Timmy is Avenue Parramatta’s quintessential creative. He writes and sings his own songs, dances, runs a vegan cooking channel and adores the beautiful, colourful clothes of Avenue’s business partner, Yevu.
Timmy joined Avenue at the end of 2020, and after a start interrupted by COVID lockdowns – “it was so strange online, everyone was in their pyjamas,” he laughs – he has loved it ever since.
He attends three days a week, contributing to both the Animals team and the Order Fulfilment team which packages and sends out orders for Yevu, a responsible fashion label generating sustainable income for women in Ghana.
One of Timmy’s goals upon joining Avenue was to develop work skills. “I love the Yevu team,” he says. “I do collecting orders, invoices, folding, double checking and stocktake. At the end of the day, we update the tracker, and I can do the invoices really fast now. I’ve learned so much at Avenue.”
Timmy brings his unique flair to his work at Avenue, particularly when looking after the dogs the Animals team cares for. “I walk the dogs, and make sure they go to the toilet outside, and play with them. Maybe even dance with them. They like it when I dance with them.” Timmy loves it that no day at Avenue is the same – “it’s always a surprise!”
Over his three years in Avenue’s microbusiness teams, Timmy has saved enough of his profit share to make some significant purchases, and is considering what to buy next.
“I’m still thinking about my goal. Maybe I’ll buy something for my Dad – give him a new iPhone. Because he’s a Samsung user and everyone in the house is an Apple user. Now he’s found out that Apple’s easier to use, he’s on the curve. In the past I bought an Apple watch for my sister. I bought an iPhone for myself and another iPhone for my rabbit, Teeny. The iPhone was to Facetime her when I’m not at home. I can FacetimeTeeny and she can auto answer.”
Teeny not only has her own iPhone to keep in touch with Timmy, but she has her own instagram account as well: @twinkleandteeny04. “I haven’t changed the name since [my other rabbit] Twinkle passed away,” Timmy explains. “Twinkle and Teeny were twins.”
Timmy has strong social media skills, and many of his 2024 goals centre around @Timmysvegankitchen, his YouTube cooking channel. “My cooking is vegan, gluten free and oil free. I don’t like oily food. I’ve been vegan since 23 August 2021, because of all the tummy aches I’d been having. I feel much better now. No more tummy aches all day long. And I’ve always loved animals.”
To monetise his channel, Timmy needs 1000 subscribers, 10 million views and 4000 watch hours. He tracks his stats through the YouTube Studio app. “I have 960 subscribers. I want to get to 1000 this year. I need all my subscribers to watch me!”
As a spin off from his channel, Timmy also has a cookbook in the pipeline. He has a YouTube friend and mentor, who runs the Whole Food Plant Based Cooking Show and sells cookbooks and aprons from her website. Timmy believes he can achieve similar success. “I’m still working on my cookbook. I’m designing it in Canva. I’ll sell hard copies, on Shopify, maybe all over the world. I know how Shopify works because of working on Yevu, and in the Order Fulfilment team at Avenue.”
Alongside his entrepreneurial plans, Timmy is excited to stay at Avenue and is grateful that his NDIS plan has been rolled over until 2025 to enable this. Now that Avenue Parramatta has relocated to its larger premises, Timmy has an eye on the new opportunities that this creates: capacity to look after more dogs in the Animals team, and the potential to sell his cookbook through Avenue, online or at markets. Most importantly, Timmy just enjoys his time at Avenue: “I’ve learned so much at Avenue, and I’ve made so many friends.”