Emily to build networks

Ag Bureau's 2021 Rural Youth Bursary winner Emily Buddle, Eudunda, experienced this first hand and wants to use her experience to help others.

When she found a gap in the market, she decided to start her own business, Ellimatta Consulting, to provide rural and regional people with appropriate support.

"For me, the whole catalyst was around coming into my family farming business after marrying my husband and just noticing an opportunity to enhance the support available," she said.

"Particularly for women coming into farming businesses, and trying to navigate the challenges of what is required when managing a business.

"But also some of the nuances in farming businesses around succession planning, isolation, some of the things that you're kind of aware of, but until you're actually living in them, you don't actually understand fully what they mean, and the impact that they can have on you both personally but also within your business.

"So that is my passion project and certainly ties into my values of helping people and obviously agriculture."

Emily said she took a leap of faith last year when she sent out a survey to find out more about what the community wanted.

"It reached a lot further than what I thought it would and the analysis of the results showed there was a gap," she said.

"Then I was successful in my application for the Ag Bureau's Rural Youth Bursary, which enabled me to undertake my coaching Certificate one with the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership.

"I completed the workshop in January and I feel like I was very fortunate enough to have the bursary cover the costs of completing that course."

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Emily said the survey aided finding the gap as it shown what support people, particularly women, were looking for.

"The analysis came back that there was opportunity to build networks and a community around women in agriculture, but also provide some expertise and just support more broadly," she said.

"The results of that survey was really the catalyst to apply for the Ag Bureau bursary, so that I could start to get the skills I thought I'd need to launch into providing some greater services.

"From the coaching certification I learnt there is great nuance between being a mentor and a coach.

"Creating that distinction is really important, particularly in the context of Ellimatta Consulting, because coaching effectively gives the coachee - the coaching counterpart - the power and the ownership over the direction in which they want to take to make change.

"So the biggest thing for me is that you have to be open to change in farming and agriculture because you know you've got to take each day as it comes because things change in an instant."

She said her key take home out of the coaching was how to enable a person to take ownership of their circumstance to easier be able to implement the steps required for change.

Emily presently works as a senior project officer for Livestock SA, managing the Ag Resilience Program for the Future Drought Fund.

"I saw the opportunity to manage the Farm Business Resilience Program good to expose myself to the industry that I wanted to go out and work in as a consultant," she said.

"To have the opportunity to manage the program meant I was really tapping into the skill sets skills that I've already got, and developing them further in terms of project management, working with future colleagues and current colleagues in the industry.

"I'm using it as a stepping stone to get more confidence and skills."

Emily said she wanted to work towards being able to take on clients.

A mentor put Emily onto blogging, saying putting her thoughts down in this way had many benefits.

"It's to share my experiences and some advice," she said.

"I think that sharing different perspectives on different topics that are relating to agriculture, women in farming and similar.

"It gets my thought processes going in that space and it puts me out there a bit more.

"It is a bit of a side project I have got going."

Emily said the blog was a way to kickstart ideas her potential clientele had not already considered.

"The blog has been about if I just come across something that I think would be of use or to provoke thinking in my audience - whoever that might be - around the issues in farming," she said.

"The most recent blog was reflecting on the need for a good business plan and why it is important to review it.

"Having a business plan documented can provide you with really clear goals and direction for where you are at the moment and where you want to be by learning more about the intricacies of a farming business.

"Sharing that knowledge or my thoughts around that, I'm hoping people can use my own experience in developing a business plan for our farming business and go 'oh well, perhaps I could give that a go for our business' and can also reap the benefits from having a plan documented."