New book champions rural business women

A NEW book with helpful advice for women in regional, remote and rural areas on growing their business has been released.

Titled Rural Business Women, co-author Sarah Walkerden said the first of its kind book aims to help women who may be at different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

“I’m hoping to get this book in the hands of as many rural women as possible to help them,” she said.

“Whether they’re existing business owners, or starting out, or thinking about starting a business, I think there’s so much information and inspiration in the pages, the more people that get access to it the better.”

Ms Walkerden said the lack of guidance for women in business in regional, remote and rural areas inspired the book.

“There’s a lot of us out there toiling away in the middle of nowhere and business is rapidly growing in the bush but there just wasn’t any representation for us specifically,” she said.

“A lot of the busines books and advice all focus on city-based business owners and women, so I figured the smaller guys in the bush need a bit of a platform.”

With 15 co-authors, Ms Walkerden said she selected contributors who were at different stages of their business journey.

“I was involved in a few business networks online and I started putting out feelers in Facebook groups and grabbed a few from there,” she said.

“I did a lot of cold outreach to business owners and some of their friends would approach me.

“We’ve got a really diverse group of women which is great.”

The book, which took 12 months to complete faced some challenges along the way.

“It was mainly that women on farms are really busy. We’ve all got young kids and families and businesses to juggle,” Ms Walkerden said.

“We’ve had home schooling during COVID which has added more time pressures.

“Coordinating everyone’s schedules to get them to write was a challenge.”