Amanda Betts’ life reads like a Hollywood script. Physically, sexually and emotionally abused since childhood, she turned her life around to build a successful company from the ground up.
Ten years ago, the now 47-year-old mother of one co-founded Auckland modelling and talent agency Red 11.
It’s an impressive feat for someone who likens her childhood to Once Were Warriors and she’s very aware of how different her life could have turned out.
So now the successful entrepreneur is giving back. Late last year she launched the Bridge the Gap Project with the aim of helping to build the confidence of New Zealanders from all walks of life, including some of the country’s most disadvantaged youth.
Meet three women who are changing their lives for the better, thanks to Betts’ revolutionary project.
MARY LIVINGSTON, 60
She’s 60, but Mary Livingston has no intention of slowing down. The energetic Aucklander has a dream to make it as a singer and she’s moving mountains to make it happen.
“As I’m getting older I want to do more and more of the things I want to do,” says the former New Zealand badminton champion. “I’m really driven about women of 60 and beyond not thinking that they are on the scrap heap.”
Livingston trained as an opera singer as a teenager but gave it up at the age of 20 to concentrate on her sports career. When her marriage ended in 1997 the then 42-year-old decided to resurrect her singing career. She used her own funds to make her first opera/pop crossover album, entitled ‘Me’.
“It took a while. I didn’t know anyone in the industry and did it all myself, from finding a producer to hiring musicians. It was all trial and error. I just thought ‘I can do it’. I’m stubborn.”
The album was finally released in 2005, when Livingston was 50, and eight years later she found sponsorship to record a second album, ‘To Where You Are’.
“I know I can sing,” says Livingston, “One of my dreams is to be plucked from the audience at a Sol3 Mio concert to get up on stage and sing with them.”
Livingston says she’s benefited from mentoring and encouragement provided by Amanda Betts, who she met last year.
“Amanda is one of those people who has come through and totally inspired other people. Now she’s inspiring me to encourage a whole generation of 60-year-olds that they don’t have to settle for less.”
LIV BJORKLUND, 37
For Liv Bjorklund, a lag in confidence was a new experience. The now 37-year-old left New Zealand at 16 to study dance in Australia and went on to live in London for 10 years, where she had a busy life as a model, coffee specialist, co-director of a contemporary burlesque troupe and yoga devotee.
She met her future husband, Matt Lloyd, a Brit, when she moved to the seaside city of Brighton. After six months together the pair decided to take a holiday in New Zealand “to see if Matt would like living here.”
Fate intervened. In between booking their tickets and getting on the plane Bjorklund discovered she was pregnant and they ended up staying in New Zealand. Returning after so long away, dealing with new motherhood to son Otto, now two, and the loss of her social network, Bjorklund struggled with “feeling like a fish out of water”.
A mutual contact put her in touch with Amanda Betts, who worked magic with a day-long photographic shoot. “She said ‘Let’s do this!’ and it was a really great experience. It brought me back into myself again like, ‘Yes! This is who I am’.”
Bjorklund signed with an Auckland modelling and talent agency and was still on a confidence-high from the shoot when, a week later, she received a call from a studio needing a yoga instructor.
“It had nothing to do with the photo shoot or signing with the agency, it was just completely out of the blue. If I hadn’t done that photo shoot I would have been a bit more hesitant but I was feeling great so I jumped at it.”
Now, she regularly scores talent agency work and her yoga career is well and truly launched. “The turning point was the shoot. It made me feel, ‘Actually, I have plenty to offer the world.”
JUSTINE HOBBS, 17
Cambridge teen Justine Hobbs fell in love with photography at high school – and having fun behind the camera piqued her interest about what it would be like in front of it. The then 16-year-old signed up for one of Amanda Betts’ bootcamps in August last year after reading about it online and figuring she’d get modelling experience and a confidence boost all at the same time.
She was one of six teens – aged between 14 and 18 and from vastly different backgrounds – who spent the day sharing stories about themselves before taking the op-shop challenge, where they had to find a whole outfit to be photographed in for $30 or less.
By the end of the day she’d had “a great experience” modelling and was surprised to find she’d made five new friends, who all remain in contact. “It turned out that the biggest confidence boost by far was hearing the other girls’ stories,” says Hobbs. “They were all amazing.”
Hearing of Hobbs’ interest in photography, the photographer on the shoot also offered Hobbs an internship. “I was buzzing for days after,” says Hobbs. “I really had the sense that I could go out into the world and do anything I set my mind to.”
