What inspired you to start Global Sisters? What is Global Sisters?
We’re not on this planet very long and I intend my impact to be a positive one – I try to make the most of every minute I have. I believe that if every human being acted with the thought process of “how can I leave this world better than how it was when I arrived” it would be a very different place.
I think there were three key motivators:
- Prior to GS officially launching in 2016 I worked with Social Ventures Australia, establishing the ACT Social Enterprise Hub and as the Director for Place Based Philanthropy with the Sydney Community Foundation. I could see there was a real need for long term micro business support and I wanted to provide this in a manner that could scale
- My desire to support women to be financially independent after spending primary school in Indonesia and working and travelling overseas, and seeing the extent of poverty and lack of access to resources and opportunity for many women
- Experiencing life as a teenager growing up in a country town in a single parent household and watching the struggle my mum went through as well as experiencing it from a child’s perspective.
Global Sisters started out as a concept for a socially conscious marketplace where women could sell their products as a way towards financial stability. I soon realised though that we needed to provide a lot more than this. After years of developing, testing and refining various aspects, we now have a free comprehensive, long term, flexible business program that helps women gain financial control of their lives, irrespective of their circumstances and external events.
GS supports women unable to access mainstream employment to explore and develop business as a flexible means of generating income. We provide start to finish support in a longer term program which includes business education, business coaching, micro-finance, sales &, marketing support as well as wrapping around all this in a beautiful community. The first 4 years of GS operations has been focussed on the ground with face to face programs supporting women down the Eastern seaboard as well as in regional Victoria/NSW. Depending on whether a Sister is starting from scratch or already established we help with all facets of business. She can jump into the program at any of the three stages of Business Education, Incubation or Acceleration and access a wonderful suite of resources and connections as well as become part of an instant community of support.
Tell us about your career and background.
I’ve had quite a diverse career path over the past twenty+ years which has seen me work across both commercial and the not for profit sectors. I used to work in innovation and then business incubation but my crash course in starting a business really came when I appeared on the Australian series of Dragon’s Den and won the highest amount of investment. I later exited the business and worked at Social Ventures Australia where I set up a pilot project in a social enterprise hub -connecting government, corporate and not for profit sectors to create employment via social enterprises for people unable to access mainstream employment. During this time I also completed a couple of awesome consulting projects across Ethiopia, America and Botswana. I set up the US based foundation to support Hamlin Fistula Hospitals in Ethiopia and worked with the Botswana Government around their business incubation program, which was aimed at decreasing their reliance on imports. I was later recruited to be the Director for Place Based Philanthropy with the Sydney Community Foundation working on some cutting edge grass roots community development projects in South Westerns Sydney. More recently I completed a Master of Human Rights Law at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
Describe a typical work day for you.
I’m a morning person and I generally wake up around 5:30-6am and sit in bed with my laptop weekdays to power through as much work as I can while there is peace and quiet. (Terrible habit I know!) By 7am I’m being mum and 8am out the door doing school drop off. School pickup is around 3pm and then it’s back home and I’ll keep working until around 7pm normally while getting dinner, walking our malamute Bubbles, sorting school homework and sometimes after school activities. I have a phone with a big screen and I do ALOT of work on the run. 7:30pm is storytime (we are just completing the entire series of Famous Five) and 8pm lights out for my little monkey. Half the time I don’t make it back downstairs and end up in bed by 8:30 or 9pm. I don’t officially work Fridays so I use that to catch up on the rest of my life although I normally end up doing some work.
Has COVID-19 affected your business? How are you navigating that?
Our team is primarily women working part time and Global Sisters has always been a completely flexible workplace. Everyone has always worked from home or sometimes co-working spaces if that doesn’t suit them. We live by zoom & slack so COVID had no impact on that aspect of GS other than upping the anti on a group of women already doing the juggle – home schooling nearly put me over the edge!
As far as our program we have experienced exponential growth in applications from women wanting to access our programs. We’ve had more than 3000 new registrations for our programs during the lockdown period which is more than the total number of women we’ve supported in the last few years. We were fortunately in the right place at the right time as we have been focused on digitising our entire suite of services over the past 6 months with the intention of being full accessible to any Australian woman irrespective of what barriers to employment she might be facing. We’ve created a model that can scale, and that has opportunities for women to connect in both f2f as well as online – so everything online has been accelerated recently.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Just start…but start small. Make sure you have a product or service there is a market for (what problem are you solving?), that you can produce at a price people will pay, will make you $, AND make you happy. Also take a good look at the competition – and be very clear on what is different and special about your business idea. Have a dream of what you want to achieve and don’t lose sight of that- visuals above your desk are great for that. Surround yourself with positive people or a community who will celebrate the wins and be there for the crashes – business can be such a rollercoaster. I’m a big believer in business being a force for good – what is your business contributing to the universe? More than anything…believe in yourself.
What’s next for you, and Global Sisters?
I completed my law Masters in January and this was going to be my year for getting fit again! COVID threw a bit of a spanner in that plan but I have high hopes for the second half of 2020. I’m aiming to start playing the guitar and I have another exciting project bubbling away in the background.
Global Sisters is about to launch Australia’s first female-only online marketplace for women owned business to help increase exposure, reach and sales. Listing on the platform is free and interested women can register here https://globalsisters.org/register-your-interest-global-sisters-marketplace/
With the launch of the online marketplace we are hoping to be one step closer to our goal of empowering women-led businesses and closing the gender gap through access to education, mentoring, collaborations and investment opportunities.
