Jordan Lacenski is co-founder at SheWolf Collaborative, a new global online network for women founders and CEOs with businesses ready to scale. She is also founder and chief innovation officer at BrandBoss Creative, a creative agency offering personalized marketing strategy, branding, consulting, and other solutions.
GREENSBORO — When I became a business owner, I quickly realized the number of unknowns, the lonely part of being the one in charge, the founder, the visionary. I no longer had a well-known brand to fall back on, a team of people to encourage my ideas, or a boss telling me exactly what to do and when.
My new business moved with me across the country to Montana and back to North Carolina. I was desperate for connection and community. I would attend networking events for women, join networking groups and memberships for people in business. Often, I would find myself listening to a panel of impressive professionals talking about confidence or self-care, balance or leadership.
The problem: they were speaking from a place of structure, on behalf a company that had been rooted. How could they possibly understand what it’s like in those months where business is slow and payroll is put on the Amex? How could they tell me how to lead my team of 10 or less, or how to handle litigation or a breach in contract from a client? They have a legal team to lean on.
All challenges aside, entrepreneurship is in my DNA, as many other founders will tell you. It’s the most difficult and most rewarding thing I have ever done. It is the most demanding and humbling adventure of my life. I have grown more as an individual in the last few years than ever before. As I continued the search for “my people, ” I finally began to meet women in the same boat, those that felt just as much pressure and just as much passion. All of a sudden, there was a sense of relief. “They get it,” I would immediately think.
Jordan Lacenski, co-founder at SheWolf Collaborative. Credit: SheWolf.
How could we get all of these women in the same room or in the same conversation? The answer: a virtual community for female founders with a mission to alter the global business landscape by connecting, empowering and equipping women to succeed. We created SheWolf with one goal: to build a pack.
My co-founder and I began researching for SheWolf, and what gap it needed to fill. I traveled to 10 different cities, went to 13 different women’s events and conferences, joined eight other memberships to research community offerings. I also interviewed 109 women all over the U.S and spoke with female VC’s to discover what the real female founder needs.
We also took our own experience as female founders and made lists of the pain points. Personally, I have run my own virtual branding firm for three years, working with both remote teams and local teams across three cities. I have learned the hard way, I have fallen on my face, and I have gotten back up.
We dialed into the problem. Current “women’s groups” for female founders do not offer enough substance or provide tangible action items and tools for business success. Here is what I have found and why I started SheWolf:
- Topics covered are often too broad and are based on motivation, rather than action steps.
- There isn’t enough exposure to the stepping stones to success, including mid-level growth tiers.
- Groups are not selective, can often grow too quickly which loses the intimacy of peer-to-peer mentorship.
As a result, it is easy for female founders to feel disappointed or overwhelmed by their options, to feel like they aren’t getting benefits from their current membership groups, and to wonder if they belong anywhere.
SheWolf is here to solve these problems by connecting women in similar businesses stages, and specifically, to give them:
- Tangible advice, under non-disclosure agreement, on topics founders need help with, such as: how to build sales, dip into that line of credit for payroll, handle business litigation, owe taxes, and hire team members.
- Our members are at various business stages, from $50,000 to $7 million in annual revenue, and can speak to each of the steps in between.
- We equip members to pick their own paths for intimacy and peer-mentorship through webinars, classes, meetups, retreats, and expert partners at the click of a mouse.
Meanwhile, don’t forget the power of the purse. To grow as a pack, we must continue to support other woman-owned brands that are always in our closets, kitchens, handbags, and hearts. From IT Cosmetics to the underwear firm ThirdLove, there are 12.3 million women-owned businesses — with an estimated 1800 new businesses starting up each day. About 4.2 percent of all women-owned firms have revenues of 1 million or more. To find out more, I’ve compiled a list of some of those companies. This is just a sampling. Remember, our success relies on the success of our members. The more we succeed, the more we can impact business culture, building environments we want to work in.
So let’s howl and come together: SheWolf is for growth-minded, high-achieving women, women making moves. This is for women who have been in business for at least one year, out of the idea stage and into the making money stage. This is for women who want to engage with others like them and be a part of the pack.
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