Motivation on its own doesn’t really get you anywhere without having solid skills

“I think luck comes to those that are prepared and do the hard work, otherwise I’d be sitting around waiting for my lottery ticket to cash in,” says Suzi Dafnis.
With a philosophy like that, it’s easy to see why success isn’t a fluke for Suzi, yet you wouldn’t pick it from her credentials.
With no business degree, no formal training in how to write a budget or how to balance a book and even before she reached her thirties, Suzi was a regular in the BRW Young Rich List.
Suzi made her millions by helping others realise their dreams and start their own business with sound advice.
She heads the Australian Businesswomen’s Network (ABN), an online community which provides training and mentoring for women starting out in their own businesses.
It’s helped thousands of women tackle the ins and outs of starting a small business, and has linked many to like minded individuals and created a network of successful women.
“I got immediately involved in the organisation years later when I sold my business. I decided that this was my real passion, working with women entrepreneurs, and decided that’s what I was going to do,” Suzi tells Neos Kosmos.
Her success story has inspired many and has made her such a good fit in the network.
But she will be the first to tell you she’s come a long way from running a business out of her spare room.
“I started my first business when I was 26 years old. It was a small events company, which after two years grew too big for that office and we moved and expanded overseas.”
That was Pow Wow Events, a company that brought out some of the best business public speakers and noted authors.
Her seminars were ahead of the curve, adapting to the changing climate of the finance and business world and offered real educational help, not just overarching motivational speeches.
“Motivation on its own doesn’t really get you anywhere without having solid skills,” she believes.
She was one of the first people to introduce an internet marketing expert to the seminar scene, something not many were utilising in the early ’90s and ’00s.
She found the American market a great fit for her events, and while only initially expecting to stay for two years, she ended up staying for seven, taking seminars around the country.
It was actually her connection with acclaimed author Robert Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad Poor Dad, that made her coffers really grow.
“We initially brought him out here to do a speaking gig, and when he wrote the book he said ‘take a box of books, if you think you can sell them great’,” she says.
“Of course we ended up selling millions of copies.”
They had the Australian publishing license for Rich Dad Poor Dad for 10 years, making millions while launching a further 12 best sellers in their newly created publishing business.
They would find the Australian market was hungry for business tips, after the early ’90s recession, people were desperate for help and hoping to capitalise on the incoming boom.
“The work [Rich Dad Poor Dad] was so new and impacted so many Australians on so many levels that we would go into a city and people would be so excited to have us there because finally they were being empowered to take control of their financial lives and to get out of the rat race,” she says.
In many of her seminars, Suzi would find there really wasn’t a big presence of women attendees. Scared off by the male dominated business world, the ratio was never equal, and it was something Suzi wanted to fix.
After selling her events business in 2007, the Australian Businesswomen’s Network became her new project in the hopes of inspiring women to take their first steps into pursuing their business dreams.
“Like a lot of women, I went into my business with very few skills outside of my core competency,” she says.
“Very early on I sought out mentors. If I didn’t know how to do something in a new area, I’d seek out someone who did.”
And therein lies the network’s main purpose. To help ferry businesswomen past the five year point, where so many businesses have failed.
After years in business and running the network, Suzi has noticed certain trends that make a successful businesswoman.
She says it’s down to three things: education, inspiration and networking.
“Having strong business skills, having role models and mentors that you can look up to, and building relationships,” she says.
It’s not enough to just hand out business cards and expect the majority of your work to be done, and it’s something Suzi hates seeing business novices do.
Being too insular is also a common mistake, where people become too engrossed in their business and don’t take the chance to make friends with their peers, look at the competition and look outside the box.
“Sometimes the biggest innovations you make in your business is not by looking at your competition but looking at a totally different industry,” she says.
Away from her desk at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network, you’ll find Suzi speaking at countless seminars around the country.
She’s become one of the best experts on utilising social media in business, and won the Best Australian Blog in the Business category last year with the ABN’s personalised blog herBusiness. She’s also a prolific media commentator on women in business and has been called upon many times to share her knowledge, including being a judge on Channel Seven’s Dragon’s Den.
But what really makes her happy is seeing small successes for women just starting out.
“Success might be finally getting their accounts out of a shoebox and into Excel,” she says.
“To me, just to see someone empowered to take the next step to overcome a barrier, and to do something they haven’t done before, is great.”
The Australian Businesswomen’s Network offers a free ebook to download on how to start your own business, that can be downloaded via the link:
www.abn.org.au/downloads/ebooks/how-i-got-started/How-I-Got-Started-eBoo…
For more information on the Australian Businesswomen’s Network visit www.abn.org.au