Mandy Richards On Self Employment And Social Business Uplifting Women At Risk
Mandy is a social entrepreneur fiercely passionate about human rights, animal welfare, eradicating poverty and empowering women.
She established Global Sisters to democratise entrepreneurship in 2013 – with the goal of creating a scalable and efficient model for supporting women to create an income stream via self employment, when mainstream employment wasn’t accessible. Mandy’s diverse career path over the past 20+ years has spanned the commercial and not-for-profit sectors where she has worked internationally on government business incubation programs in Botswana and New Zealand, as well as for high profile charities including the Hamlin Fistula Hospitals in Ethiopia and locally as National Marketing Manager for the RSPCA.
Mandy holds a Master of Human Rights Law, established the ACT Social Enterprise Hub while working at Social Ventures Australia and was Director for Place Based Philanthropy with the Sydney Community Foundation. Following securing the highest investment on Channel 7’s Dragons Den, Mandy launched a $3.5 million startup and has commercialised an invention internationally.
Mandy discusses uplifting women in at risk communities by enhancing pathways to self-employment and creating opportunities to become entrepreneurs
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social impact?
[Mandy Richards] - My background is diverse. I'm not sure I have a career as such, but I guess the overarching theme is I've always had to be doing something I felt had a purpose and was worthwhile. I've always been entrepreneurial, and I guess broadly I've worked across business incubation, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. I've worked for a couple of interesting big charities, and it's all combined with a few start-ups I ran as well.
How I started up Global Sisters (I started working on it in 2012, about a week before I had my little boy who is now 10) was I'd been working in the social enterprise space, and I could see there was so much potential and need around employment; creating jobs for people that just couldn't access mainstream employment. I thought it could be done in a better way, in a way that was using technology more sustainably and was more scalable. Also, I really wanted to focus on working with women. A few things led to that; one was my personal experiences. I grew up on a farm in Armidale, and then my family moved to Indonesia. I saw abject poverty at an early age, and then later when we moved back to Australia, my parents divorced, and I went through the experience of watching my mother become welfare dependent, struggling to look after three kids and struggling to get a decent job in a little country town (even though she had a double degree). Then I did all this social enterprise work and travelled a lot. I kept running into women, for example I ran into some in the mountains or Sarpa in Vietnam. All these hill tribes’ women had the most incredible skills and were making the most amazing things.
I just started thinking, "how can I help women like this reach markets and women like me who want to support them?" Also, how can I help them make products that people want to buy, as opposed to sequinned elephants. These products are incredible in terms of craftsmanship, but how many sequinned elephants can a person buy? That was really the start of Global Sisters; initially the idea was a marketplace that was purpose-led or cause-driven to support women, and it's just evolved from there. I kicked it off initially working with some women from refugee backgrounds in Canberra while I had a little baby.
As the Founder and CEO of Global Sisters, can you share a little bit more about this enterprise, its purpose, and the impact it's generating?
Our overall purpose is essentially to give women a means of creating an income for themselves through self-employment. This is when they just can't access mainstream employment, or at least adequate mainstream employment. There's a lot of women out there who may be classified by the government as employed, but they're underemployed, it's not decent work or they're being paid so little that they still can't make ends meet. Then there's a lot of women out there who have no financial independence.
There are plenty of women out there, for example, who may have a partner who's in a good job, but the women have no control over the money.
Our objectives are centred around financial independence for women. We're focused now on women in Australia and just making sure that self-employment is a genuine option for any woman in Australia, if that's what she wants to do.
What’s so important about self-employment is the flexibility that it offers. There are hundreds of thousands of women, probably millions in Australia who are facing barriers to mainstream employment. These barriers can range from carer responsibilities (which most women have whether it's children or elderly parents), right through to being in a situation like my mother living in a regional area, mental health issues or they are coming out of domestic violence situations. They may have passed 45 years old (it was 50, now they're saying 45) as that milestone when as a woman if you lose your job, it's hard to get back into the workforce. They might even have some sort of disability. There are a thousand reasons and circumstances that might hinder a woman's ability to get adequate work.
We're at the point now where we've supported five and a half thousand women across Australia on their journey to financial independence. We've seen more than a thousand new micro-businesses get off the ground. We work very closely with the corporate sector, which provides all sorts of pro bono support and sales opportunities to our Sisters, and we've enabled $6 million worth of pro bono support and sales opportunities from big corporates like Unilever, eBay, Visa, Afterpay, and Google to these women. That's an important part of what we do.
We've been going long enough where we're starting to see significant impacts. We're seeing older women not only buy but pay off their own homes. These are women who were possibly facing homelessness as their future. We are seeing young migrant women have success, and they were the most at risk during COVID. We had one woman, for example, who moved from homelessness to turning over $300,000 a year, and she's employing three other young migrant women. She's got a mortgage, commercial lease, and we're also seeing women moving off welfare as well. In terms of impact, that's where we are at the moment and now, we really want to see those significant impacts scaling. At a macro level, there are four key areas we really want to see change in. We feel like we're in a good position to do so, and these areas are child poverty, domestic and family violence for women and children, older women's homelessness (but I would say now also mums with kids’ homelessness is just increasingly prevalent now), and women's health (mental and physical). We know that these are all things impacted by poverty, and they're all things that financial independence is a key lever in shifting the dial on.
The other side of the work, where we are really starting to ramp up now is the systems change work. We work, I guess you would say on the ground, although most of its online. We have this one stop shop of business support, which ranges from business education, to coaching, microfinance, sales and marketing support. We have a marketplace, so women can get on there and start selling straight away.
But on the other side of things, we're really starting to look at how we can make bigger changes in the systems and structures out there that are really preventing self-employment. One, they're preventing self-employment being a genuine option, but also preventing and not supporting women on low incomes in Australia.
This is so they can leverage any income they might be making, to the point where they can purchase assets, own assets, and really start breaking that poverty cycle. We're moving from just focusing on enabling economic participation and building out, joining all the dots so they not only become financially independent, but also economically secure for the rest of their lives. That obviously passes on to their children as well.
We'd like to acknowledge and congratulate you and your team on recently receiving the $1 million grant support from the AMP Foundation. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this means for Global Sisters and their future?
AMP Foundation have been an amazing partner. They've been one of our longest-term partners, and so they really helped us get to that point where we had a scalable model and supported so many women around getting businesses off the ground. This grant is supporting the systems change work I just mentioned. This year we're launching three, three-year projects that are aimed at proving our model at scale, but also providing an evidence base we can give to the federal government to make changes to the welfare system, so that it really supports women into self-employment.
Now we have an outdated welfare system that was designed for men, and it's never been designed and doesn't cater for the women that we're supporting if they want to go down the route of self-employment. This is crazy, because we know with single mothers particularly, once they get onto welfare, they tend to stay on it for a long time. The reason (generally) is because, first, the rates are so low our welfare system is entrenching poverty rather than providing a safety net, and second, it's not designed to give these women what they need. It doesn't acknowledge or recognise all the barriers they're facing, their circumstances and what's going on for them, so it keeps trying to shove them into these bad jobs that are never going to work and are certainly never going to help them become financially independent. If we look carefully, we can see that women have these circumstances, so they need flexible work that's really going to support they in whatever circumstances are occurring at home.
Self-employment would be a great option for them. It might not be the pathway forever, but it's a start. We see a lot of women start working with us for a few years, build up their networks, confidence, and then they go and get a great job, but they needed that help in the first place. The three projects we are launching this year, one is working with women with disabilities, one is working with single mothers (who are on the higher parenting payment single rate, which means their oldest child is eight), and then the third project is working with women who have come out of domestic violence situations. The AMP Foundation grant is contributing to running the single mother's project which is awesome, and that's going to be launching in July, so we'll be supporting 300 single mothers and their children for three years on this journey in setting up a business. The end goal is that we see at least half, hopefully all of them earning as much, if not more than their welfare payments and they are really on that pathway to getting off welfare and becoming financially independent.
What are some actionable steps and key learnings you can share with change makers looking to grow their impact?
I don't know if I have vast experience, I feel like most of the time I'm winging it and just figure things out as they come along! I guess I'm always conscious of when I start something, and I certainly remember doing this with Global Sisters at the start;
you really must establish your credibility and a presence right from day one. You've got to create an online profile or presence.
So one of the very first things I did was set up a Facebook page 10 years ago sharing the stories of the women we support. I just started building up a community and following on the side while everything else was going on. This is unusual for me because I'm all about action rather than words. I don't tend to do much promotion at all. In fact, I really hide from it generally. But for the organisation, that's an important first step.
Someone said to me years and years ago, always focus on the end goal, what is it you want to achieve? Don't worry about how you're going to get there. You've just got to have a clear vision on where it is you're going.
I'm a major introvert and you would never catch me at a networking event. You couldn't pay me to go to a networking event, that's my idea of health!
But I've always found this; if you have the right intentions and you absolutely believe in what you're doing and you're doing the right thing, the right people tend to appear at the right time. If you're passionate about what you do, then it just comes across in conversations and when you meet people.
That's important. I can't imagine anyone going down the route of setting up some social organisation or purpose-led organisation if they weren't passionate about that. But I think that piece is key. One lesson I learnt, and I was aware of it beforehand (but we made a little bit of a mistake in being driven by when we were given some funding) was we should have started small and proved our model before expanding. If I look back, probably the most obvious thing I would say was a bit of a mistake for us was we ended up getting off the ground or setting up in five different locations quite early on. If I redid things, I'd probably just do it in two, and part of that was we wanted to prove a model in a regional area, in an urban area, but it was also important to be seen in Victoria and in New South Wales. It's probably obvious, but it was one mistake we made. You can do something at a small scale to prove a model and then build up from that. Once you've got your proof points, once you've got a story to tell, then that's when the support really starts. Identify some wins and as soon as you've got those, then you've got something to start selling as such in terms of promoting what you're doing so that other people who are interested can really get on board. We set up our social impact framework right from the start as well.
Nicola Stokes (GM, AMP Foundation), Mandy Richards and Alexis George (CEO, AMP)
An impact framework for our sector is non-negotiable, partially for funders so that they can have some faith in what it is they're investing in, but also for you so that you know you're progressing and achieving what you want to achieve.
That has been a rollercoaster journey for us and a real pain in the neck sometimes. That's been a learning curve as well, and it doesn't have to be complicated. We always try to keep it simple, and even with that intention sometimes that's become a bit bumpy.
Having some impact measurement tools from day one is important in this space.
The one area I've found hard has been HR and people, and again, it's been a learning curve. Where we've landed now (and it seems to be working), is we've got an amazing team on board with mostly women and one man who are super committed, hardworking, and just a great bunch of human beings. Our culture is number one. I've always said from the start, and I would say this to all potential board or team members, that there are three criteria for joining Global Sisters. You firstly must be genuinely passionate about the cause and what we're trying to achieve, and we look for indications of that. Saying you are passionate is nice, but we want to see evidence of it. You must bring a skillset that is going to be valuable, and three, you have to be a nice person. I think that's something that's worked well. Probably the other mistake we made at one stage was we doubled our team size. It was too much in one go and we had some HR issues after that. We probably brought in some people that weren't the right fit for the organisation, and it was such a small organisation that it had a really big impact on us. We're very cautious now about who we hire. Cultural fit and personality are the number one thing we look at, and then we really fit roles around them.
When you're such a small team, and when you're working on something that's purpose-led, people are very passionate about that, but it can also lead to sometimes attracting the wrong people. I've really tried with Global Sisters from the start to approach it as a business, not as a charity, and avoid a lot of typical charity pitfalls in who we hire, but also just how we present ourselves and operate. That seems to have worked well. I really work on my gut instinct, I really believe in doing what feels right, rather than what is the proper thing to do perhaps in other people's eyes. I think you must have your own strong moral compass, but also have a clear end goal always. People will always try and change their mind, and even internally, one thing that was interesting for me to see when we were going through a big change was people can be resistant to change. If you spend a bunch of time with a team on one thing and then you need to change suddenly (which we did at one point in time), there can be a lot of resistance to that. You've just got to be so clear in your own mind on where it is that you need to go.
As a female business and human rights leader working to support women globally, what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you see currently both socially and economically?
That's a big question. Three key opportunities I suppose for me would be capitalism and what that means for society, gender inequality and the environment. They're all very closely interlinked. If you don't look at all of them together, it's hard to change anything. I'm all for capitalism, but I think there are parts of it that are really broken, and we've ended up in a place that is not great. Whether you look at the environment, poverty, or mental illness in society, it's clearly not working in the way that it needs to.
All governments need to be really looking closely at some wellbeing or happiness index as part of their bottom line.
There's not much point in having a society where you've got 10% of people who are rich and everyone else is stressed out of their minds. Eventually, it's all going to implode.
I believe social business is the future of business. Business has the power to change the world, and ultimately, it's business that has caused a lot of problems, certainly climate change issues. If all businesses became social businesses, they would be looking at their ESGs and then acting on them (not just tick boxing and giving it lip service).
Genuinely, from the board to the CEO to the person cleaning the floors, they must have values they're working towards and that they believe in. Those values must include the environment and they must include people's wellbeing, otherwise, what's the point? But also, we are never going to clean up the current mess if we don't make some dramatic shifts. Gender inequality or gender equality, that's just a no-brainer to understand. If half the population is not being treated equally to the other half of the population, then we're never going to have a society where everyone is thriving.
It's not a case of if you lift up women you push down men. If you lift up women, men are just going to get lifted up further. If one person rises, we all rise.
I don't really understand why there's an issue there, it's ridiculous and it needs to change. The environment, same sort of thing. Between climate change and biodiversity disappearing, that's connected to everything. Our soil health is linked to our health, which is linked to our economy, and if we just started considering all these aspects in everything we did, but particularly in business and obviously the government as well, then I think we'd start moving forward in a positive, sustainable way where people were healthier and happier.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating a positive social change?
I love organisations that are super practical, tangible, and just getting on with it and you can just see great impact. Two of my favourites in Australia are Two Good Co. and Mettle Gifts. Two Good is based in Sydney and Mettle based over in Perth, and they both work with women who are in highly at-risk situations. Rob Caslick, who founded Two Good, is this amazing social entrepreneur. He's an engineer which is interesting, because they're not normally seen as super creative, but he's incredible. They work with women who are at-risk of homelessness or probably have been homeless and they do a range of different things. But they started off with this ethos of if you buy one product, we'll gift one to a women's shelter, and they started off doing that with soups, bringing in high profile chefs to come up with recipes. They then expanded it out to skincare products and all sorts of things. He's always doing something new, and he is super entrepreneurial, practical, and just bringing so much value to these women's lives. The result is they end up being employed with Two Good, and then they're on a pathway forward with their lives.
Mettle is similar, so their focus is on women that have specifically come out of domestic violence situations. They work with women who have been homeless because of DV or women who are living in shelters, and they just provide complete wraparound support and this safe environment where, for example, there is childcare, the women can study, and they become employed in Mettle. They make beautiful products and then they package them up into gift boxes. They do a lot of corporate gifting, but it's this complete service that gives these women the chance to build up their confidence, skills, and a network where they just couldn't otherwise. Generally, they're hiding from some abuser, and they are in an at-risk situation. Every day they're just creating incredible, tangible impact for the women that they're supporting. They're both great enterprises, because they're ones that are easy for people in the public to support as well. You just must buy their products, and you know that you are supporting a woman instantly on a path to a better life.
Another one that's interesting is The Nature Conservancy, which is a global environmental organisation. They might be the biggest one, they're incredible. We did a project with them years ago around a program they're running called Nature's Leading Women, and I really loved it because what they did was, they brought to Brisbane five or six groups of women from different Indigenous communities. Two of them were from remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and then the rest were from around the Pacific, so there was a group of women from Papua New Guinea, some from Solomon Islands and some others I think from Micronesia. These women all ran environmental conservation programs in their communities. For example, the women in Papua New Guinea were working on preserving the mangroves, which are essential for so many reasons. But what was happening in these communities was the men didn't support the environmental projects, and so this program brought all the women together to look at their projects and work with them on how they could turn it into an income generating enterprise, so that was at where we came in. We were providing the business support, so we had women from the Solomon Islands, for example, who didn't even own shoes and who are communicated with by a man in a little boat. I've now been there, and they live in the most remote place you can ever imagine, but we had these women on computers creating their own branding using Canva, which was incredible for just a few days. I loved that project because it was so practical, but also, it was combining business with environmental conservation projects. What it was achieving was so practical, because these women could then generate an income for their communities. Because they were generating an income, then the men would support it as well, and it had environmental benefits.
To finish off, what are some books or resources you'd recommend for our listeners?
Everyone should read See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. That was a book that came out a couple years ago now. It has helped shift the landscape in terms of understanding what is going on; what's causing this insane domestic violence situation that we have in Australia that is killing one woman every week? It's not a pleasant book to read, it's not an easy read, but it's something that every Australian should read. I haven't seen it, but there was also an adaptation. I don't know if it was a series or just a documentary, but I think it was on maybe SBS, so you could find it to watch as well. That's something everyone should get through.
I haven't read this book yet; it comes highly recommended. I've got it sitting next to my bed, Title Fight by Paul Cleary, and that's all about Aboriginal land rights in Western Australia. Again, as an Australian it sounds like something that probably everyone should read just to get educated, so they really understand what the situation is there as opposed to reading Facebook comments, which probably aren't great or very accurate!
There's a new movie about to come out which I'm excited to see by Dan Pallotta called Uncharitable, which is about liberating the charity sector and helping them break all the traditional beliefs, but also ties stopping them achieving what they need to achieve. It looks interesting, so that's about to be released. My favourite podcast is The Rich Roll Podcast. He is an American guy, super interesting, but he just interviews the most fascinating people all with a purpose and you can just learn so much. The other day there was a psychologist on there talking about how to help your teenager’s mental health. There's a lot on there around the environment and sustainability, a lot on living longer and better and just very interesting people on there.
One of the projects I'm working on now, which is a bit fun but I'm excited to see (it's something that I've wanted to do for years), is we're bringing out a book at Global Sisters. It is going to share the stories of 20 to 25 of our Sisters.
One thing that's incredible is I get to meet so many interesting women and hear their stories. They're all so diverse and inspirational. You couldn't make up some of the journeys these women have been on, so I'm excited to share those in a book later this year. That's going to be a coffee table type of book. At this stage it's not going to be for sale, but we'll have it online so that everyone can see it. We're also going to print hard copies and give them to people who are in positions of power, because the purpose of it is to let people experience a life and journey that they never would otherwise. That should have a lot of benefits. I hope people can have more of an understanding of what life is like for so many women out there with very different experiences and stories.
