“The genius of women in business is community”: 4 female founders share the secrets of building a successful brand

​​Whether it’s providing a new service or product to their local community, or total global domination, every business owner dreams of making an impact.

In a recent panel event, Building Brave Businesses: Female Founders On Innovation and Impact, hosted by Kochie’s Business Builders in partnership with Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN), four brilliant female founders and DWEN members discussed how they launched and grew their innovative businesses, exploring the role of mentorship and funding in each of their entrepreneurial journeys.

Dr Dervilla McGowan, distiller and co-owner of Anther Spirits, Lou Hammer, founder and director of One Day P.A. and Pre Loved Geelong; and Amelia Trethowan, co-founder of Adelia Fine Foods and Bellarine Brownie Company all spoke with host Leela Cosgrove, Strategic Anarchy founder and Australia Chapter Leader of DWEN about their experiences as female founders. 

Funding the dream

Dervilla, Lou, and Amelia attribute their steady success in building a business to a combination of organic growth and bootstrapping. In getting started, all three female founders sacrificed a hefty portion of their time and personal finances in order to grow their businesses.

“We are just an ordinary couple of people,” says Dervilla. “We didn’t come in with a lot of capital and we’re bootstrapped.”

With a diverse career in science and product development behind her, Dervilla wanted to use her skills more practically, so tapped into a passion for the distillation of spirits and launched Anther Spirits with her husband. After two years of operating their fledgling business in the shared space of a friend’s business, they moved into their own premises. 

“The business was going so well that we decided to open our own distillery,” she explains. “We get to do anything we want in that space, so it’s gone from being awesome and fun and really enjoyable, to really fantastic. It’s totally changed how we are in our business.”

For Amelia and her husband, the business started as a local project, inspired by her passion for formulations after a career in the pharmaceuticals industry.

“We started the business as a home-based business, literally making granola out of our pretty crappy oven in our kitchen and selling it at markets on the weekends,” she explains. “Our key business model now is not that direct-to-consumer model, it’s more to other businesses through those stockists”. Adelia Fine Foods now boasts over 300 stockists distributing their products around the country. 

Also sprouting from a passion project, Lou’s businesses picked up momentum organically, using the circumstances brought on by the pandemic to prepare for a post-COVID expansion.  

“Throughout the COVID lockdowns we had we got business grants,” Lou says. “I thought, you know what, when we come out of this – because we are coming out of it – we’re coming out of it bigger and better.”

These grants enabled Lou’s businesses to diversify and expand, utilising inventory systems and implementing processes to automatically push products on Shopify websites.

Mentorship and networking: utilising the power of community

“Community building and support is where we’re at our absolute best,” host Leela says. “ I think the genius of women in business, in life generally, but in business particularly is community, and how we build, network, and community-develop.”

Speaking from experience, Amelia attributes the success of her two brands to the unwavering support from her community and local stockists. 

“They were so positive and so supportive of a local brand, and of us and what we were trying to achieve,” Amelia says. “It really gave us the encouragement to go further.” 

While Dervilla is the first to recognise the areas of growing a business that she was not an expert in when starting, she is proud of her intuition in building a resourceful team. 

“The thing that we have done well generally, is we’ve got really good people around us,” she says. “That’s been the biggest strength in the business.”

For Lou, targeted and clever networking was her business’ secret weapon. She attributes the rapid growth of her businesses to word of mouth and support within her community. 

“I knew who I wanted to be my customers,” she says. “So I unashamedly stalked them. The last job I held was in marketing at an events team, and when I launched the business, I used those skills to target the people I wanted to work with.” 

“It was word of mouth that catapulted me to going from just being myself to now,” she says. “Now we’ve got seven staff with One Day PA.” 

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Why making an impact matters

While each entrepreneur provides different services and products, all three founders are inspired by the impact they make within their communities. 

“One thing that was really important to me and still is, it’s just no BS, you know?” Lou says. “So what you see on social media is what you get – we don’t sugar coat anything”. 

Within both her businesses, Lou recognises the vulnerability attached to those asking for her help.

“A lot of our clients are either going through a marriage breakdown, a death in the family, job loss or some other traumatic life event that’s gotten to a point where they’ve just stopped doing things.” Lou says. “Our clients are very vulnerable people and it’s so hard to ask for help.”

For Dervilla, a collaboration between Anther Spirits and the Australian Gynaecological Cancer foundation supports a cause very close to her heart.

“We’re making a gin with them, it’s going to be bright, purple, really massively attention grabbing, which is the point,” she says. “We want to start conversations. That’s a way of us using the means of alcohol to spread good in the world.” 

Amelia’s business supports an important cause in the community through similar collaborations. 

“We’ve got an ongoing arrangement with the national breast cancer foundation,” she says. “We partnered with them and we made a beautiful pink granola.”

Amelia supports Feed Me Bellarine, a Geelong-based charity focused on distributing food wastage to those in need. 

“While we don’t have a lot of food waste in our business, we are able to provide them with the little that we do have,” Amelia says. “It’s good to be able to also divert our waste from landfill and convert it into a way that can be helpful to others.”

For more than a decade, DWEN has brought women entrepreneurs together from around the world to help them connect with each other, scale their businesses, and ultimately succeed. Join DWEN today for free access to a global network of women entrepreneurs and valuable resources to grow your business.

Want to be at our next Kochie’s Business Business and DWEN event for female founders? Find out more here.

This article is brought to you by Kochie’s Business Builders in partnership with DWEN