Molly Lim arrived in Australia on her own from Myanmar in 2013 when she was 17. Technically under-age, she lived with an Italian-Australian “guardian” family while she studied commerce at Macquarie University. Fast-forward 13 years, and Lim now has a commerce degree with a major in accounting under her belt; she speaks English and Burmese fluently and Mandarin a little; she has worked for a range of Australian companies, from giants like KPMG to smaller outfits, and in 2024 she founded and now runs a rapidly growing all-women financial services company – Sydney-based Above Advisory.
Female Founder of the Year in the Financial Review’s Fast Lists awards, Lim says she is passionate about the potential of small business.
“I just found a true passion,” she says, adding that she feels she and her team help small business owners and professionals make the decisions to get the needles moving in the right direction in their everyday lives. “Whether it’s educating them around how ATO compliance and the complicated tax system in Australia work, or helping them plan what their business could look like and their personal wealth investment strategies would look like a couple of years down the track, personally I just find that more fulfilling than working with larger corporations and businesses.”
Lim now employs a small team of women finance professionals, although she says she is now looking for a male hire – “we’re aiming for a little bit of diversity”. The firm’s CAGR sits at a healthy 552.74 per cent, with revenue growing from $14,375 in 2024 to $612,467 in 2026.
Above Advisory’s clients include women small business-owners and career professionals who prefer working with women accountants and financial advisors. “They are our niche clientele,” Lim says. “Most female business owners, especially if they’re just starting out, they really enjoy working with our team. They just feel comfortable sharing what they don’t know, what they want to learn from us, what information they want us to help out with. That’s the very first thing we hear from the initial discovery call.”
Women are also happier sharing financial data with other women, and Lim says the firm’s clients voice their preferences by saying things like: “I’d rather work with you guys than work with a random accountant down the street just because they’re cheaper – I’m not comfortable sharing all this financial information with them.”
Above Advisory also works with clients from Australia’s Myanmar business community, who feel more comfortable talking business in their own language. The company’s clients include small business owners, professionals and others who are a little older, who want assistance setting up self-managed super funds.
When Lim left her homeland in 2013, Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – was beginning to shake off the grip of the military dictatorship which had ruled the nation for decades. By-elections in 2012 had demonstrated the popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
In 2015, when Lim was still studying at Macquarie, the NLD won the nation’s first national general election in a landslide. Yet the generals retained control with a system called “disciplined democracy” – the military-drafted constitution guaranteed unelected military officers would fill 25 per cent of the seats in the lower house, along with giving the military a veto over constitutional change.
In 2021, fed up with all this semi-freedom, the generals mounted a coup, locked up Suu Kyi again and took back all power. Civil conflict soon erupted and armed resistance now continues across Myanmar. Lim is worried about going back to see her family and her homeland, but her parents can visit Australia.
“My parents are still running their own business in Burma,” she says. “My goal was always to return home one day to take over the family business, but before I did that, I wanted a little bit more hands-on experience how organisations are run and businesses are run in Australia.”
To be begin with, Lim lived with her guardian family and learned about ordinary suburban life in Sydney. “It was a very, very truly blessed experience to experience living with Australian family, an Australian-Italian family,” she says.
In 2016, a semester before she graduated from Macquarie University, she began working for a small financial firm in Parramatta in Sydney’s west: “as an international student, the options were very limited”, she says. Lim then went to work at big four accounting firm KPMG, now dealing with a scandal regarding the misuse of confidential client information for commercial gain.
“I’m glad I’m out of that area,” she says. “I feel sorry for all my partners back then.”
After a couple of years she left KPMG to again work for a small financial services company, resolving to start her own firm soon. In 2024, Lim launched Above Advisory – her own company advising smaller clients, incuding professionals, retirees and small business owners. She says she finds providing the right assistance, especially to small business-owners, a satisfying professional mission.
“There is real passion in these people,” she says. “They really enjoy it. They love what they’re doing. And they really need a trusted advisor in the industry that they can count on to make sure they’re making the right financial decisions.”
Now married with a six-month-old baby boy, Lim continues to devote herself to her company – returning to full-time work three weeks after giving birth. She is fortunate, she says, that her husband looks after baby Phoenix.
“When the baby was young, I knew I had to focus on a little bit of recovery,” she says. “He was sleeping most of the time. I would say he needs a little bit more attention now than when he was newborn. I am very privileged that my husband is currently a primary carer right now, and he’s enjoying it as well.”
Lim has also diversified. A couple of months before Above Advisory opened its doors, she opened a fitness gym in Gladesville, on Sydney’s lower north shore. A franchise, the Body Fit Training (BFT) gym offers group fitness training, Lim says, and it is going well.
“Our gym is a little bit different, there’s no lock-in contract like other studios, so people can cancel at any point,” she says. “We mainly target group fitness, so people are definitely coming for the community and the coaching experience. You know, we want them to enjoy it and get an experience and not just pay for it.”
While the BFT gym is a partnership with her cousin, who also works in the finance industry, Above Advisory is all her, Lim says. She is across the importance of social media, and her company has channels on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. “A lot of the time, when clients walk in, they felt like they already know me personally because of the number of times and hours they watch our videos – me speaking on camera.” In these videos she addresses some of the issues the private sector is facing, including changes to the tax regime, changing a business structure, updates on possibilities for business, investing options, self-managed super fund rules and the like.
With a baby, a gym and her financial services company, Lim’s life is full. In the future, she hopes to have another child, and to return to her homeland for a visit and introduce her baby to his relatives. “Right now, it’s not one of our options, but we hope to show how beautiful our country is to our little boy one day,” she says. She is now setting aside time for her family as her baby gets older.
At the same time, she says, she continues to focus on her company and her clients.
“Our priority is still making sure our clients receive the best of the trusted advisor service that we promise from day one. Growth will come next.”