¤ Field Notes from the Feminist Economy

¤ Field Notes from the Feminist Economy

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Tag: Shecosystem

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LIISBETH DISPATCH #48

“Comfort & Joy” photo by: Jack Jackson

VIEWPOINT

Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

That’s how I felt standing next to Gloria Steinem in Toronto last week. Steinem is now eighty-four years old and still wearing boots with five-inch heels.

The woman is beyond inspiration.

A powerful voice for feminism, as well as a professional and personal governance role model extraordinaire, Steinem makes no apologies about her views on patriarchy as a persistent rapacious force of devastation for both half the planet and the environment. She is genuine when she says she wants to (still) change the ridiculous situation in the US.

And at a time of year that can be a bowl of mixed nuts for many, it was grounding to hear the words from a woman who never gave up on the movement or the fight. She’s been ridiculed, criticized, heckled, and slammed for her ideas of equality and fairness. But she kept going, continually unearthing, learning, leveraging her incredible humanity, creativity, and wicked wit to advance gender equality.

During the panel session which followed her keynote, Steinem was asked if she believed that a gender just world would be possible by 2030. Seven hundred of us attending the “Courage of A Movement” event waited in suspense.

After a few moments, she replied “I’m a hopeaholic. Yes, we do need to be realistic. But I do think hope is kind of planning. I have to say that part of the good thing about being old and I am very old, is that we remember when it was worse. We can all see how bonkers [patriarchy] is and that’s why we need to work together-the young and the old. 

We each have something to bring. So I’ll bring hope. You bring anger. And there’s no stopping us.”

Wow. With that, I left feeling joyous and full of ambition for 2019.

Read the full VIEWPOINT here.

THIS WEEK ON LIISBETH 

The Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum 2018 snapshot review by Jack Jackson.
Music credit: This Changing Life by Joan Armatrading

What the EFF? Wow. The 2018 Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum was a jam-packed two days of provocative talks, lab sessions, “think and do” workshops, movement classes, and creative writing practice. Overall theme? CONNECT + TAKE ACTION. We’ll have a full report next year but for now, check out these SIX action items from the forum here.

Shecosystem coworking and wellness space, Toronto, Canada

If you’re working at an organization that is closing, the story of Shecosystem shutting their doors might give you renewed hope and a different perspective. As we usher in a new year, perhaps identifying what needs to end, change, or be “shecomposted” in your business (or life!) is worth a closer look. Read Sue Nador’s piece on how shecomposting is fertilizing new ground here.

It’s Campaign Season! If you think our advocacy for women and gender-non conforming entrepreneurs is worthy, or you find our content of value professionally, we hope you will consider contributing to our 2018 Patreon Fund Raising Campaign. Each online magazine refresh and newsletter takes a community to create and disseminate. We have 2000+ subscribers, but less than 30% contribute financially. We are open access and rely 100% on reader donations. Our impact is measurable. So if social justice and economic transformation are on your intentions and gratitude list this year, here’s your chance to donate to LiisBeth.

LIISBETH FIELD NOTES 

Carol Anne Hilton speaks at the EFF 2018 on Indigenomics

When Giants Break Free-A New Reality for Indigenous Relations in Canada

On Dec 5th, EFF speaker Carol Anne Hilton’s report on the indigenous economy in Canada and its potential to reach $100B by 2023 was released. The report says that if achieved, “total Aboriginal income would be greater than the level of nominal GDP of Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island combined.” Hilton is the founder of the Indigenomics Institute, an economic advisory group launched in 2018 that works with public governments, Indigenous communities, and the private sector to overcome economic barriers imposed on Indigenous communities. You can read the full report here.

Photo credit: www.isachandra.com

Vegan Egg Nog?

Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the best-selling author of Isa Does It and Veganomicon, and her restaurant Modern Love has locations in Omaha and Brooklyn. Her recipes are equals parts humour and delight. Cheers to Isa’s Matrioshka Eggnog recipe for a creative twist on a holiday favourite!

Huge kudos to Christina Zeidler, Chief Alchemist and founder of Toronto’s hottest art hotel, the Gladstone Hotel, and their entire staff for developing and implementing a feminist business framework that guides business decision making and operational practice.  Zeilder and her colleague, Chris Mitchell presented their framework and the journey undertaken to get there at the recent Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum. You can read more about feminist business practice at the Gladstone here. Better yet–just go and stay there! You will feel the difference.

Food Starter entrepreneur Eden and founder of Coco and Al  promoting her Keto friendly baked goods at Food Starter’s booth at the St. Lawrence Farmer’s Market

One-Eyed Innovation Mindset At Work

On Dec 11th, Ontario’s only food processing startup incubator, Food Starter, announced the need to close its doors by January 31st, 2019, leaving 160 self-employed food entrepreneurs and growth stage companies without accessibly to well-priced food processing resources and a place to make their products. Over 65% of Food Starter’s clients were women and 80% were people of colour and/or newcomers. Programming which supported their market feasibility assessments and commercialization will also cease.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, McMaster University announced another $1M in federal funding to expand its tech incubator. Down south, the city of Chicago proudly announced the opening of a new, 67,000 square foot, $34M food and beverage incubator known as “The Hatchery” — with shared kitchens, storage, and office space for roughly 100 startups.

Let’s be clear. Food Starter had sustainability issues from its inception—and not all of them were related to funding. They were however, not intractable. A longer runway would have gone a long way to provide the time needed to sort them out.

The enterprise needed just $500K per year to continue to advance food entrepreneurship in Toronto and beyond.  That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money poured into tech incubation–and conferences like Elevate in Toronto –and across the country every year.

You can’t eat a computer. Just sayin’.

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

NEW! LIISBETH STORY VOTE 

HEY!  HAVE YOUR SAY! 

We receive MANY queries and asked you last month to choose your favourite from our top 3 but…only got ONE vote 🙁 

So let’s give it another try!

Below are the top 3 story ideas we’ve received recently: VOTE HERE  for your TOP PICK.
OR tell us what you want to read in LiisBeth 2.019!

1. The Duality of Entrepreneurial “Struggle Porn” and Unseen Women’s Labor from a business owner in the gaming industry
2. Portrait of Swedish Feminist Party leader Gudrun Shyman
3. Women are the backbone of Africa’s labor force but lack of opportunities to advance. Why a conducive environment for African women to thrive makes sense.

FEMINIST FREEBIES

LAST CALL! 2 x SIGNED COPIES of Gender Physics by Betty-Ann Heggie. Share our Patreon page on the social media platform of your choice and email us your mailing address here and you got yourself a sweet holiday read.

WHAT WE’RE READING 

Essential for everyone who feels overwhelmed and anxious about our hyper-connected world—whether you’re a corporate lawyer, a student, a sales person, or a yoga instructor—How to Not Always Be Working includes practical suggestions and thoughtful musings that prompt you to honestly examine your behavior—how you burn yourself out and why you’re doing it. A creative manifesto for living better, it shows you how to carve sacred space in your life. This book is a quiet revolution, a guide filled with practical advice to help you curb your obsessions and build boundaries between your work, your job, and your life. – Indiebound.org
Marlee Grace lives on the rural coast of California. She works with improvisation as a method for navigating being alive and making work through movement, quilting, writing, and podcasting.

By effortlessly telling this short, intense tale in the voice of an unnamed, ungendered (and brilliantly unreliable) narrator, Dionne Brand makes a bold statement not only about love and personhood, but about race and gender–and what can and cannot be articulated in prose when the forces that inhabit the space between words are greater than words themselves. – Penguin Random House Canada

“Theory is a book for those who are intrigued by how a brilliant thinker approaches lost love, unmet potential and unreliable narration. But if none of that appeals to you, Brand’s gorgeous prose and sly humour will definitely win you over. ” – Sadiya Ansari, The Star

AND FINALLY . . . IN CASE YOU MISSED IT! 

  • New $9M Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub Announced!  And the Hub grant was given to Ryerson University. What do people think? Read all about it here.

  • Women human rights defenders are under threat worldwide and Amnesty International has chosen to focus all of this year’s Write for Rights cases on courageous women peacefully advocating for human rights. December 10th was International Human Rights Day but the Writeathon.ca continues. Take action here

  • On the lighter side, looking for something different to make for dessert this holiday season? Check out this amazing sweet potato pie recipe by Eden Hagos, founder of Black Foodie. Brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, sweet potatoes…mmmmm.

  • Jennifer Armbrust, founder of Sister and an L.A. based feminist business school and a coach for embodied business practice has launched a new book called Proposals for the Feminine Economy! Check out her website and the book which offers 100 pages of proposals, principles and photos here.  

  • Baby, It’s Cold Outside Controversy–Innocent Traditional Song? Or Precursor to Date Rape? “I think the song has always been creepy, but we didn’t have the words to explain why,” said Lydia Liza, 24, a singer-songwriter. Check out this New York Times article and let us know what you think by tweeting us @LiisBethHQ 

That brings us to the end of our December newsletter, the last of 2018! It’s time for the LiisBeth team –and you–to take a break, allow time for self care and reflect on where to take this work in 2019.

To date, we have published 49 newsletters and 168 original feminist business practice stories along with advocacy pieces to help shine a light on this growing community. We have mounted two Entrepreneurial Feminist Forums with our partner, Feminists At Work, and have loved every minute of serving this community and others, working to advance gender and social justice.

As our holiday offering this year, the LiisBeth editorial team (Lana, Margaret and I) donated $200 to help advance the mission of Match International-an international women’s fund working at the intersection of women’s rights and innovation.

Thank you all for your support, volunteer time, feedback, participation, and encouragement. We could not continue to do this work with out you and your readership.

Have a great holiday season, no matter what you celebrate.

We will be back mid-January–with pens and hearts a blazin’–and a lot of good news for 2019!

Namaste, Cheers, and Peace,

Categories
Transformative Ideas

When Feminist Coworking Space Shecosystem Shuts Its Doors, “Shecomposting” Fertilizes New Ground

Shecosystem coworking and wellness space, Toronto.
Shecosystem: Coworking and Wellness space, Toronto

“I’ve actually been pulling this card a lot lately,” says Emily Rose Antflick. She shows me the purple Tarot card of Rhiannon the Sorceress, sitting atop her white unicorn under the moonlight. Antflick, a 36-year-old redhead, reads me the caption at the bottom: “You are a magical person who can manifest your clear intentions into reality.” This is a comforting message for Antflick. These winks from the universe re-assure her that she is on the right path.

We are sitting in Antflick’s living room, not far from the old office of Shecosystem at Bloor and Christie in Toronto. Antflick closed the feminist coworking space she founded in 2015 this past August. She describes this as the “shecompost” process. Composting turns decaying matter into nutrients to feed new life. While Shecosystem as a physical space is no more, its seeds are taking root elsewhere.

Shecosystem was a bright, beautiful space where entrepreneurship blossomed under feminist values. Tarot cards were just one part of Shecosystem feminist practices. Each morning, members gathered in a circle of guided meditation and expressed an intent for the day based on the card they pulled. “It was about being able to witness each other, hold space for each other,” Antflick says. But the physical space, with its heavy operational demands, was zapping Antflick’s creativity and joy. “The ‘rational’ voice –quote, unquote—says: well, just suck it up,” says Antflick. “This is entrepreneurship.” She decided to listen to the other voice. The one that told her to trust her feelings, to listen to her body.

Closing Shecosystem was a complex decision

Antflick’s identity was rooted in its soil, which was growing thin. After months of reflection, and sharing her feelings in the morning circles, her decision was made. She thought: “This is something that deserves gravity, to be marked and to be witnessed.” So an ordained Jewish priestess conducted a Havdalah ceremony. Havdalah marks the end of the Sabbath, the break between the holy day and the profane. “There were candles and spices and wine,” Antflick says. These symbols drew people to recall their sweet memories and what had been illuminated for them at Shecosystem. “I just lay on the floor in the studio and cried,” Antflick says. People joined her. “It turned into this big cuddle puddle on the floor and then we left.”

Of course, at this time of transition, people wanted to jump in and offer solutions. Antflick was clear with her community that she was not seeking advice about her decision, or the possibilities for the future. She had learned her lesson before. “When you put out a general call for help, it just ends up being this whirlwind of really uncentered advice,” she says. Nobody ever told her: “Oh, let me hook you up with an investor,” she laughs. What she did need from her community was an understanding of how Shecosystem had an impact on their lives.

Antflick initiated one-on-one conversations to capture and document key moments in Shecosystem’s legacy. With one member, she drew all the connections on a whiteboard, with separate branches for clients, friends, and the collaborations that had formed within the ecosystem. The network was extensive. “One of the fantasies that I’ve had is actually putting together a network map where I can see what all those [connections] were,” Antflick says.

These conversations also helped quiet her inner critic. Many told her that she was what made Shecosystem such a unique and special place. It’s been hard for Antflick to acknowledge just how much good she has done. She is conscious of her privileges—a white, cisgender, hetero woman from an affluent family. She was in a financial position to take the kind of risk that opening Shecosystem required. But, she often felt that this invalidated everything she was doing because she hadn’t hustled hard enough. The feedback from her community helped: “Being able to value myself, the work that I’ve done, and the courage that it took.”

Shecosytem online: the next generation of Shecosisters

Shecosystem remains an active virtual community, with a broader mission of bringing a more feminine balance into the working world. One of the members started a Facebook group called “Shecosisters Seeking A New Home.” Antflick thought a good way to help was to offer to facilitate the morning circles at other coworking spaces. She did this for free, in exchange for her members getting a free day pass. “If I think that it’s something that’s going to have an impact on people, why be proprietary about it?” she says. She wonders whether sometime in the future she will market Shecosystem’s practices to corporations. She understands the value she brings.

For now, Antflick is resisting the temptation to jump to the next thing. “It’s hard to shake traditional expectations,” she says. “Our work becomes so inextricably tied to our identity.” Instead, she is allowing herself to be in the “goo” – the imaginal phase between the chrysalis and the caterpillar. She has decided to escape the noise of the city this winter. She is heading to a quiet place, close to nature. She will listen to her intuition and make space for creativity.

The shecomposting continues.

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Related Articles

https://www.liisbeth.com/2016/03/11/why-shecosystem-is-my-system/

 

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Uncategorized

Selling Up, Moving Up

 

 

When co-founder of Women on the Move Heather Gamble introduces herself to me following a networking workshop at the Dundas Street West co-working space, she describes how she “climbed up the AT&T corporate ladder” before the age of 35 because she “could sell any early adopter technology.” After leaving her roles in sales and marketing at the company, she launched her first business with Eva Gooderham in 2004. In her first year with their business-to-business marketing firm SalesFuel Inc., she won a $1-million contract with Shaw Communications. Her story sounds to me like a well-rehearsed sales pitch, which I imagine her delivering hundreds of times.

An unapologetic saleswoman, Gamble knows the value of a good story. She insists that every entrepreneur needs sales skills to survive. Gamble models this commercial spirit in her work. Unlike many other organizations geared to female entrepreneurs, she points out that Women on the Move is a for-profit enterprise. “We don’t believe that if we’re teaching women entrepreneurs to make money that we should be non-profit. That’s hilarious,” Gamble says. “You cannot build a business on government grants and loans. If you really want to build a business, we can start you off. And we start you off by saying sales is number one.”

This approach to business makes some women uneasy. After opening their business accelerator (a co-working space, business training program, community network and venture capital fund) in January 2015, Gamble and co-founder Nicola Morgan discovered their biggest hurdle has been changing women’s negative connotations with sales. “This is what we see: women in particular have an aversion to selling,” Gamble explains. “The stigma is [that] in sales you have to be aggressive, you have to be manipulative.” Morgan suggests the solution to this problem is to make the medicine taste good. “The way we have overcome it is by showing them it’s not what they think it is. Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm.” The two longtime friends met at Carleton University back in 1981. Between Gamble and Morgan, a former Arthur Murray Dance Studio franchisee, they have accrued around 35 years of experience training people in sales. As Gamble explains it, she observed a market need for their endeavour, and, being a serial opportunist, decided to take advantage of the opening. “I saw more women going into entrepreneurship, and I saw more women not being successful, and I saw more women going back to that job they didn’t like.”

Data collected by Statistics Canada shows that women small business owners had less revenue growth than men (57.7 per cent compared to 62.4 percent) between 2009 to 2011. According to Forbes Magazine, only 2 percent (4 percent in Canada) of female-owned businesses in the United States reach $1 million in revenues while male-owned businesses were 3.5 times as likely to do so. Gamble lays the blame more on women’s own inhibitions than on systemic discrimination, noting that women tend not to speak up when men are around. “I felt it was imperative to give women their own place and space for them to say what they really believe, come up to the table and be fully engaged participants,” she explains. In terms of preparing students for the reality of life outside of the training, Morgan says they assess what skills each individual might require and focus on helping them understand and sell effectively to both male and female buyers. While women often take a more complex approach, when men are doing business, “it’s just business,” says Morgan. “We do work with women to (help them) understand how men think and that they do think a little bit differently than we do. So, really, it’s all about understanding your buyer, whoever that buyer may be,” she explains. “Men don’t really care how you feel,” but women, generally speaking, are much more focused on their feelings, according to Morgan.

Women on the Move member Michelle Isocianu and co-owner of Board Again Games happened upon the space when she was searching for a location to rent out for board game nights and ended up registering as a student in the She Factory business training program. She says the course has taught her “basic business 101 stuff” and how to apply that specifically to her own enterprise.

But it has been the support of fellow participants and the instructors that has benefited Isocianu most. “It’s nice to know that other people are going through the same thing,” she says, adding that the course has helped her to increase revenue and make wiser investment decisions. “I think going back every week and Heather being like, ‘You’re perfect and you’re great,’ – as cheesy as it may be – it does give you the confidence,” she says. “I certainly have gotten the confidence to put a value on what I do.” Isocianu admits that at first she was intimidated by the “all women kind of approach,” but now sees the critical need for such a place.

The She Factory is an intensive training program that runs weekly from September to June. Although students can be anywhere in business development, from just starting out to two years in, Morgan urges women to enlist sooner rather than later. It incorporates elements of sales and business education for women entrepreneurs, with individual classes starting at $40 and personalized coaching that is tailored to individual budgets.

Gamble’s initial mission was to train 10,000 women by 2020 and position them each on their “$1-million path” within three years. One of their first students, a business consultant in the mining sector, saw her business jump from $400,000 to $2-million in revenue after just one year. But their latest training session, which ran from September to June, brought in just 25 women. “It takes time to build a business,” admits Morgan, explaining they pour whatever financial resources they have into rent rather than marketing, which she notes can also be costly. They hope to increase their numbers by taking their business on the road — or rather the train — for a cross-Canada tour that aims to connect and train women entrepreneurs. In June, Women on the Move rolled out its “Save Our Sales” service, an app that offers access to a branding specialist, sales specialist, writing specialist and interpersonal personality specialist. The personality specialist can help business owners understand how to sell to different personality types by communicating and connecting with them more effectively.

Don’t expect their training to include tackling the systematic barriers to equality that women entrepreneurs often face. Morgan herself claims that she has never personally experienced sexism as an entrepreneur; however, she acknowledges that inequality does exist and that women deserve equal opportunity. But she and Gamble choose to focus their efforts on helping women work within existing structures to boost sales and revenue.

“I don’t know that I have to put myself into any particular category,” says Gamble when asked if she would call herself a feminist. “I categorize myself as one thing and that’s a woman on the move.”

Publishers Note: Gamble and Morgan have also launched a new workshop series called Accelerate Your Success. It is held on Wednesdays from 12 – 2 p.m and includes a one hour workshop plus an hour of networking and a catered lunch.  The focus is on developing effective sales and marketing skills with an emphasis on using social media to increase sales and find prospects. Tickets start at $40. You can learn more at www.womenonthemove.club.

 

 

Additional Business Support Groups for Women in Toronto

SheEO: A peer-based venture capital fund for women;
Shecosystem: A community that holds weekly co-working events with a focus on wellness; and
Ember: A co-working space with mentorship opportunities for women.

For a more complete list of supports for women entrepreneurs across Canada, visit http://weoc.ca/ or download their eco-system diagram Womens-Entrepreneurial-Ecosystem_2016_03_01_weoc (1).

Categories
Body, Mind & Pleasure Our Voices

Why Shecosystem is My System

Marni Levitt
Marni Levitt

After yet another teaching assignment in a tough inner-city neighbourhood, I was burned out and took a stress leave. Two weeks in, I joined the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), a co-working space and community launch pad for those who prioritize people and the planet over profits. It was June of 2015. I had just turned 40. And I vowed not to put up with stressful, health-damaging work. I decided it was time to turn my part-time gig at Move-N-Music into the full-time venture I’d always wanted it to be: a social enterprise that uses arts, culture, and creativity to promote mind-body wellness.

When I walked through the doors of CSI in the Annex community of Toronto, the smell of coffee, buzz of energy, and lively conversations hit me so fast I immediately felt at home. Two years prior, I had taken my first real leave of absence to test the waters of entrepreneurship and joined a co-working space designed for artists. The space itself was lovely, peaceful, and beautiful, but the people were rarely there. This didn’t give me what I needed, which was networking and skill development to help me take Move-N-Music to the next level.

At the CSI orientation session, participants ranged in age from 30 to 60, came from diverse backgrounds, and had a wide range of projects, many of which focused on solving ecological problems. One person stood out the most: Emily Rose Antflick. She was tall with long red hair and a down-to-earth demeanour. She talked about a secular girl’s coming-of-age celebration called G-Day, which she helped organize in Vancouver and wanted to bring to Toronto. “Wow,” I told her. “That’s a great idea.” As we chatted more, we discovered we both loved dance and were birthing new—and as yet undefined—enterprises that could be life changing, for ourselves and those we served.

Over the summer I had taken an online course called Feminine Power that helped me build some of the inner structures I needed to create powerful and lasting change in my life and business, such as confidence, faith, resolve, and commitment. But I also needed outer structures like a physical workspace with people who shared similar values and could provide networking, mentoring, and learning opportunities. From that, my hope was to get work and a sense of belonging. Thanks to CSI, I came across exactly what I was looking for: Shecosystem, Antflick’s start-up.

Antflick’s vision for Shecosystem was a bricks-and-mortar co-working, wellness, and mentorship space for women entrepreneurs, essentially a feminist version of CSI. Before investing in a physical building, Antflick decided to start Shecosystem in the form of bi-weekly meetups to grow a supportive community of entrepreneurial women who value work-life integration. Why? Antflick had noticed during business conferences that women were feeling burned out and isolated from working alone. She came to believe that women—and our businesses—flourish when we are part of an inspiring, interconnected, professional ecosystem that nurtures our whole selves. So she set out to design an ecosystem that would speak to women on our terms, that would help us grow, thrive, and redefine the dominant business paradigm. I immediately wanted to join.

On a sunny fall day, I attended an inaugural meetup and joined a full table of businesswomen with diverse expertise, passions, and experience. Some wore suits, others jeans and yoga pants. They ranged from late 20s to 50s and beyond. As each woman shared what she could offer and what she needed to grow her business, it was clear there was a profound desire to connect and help each other.

Antflick had conceived of Shecosystem intuitively, sensing that women entrepreneurs needed something different. But she knew she would not create that perfect thing in a tidy business plan designed to snag venture capital. Rather, she would take things one step at a time, drawing on the concepts of permaculture design to build her enterprise and help other women grow theirs.

Permaculture is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking that embraces diversity and mimics the patterns and relationships found in nature. It can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to technology, education and even economics. As any good gardener knows, good soil is built from diverse organic matter.

Meanwhile, during my own journey, I was starting to question how entrepreneurial programs, co-working spaces, and incubators were serving women in particular. I never even considered looking for incubators or business supports in the mainstream areas because those ways of doing business never resonated for me. Instead, I gravitated towards what felt natural.

During my women’s studies degree at McGill University, I learned to question assumed categories around gender and sexuality, and find the intersections of oppression such as racism, heterosexism, and classism. I understood the cultural, political, and economic bases for inequality and the possible frameworks to overcome them. I discovered how to identify and validate a different voice, a “woman’s way of knowing” inside of myself. Yet I found all of that slipped away when I entered the “real world” of women’s work.

In contrast, Antflick was creating a framework that encouraged real human interaction and connectivity (eye contact and sometimes even hugs!). It’s an antidote to the social isolation that can come with digital revolution. It emphasizes the human side of doing business, which may seem to be unrelated to business goals but is actually essential to the well-being, and consequently productivity, of the person running the enterprise. These deep human connections are also the best ways to make contacts, find resources, test ideas, and ultimately move forward and thrive.

Each two-hour meetup costs $12 ($8 for women who join the Women in Biz Network, a partner of Shecosystem). Even though there’s a guest speaker, it’s loosely structured with time dedicated to ask questions to the mentor, network, and even get work done on laptops. The sessions end with 20 minutes devoted to a wellness activity such as stretching, dancing, or mindfulness, usually led by a Shecosystem member.

Both Shecosystem and CSI have led me to mentors, business courses, supportive community gatherings, resources, ideas and, most incredibly, paying clients. I have been delighted to discover that when I build a supportive structure for myself, new business results. Taking care of “me” means taking care of my business. Indeed, I am building a paradigm of care that will sustain me over the long haul of running Move-N-Music. Every time I attend Shecosystem meetups, I am forming new relationships. And though I may be doing business with people, I am making friends. Who knows what will emerge from this circle of caring?

What I do know is that Antflick and I are part of a growing number of paradigm-exploding women entrepreneurs and leaders who refuse to accept the same old work-until-you-drop and compete-to-beat-your-competitors paradigm that has threatened our modern world, from climate change and ecological destruction to dangerous social and economic inequities. Instead, we are forging a different path towards the glowing possibility of a world that is not only sustainable, but allows humans to thrive in partnership with each other and the natural world. This enables our businesses (and the resources that support them) to enjoy real long-term sustainability and growth.

Shecosystem is a women-led co-working space and community hub in Toronto that blends start-up support and skill development with wellness and mindfulness programming. Move-n-Music, founded by Marni Levitt, uses the arts to build a culture of mindfulness, healthy living, growth, and integration.

 

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