How these businesswomen launched and built their empires
Meet the entrepreneurs who have turned ideas and side hustles into success stories, some earning seven figures. See how they created their empires and find out their secret to success.
Business
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Economic and social prosperity go hand-in-hand with the growing contribution of women to Gympie’s business community.
Whether it be from side hustles that turn into empires to young entrepreneurs starting out with a bang or lateral thinkers taking their business in unique directions - there is no shortage of successful women.
Meet the region’s most impressive and inspiring.
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Rebekah Rodriguez
“There’s seven days in the week,” teacher, Your Serenity Beauty business owner, and mentor Rebekah Rodriquez said.
In the past 10 years, Ms Rodriquez has grown her beauty empire in Gympie, training new therapists and specialising in skin therapy.
She is passionate about providing her clients with ways to enhance their skin naturally, with results-driven, non-surgical facelift methods.
Ms Rodriquez works full-time as a TAFE teacher along the East Coast from Hervey Bay to the Sunshine Coast. This year she has focused on training more than 50 high school students in their certificate II in beauty.
She said the benefit of being a teacher was that she could provide training, inspiration and experience within her salon to aspiring students.
She manages six therapists in her salon and has enjoyed watching the salon grow to specialise in skin care.
Fiona Keable
Business coach and fitness trainer Fiona Keable started Real Body Movement six years ago with her partner Matt Keable when they were looking for rehab options for his spinal injury.
Since then she has grown the business in leaps and bounds, weathered the complexities of moving online because of Covid, moved to a bigger space and expanded with a side recovery gym hosting an infra-red sauna and ice bath.
Real Body Movement employs 17 staff members and has about 270 clients and members.
The gym is also currently training eight students, with four more to start in the coming months.
For Ms Keable, fitness is a lifestyle and while she is passionate about rehab, having first-hand experience of family members suffering from dementia and spinal injury, the gym is not targeted solely to rehabilitation, but encompasses a much more holistic view of fitness and physical wellness.
The gym has a community outlook, raising money for Dementia.org, Headspace and Little Haven Palliative Care.
Ms Keable said she would not be where she was without the wonderful support of her team and her family.
Kim Jones
Kim Jones is one half of the Gympie couple who have owned Kingston House, a beloved heritage home overlooking the Gympie CBD, since 1996.
The duo turned it into a much-loved restaurant with stories of ghost hauntings along with allowing Gympie people, passers-by and visitors to soak in the beauty of the rambling but stately old home.
They ran it for 26 years, leased it out for a year, but could hardly stay away, and five months ago, decided to come back, give the place a fresh coat of paint, rejuvenate the restaurant and serve up the delicious food Kingston House is known for.
Emily Murphy
Anything from project management to consulting or even grant writing, Emily Murphy has 20 years experience working in and around arts projects in Australia with her arts business EM Events.
Moving to Gympie in 2019, she loves the wealth of natural beauty Gympie has to offer and has taken on the challenge of connecting and nurturing the creative arts in a non-traditional way through her involvement with Creative Arts Gympie Region.
With the Gympie Civic Centre under repair, this means finding alternative spaces within the CBD to feature art – this might be in the streets or landscapes, halls or partnering with local businesses.
Ms Murphy is exploring how to build a sustainable arts business model through diversification of an income stream that reaches and works with arts groups, individuals, and communities around Australia and the world.
In 2023, she has worked with 10 communities across Australia, employing 10 subcontractors along the way.
She is particularly proud of the opportunity to work alongside Northern Territory First Nations’ artists in Groote Eylandt and Borroloola to produce and showcase their music in four different local languages.
Caz Crane
Caz Crane is one half of the former Sunshine Coast couple who transformed the heart of Woolooga, with their five new businesses making Woolooga a must-visit destination for Maryborough, Gympie and Burnett residents.
The Cranes moved to the region in 2020, and bought the historic Woolooga Trader building on Thomas St in June 2021, transforming it into a commercial hub.
Little more than six months later they lost everything in flash flooding, but rebuilt and in early May 2022, opened their fifth and final venture: the Woolooga Longyard bar and grill.
The Cranes’ other shops in the precinct are a grocer and cafe, an animal feed and rural supply store, a hairdresser and a bed and breakfast, throwing the doors of the town open by offering a little of everything. And success has followed.
The Longyard was the 2022 runner-up in the New Business of the Year at the Gympie Business Awards.
Marg Cochrane
A veteran of the Gympie real estate industry, Marg Cochrane owned and operated Gympie Regional Realty for nearly 10 years before launching Marg Cochrane Real Estate.
The business was highly successful, selling 55 per cent of the region’s vacant land in 2019.
Marg Cochrane Real Estate was a smaller boutique agency.
Ms Cochrane said the two most important things to be successful in real estate were professionalism and good character.
Jazmyn Smith
Gympie musician Jazmyn Smith has an emerging creative business empire working exclusively with musicians and artists from local to international.
A tour to Nashville and Hollywood to film a behind-the-scenes documentary with Melody Moko saw Ms Smith gain international experience and rub shoulders with stars.
Despite her international travels, she contentedly calls Gympie home and is a big believer in having a career in the arts without having to move to the city.
Ms Smith is passionate about showing off Gympie and brings 90 per cent of her artists up to Gympie for photo shoots.
She draws inspiration from the region, turning its heritage buildings, rainforests and cattle pastures into film sets. Even sting rays in Tin Can Bay get a mention in her film stories.
A single mum, a musician, a photographer, filmmaker and business owner, little stands in Ms Smith’s way.
Kikki Watt
Kikki Watt is new to the scene, and is building her emerging business empire as Gympie’s ultimate fashionista, sporting bold colours, matchless style and exquisite taste.
She’s the flair behind The Dolly and Oats, the popular tapas and cocktail bar in the heart of Gympie.
Ms Watt hasn’t been afraid to get her hands dirty, shining up some antique furniture and turning it into a gorgeous piece of decor for her bar — from old family heirloom couches, to photos and wall pieces made from the original flood-salvaged floorboards.
Ms Watt moved to Gympie 17 years ago and was previously a beauty therapist. She runs The Dolly and Oats with the help of her partner, Mick Nicholls and son, Zac.
Jody Allen
Jody Allen has lived in Gympie for more than 20 years and rose to popularity as a stay at home mum extraordinaire after she lost her job while pregnant with her second son, and worked tirelessly to make ends meet while on one wage.
She has written four successful books and is the creator the huge successful online mother’s network, Stay At Home Mum.
A self-confessed dag who has parlayed her frugality, social media obsession and penchant for wearing PJs into a multimillion-dollar empire.
Jody‘s SAHM website has grown to be one of the largest privately owned parenting portals in Australia. Her Facebook page has 533,000 followers and she has equally massive follower numbers on Instagram (32,300 followers), YouTube (5750 subscribers), Pinterest (142,500 followers) and X.
Carolann Verity
For the past 30 years Carolann Verity has been a major player in the ongoing style and fashion of the Gympie region with her award-winning business Hair Review.
Located in Mary St, the business punches above its weight, winning awards for best in the business, people’s choice awards, training some of the best hairdressers of the region, and giving back to the community by donating to palliative care charities and community sports.
Hair Review voted Gympie’s Best Hairdresser of 2023
In 2019, Hair Review won business of the year at the Gympie Business awards.
“Hair Review strives to provide exceptional, responsive, quality services, and winning the Business of the Year Award affirms that we are achieving this goal,” she said.
“It recognises and rewards our amazing team for their commitment to providing services of the highest standards, inspiring them to continue to strive for excellence across all service areas.”
Hair Review Premium Hair Extensions is an offshoot of the business located on the Gold Coast, and for the past five years, has been leading the industry in providing exceptional hair extensions.
Celia ‘CC’ Diaz Petersen
Celia ‘CC’ Diaz Petersen is easily Gympie’s gourmet jam, relish and salsa goddess of the kitchen.
She says the fire in her belly just gets hotter as she builds her well-known brand of CC’s kitchen with more than 35 rosella products available.
Her achievements are sharing the old-time feel of her grandmother-in-law, Nana Petersen’s recipes, not just locally, but around the world, giving new life to the traditional labour-intensive jams and relishes made from the hot pink native Australian flower.
Each year, she hosts the Big Rosella Field Day at Woolooga in May.
She’s excited about showing of the Gympie region to locals and city folk while increasing awareness of farm-to-plate products.
Mel Manley
Mel Manley is the co-owner of a fast-food empire that spans the Wide Bay Burnett region, and includes eight McDonald’s franchises from Gympie to Bundaberg, Childers to Bargara.
In 2021, the chain of stores reportedly employed more than 750 people.
Mrs Manley lives in Eumundi and often travels to Nepal and India to support Forget Me Not, an organisation that aims to prevent the trafficking of children into orphanages.
She is also a co-owner of the much-loved Imperial Hotel at Eumundi.
Jellina White
Jellina White has a string of accolades and excellence awards for her work as the owner manager of the Bank of Queensland branch in Mary Street.
Perhaps the accolade she deserves most came in 2022, and goes to the incredible achievement of surviving the 2022 floods.
A year on, Ms White managed to keep on all her staff, find temporary locations, whether it be in a marquee in the car park or at Drake’s shopping centre, while refurbishing the flooded out office in Mary St.
She moved back into that space in September 2022. While banks close shopfronts in rural towns, she sees value in continuing on the old-fashioned banking services with person-to-person help in a physical storefront.
Something that no flood will ever be able to take away from her.
Ms White grew up in Gympie and began her banking career in 1987, when the Gympie branch first opened in Mary Street, where it remains through to this day.
In 2009, she took on the bank as the owner manager.
She converted the corporate branch of BOQ at Stone’s Corner into an owner manager branch December 2022.
She believes in giving back to Gympie and is a proud sponsor of community sports, such as Gympie Hockey and the Gympie Junior Rugby League development program.
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