N: Tell us about how the idea for eWomenNetwork came to be.
S: I moved from Dayton Ohio which I thought was “the Big D”. I just had no perspective. I mean honestly, I just could not believe the size of this city. I would go to networking events that were primarily men, and everyone was very kind to me, I had no issues with that. But I just didn’t feel like anybody was including me or inviting me to really play, I felt relegated. And so, then I started going to women’s organizations, this was 1999, and I just felt like, you know I had little kids too- I’m open to talking about kids and the ridiculous price of parking and the traffic or whatever, but I was like “when are we going to start talking about business?” and I can still remember being downtown and being at a table and trying to direct the conversation off of the small talk and into business and I really felt this energy of being put off like “who are you?”. I remember coming home and talking to Kym about it and he’s really the one who said “well, you should start your own”, you know just get real intentional about what you want, but it was really Kym’s idea, right there he saw it, I didn’t, I was too close to it.
And then I just started being the Managing Director, going out and doing meetings anywhere I could, I had a girlfriend who did my hair, Susie and asked her if I could use her hair studio in off hours. I called people, I went to Sam’s Club and bought little pieces of cheese and those God-awful toothpicks with cellophane at the end. And you know, Nicole, I saved and washed those toothpicks. I rolled in a little cooler of water bottles and schlepped a portable flip chart. We literally sat in those chairs that back into the bowls where they wash your hair.
In many ways it was way harder than I could have ever imagined and I’m glad I didn’t know. I think there’s something to be said for the bliss of ignorance. Because I do think, in total transparency, if I would’ve known everything that I was going to go through in those first four or five years, I think I would’ve chosen a different path.
N: When did you start to think bigger and act bigger as far as having eWomenNetwork be much bigger than Dallas, was this always the master plan?
S: I think we thought that it would have multiple chapters, I can’t say that I imagined it being the way it turned out, I mean multiple chapters could be in Dallas, that kind of thing. I didn’t have the ability to dream that big, you know, I wasn’t being coached in the very beginning. And I certainly didn’t have a pedigree to come from people who achieved great things. I mean, Kym saw it, from the perspective that he was a musician and had the experience of Capitol Records and that kind of thing, but even then, we both knew that that required infrastructure.
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