Treading her own path: What motivates serial entrepreneur Carlia Ashton

Fashion was going to be in Carlia’s future until she began to travel and a world of possibilities opened.

Her move away from textiles was unexpected, but Carlia found she operated better when she was following her own path to success.

“I think I've always just been really curious and I've never done things normally,” she said.

“I've never followed the pathway that you're supposed to follow, I've always done things my own way.

“People probably think that some of my solutions are a little bit crazy and obscure, but they seem to work.”

Creating a career with design

Carlia used to watch her mum sew and eventually, she learned to do the same. At first, it was clothes for her dolls and as she got older, she began making her own garments.

A Bachelor of Fashion (Design) at RMIT was always Carlia’s number one university choice, but she wasn’t selected, she opted for her second choice – RMIT’s Bachelor of Arts (Textile Design).

Her disappointment faded quickly once she started the degree and learned what lie beyond the study.

“As soon as I got in there and started doing the actual course, I fell in love with it,” she explained.

“Just the variety of career paths that you could do within textile design, I think that for me was a huge eye-opener. The industry-based projects that we worked on - that was a huge surprise and it's something that I think about a lot.

“Because rather than just doing projects that are made up by faculty members, the projects were made up by industry and they were things that then we would go and present to those different companies and you'd get shortlisted and you could win internships.”

Discovering that the sky’s the limit

After graduating, Carlia spent a year working in textile design and by the end, found herself on the edge of burnout.

“The company that I went into, it was amazing experience, but it was a hard slog,” she said.

“We were pumping out designs almost every single day. I was just like, ‘I don't know if I can actually keep this up, my creativity, managing to pump out designs every couple of days’.”

Carlia put the risk of burnout behind her and chose to travel. She flew to the Middle East where she found work with Etihad Airways.

Carlia worked in business development at the company’s head office in Abu Dhabi for a year before being recruited to work for a private jet company as an account manager.

After three years in aviation, Carlia was drawn back towards creative work, leading her to a role at a post-production studio working on TV commercials, billboards and magazines.

It was while she was living and working in the Middle East that Carlia began to experience skin problems. This led her to experiment with different products and formulations, which was to be the infancy of her all-natural, vegan skincare brand ONNE.

Teaming up with scientists and manufacturers in Australia, Carlia created a line of products including moisturisers, cleansers, scrubs and masks.

She returned home to launch ONNE with the goal of breaking into the US market.

“I wanted to test the waters in Australia and see how the brand would be received before then moving and extending it out to the US market,” she said.

ONNE launched in 2016 and by 2019 had secured capital from global investor Co Brand Partners. By 2021, Carlia stepped out of the company and began to focus on her next business move.

Making freelancing easier

Carlia moved into a management role at sports, experiences and entertainment company Kojo, where she headed up the creative services team. She quickly found how difficult it was to find available freelancers at short notice.

“We had so many projects that we would have on and they would just land at random times and they would be super urgent, things would be needed within 48 hours,” she said.

“Our own teams were just slammed with work and it was so much shuffling that I kind of saw a little bit of a niche in the need for one contact with pre-vetted freelancers.”

After contacting former workmates to gauge interest in a platform for freelance creatives, Carlia knew she was on to a winner. She launched TM8 in 2022 and today it has a global database of video artists, illustrators, translators, graphic designers, animators, copywriters and marketing professionals.

“It was just a bit of a side hustle while I was still working and doing contract work for other people and then it kind of just exploded, and I stepped in it full-time in September last year,” Carlia said.

Following a passion

Throughout her career, Carlia harboured a passion for wildlife conservation in Africa, and it was sparked by one single image.

“It kind of tracks back to about 2014 when I saw a really harrowing image of a rhino called Hope and she'd survived a poaching incident,” she said.

“Since then, I've always wanted to do something in the conservation space and something a little bit more meaningful but not really had the mechanisms other than just donating to be able to do it. But after a couple of years of going back and forth to South Africa, my husband and I had the opportunity to start a tourism business.”

Carlia moved from Adelaide to South Africa three months ago to start the Nokoma Foundation – a non-profit organisation that aims to fund projects to benefit communities living near the Kruger National Park through tourism.

The foundation has only just launched, and Carlia is excited by what’s to come, even if it’s daunting.

“I like being uncomfortable,” she said.

“I know that sounds really weird, but there's a saying in yoga that ‘on the mat you get comfortable with the uncomfortable’ and I kind of apply that in life as well.

“If I'm uncomfortable, then I'm being challenged and I like to do challenging things.”

Carlia’s entrepreneurial spirit was awakened by her sense of adventure, but as her career progressed, it was driven by her curiosity and today it has flowed into pursuing her personal passions.

Story: Kate Jones

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