the Networker: Launching 2.0

In less than five years, Ladies Who Launch has grown into a national organization with many thousands of members. Here's what they have up their sleeve by Courtney E. Martin


Bethany Schoenfeldt stands on a stage, her very pregnant belly draped in a silk tent dress, and gushes about Ladies Who Launch, the organization she founded just five years ago with her good friend Victoria Colligan. “I'm so touched by this community. It just brings me to tears,” she says before adding, “Maybe it's the pregnancy talking!” Six hundred women burst into laughter, reminding everyone that this is not your average networking event. 

Ladies Who Launch (LWL) is, like the women who love it, complicated. The sprawling network brings together 45 local groups, called “incubators,” in which women build skills and get the support necessary to start a business or creative project. The groups come together many times a year for conferences where members tell their inspiring stories—this latest one in New York featured Oxygen Media founder Geraldine Laybourne, among others. 

The organization, whose main purpose is to help women “launch their dreams” is going through a major period of growth right now. In the near future, a redesigned website will allow for social networking, to build on the success of their online newsletter, which already reaches 40,000 people. Oh, and the founders, along with Amy Swift, wrote a book that landed in stores in May. It’s titled, you guessed it, Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle.

According to the Center for Women's Business Research, women are at the helm of about 10.4 million private companies nationwide, and businesses owned by women are growing at twice the rate of male-dominated companies. But lest you chalk Ladies Who Launch up to a small business support group with a girlie touch, think again. LWL is not only about start-ups, but also about cultural shifts. While the media tends to pit stay-at-home moms against working women—an antiquated duality if there ever was one—LWL recognizes that contemporary women want to shake up the whole concept of work/life balance.

“It is profound when you really think about it,” explains Colligan. “We're teaching women to listen to their instincts about what they want. In our experience, almost all women can connect with the idea of wanting to be creative, wanting to be fulfilled, and wanting to have flexibility. Ladies Who Launch is about validating who women already are.”

Angela Kim, a concert pianist/founder of an organic makeup line, Om, is a prime example. Before her incubator experience, she was embarrassed to talk about her two very different lives, performer and business owner. What felt “weird” to her, however, was seen as an asset by her incubator group. Kim incorporated her story into her marketing materials and soon her profits tripled. “I never would have realized that my story set me apart without my incubator,” she attests, beaming in her very own makeup.

LWL encourages members to envision the lives they want—how they want to spend their time, who they want to spend it with—and then consider the way their work fits into that vision. You might, for example, find the funder for your small business in your yoga class or get a recommendation for a perfect grant writer from your son's teacher. Nothing that you intuitively want to do is considered a waste of time. In fact, they've found that launching improves women's self-esteem and happiness because it is so in line with their innate approach to life.

Colligan and Schoenfeldt are convinced that there is a distinctly feminine way of building businesses and projects, characterized by flexibility, creativity, horizontal leadership, relationship-building and intuition. And the traditional corporate structure is way behind in waking up to this reality. “Society is simply out of balance,” says Colligan. “My real hope is that the corporate world will be struck by the launching movement and that we will see some real changes in the way that it is structured.”

In the meantime, LWL will keep encouraging women to make bold moves. As their book asks, “How long can you stand to let your dreams go unnoticed?”

Learn more at www.ladieswholaunch.com.

 

 

Courtney E. Martin is a writer, teacher, and chick pea enthusiast who lives in Brooklyn. She is also the author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (Simon &Schuster, 2007). You can read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.

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