‘I killed that business in six months’: Tanya Van Der Water had no idea how to be a CEO. It was a golden opportunity

Tanya Van Der Water was a fish out of water: an 18-year-old woman of colour in towering high heels striding across a work site, spruiking handcrafted leather tool belts to tradesmen.

The men called her the ‘Young Hot Islander’ and Tanya – who is actually South African – leaned in to the character, cheerily flirting away to make a sale for the family business, Buckaroo.

“I became very good at manipulating because I was already manipulating the world around me.”?That hustle would prove crucial when she unexpectedly took over the family business after her father’s death. And almost ran it into the ground.??

Here’s what I learned from Tanya Van Der Water about creating your own legacy.

External validation can be highly addictive

After emigrating to Sydney from South Africa during the Apartheid era, Ken Van Der Water set up a workshop dedicated to handcrafting leather goods – sandals, bags, wallets, belts.?

Tanya grew up in the shadow of Buckaroo, and her father’s struggles with alcoholism. While she sold Buckaroo’s belts on worksites as a teenager, her dad was at the pub.

“The dynamic between him and I – from when I was a very young child to when we were working together and even up until his death – was always foundationally based on me being the daughter of an alcoholic,” says Tanya, whose husband also battles alcoholism.

“I was desperate to get his validation and love and approval.”

Tanya developed an addiction of her own. Growing up, she felt her purpose in life was to help others. Her addiction was perfection. Her sense of self-worth was inextricably linked to external validation – which was ultimately a trap.

“My addiction is an obsessive brain which is on a constant loop of ‘What can I achieve next? What can be my next successful step?’”.

“The way my brain was, and still is, wired, is that I seek approval, I seek acceptance. I want to be validated. I want to be adored. It’s a very easy thing to get stuck in the trap of.”

To innovate, you need to let go of the past

In 2012, after her father was diagnosed with cancer, Tanya became the CEO of Buckaroo. She was 26 years old, with three children under the age of three and a husband in “full blown addiction”. Nothing went to plan.

“I didn’t know anything about business. I just knew how to sell. So jumping into the business was a very difficult challenge for me. I probably killed that business in about six months,” she says.

“But by killing the business, it gave me an opportunity to rebuild.”

Instead of trying to do it all herself, Tanya surrounded herself with people she could learn from. She developed “quite a strong entrepreneurial flare, ”she says. “I was really brave and I took lots of risks.”

One of those risks was cutting more than half the products from Buckaroo’s line. Products that were being dragged along by the company were eradicated in favour of those that pushed the business forward. “The business was still trying to hold onto this idea of what we’d always done,” says Tanya.

“It was like getting rid of a chunk of the past, a chunk of history, and a little bit of my father. But it was the best decision for the business because we were able to really define who we were and what we did. We were able to build a whole new brand for Buckaroo, which focused on tool belts.”?

At any moment, you can choose to start again

Tanya is no longer the CEO of the company she has known her entire life. She stepped away after realising that despite appearing like a superwoman who had it all, she was exhausted and unhappy.

“I said out loud for the first time, ‘I think I want to leave the business. I want to look at something else.’ About a month later, I fell pregnant. So it was very much the universe going, ‘Yep, you’re on the right path’,” she says.

About 18 months later she says: “I’m living my version 2.0 of life.”

“No one tells you what I’ve done is possible. No one ever said, ‘Did you know you can leave your business? Did you know you don’t have to work in it forever?’”

“I thought I was going to do it for the rest of my life – I conceded to that and I didn’t realise how unhappy it was making me.”

Tanya remains the sole shareholder of Buckaroo, but has thrown herself into other work: volunteering with not-for-profits, and healing the pain of her past. “I’m very much committed to my healing journey. Every day I am focused on what that means for myself, for my children and for my husband,” she says.

Curveball is a production of podcast consultancy and production company Deadset Studios. Curveball’s host Kellie Riordan is a leading podcast strategist and former head of podcasts at the ABC.