S1 EP14: Sisters, Fights & Business – The Real Tea

Quick context before we get into it. Two of our brothers moved to Dubai last week, and I am not coping. The three of us are really close. We grew up together, went to school together, caught buses together, lived at home together. People have come and gone but the three of us have always been the constant.

They’re 21 and 22 and the fact that they’ve moved across the world to start their life is beautiful, but I still went to bed wearing one of their t-shirts. This morning I woke up to a message from one of them saying “I love you, sister girl.” I cried. In my head I always assumed I would be the one leaving first, not the other way around. It’s an adjustment.

So shout out to Bax and Joey. We love you boys and we are so proud of you.

We are sisters. We are also very, very different people.

I call Biba the silent assassin. She can be ruthless in a room and nobody in the room realises. I am the opposite. If I don’t like you, you see it. I cannot control my face. Which is a problem at work and a problem in life.

The age gap is a real part of why we work the way we do. I’m 12 years older than Hydie. Watching her grow up was surreal. She stopped being the little one I knew, started developing her own style, her own opinions, her own way of doing things. That was actually hard for me in the beginning, because I had always been the protector and suddenly she didn’t need protecting in the same way. In the clinic too, she came in and had her own ideas and her own approach, which was very different to how I had been running things. I had to learn to step back. And looking at the business now, two opinions really are better than one. The way we’ve merged creativity, care and systems between us has made the clinic what it is, and I would not have it any other way. Those merged instincts shaped the services we built the clinic around.

People ask us constantly, “How do you two work together six days a week?” And the honest answer is: we do fight.

Sometimes. Not huge blowouts, more disagreements. Hydie is very firm in her beliefs. Some people would call that opinionated. She calls it sharing. I call it sharing when no one asked.

The thing that has saved us is something we set up a couple of years ago. We call them our safe words. If one of us feels the tension building, or senses the other one is annoyed, we use the safe word and it becomes a prompt to talk. Have the conversation, work it out, move forward. That one small thing has kept our relationship and our business standing, because the alternative is letting things simmer, which never ends well.

We also sync up in our cycles, which means our PMS lands at the same time. Women will understand this. The luteal phase is the five to ten days before your period, and that’s where we both get short-fused. So we know when to give each other a little bit of extra space in that window. That push and pull is what running inside the Parramatta clinic actually looks like, day in and day out.

I feel like I don’t need friends, because I have my sister. Hydie feels the same now, and she’ll tell you herself, but it took her a while to land there because of the age gap. Biba was where I am now when I was 12. We couldn’t be at that same point together back then, and now that we are, it changes everything.

When I think about travel, I only want to go with my sister. We’ve been to Paris, London, Dubai, Lebanon, Switzerland, and honestly we call it arguing in exotic cities around the world. We were bickering under the Eiffel Tower. We were over it in London. We were over the bridge near Big Ben. There is nowhere better to argue with someone than somewhere beautiful, because the fight is always short and the memory is forever.

Having a relationship like this is not everyone’s experience. We hear from women whose sisters have sabotaged them, lied to them, broken real trust. The idea of ever saying something to deliberately hurt each other is genuinely unthinkable. We take stabs when we’re annoyed, but there’s no malice in any of it. And nine times out of ten, whatever she said that annoyed me in the moment ends up being right. It’s part of why we love looking back to see the work that built the brand.

Biba had done a lot by the time she was my age. Nursing, married, divorced at 25 with a newborn. When I look at that, it’s almost impossible to imagine doing all of that at this stage of my own life. That’s the story of how Biba was built, long before the clinic existed.

And yet, she’s also taught me that the road is long. I’m 24, I work full-time, I’ve got multiple qualifications, and I still feel like I’m only at the start of where I want to go. That’s a blessing and a curse. Most days it motivates me. Some days it makes me wonder if I’m doing enough. Biba and the team at the clinic remind me constantly that what I’ve done so far is a lot, even though to me it feels like the beginning.

One thing I’m working on is being more present. Appreciating where I am right now and who I am right now, instead of only looking forward. That’s a growth piece that Biba has actually modelled for me, even though her time management drives me up the wall sometimes.

Honest moment. Hydie’s habit I don’t love: she thinks she knows everything. She won’t tell you she thinks she knows everything but she does, and she will share the fact even when no one has asked for it. Sometimes she’ll finish a thought with this face she pulls. That face is the one that makes me want to move. But she’s often right, eventually, which is part of why it works even when it’s annoying.

Biba’s habits I don’t love: the phone. She is constantly on her phone. We’ll be mid-conversation and she’s swiping through something. The other one is time management. I like to plan the next season of the podcast a month in advance. Biba will pick up the research the night before. She thrives under pressure, and she’s a hospital-trained nurse so she has genuinely earned the ability to work at speed, but I like a schedule and she likes adrenaline, and that contrast has tested us.

We also balance each other here. Biba’s pace is why the clinic can handle a completely back-to-back day without breaking. I need to be doing something constantly, and stillness is not where my best work comes out. When you drop me into a full schedule I come alive. My creativity explodes. A slow day is my nightmare.

On how we keep the balance, it comes down to two things: respecting each other’s space, and respecting each other’s people.

On the weekend Hydie had planned a proper date night in with her boyfriend, cooking together at home. I was invited, but I knew that night was about them, so I stayed home. She texted when they were done and they came over after. That’s how we operate. We don’t hang out every weekend. We don’t insert ourselves into each other’s private life. When she’s got family events with her boyfriend’s side, that’s hers to enjoy. When she’s gone, I get silence, which is my absolute favourite thing in the world. I love being alone. I brainstorm, I plan, I cook, I bake, I reset.

And to close on a good one. When we first opened the clinic, we had a gap in the schedule and I said, “Let’s go get quick massages.” Our clinic sits in a business complex, and a lot of businesses back onto the same car park. We walked from our back door to what we thought was a massage parlour a few doors down. We walked in and said something like “deep tissue please, and we want someone who can really get in there.” The woman at reception looked deeply confused. Then a line of women came out for us to choose from. I had only ever seen that in a movie, and it took about a beat too long for me to realise I had accidentally walked my younger sister into the wrong kind of establishment. We were politely redirected two doors down to the actual Thai massage place, which was excellent. Hydie was nineteen, I was mortified, and she still brings it up.

Also iconic, and now our forever in-joke: one day the clinic was chaos, every room running, and I texted her “meet me at the car.” Meaning let’s vent for two minutes. She took it literally, walked straight out to the car, and stood there waiting to leave. Her next client was already inside. I had to track her down on the clinic cameras. “Meet me at the car” is now the code between us.

We’ve worked together now for coming up on seven years. The clinic turns seven in August. I finished my HSC on a Wednesday and started full-time with Biba the next day. Nearly seven years straight. It has flown. And honestly, I could not imagine building this with anyone else. We are at the very beginning of what we’re building. This is not halfway through. This is the start line.

We’ll see you next Wednesday for our season finale, where we go even deeper into the woman behind Biba. Bye.

If today’s episode has you thinking about your own next step, get in touch with the team and we’ll take it from there.