This week Ruby Assembly Consultants are very proud to have an exclusive interview with Corinne of Madame Flavour fame. Madame Flavour teas represent an elegant and tasteful alternative to commercial teas in the supermarket. Each pack is beautifully illustrated and include a beautiful personal touch with information inside the pack. Madame Flavour teas have garnered a very successful online presence, and use social media pro-actively in their marketing. So, meet Corinne aka Madame Flavour. An eminently stylish lady, we bring you Madame Flavour’s Business Ninja Interview.

1. What makes your business magical, setting you apart from other competitors?

Our personal touch. There are just three of us at Madame Flavour headquarters; one street from the house where it all started in 2008. We are discerning, modern and love what we do. We care and personally deal with all the blending, quality standards, our suppliers and customers. Surprising and delighting our customers is really why we do it. When you drink Madame Flavour tea, you feel the love.

2. What are your maddest ‘ninja skillz’?

Managing a list of 500 things to do with a single laptop and old school mobile, juggling business, house-building, motherhood and exotic overseas trips to destinations like Shanghai, Colombo and Paris, with relative calm; spotting a cornstarch based biodegradable infuser pod form a nylon at 40 paces.

3. How did your lightbulb moment in creating your business come about?
My husband brought home a pyramid style leaf tea pod whilst I was trying to resolve women’s love of leaf tea and the pot experience but lack of time to prepare it/ settling for paper teabags. Ai carumba, an elegant solution.

4. What is your earliest memory?

Finding turtles in the creek below our house in St Ives, Sydney.


5. What would your last meal be?
Some form of duck..probably a l’Orange, our French family occasion favourite. Washed down with Madame’s Special Blend to help with digestion.
6. What is your best tip for recruiting staff or choosing business partners?
Not my strong suit but would have to say in a small business, personality fit and intuitive feel for someone’s energy seem to be a more effective gauge of ultimate success than skills tests.

7. What is your favourite sound?
The deafening silence interrupted occasionally only by kookaburras, lyre birds or grunting koala’s of our rainforest retreat in Gippsland. My daughter Sienna’s singing.

8. Who would you like to invite to dinner?

Anita Roddick, Julia Gillard, Cate Blanchett, Oprah, Sheryl WuDunn.

9. Who has inspired you to be a better ‘Business Ninja’?

Better for me these days is more relaxed, more trusting of the outcomes and of my ability to handle things and more in touch with what inspires me versus the pull of pure growth and ‘success’. I’ve been inspired by mentors and close friends who have expertise in energy work, coaching, meditation and belief in me. And by my husband who is very practical and knows what makes me happy.