October is Small Business Month! And to celebrate, we’re highlighting some of the great small businesses we have throughout the New England and North Coast. See all the stories here.
Today for Small Business Month, we’re celebrating three local businesses that keep the North Coast looking good at home, online, and within.
Urunga Mowing & Maintenance
From building homes to helping look after them
Urunga, NSW
After 30 years working in construction across the country, including on the Grafton Bridge, Deano Hill has brought his skills home to Urunga — and into a business that has been a long-held dream.
Deano is the owner and operator of Urunga Mowing & Maintenance, established in March this year after he identified a need for quality lawn, garden and home maintenance services in the local area.
A fully qualified carpenter by trade, Deano has extensive experience in construction, home renovations and commercial grounds and maintenance. Now, he’s putting that experience to work helping Urunga residents with everything from regular lawn and garden upkeep to one-off jobs around the home.
His skills extend well beyond mowing. Deano can tackle home maintenance and repairs and is experienced in operating a wide range of lawn and garden machinery, including Kangas, tractors, stump grinders and bobcats.
Having spent much of his working life travelling around the country for construction projects, Deano is particularly happy to now be working in the community he calls his “forever home”. He says one of the things he enjoys most is helping local people, particularly older residents who have spent years contributing to their community and may now need a little extra assistance around the home and garden.
For Deano, Urunga Mowing & Maintenance is about more than starting a new business. It’s about putting his years of practical experience to use, helping people in his own town and finally bringing a long-held dream to life.
Whether it’s keeping the garden under control, tackling a maintenance job or taking care of those jobs that have been sitting on the list for far too long, Deano is ready to lend a hand.
Persona Web Development
Websites designed to feel like you
North Coast NSW
For Layla Berlanga, building a website isn’t just about making something look good online. It’s about understanding the person or business behind it — and then translating that personality into a digital space.
Layla is the founder of Persona Web Development, specialising in custom websites for small businesses and solo practitioners. Her approach combines front-end development with a strong focus on conversation, collaboration and getting to know what a client wants their business to say about them.
Before beginning the design process, Layla takes the time to talk with her clients about how they work, how they speak to their customers and how they want to be perceived. From typography and layout to movement and the finer details, every element is considered with the client’s individual identity in mind.
And while trends can be tempting, Layla isn’t afraid to have an honest conversation when a popular design approach simply isn’t right for the business.
Her websites are hand-coded rather than assembled from templates, with each project built specifically for the client. The result is intended to be more than just another website — it’s a digital presence that feels like it belongs to the business behind it.
Layla’s path into web development began in 2023, when she started studying while raising her two children. She went on to graduate from Lumify Learn Technical College with a Certificate IV in Web Development and has continued developing her skills ever since.
Before moving into web development, Layla spent more than a decade working in customer service — experience she says has shaped the way she works with clients today.
Whether technology is something you love or something you’d rather avoid, Layla’s aim is to make the process approachable, collaborative and tailored to the individual. As a woman working in a traditionally male-dominated technology industry, she’s also bringing her own perspective to an industry she is continuing to build her career in.
For Layla, a website isn’t simply a technical project. It’s a commitment to understanding someone’s business and creating something they can genuinely be proud to put their name to.
Rachel Brown Nourishment
Nourishment with a personal, holistic approach
Uralla, NSW
For Uralla local Rachel Brown, nourishment is about more than what is on the plate. Through Rachel Brown Nourishment, she is creating an online community for women and exploring different approaches to wellbeing, with a particular focus on nutrition and supporting women through the different seasons of life.
A local mum of three, Rachel has built her business around her passion for learning and her desire to help women develop a more personal relationship with food and wellbeing. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Nutrition and a Master’s degree in Aromatherapy, along with training in Taoist energetics, German New Medicine and the GAPS diet.
Rachel is also continuing to develop her knowledge while building her business and community around Uralla and the surrounding region.
What makes her approach personal is the lived experience she brings to her work. Rachel says she wants women to feel empowered to make informed choices using the resources already available to them, rather than feeling they need to rely on expensive wellness products.
Her work draws together the areas she has studied with a strong belief in connection, learning and community. She hopes to create a space where women can come together, share experiences and explore ways of nourishing themselves through life’s different stages.
For Rachel, the goal is simple: to help create a community of women who feel supported, informed and empowered to take an active role in their own wellbeing.
Throughout October, we’ll run stories highlighting the great local businesses we have right here in our communities. This is a free service – the businesses highlighted have not paid for this story.
Want to highlight your business? Just fill in this form – places are limited.
Please share this story to help support New England businesses! See all our Small Business Month profiles here.