Left to right: Kayla Beckmann, producer and CEO of Small Fox Media; Karlin Housen, founder of Houzen Event Planning and Design; JoHanna Bienvenue of JB Content and Technical Writing; Heather Shea, intuition coach and CEO of Heather Alice Shea, Inc.; Jasmin Wooden, caterer and owner of Blue Sage Cuisine.
I’ve spent a lot of years thinking if I were more confident, louder, and funnier, I would enjoy networking events. The truth is I don’t. I’m good at one-on-one connections and great at solo flights of thought. Networking has been disappointing: I corner one poor soul (someone I already know), listen to rehearsed pitches and leave feeling guilty I didn’t get rid of more business cards.
What if all it took to throw networking out the window was sharing your personal story; sweaty-palms, dry throat and all? “Stereotypes are very reinforcing because, as human beings, we expect what is familiar,” writes Sheryl Sandberg, in Lean In. A local people-connector and visionary, Toni Hernandez is comfortable disrupting the familiarity of networking. Her vision in creating Leading Ladies 904: gathering a tribe of women uncomfortable with mediocrity and comfortable with being uncomfortable.
LL904 launched in November 2015, and the inaugural gathering started with stories. The atmosphere was warm, open and unhurried. We were a roomfull of women entrepreneurs having conversations, not announcing or positioning ourselves.
That was an igniting moment, when sharing personal truth was enough. The energy was palpable – sufficient to derail the culture of competition. Heather Shea, of Heather Alice Shea, Inc., believes the LL904 movement threw a wrench in the wheel of traditional business, where strategic operation is everything. “Collaboration is really the foundation of all business endeavors. When we raise standards like this, we are elevating others.”
By exposing ourselves, we built a network of partners, both to navigate our career paths and deepen self-belief. The trail-blazing, twenty-something Kayla Beckmann, of Small Fox Media, is relieved that sharing her story was enough to connect us all. Jasmin Wooden of Blue Sage Cuisine, who catered the event, shares, “As a caterer, I always enter events ‘through the back door’, so to speak. Food is the presentation of my business. For the first time in my profession, my presence, passions and goals mattered. It was exciting to step into the forefront.”
By JoHanna Girardi
