Today's guest is Liz Volpe. She's a serial social entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Currently she leads Project Gen Z, a "a social enterprise with a vision to inspire, educate and activate'the next generation of world changers".

Facts

Liz Volpe was born in England

She arrived in Australia as a backpacker in her early twenties. She had the intention of staying for around a month, but she fell in love with the country and decided to stay.

The hardships of her first working experience in Australia, a direct, commision-only sales job, taught her a lot of valuable lessons that helped her shape her successul future career.

In 2006, she launched her Zest Possibilities, a market leader in outsourced promotions, sales and marketing campaigns.

Through her experience in Zest she initiated a transition into social entrepreneurship.

She and her team at Zest raised over $150 million for local and international charities.

In 2012, she co-founded, along other like-minded business women the League of Extraordinary Women.

The Business Review Australia named the league as #3 in the 'Top 10 organisations encouraging female professionals in Australia".

Liz was also ranked #13 on the Top 50 Australian Female Entrepreneurs under 40 list in 2014.

In 2011 she traveled to Cambodia, where she visited the Sunrise Cambodia a sustainable community development organisation with a focus on Cambodia's orphaned and abused children.

That trip was the seed of the foundation of Project Gen Z in 2015. Project Gen Z's aim is to educate, inspire and motivate these vulnerable children to follow their dreams and to learn the path of entrepreneurship.

Quotes

"My job was to stand on the streets every single day and try to sell something, commision only. And got used to getting thousands and thousands of 'nos', and getting used to rejection, and realising, as a young English girl, that I was very, very negative. It was probably the best job I've ever had. I kind of molded me for the future."

"We've now got over 150 entrepreneurs within the movement of Project Gen Z, that are extremely passionate about inspiring and educating the next generation."

"When you work really, really hard and you're passionate about what you're doing then money comes naturally. It is not something that you ever focus on it, it will just be a byproduct of all the hard work that you do."

"If you want to be successful, you do have to work. It's not gonna just come."

"We want to give young people the opportunity to dream. No matter what."

"We're all about vision. And obviously you gotta back that vision up but without that first dream, nothing will happen."

"Never doing anything to do with business before, I had a massive amount of limiting beliefs around that. In fact, that inner voice said to me straight away 'you can't do this'."

"When you have tiny little bit of fear or you're scared of something, that's the time when you are learning, when you're growing the most."

Links

Liz's website

https://www.lizvolpe.com/

LinkedIn profile

https://au.linkedin.com/in/lizatkinson1

Project Gen Z

http://www.projectgenz.com.au/

The League of Extraordinary Women

http://www.leagueofextraordinarywomen.com.au