeah, I mean, even we grow a tiny bit of tea in Australia, not very much. But Madura has a lovely little estate, that is so pretty, it’s again, Northern New South Wales. And in Victoria, we’re growing very small amounts of tea that are exported to mostly exported to Japan as essentia. So really, different environments lead to different flavors, and just different cultures and different traditions.

Murray Guest  21:26

So with your travels, and working with suppliers, and obviously, the past year has been a disruption to everybody. What has that meant for you in your business?

Corinne Noyes  21:41

Yes, so many things. Look, ultimately, it’s been a positive thing. I think the I spent the entire year pretty much here in Gippsland, which was, you know, it insulated me and gave me space to step back and think, what are we going to do? We, you know, we lost more than 30% of our business, because we sell to supermarkets, we have a small online business, but then you had quite a significant food service business. So that’s airlines like Virgin, who went into administration and hotels, cafes, restaurants, cruise liners, I could all just it literally disappeared overnight. But what that had us/me do is think Well, how do we survive, and we had to become way more efficient, simplified the business, looked at inefficient ways of practices, as well as product lines. So we don’t, provided enough I mean, people understood, like, it gave me the opportunity to have tough conversations that were much more accepted than maybe if you’d had them earlier. My team was already relatively remote. So that was okay for us. And I just thought more about what do I really want to be doing with my time, how do I want to live the rest of my life. I’m sort of early 50s now. So there’s a you know, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting time.

Murray Guest  23:19

Did your online business take a pivot? And that obviously take off a bit more?

Corinne Noyes  23:25

Yeah, that’s it. So supermarkets did and absolutely online did. We really had just been running it as a service to people who couldn’t buy, you know, certain blends that they had to have. And yeah, it doubled and made me realize this is, this is something that we are well positioned now to build and in fact, have started, we’re putting much more energy into this, major growth focus for us.

Murray Guest  23:53

Fantastic. That’s great to hear. And obviously, as things start to change, moving forward with, you know, travel restriction changing. Of course, we hope that, you know, your products are everywhere, where they were in the past again, as well.

Corinne Noyes  24:12

Yeah, we’ll look at in fact, you know, Virgin 2.0 is back and we’re back with them. The hotels are opening. So that’s all reopening. What was powerful, though, was to see that there was a way forward that worked if they didn’t come back online, so that Yeah, just good to know.

Murray Guest  24:34

So I’m, again, putting you on the spot here. But just reflecting on that time as a business leader, if there was a lesson that you would share with people out of that journey, what would that be?

Corinne Noyes  24:47

Well, one is to, you know, it’s just so important to sometimes reflect on what’s really what matters to you. How you want to live, it’s so easy to get caught up in the importance of whatever it is you actually are doing, which may or may not really be deeply satisfying and sustaining. So I, I do quite regularly stop and just think, you know, it’s a bit of a cliche, but just what do I, you know, what’s gonna matter when I’m looking back at 85? or 90 or 110, which is my new life goal?

Murray Guest  25:25

110. I like.

Corinne Noyes  25:27

I heard, there was a great article about a French woman who survived COVID. And she was 112. And I thought, why am I living it limiting myself to this idea of 100?

Murray Guest  25:38

And, and just for our listeners out there, what’s going to help you get there is good tea. That’s right.

Corinne Noyes  25:43

Absolutely, it’s, you know, full of antioxidants, and very healthy.

Murray Guest  25:48

So, looking back around, legacy is what I’m hearing what you’re talking about there. What’s my legacy? What have I done? How do I want to live my life?

Corinne Noyes  25:59

Yeah, exactly. Do I want to look back and I did really great business stuff, or is there something else? I mean, at the end of the day, what I see now, the part of Madame Flavour that is really satisfying for me, whilst yes look it’s only tea, is that it really does make a difference to, you know, clearly 1000s of people because we have 10s of 1000s of letters from people who know particularly are in vulnerable situations. So it may be you know, cancer, and the only thing they could stomach was our tea or smell, the only thing they could smell was our tea, or it may be a bereavement, where this was a thing they shared with that partner, that sister that brother, and now it reminds them or, you know, it may just be a feeling of, it’s a small pleasure, I don’t have a lot of money or whatever, this is a small pleasure, that really just makes me feel good. But that’s the part, you know, you got to find the thing. Ultimately, I think you’ve got to find the part, that piece of your business that is nourishing the part of you that needs to feel good about how you what you’re doing in life.

Murray Guest  27:20

Yeah. And I think the reminder there that’s standing out for me too, is, it’s easy to forget the ripple effect of what we do. And with that slowing down, that is a definite theme of what we’re talking about today of taking time to acknowledge and appreciate that impact that your products make, or your services in the world, as small as they may be. But every one of those all adds up.

Corinne Noyes  27:44

Absolutely, and doing whatever you can, you know, I’m lucky I own the business, I’ve got a lot of freedom around decisions. But regardless of the role you’re in, you can do it in ways that, you know, give more or create more of that positive outcome, you’re there, you always have choices in the way that you operate.

Murray Guest  28:07

So what does the future of Madame Flavour look like?

Corinne Noyes  28:11

Look for me, we are in a really good, healthy place. And it looks like stability, continuing to create great, exciting teas, you know, to explore and innovate to make our customers happy. I did a distilling course actually, last week. So I spent a day, well not just learning about, but going through the process from the picking in the garden of the – in this case, it was Rosemary – through to the stripping and packing and putting in the water, turning on the gas and watching as the hydrosol and then the essential oil dripped through into our beaker. You know, to give us Rosemary essential oil. So for me, I love plant aromas and flavours, and there’s just more and more exploring around, you know, does that take us into then, I don’t know. But yeah, pushing that edge.

Murray Guest  29:11

Yeah, that sounds exciting, too. Are we expecting any Rosemary flavoured teas coming out?

Corinne Noyes  29:19

Ah, it’s full of health benefits. I don’t see why not. Look, the next we do have a new blend coming out in the near-ish future, which is more around an autumnal blend. I’ll just leave it at that, I can’t reveal too much, but always, always, always playing.

Murray Guest  29:41

And when you think about your journey as a business owner and business operator and a leader that you are I just, actually this popped in my head earlier and I just want to make sure I don’t miss this opportunity to ask, when you reflect back on your career, prior to starting your own business, what did you take from that, that you now know, sort of helped you or as a bit of a lesson or insights from those years in the corporate roles that, you know, has been transferable to what you do now.

Corinne Noyes  30:19

A lot of what I learnt was pivotal, I think, in my success. As a marketer, I always related to marketers as the the core of the business although that was much debated with other departments, but

Murray Guest  30:37

It is the voice of the customer.

Corinne Noyes  30:38

Exactly, right. So, at the end of the day, you understand the customer, you know how to, to know how to package together something that they will love, which is the saleable item. But also, you know, how to then present it to the, to the person so, for example, in my case, supermarkets. I didn’t have connections necessarily, but I knew what they needed. So that piece made sense. I, I understood a little, you know, a little bit about sales, I learned that the disciplines of marketing, how to promote, how to, you know, generate awareness. Sampling trial, I understood financials, I mean, I was a critical piece, you know, how to plan, how to do profit loss, product costing, I mean, so many things, that, without those, you know, it really becomes very, very difficult and much riskier, because at the end of the day, for me, now, I just know that having some, you know, basic financial measures, ratios that I keep a very close eye on, whether that’s around cash flow, whether that’s around profitability, you know, you can’t have, well, there’s always going to be surprises, you know, the crashes, but if you keep an eye on those things, you know, no major surprises. There are less of them. Let’s put it that way.

Murray Guest  32:12

Yeah, fantastic. And I know that it’s a journey which people consider they think about, you know, what can I do? What does my future life look like? What’s my legacy? And how do I do that? And I think, you know, what you’ve highlighted there is that all of the life lessons or career lessons you’ve got are transferable to wherever you’re going next in in your journey.

Corinne Noyes  32:35

Absolutely. It’s not a perfect, it’s not a perfect step ladder. It’s just, you just keep moving through life. And it is really all about building on and hopefully moving more in a direction that that takes you places you love.

Murray Guest  32:51

Yeah, yeah. Spot on, and having beautiful experiences.

Corinne Noyes  32:55

Indeed, that is, I mean, what else is there in life?

Murray Guest  33:01

Well, Corinne, thank you so much for your your time. It’s been wonderful to have you on the podcast to talk about what you’re passionate about. I have to admit, I’m not a big Earl Grey fan, but you know what, I’m gonna give it a try.

Corinne Noyes  33:16

I’m gonna send you some. 

Murray Guest  33:17

Oh, that would be wonderful. I think the traditional Earl Grey of the very strong, you know, sort of fragrant notes don’t connect with me, but what you’re talking about there does sound like the best Earl Grey in the world, let’s be honest. So.

Corinne Noyes  33:30

And knowing the detail of what’s in it and where it comes from, it just makes it more.

Murray Guest  33:36

Okay, I will, I will close this loop and let you know how good it is, of course.

Corinne Noyes  33:43

Thanks, Murray.

Murray Guest  33:44

Um, where’s the best place for people to find out more about Madame Flavour online?

Corinne Noyes  33:49

Yeah, madameflavour.com. And also Facebook, Instagram @madameflavour

Murray Guest  33:56

Great, well, thank you. And we’ll make sure that they’re in the show notes so people can check that out. And if you do experience Madame Flavour for the first time, or you’re a regular consumer, please let me know. I’d love to know because they are beautiful, beautiful teas. And to wrap us up, I would love to know your definition of inspired energy. It is the Inspired Energy podcast and I ask everyone this question. So what comes to mind for you today?

Corinne Noyes  34:25

Inspired energy is when I am, I’ve had my cup of tea. I’m completely grounded and anything is possible.

Murray Guest  34:35

Oh, I love that. That, again, thank you, that is unique to all the other answers and that is beautiful, that is wonderful. Really appreciate it. All the best for the rest of this year. And again, thank you so much for your time and insights.

Corinne Noyes  34:50

You’re welcome.