When it comes to entrepreneurialism, Jo Burston believes there’s plenty of inspiring people and stories to explain ‘why’ women would want to get involved.
What’s missing, she says, is the ‘how’.
And so the serial entrepreneur and founder of Job Capital is stepping back from the day-to-day running of the hugely profitable and successful business to promote entrepreneurialism among women.
She’s launched Rare Birds, a movement of entrepreneurs who “also happen to be women.” It’s an opportunity to use her influence and network to inspire, motivate and assist women and girls in becoming entrepreneurs by choice.
Having always had big ambitions for the businesses she’s run, Rare Birds will be no different. Burston plans to reach one million female entrepreneurs by the year 2020, taking the movement all over the world.
It’s necessary, she says, due to the lack of women in the entrepreneurial community. Indeed, she recounts plenty of experiences of being one of only a handful of women in rooms full of entrepreneurs, but cites one particularly experience as providing the wakeup call.
She was invited by Matt Barrie from freelancer.com to attend the Pearcy Award ceremony, a peer-nominated award for outstanding entrepreneurs. Despite being ecstatic to find out she’d actually won the award, taking the stage to accept it she was alarmed to see the poor representation of women across the room.
“The self critical entrepreneur in my went home that time and said ‘Am I winning this because they need a woman to stand on stage, or because I’m bloody good?” she says.
“It was a big moment for me but I still had to convince myself that I was worthy of it … We’re 50% of the population, so why aren’t more women involved?”
Burston set out to investigate what was going on, starting with young girls. Returning to her old school in Sydney, she asked 30 girls between the ages of eight and 13 what an entrepreneur is. They came back with names like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, but could not name a single Australian entrepreneur, male or female.
“I went home that evening and I was depressed. It was terrible. It was systemic. They had to be prepared by the principal to understand the word entrepreneur, then they thought it was a man,” she says.
“That was the epiphany for me. I thought, ‘you know what? It doesn’t have to be that way and I can influence changing hearts and minds.’ I set about understanding what I could do to change this systemic environment to make a place where women and girls would have no barriers to entry to have entrepreneurship by choice.”
Rare Bird is built around four core pillars. The first is inspiration, which involves sharing the stories of successful female entrepreneurs and will include the launch of a hard copy book later this year. The second is money, with Rare Birds to link those seeking funding with those who can provide it. The third pillar is mentorship, which Burston describes as being fundamental to her own success. And the fourth pillar is resources, which will come through the exchange of information and referrals.
Burston’s committed to creating a community that invites everyone in, one that’s not exclusive and can breakdown some of the barriers women may believe exist between accessing the inspiration, mentors, funding and resources they need.
And all of the above will be done to help reach those one million female entrepreneurs by 2020, a figure Burston doesn’t believe is overly ambitious.
“Yes, they’re big numbers. But I don’t want to reach for a small number. I’m a diehard entrepreneur. However long it takes, it takes,” says Burston. “Playing small for me is not really an option. I need to be in a big sandpit that I want to own. That gives me an incredible amount of motivation to get up every day.
Having done time in the corporate world, and now managing multiple businesses at once, Burston describes herself as somebody who’s always had a desire to lead. While she admits to making a number of mistakes since launching Job Capital in 2006, and even burning herself out at times, she says she never let those get in the way of what she really wanted.
“I was so obsessed with getting to the top of the mountain that I didn’t care what happened a long the way,” she says. “I know that everything I touched I wanted to lead. I hated being told what to do. I’ve always had a strong work ethic. I’ve always felt privileged to be employed.
“I’ve started other businesses that I’ve broken. And broken myself in the process,” adds Burston. “If you’ve stuffed up, you’ve stuffed up. For me, it’s how quickly you pick yourself up again.”
Burston sees entrepreneurialism as a ‘profession’ and mentoring as one of the greatest exchanges of information that’s never been measured. Her goal is to inspire and support as many women as possible in getting involved, and to be able to put some numbers to the result that can effectively measure success.
×