Hello!
My name is Bryn! I am twenty-five years old and born and raised on the beautiful Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia and live with my two French bulldogs, Ernie (3) and Lola (2).
I have often felt over the last few years it difficult to explain to people what I do for work when people ask me out at dinner, or out with friends. Increasingly I have often found myself replying “aah I work in sales” haha.
For my website “about me” page, I thought that I would explain this properly because I want people to know the real me, and my journey.
So here goes, right from the beginning!
In the early 1900’s my great great grandfather, mother and subsequently four generations of my family were involved; my the phosphate mining of Banaba (Ocean Island).
In 1989, my mother heavily started researching our family history and in 1991, nine months after I was born my mother travelled to Fiji with my grandmother to meet with the Banaban people for the first time. You can read about the history of the Banaban people here.
When I was five years old, my parents separated. My father Iain was a very well known policeman on the Gold Coast for thirty-two years and my mother, Stacey was one of the best-regarded florists on the Gold Coast, mum individually specialised in Japanese weddings.
At this time my mother met a Banaban Islander - Raobeia Ken Sigrah and they fell in love. From then on at the age of five, my life was continuously engaged in a whole new culture. Since the age of five, I have been travelling to some of the remotest parts of the world. The type of places that luxury resorts do not exist, where The Pacific islands are untouched and canoes remain the main means of transport. Growing up, these were the adventures every school holidays my parents would take me on.
I spent my life living out of a suitcase, travelling between Mum and Dad’s place and spending school holidays either in Fiji or on surfing trips around Australia with my dad. No matter where my parents went to I was with them and even had my first solo flying experience around nine years of age. Haha! Miss Independence!
Growing up I was a major nerd. Like serious *NERD ALERT* braces and all. I was in academic excellence, sports excellence and a fanatic dancer. I loved science and mathematics, and my grandmother would buy me mathematic equation books for my travels to pass my time on boats and airports. For Christmas, my Mum would buy me things like an atlas or a subscription to National Geographic, Qantas Frequent Flyer Membership and at nine years old my first website called 'Brat Queen Bryn', Haha! Thanks, Mum! I loved this type of stuff and still to this day am very much the same, some would say worse!
My mother always told me that at six years old, before I went to sleep I would look at my world map in my bedroom and at six I could recite any capital city in the world. My parents would always ask me random questions like – “Hey Bryn, what’s the capital city of Hungary” and I would reply “Budapest, of course”. Along with Where’s Wally, it is one thing from my childhood that I still remember today.
Fast-forward to 2004 and my mother and stepfather formed the Banaban brand. In a nutshell, the Banaban brand is one of the first coconut oil companies in Australia, specialising in over ninety organic coconut food, beauty and pet products. Purely because of my stepfather being from The Pacific and my Uncle was a producer of virgin coconut oil in Fiji who wanted to sell to the Australian market.
At this stage, I was thirteen years old. At this time I hit a really rough patch and from this time until I was seventeen I almost completely destroyed my life. I dropped out of my school excellence programs and was in a really bad way mentally. I had a bad attitude towards life and didn’t really take care of myself so to speak. I hung out with the wrong crowds and did what all teenage kids shouldn’t do.
I remember at fourteen, my school principal told my dad just to give up on my schooling and to get a job, but I was determined to graduate and pull myself out of this rut I had gotten myself into. It took me a few years, but I eventually got there.
Once I graduated high school, I started working at a local hotel in Surfers Paradise, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was still quite upset at how much I had destroyed my life in high school and dropping out of my OP course in high school meant no university for me.
My mother rang me one day in 2009 and asked me to come and work with them at Banaban full-time in the office helping the online retail section of the family business. So I decided I would, and it changed my life completely. I was incredibly fortunate for the opportunity I was given, and after my high school situation I wanted to make the most of it.
I started off progressively working my way through everything in the business including production, packing, sales, customer service and eventually at twenty-one into sales and marketing. Woo Hoo! The online sales and marketing world, I love it! It’s like mash potato for me (my favourite food! Haha!)
It was an incredibly exciting time for me. I was dealing with some of our biggest clients both national and international and marketing our products on my own at that time. It gave me a job satisfaction like no other and all of a sudden I just had a fire in my belly to keep pushing further. I wanted to think outside of the square in every aspect of my career and I had this desire to be the best in my field.
I thought to myself if I was going to sell coconut products I needed to be able to create food with them to explain to customers how to use them. At the time, coconut products in Australia weren’t that well known and when my parents wanted to bring out new products they would ask me to take home a sample, create a recipe and bring back feedback for them in how to market them. From that moment I was then writing creative spiels for the product labels and catalogues and started posting my recipes on Facebook. I WAS COCONUT OBSESSED!
My recipes started gaining traction on Facebook so I asked Mum if I could write a cookbook and self-publish it through Banaban. I was twenty-one and really eager to buy a house, my hopes for the book profits was to save enough for a deposit towards a small townhouse for Ernie and I. I have lived out a suitcase for what feels like my whole life so I have always really wanted a place to call my own, a forever home.
In May 2013, I launched my first cookbook, Going Coconuts and spent weeks building my website and blog from scratch and on the side building my Going Coconuts brand. You can see more on my first cookbook here.
I started travelling more for work with Banaban to our coconut farms throughout The Pacific and Asia and working in countries such as Fiji, Japan, Sri Lanka and Germany. I decided in 2014 to put my book money towards my phone app and spent hours with my food photographer Jo Anderson from the Luminous Kitchen learning the ins and outs of food styling and photography. In October 2015, I launched my recipe phone app on the iTunes app store. You can see more on my phone app here.
I was fortunate enough to gain an international publishing contract for my new cookbook in February 2015 and in September 2016 it as released with more than 25% already presold in presales in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. You can see more on my European cookbook here.
Fast-forward to March 2016 and I released my first range of nine gluten and dairy free, vegetarian-baking mixes made from Australian almond meal and coconut sugar. You can see more on my baking mix range here.
My ‘Going Coconuts’ hobby has become just that, a hobby. I seriously wake up every day excited to cook in my kitchen or design a new page on my website. I have poured every cent into this, and I love it, even sitting here writing this now I just have the biggest smile on my face. I didn’t reach my goal of buying a townhouse just yet (there’s still plenty of time), but I’ve gained so much more from this hobby as a person, it has changed me for the better and given me such happiness from within. I would stay up working until 2 am each morning if it meant I could still continue doing what I love.
For the time being, I am still working at Banaban as their Creative Director around thirty hours a week from home. I love it! I think I’m a workaholic! Haha! I spend most days cooking in my kitchen and taking pictures and videos of food, packing my baking mix gift boxes and on weeknights, I’m up writing and implementing work for Banaban and my blog.
I am so lucky that I had my “get your shit together Bryn” moment. From about twenty-one years of age, I knew in my heart that I had truly found the one thing in my life that exceeded all expectations and made me the happiest I had ever been. I really thank my hobby of cooking and love of writing and creativity for giving me this life and a second chance to prove not only to myself but also to anyone out there; you are capable of doing whatever you want with your life.
So now that you know with the REAL Bryn and my strange and brutally honest journey. Enjoy the recipes and blogs and thanks for being apart of the one thing in this world that makes me so incredibly happy <3
bryn x
P.s. I encourage you to find your passion. To find the one thing in life, you truly love. I promise it will change your life and way of thinking forever.