Kiwi Business Story: Miriama and Reuben Reid at The Cohorts

Miriama and Reuben Reid are the Co-Founders of The Cohorts and Icehouse Coaching alumni. 

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 9 March 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here. 

How did The Cohorts come about?

Miriama: We were in advertising and back then, it was a very heavily male-dominated industry, particularly in large agencies. In fairness, I just got fed up, and decided to step out and start our own business. 

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a strong woman-led mentality of leaders and businesses. One of my earlier clients was Manukau City Council and the arts programmes. I did their magazine, publications, books, and [worked with] just a fantastic group of people who were very inspired and making a change. Having come from quite disposable, I guess, advertising campaigns and a PR background to go on to clients like that… I just loved it. Reuben joined me about a year later. 

Rueben: I was doing digital work with the agency I was working with at the time, and then stepped down and joined Miriama. It took a little while to build up the digital side of the business because Miriama was predominantly print and design and brand-type work, and so we spent a good period building that up. We ended up becoming a contracting team and to the agencies – when they had spill-over for digital and creative projects – as well as obviously servicing our own direct clients. 

How did you hear about The Icehouse? 

Miriama: The Icehouse has just been around forever – a known brand. I wanted a coach who had the experience in our industry on the digital side of things. I didn't want it to be as generic as some coaching can be. 

I basically just sat down with Reuben and said, ‘I want to bring an advisor in’. Years ago, we used to have an advisory board, and we haven't had that for about the last decade. I felt like we are probably well past the halfway mark in our career, and we needed to look at ‘where to?’ from here… we just needed that outside head.

What does Craig Caminos, Icehouse coach, give you and the business? 

Reuben: We enjoy his insights and his experience – it’s at a different level to us. And having someone with that history, applying their understanding and knowledge of structure and process when we're wanting to work out what the next 10 or 15 years looks like for The Cohorts, is invaluable. So we're really enjoying working with him to go through that process, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on it. 

When we hit a point where we feel like we're out of our depth, engaging people that have got that experience and knowledge in the areas that we don't, is just a logical step. Surrounding yourself with people who know the space that you're trying to step into, or know the process to get to an end goal, and then engaging that knowledge and support in business, is something that any successful business person does.

What challenges have you solved along the way?

Miriama: The biggest thing was venting our frustrations in a couple of ways that a brand wasn't necessarily being protected in a working approach from the client side… it was concern from almost a brand guardian kind of level - just to make sure that all of that work and everything didn't get watered down as too many people came into the mix… it’s really about having a sounding board, to throw our ideas at.

Reuben: On one hand you've got the long-term picture that you're looking at, and long-term planning – making sure that we're regularly touching base and getting that plan in place, to a point where there's actionable items and actionable things that we've got to carry out.

And the other thing is the ad hoc stuff that comes up in the day-to-day operations of business… Craig lends independent advice on how to deal with some of that stuff.

What excites you most about 2023?

Miriama: We've just expanded the team, for which I'm really grateful. Our greatest challenge has been recruitment for the last couple of years. We have a couple of very senior guys who have just recently expanded the team. So work wise, it’s a larger team and all of that brings.