It looks like we’re making this little group “official” now ladies!
In case you missed our Planning Meeting, this email serves as a summary of everything we talked about, and a way to communicate any next steps or questions that we had for the group going forward.
I’ve decided to use Beehiiv to make this operationally simpler going forward, but please do reply and let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions.
UPDATES FROM OUR PLANNING MEETING
Why does this community exist?
We started the meeting by drafting our v1 purpose statement:
We elevate women who lead by building a candid, committed space to think out loud, get unstuck fast, and build better businesses together.
Updated membership criteria & commitment
We are committed to keeping this community accessible and diverse in terms of membership.
However, we also discussed how important it is to respect each other and show mutual respect and commitment to the group. So don’t just come here to take advice, be sure to share, give back and engage with the opportunities being shared by others.
As far as membership criteria, any members you invite to this group must be:
Female/Femme-identifying.
Must be a founder or a professional who is considered part of the C-suite/2IC/strategic decision-makers.
As far as commitment criteria go, we’ve proposed that all members must attend at least half of the sessions every quarter (i.e. 3 out of 6 sessions).
If you cannot make a session for whatever reason, you’ll need to do the following proactively:
Record your updated RSVP status on the calendar invite
Send a message through to the group to update on where you’re at with your business this week, any wins you’d like to share and where you may need help or support.
Updated event formats and frequencies
As far as how often, and what we meet to discuss, we landed on the decision that we will run
1x Monthly Mastermind Meetings for real-time problem-solving in a fixed format (check-in round robin + hot seats). This will still happen at 4pm on the 4th Monday of every month.
1x Monthly Peer Interviews with each member in the community to properly build context and trust. These sessions will start from November (dates tbc).
When the group gets too big for us all to collaborate in the mastermind meetings, we will start having breakout rooms to allow for smaller, more focused discussions.
We finally have a name!
While there were a few great suggestions for the final name of this community, there was one that came up afterwards which just fit perfectly:
She The Change
Now as much as I love this name, I’m aware that there’s a lot of work to do to build a culture, operational structure and support system that lives up to this name.
Tess, has graciously offered to guide us through a Culture Workshop Session to help us solidify a proper strategy going forward. If you’d like to contribute please join the WhatsApp group here for future coordination.
Membership fees and sponsorships
At this point, we realised that we really do have something special here.
And that if we want to make it really into a supportive space that works for all of us, then it is likely that we will need to start making an investment into the maintenance and upkeep of this community.
For now, we will keep the community as “Free” to join and stay until we reach 20 members. At this point, we will provide an update as to membership fees and how we can potentially also get sponsors to assist with this.
How would you feel about paying for access to this mastermind group?
NEXT STEPS FROM OUR PLANNING MEETING
What can you expect next?
One issue that was raised during the meeting was the issue of data security and WhatsApp. It is technically not GDPR or POPIA compliant, and we want to make sure that we know how to protect ourselves and others’ details.
As a result, we’re going to implement a new onboarding process whereby a new member who is invited to She The Change will be asked to first complete the onboarding form to get consent around data privacy.
As a little bonus, we will add in a few additional questions to allow us to build a Member Directory in Notion — so we can easily search for more information about each other once the Directory is live! 🎉
COMPLETE YOUR OFFICIAL ONBOARDING!
Submit to the Member Directory
Now it’s YOUR TURN to officially complete onboarding by filling in your form at the link below. It should take you about X mins to complete - please take some time to give intentional answers.
There will be no mid-month check-in this month!
But please feel free to post any asks and requests that pop up throughout the week in the WhatsApp Community group.
Instead please complete your Member Directory form above and we’ll share the Member Directory for feedback and input ASAP.
If possible, please mark this email as priority so it isn’t moved to spam 🙂
As always, your feedback is always welcome — just reply or post a comment directly on this post in your browser here!
Have a GREAT week,
Cands
