Every time I saw a certain friend, they’d ask me the same thing: “Have you seen that role going? You’d be great at it.” They meant it kindly – a real job, they were saying, with a title and a payslip from someone else.
And every time, I’d swallow what I wanted to say Who do you think runs the business? and hand over the line I’d worn smooth instead: “Oh, I just do the bookwork in my husband’s business.”
Just. The smallest, most dishonest word in my vocabulary.
For years, that was the whole script. It’s Brett’s business. A concrete cutting business. I help my husband out. I do a bit of the paperwork.
The funny thing is, every time I share that story now, another woman tells me she says exactly the same thing. She “helps out” in the family business. She “does a bit of admin.” She “looks after the books.” Meanwhile she’s managing payroll, handling staff issues, chasing invoices, solving problems, managing customers and making decisions that directly affect whether the business grows or survives.
I’ve come to realise there are thousands of women quietly doing exactly this every day, performing the invisible labour that keeps businesses running, while struggling to recognise the commercial value of what they bring to the table.
I said it so easily to clients, to our accountant, to anyone who asked, that I stopped hearing how untrue it was. As though I’d wandered in to lend a hand with something that belonged to someone else, rather than something the two of us were building from nothing.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: it wasn’t that I stopped believing in myself out of nowhere. It was an external perception – quiet, constant, everywhere – that small businesses just run themselves. And unless you’re in it, you truly have no idea what it takes.
Let me tell you what “the bookwork” really was.
I registered the company. I set up the systems and ran the bookkeeping, the BAS, the invoicing, the overdue accounts. I handled insurances, compliance, WHS, the silica-awareness rules reshaping our industry, and, as we grew, payroll, payroll tax and the cash flow you watch like a hawk when you’re scaling, because invoices don’t always get paid on time, and the whole thing can wobble overnight.
Most of it happened at our dining table, in the hours my son slept. We started in 2016; he arrived in July 2017.
People assumed I’d fallen into it. I hadn’t. Every job I’d had before, none of which felt like a career at the time, had handed me a piece of what it takes to run a company. No coach, no mentor; just trial and error.
And the calls were never small.
Not long after our first baby, Brett got one at 8pm on a Saturday from a tier-one company wanting work. We were a one-man show.
“Should I go?” he asked.
Of course you have to go, I said. This is huge.
It was a grim job in a sewer pit, and the one that earned us a name for being reliable and safe, opening the door to the tier-one sites we still work on.
Every decision after that – to hire, to hire again, to build a HR function- was a conversation between the two of us.
That’s not bookwork. That’s running a business.
The clearest proof came years in. Concrete Busters was humming, and we started asking, what’s next? One day in the sauna we were listening to a podcast about buying “boring businesses” and the wave of baby boomers retiring with no succession plan.
I turned to Brett and said, “You know who doesn’t have a succession plan?” A competitor of ours whose owner was getting close to retirement. We asked the question, and the answer was yes.
Four daunting months later – lawyers, accountants, a new team, no guarantees- we owned a second business.
Through all of it, one person never underestimated the work: Brett. The bloke on the tools, the public face, the man everyone assumes is “the boss.” When people rang about the business, he’d send them straight to me. “You need to speak to the real boss, Jess. She handles all of that.”
Without you, I couldn’t do this, he’d say.
The blindness never came from him. It came from everyone outside the door, and, if I’m honest, sometimes from me too. There are thousands of women doing exactly what I did right now. They’re running the numbers, solving the problems, spotting opportunities, managing staff, making strategic decisions and carrying responsibilities that would attract executive titles in almost any other workplace. Yet many still introduce themselves as someone who “helps out.”
We’ve been handed a vocabulary of helping, supporting and assisting, and it sits neatly over work that is strategic, operational and relentless.
The work is real. The value is real. The only thing missing is the recognition. And too often, we’re the last ones willing to give it to ourselves.
This isn’t a sad story. I’ve always been ambitious, always had drive, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ll never work for someone else again, because taking ownership of something and building it is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done.
A lot of women still feel bashful about saying that out loud, about taking real pride in their own success. That’s changing, and I’m grateful to be part of it.
So today, when someone asks what I do, I still feel the old pull to shrink it into something palatable. I’m working on that. Because the truthful answer is that I’m the director of two seven-figure companies in one of the most male-dominated industries in the country.
Somewhere along the way, I became the CEO, COO, CFO and HR manager rolled into one- I just didn’t realise it at the time.
No, small businesses don’t just run themselves. Women like me run them.