Sitting in on a HerBusiness Online Roundtable was an entirely different and immensely enriching experience for me. As a young university student with a background in writing and virtually no business training, I had no idea what to expect from a business consulting webinar. I was pleasantly surprised, however, with the amount of value that I found in the online session.
The Roundtable started with a round of introductions. Each attending HerBusiness member stated her name, her company, and her ideal clientele. I was delighted by the diverse range of businesses and nationalities. One of the women had been living in Toronto and London, Ontario in Canada. It was clear that HerBusiness has been able to help women in Australia and around the world as well.
As I continued watching the progression of the Online Roundtable, I began to realise what the key element of HerBusiness is that sets it apart from other business organisations, and that’s the amount of support that it offers and encourages among its members. I’ve witnessed few things more inspirational than a group of businesswomen uplifting and motivating each other to accomplish all of their goals.
HerBusiness encouraged this type of positive interaction in several ways, one of which was the list of ‘agreements’ that were presented at the beginning of the webinar. These agreements set the guidelines for interactions between the women, and helped establish a safe and positive environment for them to discuss their ideas and issues with their businesses. These agreements included the encouragement of the women to ask for as well as offer support for one another, acknowledge each other’s successes, offer constructive feedback, respect confidentiality, and seek to avoid conflicts of interest.
The businesswomen continued to become increasingly more comfortable with one other, and as they all learned more about each other’s respective businesses, there was talk of collaborations and even the suggestion of joint ventures by moderator and CEO of HerBusiness, Suzi Dafnis.
Again, the sheer excitement and motivation that these women had to help each other and work together was something truly amazing, and HerBusiness does a fantastic job of providing an outlet to support this.
Another element of value that this Online Roundtable had to offer was the number of interactive exercises that were provided for these women. The goal of this particular Roundtable was to help each of them conceptualise a specific system that they could implement to improve their business.
These exercises included a brainstorming session in which each member presented a specific topic or issue that they could use more support with, and were given detailed directions as well as a helpful template to fill out that would assist them in executing these systems.
Another exercise that the women completed involved a reflection upon their future goals and what they’d like to accomplish with their new system in the next three months. The women discussed these goals and visions, and offered suggestions to help one another achieve them.
There were many other aspects of this Online Roundtable that I found to be beneficial to all of the members that participated. Quotes from other members of the HerBusiness community involving the difficulties they had been facing were presented during the session. This not only allowed the participating members to reflect upon their position on these issues, but it also provided them with comfort in knowing that they were not alone in struggling.
There was also talk of potential future sessions that would be based on a more comprehensive covering of subjects that had been frequently discussed, such as the intimidating topic of cold calling.
Suzi Dafnis was also very helpful in offering her advice from her many years of experience in the entrepreneurial industry, simultaneously confirming her credibility while again letting the women know that they were not alone in their struggles. In addition to this, she offered plenty of recommendations and resources to the members to support them in their future endeavours.
There’s no questioning the value that an Online Roundtable such as this can have for a budding businesswoman. The amount of support that one can receive is unparalleled and priceless. Suzi Dafnis ended the Roundtable by asking everyone what they took away from the session. I, for one, took away so much more than I could have asked for.
Learn more about the HerBusiness Roundtables here.
This article was co-authored by Cara Albert. She is currently completing a journalism internship at HerBusiness and pursuing a degree in Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida in the United States.
