Amanda.

She is a birth worker and a doula. She had so many stories and so much to say.

But that isn’t always effective.

We showed her how to tell clear stories. One story. One message. She immediately changed the way she was showing up on social media.

Both with her written and video posts

She started writing using my framework. DM’s started to come into her inbox and she got 3 new clients in one month!

When she first came to the Women’s Leadership Lab, she was interviewing. But she couldn’t seem to make it past the first round.

As she worked on her delivery in the Public Speaking Masterclass, she started to gain confidence. She started to show up as her authentic self. 

Kaushika was starting to make it to the second round of interviews. 

The other day, she called to say, SHE GOT A JOB! And it pays 15% more than her last job. 

All because she was in the driver seat after each interview. She had built her confidence to ask for the next step. 

Now she’s hiring other talent and influencing the culture at the startup.

“I struggled to sell my art for $500. Now I sell my pieces for $5000.”

That was one of my members this morning on a Mastermind call. Yolanda Prinsloo is one of the few artists in the Women’s Leadership Lab. She and I first started working together September 2021 for public speaking training. She wanted to make a living as a full time artist, but supplemented her income by teaching. Increasingly, teaching was soaking up more bandwidth and the art was falling by the wayside. She wanted to reverse this equation.

Growing up in South Africa during apartheid, she had many rich ‘stories’ to tell. Much of it informs her artwork today. But she had trouble speaking about herself. She had trouble telling clear stories to make the sale.

Today, her ability to get 10X for her pieces is attributable to one key change in her sales process: Make the client ‘the hero.’ In other words, actively listen when the client is speaking, reflect back what she heard, and then solve the problem for them. Make it all about your audience. It’s something she learned in the Masterclass.

After she finished up with the 6 week Public Speaking Masterclass, she started attending my Mastermind calls to learn about the systems and processes needed to run a successful art business. Yolanda is leaving the Women’s Leadership Lab today. Not everyone on the Tuesday Mastermind calls was necessarily in her swim lane, but she was always present and eager to learn and make changes. And she did.

Quickly.

I am sad to see her go. But I am content that she leaves with a clarity and direction on how to tell compelling stories in order to sell. She is on her way to living the life of less teaching, MORE ART COMMISSIONS! The goal she came in with.

Shreya Mehta was preparing for her first trade show post-pandemic. She was surprised by the number of questions and hesitations her employees had about it. She’s a fourth generation diamond wholesaler and brought the concerns to the weekly peer mentoring call.

How could she quell the concerns from her employees and ready for the tradeshow?

“Interview each employee,” the group suggested. “Since they are on the front lines with the buyers, they know the pain points intimately? They know where the gaps are. What had they observed in trade shows past? Record all the suggestions. Then implement them.”

Live shows are hard to control when already underway. By also anticipating what could go wrong, Shreya crafted backup plans

By event day, she had spent 1 hour interviewing each of her employees for the first time. She collated all of their suggestions and implemented them. Shreya was happy to report she had the highest revenue generating trade show ever.

Why?
 The employees were part of the process. Showing up at the trade show was a co-creation between owner and employee.
 An owner can sit in a silo and opine where the gaps are, but the front line, client facing knows them well.

I was her first phone call afterwards. She was so excited to share the news. It’s been tremendous to watch Shreya’s learning trajectory since she became a member of the Women’s Leadership Academy.

Sanketa attended her first LadyDrinks event in May 2019.  I was hosting a charity fundraiser in Plainfield, New Jersey. It was a show house, featuring the work of several members who were interior designers.  Proceeds for ticket sales were going to the Valerie Fund. 

Sanketa had cancer as a teenager.  The Valerie Fund not only saved her life, but it provided the funds for her treatment. She saw the event as a means to reconnect with the Fund.  

At the event, Sanketa told her story. Today, she makes her living as a personal chef. While her current client base for Eat Krave Love was friends and family, she wanted to get in front of a new audience, and a new client base.   She started catering events for LadyDrinks. Others in the membership started hiring her too. She got new headshots done. She started to build a brand.

Sanketa’s client base grew. She reached newer audiences.  Her biggest takeaway was— learning to bet on herself.

Natasha Mohan is CEO of the Jersey City co-working space WorkSocial. Startups and growing businesses book office space for their teams to do collaborative work there.

In 2022, Natasha declared plans to expand WorkSocial’s space by 6X.

With previous architects, communication had always been a problem. They would advise changes based solely on their preferences, rather than getting to know the true needs of the space and its unique clientele.

This was the case until she got to know a member and architect Kimberly Brown over the weekly peer mentoring calls at the Women’s Leadership Lab. When Natasha put out the bid for the build-out, Kimberly’s firm won the job because of her level of responsiveness.

Natasha worked with Kimberly to share how her clients work. “What does their day look like? What does their week look like?” She liked that Kimberly’s team understood all of the restraints of the current space.

Communication with all the stakeholders was happening and not just directed at her. She liked that she had input on the build-out.

“She added the ‘wow’ factor,” said Natasha of Kimberly and her team’s work. “We have a client who started out with a virtual office. Then he migrated to an open desk. He’s just committed to WorkSocial for two years. He likes coming to the office now because of Kimberly’s work.”

As the ribbon-cutting ceremony approached June 8th, Natasha also expressed a need for media. She didn’t know where to start with the press. In a few years, when she planned to either exit the business and/or raise more capital, investors would be expecting her thought leadership on the future of work. How would she create that?

The Women’s Leadership Lab connected her to Lori Rosen, who had handled the PR for another member’s restaurant opening in Jersey City. Rosen immediately secured media placements in New Jersey Business Magazine, Real Estate NJ, ROI-NJ, and Hoboken Girl for the WorkSocial expansion. In addition, Rosen’s team secured thought leadership interview opportunities with Medium’s Authority Magazine and NJBiz, which Natasha is looking forward to undertaking in the next few weeks.

She also laid out a six-month public relations plan, including TV interviews. This alliance gave Natasha the boost and the confidence to be the face of WorkSocial.

Saloua had worked in traditional banking in Canada for 10 years. More than that, if you count her time in New. York City.

She headed up 2 of the top performing teams in Canada, even through the pandemic.

When we started working together in the Public Speaking Masterclass, she expressed she wanted to start a fund and change the way women invest in women businesses. 

Throughout class, I challenged students like Saloua to dig deep. Get vulnerable. It takes courage to tell personal stories and see how it fits in your leadership. 

Just before the last class module, she shared some big news: She turned in her resignation at the bank.

Now she’s in a leadership position at a fund. It’s her apprenticeship–before she launches her own. 

Oh, and she also wants to do a TedTalk. We are working on that next.

Thai-Anh Hoang is the founder of a clean skincare line for kids, called Embeba. She regularly attends the Thursday morning peer mentoring calls at the Women’s Leadership Lab.

Eager to build awareness for her brand, she asked if anyone had a connection to Motherly. Motherly was a publication she read when she was pregnant. How cool would it be for her kids skincare line to be featured in it?

https://joyadass.hubspotpagebuilder.com/monapanjwani