Georgina McEncroe, Founder of Shebah, the female rideshare service, is one of the most successful business women in Australia. She’s also super-nice and lots of fun to chat to. She has done soooo much! From starting out as a teacher, to travelling, creating an award-winning Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, or collecting testimonies for the War Crimes Tribunal, George has done it all.

She has been divorced and been fired from her job on radio, but the culmination of all this experience let her to go for it when she first identified the gap in the market for a safer type of taxi service, where people could trust that their children would be driven safely, that had baby seats and where a woman can hire another woman to take her home, if she has had too many drinks on a night out! Shebah’s crowdfunding capital raising was once of the highest in Victoria, raising over $3 million from 3000 small investors. Watch this space as Shebah becomes a household name.

Louise Mahler is an absolute joy to chat to! An internationally renowned speaker and executive coach, she is also very funny and has loads of stories to tell. From growing up in the suburbs of Brisbane, Louise headed off to Europe and sang in operas from Vienna to Stuttgart and everywhere in between. And then she realised she had had enough and returned to Australia, a young divorcee with a small baby in tow.

This led her to find a ‘proper’ job so she worked with a big mining company in ‘Quality Control’ for a few years before leaving to focus on helping leaders have a voice of influence and a charismatic presence. “It’s all about communication,” she says. Starting off with free talks and working her way up to being able to command a fee of $US25,000 for a one hour talk in a stadium in the US, Louise has a career many Australian’s would envy. And yet she is still down to earth, generous and humorous with her stories. One to listen to!

Kate Toon is a well loved and a very popular woman for good reason. She’s just the best person to talk to when it comes to building your own business because she is super generous with her information. This chat was no different. From her first trip to Australia as a backpacker, Kate was always going to kick arse.

After working in agencies (her first job was creating an ecommerce site for Marks and Spencers back when people barely knew what a website was), she went on to become a copywriter and then, aftyer the birth of her son she decided to go out on her own. Make no mistake, Kate has worked very, very hard to get to where she is now but it’s been worth it, as she will say. She has two membership groups – one for SEO and the other for Copywriting – and is now venturing into the area of building a personal brand. She’s such a dynamo, and a really fun person so this chat is well worth listening to!

Meredith’s story of how she co-founded the Because agency, one that specialises in brand experiences, is fascinating. It all started with a trip to London at the start of the 2000’s. During her time there she got a job working for a new company called because. Run by a very entrepreneurial woman, Meredith worked her way up through the ranks but wanted to go home to New Zealand (or certainly closer!) so she thought about getting back and setting up her own agency, when serendipity stepped in. Her ‘boss’ was keen to be the co-founder and seed fund the startup.

Meredith talks about what it was like to land in Sydney with her husband. She knew no one and had $150K and a laptop as her starting point. She talks about what it was like to win a massive project with CUB when she was starting out, and what it was like to lose it because they didn’t have an office in Melbourne. Something she now has, and CUB is a client again. It’s a great story!

Stephanie is not your average woman. She always wanted to give back, from a very early age, so when she was on a trip to Nepal and she found 7 very poor, and disabled women huddled together without any of the basic necessities she decided to start there. Her NFP, Seven Women, has now helped thousands of Nepalese women by teaching them skills so they can support themselves and their families. This has led her to an Order of Australia Medal, speaking at the UN and all over the world about what she is working on and how every person can help to affect change.

I spoke to her while she was in Melbourne during the COVID lockdown which has obviously cutailed her travel, but not her passion or ambitions for her organisation. She explained what a rock her Mum (and family) have been throughout her whole career and how, with their support she is continuing to do things that will make change happen. She is soon to release a documentary and is going to teach herself PR. Her story is very inspiring!