Liza Kaufman is the host of Smart Women Big Deals, a podcast exploring the life-changing decisions, personal challenges and unexpected opportunities that shape the journeys of successful women. Launched in September 2026, the series features candid conversations with entrepreneurs, executives, creators, health experts and cultural leaders, moving beyond professional achievements to explore the setbacks, risks and moments of reinvention that helped define their paths. Drawing on decades of experience in business, real estate and negotiation, Kaufman aims to inspire women across generations to embrace ambition, pursue new opportunities and recognize that success can take many forms. We spoke with her to learn more about the inspiration behind Smart Women Big Deals, her approach to interviewing guests and her vision for the platform’s future.
What is your channel called and what is it about?
It’s called Smart Women Big Deals, but the “big deals” aren’t necessarily about money. It’s about the decisions that change our lives. The risk you finally take. The career you walk away from. The business you build when everyone tells you it’s too late. The failure that forces you to reinvent yourself. I sit down with extraordinary entrepreneurs, founders, executives, creators, health experts and cultural leaders and try to get beyond the resume to the parts of their stories we rarely hear: the setbacks, pivots, lucky breaks, difficult decisions and moments that changed everything. At the heart of every conversation is one question: What is the SMARTEST BIG DEAL you have ever made, one that may or may not have anything to do with career or money?
When did you start it? What motivated you at the beginning?
Smart Women Big Deals launched in September 2026, but the idea had been living in me much longer. I’ve spent decades building businesses, negotiating major transactions and sitting across the table from extraordinarily successful people. One thing became very clear to me: almost nobody’s life unfolds in a straight line. Behind the success are usually failures, reinventions, moments of fear, extraordinary resilience and at least one decision that changed the trajectory of everything. I wanted to create the conversations I wish I could have heard when I was younger. And I especially wanted women to hear one message: there is no deadline for reinvention. You do not need permission to change your life, and you are never too young or too old to make your next big deal.
Who were you inspired by? Any influences?
A: I’m inspired less by celebrity than by courage. I’m fascinated by people who have built something meaningful, but I am even more interested in what happened when things did not go according to plan. My greatest influences have been the people I have encountered throughout my own career: entrepreneurs who lost and rebuilt, women who entered rooms where they were underestimated, people who changed direction when it would have been easier to stay comfortable. Success is interesting. The road to success is much more interesting.
How would you describe your audience?
Curious, ambitious and wonderfully intergenerational. Smart Women Big Deals is for women at 25 who are figuring out who they want to become, women at 45 wondering whether they can reinvent themselves, women at 65 beginning an entirely new chapter, and the men who champion those women. I want a daughter, her mother and her grandmother to be able to listen to the same conversation and each take something completely different from it. Ambition does not have an expiration date.
What is your creative process? Do you have people who work with you?
I have a terrific team, but I am deeply involved in every interview. We research our guests extensively because I don’t want to ask questions they’ve answered a hundred times. I want to find the moment underneath the biography. What happened before the breakthrough? What almost derailed you? What did you get wrong? Who believed in you before everyone else did? What did success cost you? And knowing everything you know today, what would you tell the person you were 20 years ago? The goal isn’t simply to conduct an interview. It is to create a conversation someone remembers.
How do you monetize your content? Do you also have another job?
Smart Women Big Deals is still very young, and right now my priority isn’t maximizing monetization. It’s maximizing impact, audience and long-term brand value. My other career is actually a huge part of why this platform exists. I am the Founding Partner of Sotheby’s International Realty Quebec and of Kaufman Group in Montreal, and I have spent decades in high-end real estate, entrepreneurship and negotiation. I’ve had the privilege of being in rooms where enormous decisions are made. And I have learned that the biggest deal in someone’s life is very often not the one with the biggest dollar sign attached to it. Smart Women Big Deals lets me take everything I’ve learned from business and turn the microphone toward other remarkable people.
What is your favourite piece of content you have created?
This is almost impossible for me to answer because every guest has given me something unexpected. But the moments I treasure most aren’t necessarily the polished ones. They’re the moments when the interview suddenly becomes a real conversation, and someone tells me something they didn’t arrive planning to say. That is when I know we have created something worthwhile. I don’t want Smart Women Big Deals to manufacture viral moments. I want to create meaningful moments that become viral because they resonate.
What is the best part about what you do? What is the worst part?
The best part is receiving a message from someone who says, “I needed to hear that today.” If one conversation gives someone the courage to start again, leave something that isn’t working, ask for more, take the risk, build the company or simply believe that their next chapter can be bigger than their last one, we’ve accomplished something. The hardest part is that there are so many extraordinary stories and only so many hours in the day. But perhaps that’s also the opportunity.
What are your future plans for your channel?
I don’t think of Smart Women Big Deals as simply a podcast. I am building it as a media brand and a community. The podcast is the beginning. I see live conversations, international guests, events, partnerships and ultimately a global platform built around ambition, reinvention, resilience, health, longevity, entrepreneurship and the decisions that shape extraordinary lives. And I want to build it without losing the intimacy that made it special in the first place. If we do this properly, Smart Women Big Deals should become a place where generations learn from one another.
Where can we follow you?
PAY IT FORWARD: What is another Canadian content creator that you love?
Maggie Sellers Reum and Hot Smart Rich. Maggie is Canadian, and I love what she is building for ambitious women. What resonates with me most is that her story hasn’t been a straight line. She has talked openly about hesitation, anxiety, taking risks and pivoting her way into entrepreneurship. I have enormous respect for women who are willing to reinvent themselves, bet on themselves and then use what they’ve learned to help other women think bigger. There is a wonderful alignment between what Maggie is building and what we are trying to do with Smart Women Big Deals: reminding women that ambition is something to embrace, not apologize for.
