A Memoir from the founder of Talking Stones; James

1970 – 1990’s

I had always been very entrepreneurial. As a kid I ran roadside stalls outside my childhood home and sold homemade toffees in the playground in primary school.  Leaving high school with no plan I knocked on doors along the shops in Terrigal and got a start as a junior in a real estate office. That sparked a passion for sales and serving customers.

I soon started my own real estate office. We opened two offices before I fell in love with my now wife Sam and we decided to sell everything we owned to go backpacking around the world for a few years.

Returning to Australia I worked in various corporate jobs in the IT sector which ignited my passion for new technology.

I spent a number of years establishing and building businesses for others -  or as I like  to say – spent a lot of time making other wankers rich.

2000’s the origin of Talking Stones

I stumbled across a small pebble that had the word “imagine” crudely engraved into it. For some reason I was enamoured with the small stone.  It just felt so permanent, so forever, so everlasting, I really can't explain the impact that little stone had on me.

It was around this time that we recalled the loss of our family pet “Lady” and the difficulty we had in finding a suitable memorial that reflected the special place Lady had in our hearts. That’s when I hit on the idea of engraved tumbled river stones as a unique memorial. 

I became obsessed with perfecting the technology to engrave words into tumbled rivers stones. Everyone told me I was crazy and it couldn't be done. The more they pointed out how silly the idea was the more determined I was to pursue what had become my passion. It took 6 weeks from initial concept to completion of my first engraved stone. Living in Melbourne on a work assignment I transferred back home to NSW to develop the business which I named “Talking Stones”

I rented the equipment I needed, and had to dig out the underneath our house to set up space to work from. The equipment made so much noise I could only operate it when our neighbours were out. In the beginning the operations were scrappy and agile just like any start up. I just worked every hour of every day of every week. 

I was still stuck working in “Cubicle Nation” but I ran Talking Stones as a side hustle. I developed some product categories and hit the streets pitching products to trade customer. We did a lot of days driving up and down the East coast to set up displays of our products at family and pet events.

In the spirit of new technology adoption we also created one of the country’s first ecommerce online stores. 

Our first commercial customer was a Pet Cremation provider in Sydney who we still service today and a non for profit animal welfare organisation. They both still make great margins and drive happy customer outcomes from our products to this day.

2010’s

I remember saying my wife “you know if I could turn over $500 dollars a week im going to leave work and do this full time”. Shortly after this, I left what I called was my last “proper job” and from that day on, I have spent the rest of my time doing something I love.  

I wasn’t smart but I could work hard, so I just set about working my ass off to be successful. I could also recognise people who were genuinely smarter than me, so that became my hiring policy, just hire people who were smarter than me. Learning from past work experience we have also strived to create a supportive work environment based on meritocracy and inclusion. Your work should be a safe space where you are encouraged to thrive.

Early adoption of technology and pioneering new process is still an important mantle in our business, we are proud to have develop a number of processes and technologies exclusive to Talking Stones.

Over the years we moved from the front room in our rental, to a small dug out under our house, out to a single lock up garage in the back yard, to a small rented commercial space to today  a wholly owned manufacturing facility on NSW Central Coast.    

Today we are Australia’s most trusted manufacturer of ever- lasting made to order memorial products for people and pets and specialist custom stone engraving services and we take pride in knowing more than 100,000 families take comfort everyday from the object we have created for them.

Our business extends across a national trade network of commercial clients and direct to consumer channels.  

We are proud to be an Australian manufacturer using only the highest grade Australian raw materials and quality of workmanship.  We adhere to one of the most stringent sustainable and ethical trading policies and all  Australian supply chain .

- James Rae