From a brunch conversation to one of Australia’s fastest growing service businesses. Anna Grosman shares the lessons that got her there
What’s happening: Anna Grosman is the founder of Her Confidant, Australia’s first female-led companionship agency for women, which has grown 400% year-on-year since launching in its current form in February 2024.
Why this matters: For small business owners, Grosman’s story is a rare example of a founder who built genuine commercial success by doing the opposite of what her industry normalised. No paid advertising. Rigorous quality control. A client-led model that kept evolving as she kept listening.
Anna Grosman did not set out to disrupt an industry. She set out to solve a problem she kept hearing about.
“My career in the intimacy industry started over brunch with friends,” she said. “The same frustration kept coming up. High-achieving, financially independent women were exhausted by dating apps and low-effort men. They wanted connection, intimacy, and great sex, without the emotional labour or compromise of a traditional relationship.”
That observation became Aphrodisiac Male Escorts, which Grosman co-founded in 2012. It grew quickly, she said, because it removed the sleaze and centred women. Safety, discretion and emotional intelligence came first. But over time, something deeper emerged from the client base that no product in the market was addressing.
“Alongside confident, empowered clients who knew what they wanted, there was a far larger, quieter group,” Grosman said. “Women coming from silent marriages, divorce, loss, long stretches of emotional neglect, and even trauma. On the outside, they were functioning. Internally, they felt invisible.”
That insight drove the relaunch of the business as Her Confidant on Valentine’s Day 2024, deliberately repositioned within the wellness space. Since then the business has grown 400% year-on-year, with consistent 30% month-on-month growth driven entirely by referrals and repeat clients rather than paid advertising.
The commercial lesson embedded in that trajectory is one of the most transferable in business: the founders who keep listening after launch build something fundamentally different from those who fall in love with their original idea and stop.
“Many founders fall in love with their original vision,” Grosman said. “I chose to fall in love with listening. As I deepened my understanding of our clients, their needs shifted the business’s trajectory. That evolution is exactly what took us from Aphrodisiac to Her Confidant. We didn’t pivot for a trend. We responded to a profound truth.”
When safety becomes the product
The most commercially significant decision Grosman made was reframing what her business was actually selling.
“One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that safety is not just a feature. It is the product,” she said. “When women feel safe, everything else follows: trust, desire, and openness.”
That insight reshaped every operational decision. Her Confidant receives well over one hundred companion applications a month, and the vast majority are rejected. The vetting process includes psychological screening, background checks, health checks, extended interviews and simulated bookings with trusted trialists.
“I’m interested in emotional intelligence, presence, and integrity,” Grosman said. “That level of selectivity protects my clients and preserves the sanctity of the space we’ve built.”
The commercial logic behind that selectivity is worth sitting with for any service business owner. By making the barrier to entry extraordinarily high, Grosman made the quality of the experience extraordinarily consistent. Consistency built word of mouth. Word of mouth built growth without a marketing budget.
The Reawakening, Her Confidant’s newly launched somatic intimacy program, is the fullest expression of that philosophy yet. Developed in consultation with Australian sexologists, psychologists and intimacy professionals, it is a multi-stage guided experience designed specifically for women who feel disconnected from touch, desire or pleasure after years of stress, caregiving, trauma or emotional overload.
Almost 50% of surveyed women in midlife reported having poor sexual wellbeing, with affected women more likely to be depressed, according to a recent Australian study cited in the program’s launch materials. Many women are also opting out of dating altogether, citing safety concerns, burnout and a lack of meaningful connection.
“On the outside, these women are high-functioning and successful,” Grosman said. “But inside, many feel disconnected from pleasure, softness and embodiment. We see so many women who don’t feel like themselves anymore. A part of their being has shut down or become dysregulated through years of stress, caregiving or trauma. And there’s still enormous shame around women, particularly mothers and older women, wanting intimacy at all.”
The program consists of an initial discovery call, a preparatory session with a qualified sexologist, psychologist or intimacy professional, a three-hour guided intimacy experience with a rigorously vetted trauma-informed companion, an aftercare catch-up with Grosman, and a follow-up integration session with the chosen intimacy professional, supported by curated personalised resources throughout.
Sexologist Isiah McKimmie, one of the practitioners involved in the program, spoke to the broader need it addresses. “A lack of meaningful physical touch impacts our physical and mental health,” McKimmie said. “Many women are now looking for alternative ways to meet their intimacy needs, but may not want to date. Access to a companion will allow women to access intimate touch in a way that increases physical and emotional safety.”
For Grosman, The Reawakening is not a product extension. It is the logical destination of everything she has been building toward since that brunch conversation more than a decade ago.
The ecosystem behind the experience
One of the less visible but commercially important parts of how Her Confidant operates is the network Grosman has built around it.
Rather than positioning the business as a standalone service, she has constructed what she describes as an expansive ecosystem, a curated all-female panel of sexologists, trauma-informed therapists, wellness practitioners, marketing professionals and designers who work alongside the business at every stage.
The Reawakening makes that ecosystem visible. Delivered in partnership with leading Australian practitioners including Isiah McKimmie, Laura Lee, Courtenay DuBois and Natalie West, the program reflects a model where the client experience is held by a network of expertise rather than dependent on any single service or individual.
“I don’t see my Companions as commodities, but as my extended family,” Grosman said. “This work is emotionally demanding. It requires deep presence, holding space for a woman’s vulnerability, and navigating complex emotional landscapes. To keep that level of service sustainable and heart-led, I stay closely involved, checking in consistently and providing real support. If I don’t take care of my people, they can’t take care of my clients.”
For small business owners, the model offers a practical template that goes beyond the intimacy industry entirely. The quality of the client experience is only as strong as the support structures behind the people delivering it. Building those structures, whether through formal partnerships, curated referral networks or collaborative service design, is not a cost. It is the foundation of retention and word of mouth growth.
What any founder can take from this
Grosman has built a business growing faster than almost any comparable operator in her space, in an industry that offers none of the conventional advantages, no easy access to advertising platforms, no mainstream PR, sustained public scrutiny and significant stigma.
The lessons she draws from that experience are direct. “Don’t wait for permission,” she said. “If you see a gap, trust what you’re noticing. Most meaningful businesses don’t come from trend reports or pitch decks. They come from listening, from noticing what people are asking for and are not being given.”
On building in a difficult operating environment, her approach has been consistency over defensiveness. “You don’t convince people by arguing. You convince them by doing the work well, consistently, and with integrity.”
On the relationship between care and commercial success, she is equally clear. “If I want longevity, I need systems that support humans, not just outcomes. Presence, consistent check-ins, and shared responsibility matter more than most people realise.”
And on the question of whether purpose and profit can genuinely coexist. “They feed each other when done well. If your business empowers the person at the centre of it, emotionally, physically, or financially, you’re building something that lasts.”
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