Aboriginal Businesss Service:

Lani Blanco and Debbie Nelson, Yarn'n

The women behind Yarn'n, an employment and consulting service, are getting used to people asking about their name. But the attention is welcome, and it's thanks in part to the Aboriginal Business Service.

Lani Blanco and Debbie Nelson laugh when they relate the story of visiting business adviser Phil Schwenke at the Service, with their original business name at "four lines" long. Phil taught them, among many other things, the power of a short, unique name that was easy for people to remember.

With the name reflecting their love of a story, Lani and Debbie are also perfecting their business story, as they knock on doors of big business and government to engage them in the Yarn'n idea - helping connect the people who are all, in their own way, involved in employment services for indigenous Australians.

"Private sector, public sector, Aboriginal organisations, state and Federal governments are all working pretty much in silos," Lani explains. "We wanted to help the people who were looking at improving either services or employment outcomes for Indigenous people. This is our main goal - to position our business so we could help many."

Both women have backgrounds in human resources and learning and development; Lani in the private sector and Debbie in the public sector. They met 20 years ago as founding members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Network and recognised then that their skills, experience and personalities were complementary.

They started talking about starting a business together about a year and a half ago. Then a friend recommended the Aboriginal Business Service in Redfern.

"We'd been talking about it for a very long time, but we had an initial fear of how do we go about this," says Lani.

"Because you don't know what you don't know," adds Debbie. "And we didn't know a whole lot!"

They laugh about being confused over what comes first - the ABN or business name.

But Philip was able to answer all of their questions, and not only helped them with general business information, but also with shaping and fine-tuning their concept. Over three months Lani and Debbie saw him each fortnight for sessions that would often run up to two hours, with so much to talk about.

In the next three to five years, the goal is for Yarn'n to be supporting Lani and Debbie fulltime, with offices and networks in other states as well as NSW, and for the focus to broaden to providing diverse employment opportunities - for women, people with disabilities, and people from multicultural backgrounds, including Aboriginal Australians.

Without the Aboriginal Business Service, and the help of their business adviser Phil, Lani and Debbie say they would still be "sitting there talking about it, not knowing what the first step was."

"He sprinkled some brave dust." Says Lani. And Yarn'n was born.
 

                                                                       Back to Top