Rare Birds, a new Australian bred organization has launched to create 1 million female entrepreneurs in five years. It believes that more women should back themselves to build successful companies.
This movement is not new but is certainly picking up momentum. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government of Germany has passed a bill that requires, large listed companies to fill 30% of their supervisory board seats with female nonexecutive directors. FastCompany profiled women who lead billion dollar tech companies.
Rare Birds is the initiative of Australian entrepreneur, Jo Burston, Founder of JobCapital. After speaking at schools around Australia in 2013, she was dismayed to find that many young girls didn’t know what the word “entrepreneur” meant. Knowing this was not right, she began the journey of Rare Birds to inspire a wave of change.
Burston herself didn’t come from a family of business people. Her father was a fireman and mother a banker. Having no idea what to study at university, she decided not to go altogether. Instead she dropped out after high school and began to work a variety of jobs including retail. But throughout her life, two traits carried on: her leadership strength and thirst for knowledge.
It was her encounter with serial entrepreneur, Philip Weinman, nine years ago that ignited her passion for business. On their first encounter he asked her to sit down, so she sat down in his chair and said, “I’m going to sit here anyway, I might as well sit here now.” Both shocked and impressed, Weinman eventually invested several thousand dollars in her over a handshake and taking 60% of the company. Burston learnt from Weinman’s shrewd business tactics and eventually repaid him with interest after two and a half years to take over the entire company.
In the early stages of the company, Burston received calls from venture capital investors from the U.S., wanting to invest. At the time, she didn’t even know what venture capital was. Now reflecting back on that lack of knowledge, Burston doesn’t want that to happen to other women with similar opportunities.
A critical function of Rare Birds will be an online to offline ‘Deal Room’ to help young women find investors. To eliminate entrepreneurs going to a meeting half armed over rounds of coffee meetings, Rare Birds will help prepare them. “I want entrepreneurs to have a choice [of investors], because it doesn’t happen,” said Burston. The program costs several hundred dollars to take.
Rare Birds holds the philosophy of ‘If She Can, I Can’, meaning if other people hear stories of talented women achieving business success, they can too. One of Burston’s role models is Boost Juice Founder Janine Allis, who started at the age of 35 with three children and built one of the country’s most successful franchises. To help spread the call to entrepreneurship, Rare Birds has published a book titled ‘Australia’s 50 Influential Women Entrepreneurs’.
In her experience, one of the main reasons that women struggle to start on the path of doing business is their lack of self-confidence. “Women get stuck with the ask. They’ve got to stop saying ‘sorry’ and do it with confidence. There’s a shift in self-esteem that needs to happen,” said Burston.
In the coming months, Rare Birds will launch Phronesis Academy. ‘Phronesis’ in Greek means ‘practical wisdom’. It is based on a model in Myanmar that teaches 200 women to make money in a sustainable way. Instead, it will put the program online to teach kids for a small cost. Lessons will educate them about simple business concepts and ask them to test out their ideas in the real world. Kids can collaborate and get mentored and by the end are given a business plan. “Kids learn in fun way because they’re not being tested,” said Burston.
