An esteemed financial planner and the Founder and CEO of Australia-based Endurance Financial, Stevie-winner Amanda Thompson excels at delivering strategic and tailored advice to businesses and individuals, drawing upon almost two decades of experience.
She isn’t afraid to share that she is also a survivor of sexual assault, a heart attack, and melanoma. She says that “while I do not let these experiences define me, they have taught me invaluable life lessons that I apply to the way I run my own business as well as my mentorship of other women in business. The challenges I have faced have gifted me grit, determination, and passion.” She attributes these gifted lessons as enabling her to qualify three times for the Ironman World Championships.
As a keynote speaker at events around the country, she is committed to sharing her experiences with others. She is particularly driven to help women overcome the gender biases that stand in the way of personal achievement. Through the lessons she learned thriving in typically male-dominated environments, her goal is to mentor others to find the power of resilience, determination, and dedication.
Leveraging Lessons Learned to Educate Others
In Australia, more than one in three business owners are women. Despite this, the odds are stacked against them. Institutional and market failures create more financial barriers for women in business and limit access to resources, skills, credit, and/ or capital to enable their businesses to grow. According to the Australian Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry, less than half of women business owners actually pay themselves a wage.
She recognized that she couldn’t help the hundreds of thousands of her fellow Australian women business owners struggling to achieve financial freedom on a one-on-one basis; in part, because so many of them simply don’t have the means to access one-on-one consulting. Thus, she set out to innovate and develop a scalable, comprehensive, accessible, and low-cost product.
Launched in February 2022, Financially Fit Women provides education, mentoring, and coaching for women business owners who:
- know they need to understand the numbers but don’t know where to start;
- are working really hard but don’t seem to be making a profit;
- wish they had a full-time finance department; and
- are feeling alone and potentially vulnerable – and would love to connect with a network of similar-minded women who are all looking to grow.
The 12-week online course includes six self-paced digital modules, six group sessions connecting participants with their peers, and three one-on-one mentoring sessions with Amanda. The course was born from extensive research and consultation, including market research, situation analysis, and consultation with clients and prospects to assess knowledge gaps.
The course content was developed from Amanda’s expertise in business and finance in addition to collaborating with experts in other fields such as legal, marketing, and mortgage brokering to provide a holistic financial education offering.
Financially Fit Women is the first-ever financial education course developed specifically for women business owners in the Australian market.
To make the course accessible to those who can benefit most, they offer a fully sponsored position in each course to a woman who is not able to pay. This position is filled based on nominations from the business community. An ongoing membership community is available to participants who would like continued coaching and support, and all membership revenue is donated to organizations working to support victims of domestic violence.
Above all, the Financially Fit Women program is grounded in a desire to create long-lasting social impact by contributing to:
- Women business owners paying themselves a proper wage, leading to financial freedom and independence
- Women-led businesses being afforded opportunities to secure capital and resources, enabling them to grow
- Women-led businesses experiencing more growth, creating more jobs and having a positive economic impact
- Improved workforce participation with less women dropping out of self-employment
It is Amanda’s aim that Financially Fit Women will turn women business owners and entrepreneurs into astute CFOs with focus, direction, and a tailored game plan.
Recently, to complement the course, Amanda’s team developed and launched a Financial Bootcamp aimed at all females to be able to access a base of information with ease and affordability, slowly but very surely closing the gaps within all aspects of finance for women.
Amanda also launched a new book titled Financially Fit Women, which helps women understand what truly matters when looking at their numbers, giving them the confidence, knowledge, and power to be financially fit.
Endurance Financial Founder & CEO Amanda Thompson won a Gold Stevie Award for Women Helping Women - Business in the 2022 Stevie® Awards for Women in Business.
Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business?
