Tavola shared with Moana Fresh the similarities with entrepreneurial and motherhood challenges, drawing a conclusion that creative practice and entrepreneurship can be a form of Motherhood for Indigenous business owners like them. Maila from Moana Fresh agreed - there are different needs at different times.

Tears can also be a sign of strength, a sign of your love pouring out, especially when you are a kaupapa based enterprise. “Jim Viviare talked about being a midwife to a project and I realised I’d always repeated that,” Tavola says. “There’s this beautiful quote which he said at the curating pacific art forum about being a midwife to a project. Now I realise that actually I mother them - I am the mother not the midwife. It’s a nice idea that you can stand outside and be like aw baby is coming to this world? But I’m here like AAAAAAARGH, pushing!”

Tavola is adamant in advising the importance of building your financial literacy as a hopeful Moana entrepreneur. Financial literacy is the number one key thing for newcomers, but you must bring your kaupapa and cultural grounding with you. Having an accountant who is supportive of your ideas and culturally competent is key. Once she built a relationship with hers, Tavola gained clarity with her financials; and how to make money work for her.

“My accountant changed my whole life, changed my outlook, changed my relationship with money. She enabled me to stop letting money control my business but actually letting my business flow, and the ideas flow and the money just works itself out,” Tavola says.

An ode to her “embassy upbringing” where representing Fiji was called for, Tavola is passionate about wearing a fresh hibiscus every day. She chooses to embody the Pacific in what she wears to work specifically. “Channel the Pacific in everything you do. No matter what happens, that is what is in our blood. It’s so exciting that nothing can take that away from us. Even like shattered, exhausted, it's still like in us,” Tavola says. “Colonisation has tried to disconnect us from what we know and decolonisation is tapping into it again. And that is and INFINITE power source.”

The curator invites us to define what a social enterprise is, according to us - but it’s a matter of working out how because there's not many models out there. Ahi from Moana Fresh agrees and says: “It’s key to understand the landscape of social enterprise, traditional business, incorporated trust and where your business sits.” It's worth doing groundwork research before or as you are beginning. Tavola advises knowing your market is also key to understanding the landscape. “You need to know intimately the value system of the people you want to take money from… Your customers, your stakeholders and your funders,” Tavola says.

Passionate about putting Pacific art into Pacific homes, she continues to hold accessible gallery shows and values keeping work under two-grand. In some ways, this mentality creates – and sustains - the demand for Pacific works. “I know when we sit around in a homeland, we are sitting underneath something - it's going to keep giving and keep shaping our lives. I have sold so much work to Palagis. The work basically goes and dies because it is no longer activated, its acquired. So my most rewarding times with Vunilagi Vou have been selling art to emerging collectors.”