Jules Brooke is an Entrepreneur, Public Relations Guru and Founder of Handle Your Own PR, and She’s The Boss. She is passionate about women being seen in the Media. This is her story.
I want to make women in business more visible. I want to be supported by, and support, the women around me so we can all rise together. I want to see equality for women, especially in business and entrepreneurship.
Jules Brooke is an entrepreneur and the founder of Handle Your Own PR and She’s The Boss. Handle Your Own PR is a DIY PR service for business owners. Using her online PR Accelerator program and PR SaaS platform, she has helped her students appear on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers nationally. Many have gone on to huge success in their business.
She’s The Boss started in late 2019 when Jules hosted a show on Ticker TV and has really grown since the start of the pandemic in 2020. There are online zoom lunches and Learning Table events with female founders, real life networking events, two podcasts; She’s The Boss Chats and She’s The Boss Leaders. She’s The Boss also has a YouTube channel and all the media features interviews with wildly successful women in business from Australia and around the world.
Jules has a passionate drive to make female founders, and women doing extraordinary things in Business, more visible and more connected. Jules is also a single Mum to three young men – Jake 21, and twins Ned and Tom 16 – and have a gorgeous, supportive partner in Dave.
Where did your journey start?
After growing up with a Dad in the British Army, my three brothers and I moved from Germany to Cyprus, to England and back to Germany before moving to Australia when I was 12. I started my first business, a graphic design company, at the age of 24 before selling my share and heading overseas to the USA, Jamaica and the UK, where I stayed for five years. On my return, with a new husband, I lived in Sydney for a couple of years to work on the Olympics and to celebrate the NYE 2000 before returning to Melbourne to find out I was pregnant with my first child. I was thrilled!
In 2003 I started my own PR agency and was joined in 2006 by my business partner, Simone. Then in 2008, we started Handle Your Own PR just before the Global Financial Crisis hit. Fully committed to helping business owners understand the power of PR, in 2012 I had a friendly split from Simone and the agency and focused on Handle Your Own PR full time.
In 2015, I sold my house and built a PR SaaS platform where people can build their own media contact list and send out fully formatted articles and media releases to the media outlets and journalists of their choice. It’s the first of its kind in the world! Since launching the SaaS platform, I have helped hundreds, if not thousands, of small business owners and entrepreneurs get free media coverage.
Roll on to late 2019 and, almost by accident, I was given the opportunity to host a TV show on Ticker TV, which was a new start up. One of the shows I created was called She’s The Boss, where I interviewed female founders and women in business. I immediately fell in love with interviewing! I started a podcast called She’s The Boss chats, and after parting ways from Ticker TV, a YouTube channel also called She’s
The Boss, and since then I have interviewed over 200 extraordinary, purpose driven entrepreneurial women.
What led you to create your business?
She’s The Boss has been an absolute joy since the day I started it. It almost feels like it was ‘meant to be’. The opportunity I was given to host a show at Ticker TV, and learn how TV works, was really the starting point. Having that platform really boosted my profile, but it also made me realise how little we see business women in the media, and hear the story of how they got to where they are now. I wanted to change that.
The second key moment was starting the online zoom lunches at the start of the lockdowns. It meant that women from all over Melbourne, and eventually Australia, could connect, share their achievements and problems and really support each other. Because I had been interviewing such extraordinary women, I was able to invite them into the group too and it definitely became an inspirational group. The lunches continued online every week until Dec 2021, and even now we run them fortnightly.
I think what I really love about it is that we have such diverse women, mainly over 45, who join in and it also allows Mums, disabled women and women in rural areas to connect too. Then I started the podcast. What a joy! I was lucky because my partner Dave is an audiobook and podcast producer so he offered to produce them at first. I don’t think he was expecting me to be so prolific though! After producing 50 episodes for free he bowed out and my son Jake offered to take over. He also has graphic design skills and has produced all the YouTube shows for our channel too.
From the zoom lunches and a couple of real life lunches I managed to host during the periods we were ‘let out’ from the lockdown, the community really started to grow and strengthen bonds. Then I was blessed to have Mia Maze and Antonia Grimard offer to become my co-founders. Mia, who is an incredible mentor and marketing and social media guru agreed to help grow the community, and Antonia focuses more on digital and strategy.
In 2022 we have all sorts of irons in the fire. From a corporate program, alliances, speaker events and real-life events to our plans to launch a global, on-demand, free TV network for women in business with only female hosts for the shows.
My advice is simple. Do it! Follow your dreams and make the impact that you know needs to happen for change to occur. Become your own boss and bring other women along with you.
What are you passionate about?
I want to see women leaders and CEOs everywhere, and role models for the younger generations. To achieve this, I personally want to do two things:
Connect women as much as I can. Encourage them to collaborate. I want to be that person that mentions someone else’s name in a room full of opportunities (my favourite quite right now) and encourage the women around me to do the same.
I want to start a TV network for women by women. A network that has a diverse group of women as the hosts, that talks about business, leadership and innovation. A network that allows 150+ women to raise their profile and lift the visibility of others. I want to educate and empower as many women as possible.
What advice do you have for other women 40+ who are wanting to make an impact in the community or the world?
My advice is simple. Do it! Follow your dreams and make the impact that you know needs to happen for change to occur. Become your own boss and bring other women along with you. Make sure you surround yourself with awesome women who make you feel great. And I would also say, 40 is a great age to get started. It’s never too late to follow your passion. It doesn’t even feel like work when you’re doing what you love. Get help from experts with experience to guide you. Don’t give up!!
Keep Watching Jules Brooke here: https://www.julesbrooke.com/shes-the-boss
