Happy Changemakers: A New Chapter of Love, Life and Business

Sometimes you know within a few moments what a great human someone is.

Jodie Willmer is one of those people.

Even through a Zoom call, she radiates warmth in a way one rarely experiences online. It is not showy or performative. It is a genuine, non-showy charisma. The sort that tells you almost immediately that this is someone you can trust. Someone who listens properly, who thinks deeply, and whom you can imagine being very, very good at what she does.

And when she starts talking about her partner Rob Nagy, the admiration she has is undeniable.

Jodie and Rob have been together for 13 years. They met later in life, both having had previous long-term relationships. At the time Jodie was CEO of a not-for-profit and, looking back, deeply burnt out. Rob was working in a small family-owned IT consulting business, with a background in technology, sales and project management.

Their love story began, fittingly, at a meet-up group about positive relationships. Jodie arrived first, unsure how to identify the group in the café. Later, she saw a man at the door doing the same thing: looking around, slightly awkwardly, trying to work out where he belonged.

She went over and asked if he was there for the meet-up.

“Yes,” he said.

“Come over here. Come sit next to me.”

That, was basically that.

Their meet-up is a fitting reflection of their broader story, marked by the way Jodie and Rob have shaped both a life and a business with equal parts spontaneity and deep thoughtfulness.

Their first business began almost by accident. Jodie moved in with Rob and rented her own place on Airbnb. A friend of a friend heard guests were having a great experience and asked whether Jodie could help him do the same. She said yes, then went home to Rob and said, “Right, we’ve got to create an offer, and we’ve got to register an ABN and business and all the things.”

They did not have a business plan. “We did all the things you shouldn’t do,” Jodie says. What they did have though, was curiosity, energy and a shared desire to stop pouring themselves entirely into other people’s enterprises.

Early in the relationship, while on a trip to Thailand, they nutted it out. They wanted to work together. They wanted to be together. They did not know exactly what the business would become, but they trusted they could work it out.

Ultimately the Airbnb business wasn’t sustainable, however, they learned how to build community, sell an experience, engage people and deliver quality. They got involved in a host led community of around 2,000 Airbnb hosts at a time when Airbnb was still relatively new and even spoke at the Airbnb Open in Paris. More importantly, they realised those skills were transferable.

That became the seed for what’s now Happy Changemakers, their consulting business.

Today, Happy Changemakers works with purpose-driven businesses and not-for-profits. They help organisations action strategic or business plans, adapt to change, and identify new revenue streams connected to their purpose. They have worked with NFPs, SMEs, bushfire recovery communities, drought-impacted businesses, local councils, boards, neighbourhood houses, committees of management and independent consultants.

They also created Package Promote Scale - a framework they use in their own consulting business and now teach to independent consultants who want to package their services, grow revenue and increase impact without the stress and overwhelm. They wrote a book about it too.

With so much going on in their business, and an enduring admiration between them, I was keen to understand their secret sauce.

Jodie described herself as “the facilitator in the family.” Her strengths being facilitation, governance, strategy and helping people have hard conversations in ways that feel safe. She has spent decades in the not-for-profit world, where she learned to do things “on the smell of an oily rag”, but she is also tired of purpose-driven people being underpaid, burnt out or giving away their intellectual property for free.

Rob brings something different. He is logical, planned and skilled at taking complex information and making it clear. Jodie jokes that they draw something “on the back of a serviette” and Rob makes it look amazing. He builds systems, shapes platforms and brings structure to their ideas. He also knows and loves technology, but he’s not your typical techie, he’s pragmatic and knows how to talk tech in a language people of all abilities will understand.

So, the secret sauce? I think it’s healthy compatibility. Not sameness. Not one person shrinking themselves to fit the other. It’s two people knowing who is best placed to do what, and respecting it.

Jodie and Rob have a matrix for who does what, but there’s communication about the decisions that matter. For example, Jodie manages sales and finance, but there is no situation where one person spends money and the other gets a shock looking at the bank account. Rob manages marketing and IT. They are clear about lanes, expectations and decisions.

They also have regular breakfast meetings where they talk about the business, which creates the space for clear boundaries in their personal life. They avoid business talk in the scraps of the day when one person is switched off and the other has had a late-night spark of inspiration. They also go away periodically to work on the business: reviewing the business plan and looking at what needs to change. Being intentional about what’s business “time” and what’s personal “time” helps them thrive personally and professionally.

As well as having a plan for what they “will do”, they also have a plan of what they “won’t do”. It helps them resist what I call the bright shiny things that often distract entrepreneurs. This gives them something to return to when a tempting opportunity starts pulling them off course.

None of this means they have avoided ego or tension. Jodie is honest that, early on, they did trip over each other a little. There was competition at times: who had the best idea, who was right, who was “the boss of the game.” Jodie had been used to leading organisations, and she had to reflect on what style of leadership would serve both their relationship and their business best.

That reflection is part of what makes their partnership so mature. Jodie and Rob have seen couples and co-founders start with good intentions, only to drift apart because they did not make time to plan, decide and work on things together. They drifted emotionally, professionally and romantically. She and Rob always wanted to avoid that.

Her advice to others working with someone they love is clear: be transparent. Being open about money, decisions, time, priorities, workload and standards helps prevent unwelcome surprises down the track. Jodie has seen relationships come undone because one person does not understand what the other is doing, or because there is mistrust around side projects, productivity or who is carrying the invisible work. For them, setting some principles for working together early on, really helped with this.

While Jodie and Rob’s story shows that working with someone you love can be powerful, it cannot run on love alone. It needs clarity. It needs humility. It needs emotional maturity. Most of all, it needs two people willing to keep learning how to work with (not on, not for, not over) each other. They might not be the stereotypical “power couple”, but they are a “poster couple” for how to work with people you love.

Learn more about Happy ChangeMakers and Package Promote Scale