Women's Entrepreneurship Retreat 2013
August marked the one year anniversary of Boiled Architecture, the super awesome architecture firm I founded. From the beginning of this journey, I felt a calling to share what I was learning with other active or aspiring entrepreneurs--especially women.
That's why I founded the Women's Entrepreneurship Retreat, an annual weekend of learning, encouragement, and peer mentoring that will be happening again May 24-26. You can pre-register here.
It's held at the Asilomar conference grounds. What!? Asilomar? That beautiful seaside resort designed by Julia Morgan, the first female architect in California!? Yes, that's right.
Here's how the weekend will progress:
On Friday, you'll get settled in to your room and register for the conference. You'll have dinner in the big dining room and get to know a few of the other amazing women.
After dinner, you'll get an overview of the business model. We'll use a graphic, creative format for understanding the basic building blocks of your business.
On Saturday morning, you can take a walk along the beach or just sleep in. After breakfast, we'll have the first keynote speaker. She'll cover value propositions and customer segments.
Then we'll give an overview of how to do a great elevator pitch. The first 20 women to sign up will have the opportunity to give their elevator speeches in front of the whole group. As you listen, write down 5 women you think you'd find synergy with. Based on your lists, we'll later pair you into Genius Circles.
Then we'll dive into workshops to help you flesh out your business model.
First, financial stuff. More details will come later on specific workshops.
After lunch we'll switch gears and dive into marketing positioning and communications.
Okay, take a coffee break because next we have our second keynote speaker, who will give you a powerful primer on competitive strategy.
By now you've taken in a lot of information, and you probably need to process it. We'll have a work session where you can work on your business model and talk with all the amazing women you've been meeting.
After dinner, relax with a little alone time. Then join us later for a bonfire complete with s'mores and hot chocolate.
On Sunday morning, our final set of workshops will address team management.
Then we'll do something really special. This is something entirely unique to our retreat: Genius Circles. [We're hoping Apple hasn't trademarked the work "Genius."] We pair you up with a handful of other remarkable women, for peer mentoring. This is a resource that you can turn to long after our retreat is over.
Finally, we'll wrap up the conference by hearing from a successful real-life woman entrepreneur. And now, with your mini MBA and a network to boot, you can follow in her footsteps.
Last year was our first year throwing this retreat. Here are some comments from last year's attendees:
“I walked away with a support group of professionals and the beginning of what I
believe will be great friendships.”
“I walked away with more than I expected. It was fabulous.”
“The location is spectacular, the facility is both historic/feminist & charmingly
rustic.”
“I got hours of free coaching and people are still contacting me to offer me
support and mentorship.”
Last year was largely an experiment to see if we could pull it off. We learned not only the logistics of hosting such a retreat, but also that there really is a need for this kind of thing. So 2013 will be a wonderful event. Please join us!
If you attended last year, there's no need to pre-register because you will have the first chance to purchase tickets. If you didn't attend last year, you should pre-register to get the early bird price.
