Meet the St. Pete Girl Bosses, where women support each other’s businesses

More than 50 women are sitting around a circle inside St. Petersburg City Theater’s entrance hall on Friday morning for the meeting in St. Pete Girl Bosses.

The network’s group communications director, Taylor Adams, came to the circle with a microphone in hand, wearing pink earrings that read “Screw it. Let’s do it.” He started the meeting.

“We’re the largest, fastest-growing, sexiest female entrepreneur group in the Tampa Bay area,” she said of the group. The girls cheered around him.

The theater hall is one step from The Crislip Cafe on Central Avenue where St. Pete Girl Bosses started meeting almost a year ago. The networking organization outgrew the space as word of mouth spread – women business owners came together to be each other’s cheerleaders in their businesses.

The Facebook group St. Pete Girl Bosses has grown to over 3,100 members since launch. About 160 people are part of a paid membership program that started last summer. The group also launched its own podcast called “Bosscast” at the end of the year.

As they do every week, the St. Pete Girl Bosses meet in the theater hall on Friday mornings to discuss a specific topic. In early December, they focused on the themes of using social media and other online tools. The meeting began with leaders announcing the first health passport, members can purchase for access to almost a dozen life coaches, energy readers or psychics – all women.

Then they were divided into small groups – pairing women from different industries, such as real estate, coffee bean distribution, CBD retail, yoga and more – to write down advice on a pink sticky note. They don’t identify their notes with a random person in the room. They continue to discuss their wins of the week, what online tools have helped run their businesses and how the pursuit of money gets in the way of their missions.

While many women came for networking, many members said they stayed because they found people who understood what they were going through. The community feel of the group makes it a safe place to make friends and get feedback about their work.

Founder Sandy Bean, 45, said she started the group after she transitioned from being a teacher to the owner of an academic enrichment center for gifted students — realizing she was missing out on the community during the process.

While psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs prioritizes safety and stability, Bean said, budding entrepreneurs often flip the pyramid to focus on self-actualization and sacrifice security for achievement. -ot the business goals. Having a community to lean on is the key to rebuilding safety nets, he said.

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Bean said she tried other networking groups but struggled to make real friendships. He noticed that there were women who were not heard.

“Going to networking groups, the women, they’re great. But they don’t always talk to each other,” Bean said. “It’s different when you’re in a mixed crowd. I’m not trying to drop the men under the bus or whatever, but this is different.

So Bean invited five other women he already knew to meet at the coffee shop and created a Facebook group, choosing the name St. Pete Girl Bosses “ironically.” He expects maybe 20 people to sign up. In a few days, he said there were a hundred in the group, then a thousand. Now, there are women from Dunedin, Sarasota and even Lakeland who come to the meetings.

“We started doing in-person workshops and volunteer events, and (St. Pete Girl Bosses) quickly turned into a business that wasn’t exactly what I expected it to be,” Bean said.

For Clara Clayton, a 57-year-old wellness coach, she said many of the networking groups she attended shut down during COVID-19 and never started up again.

Initially, Clayton joined a Facebook group and began attending Zoom co-working sessions. Then he started going to happy hour events before joining the big weekly meetings.

The group helps him get new clients and also advice when he needs it. He really enjoyed St. Pete Girl Bosses that she became a brand ambassador for them.

“It’s not just about exchanging business cards. It’s about creating deep relationships.” Clayton said. “Passing cold leads, it’s not for me.”

Many local women entrepreneurs struggle with a lack of education in business methods outside of their expertise – in areas such as selling, marketing or pricing their products – or getting access to investors and community resources. , said Jennifer Schultz, St. Pete Girl Bosses vice president and owner of The Crislip and the cafe’s attached gift shop, The Merchant.

“The magic of this group allows me to find other experts in areas that can help educate me and other women in areas that may not be our strong suit,” Schultz said. “I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room, I want to meet other people who can help me learn and help other women learn.”

Many women also work together and visit each other’s stores or book sessions.

A health insurance agent shared with her small group that the highlight of her week was that every appointment she had for the past seven days was booked by a female boss.

When Central Avenue home decor and gift shop The Canary opened in November, owner Allie Padin credited the group with helping her connect with a commercial real estate agent, small business attorney and general contractor – all of which helped facilitate getting his business off the ground.

Schultz hosts a pop-up at her shop during the holiday season to support a fellow “girl boss” flower arranging business, The Roaming Petal.

Roaming Petal Erica Holland, 29, said the group helped her triple her network in a short time and opened up new opportunities to collaborate with other local businesses.

“I run my business by myself, by myself,” said Holland, 29. “Having that support system of other people to ask if I need to bounce ideas off or if you’re feeling overwhelmed by stupidity of it all. in entrepreneurship helped a lot to have.”