Empowering women

I never thought I would own my own business. That was never a dream or goal of mine. I had a million different dreams growing up of what I wanted to be. An archaeologist digging up mummies in Egypt, director of movies, choreographer, teacher and the list goes on. Of course I wanted to be a photographer but I thought travel photographer for National Geographic or photojournalist for Time Magazine. 

Last year in January while I was preparing for bed I had this idea of hosting a party for women in my community and we do portraits. I thought about how some women say they don't want to do portraits because they don't have anything to wear or because they don't know how to do their make-up or hair. So I thought what about pairing with someone who does make-up and hair and they could do demonstrations then after we could do portraits. But why stop there? There are multiple women in my community who sell clothing and jewelry so why not have something like a sip and see type party where we combine multiple companies and then to end the night take individual photos and a group photo. Before I knew it, this idea had grown and I kept thinking there is no way we could fit this many people into someone's house for a party. I thought okay we would need a bigger location so that grew into thinking we could use the community center. I went to bed with my head swimming with ideas. 

Over the next few days I wrote down my ideas and contacted a friend who also had a small business. I thought the perfect time for this event would be right before Mother's Day so we could treat ourselves and buy gifts for the mothers in our lives. I started reaching out to other female small business owners in our community to see if they would be interested in joining in our event. Right away I had so many women interested in more information. And that is when The Broad Collective was formed. I chose to go with only female small business owners because I don't feel like women small business owners get enough support. Not only that but they are usually wearing multiple hats and juggle more than just a business. Not to say that men don't as well but I wanted to focus on the women especially the moms who run a business while also raising kids and in a lot of cases also work a full time job as well. I want to connect with other female small business owners in Providence Village so we could support, encourage and promote each other. 

I designed a presentation and took it to the HOA to get approved for the community building and we planned our event for May 5. We only had about 6 weeks to plan but everything came together really well. We passed out free gift bags with information and little gifts for any woman that came to the event. We got a lot of positive feedback and a lot of people were really happy about the event. I would like to work to continue having events.

I want to continue working and supporting other small businesses. I often see mom's post on different mom's groups that they are looking for something either as a hobby or a way to bring in extra income. The decision to stay at home with their kids is a struggle because they know they can't afford daycare but would like to help contribute to the household expenses. I want to encourage those mom's who are on the fence about starting a business because like I said I never thought that would be me. But I can say it isn't always easy. I plan to write a whole blog about that later though. 

The Broad Collective has started planning for this year's Spring Fling event. I would like to change a few things from last year but we will see what comes from it. We've added new small businesses and I really would like to expand to include other areas around us.