Meet St. Pete Girl Bosses, where women support each other’s businesses

More than 50 women sat in a circle in the lobby of the St. Petersburg City Theater on Friday morning for a meeting of St. Pete Girl Bosses.

The network’s director of communications, Taylor Adams, microphone in hand, wearing pink earrings, entered the circle, saying, “Spin. Let’s do it.” She started the meeting.

“We’re the largest, fastest-growing, sexiest female entrepreneurship group in the Tampa Bay area,” she said of the group. The women around her cheered.

The theater’s auditorium was just down the street from the Chrislip Cafe on Central Avenue, where the St. Pete Girl Bosses had started meeting a year earlier. As word of mouth spread, the networking outgrew the venue – women business owners were coming together to inspire each other in their endeavors.

The St. Pete Girl Leaders Facebook group has gained more than 3,100 members since its launch. Last summer, about 160 people were part of the paid membership program for the first time. The group also launched their own podcast “Boscast” at the end of the year.

As they do every week, the St. Pete women’s leaders meet in the theater hall on Friday mornings to discuss a different topic. In early December, they focused on social media use and other online tools. The meeting began with the leaders introducing the first Wellness Passport, where members can access nearly a dozen life coaches, energy readers or psychics – all of whom are women.

Then they broke into small groups — women from various industries like real estate, coffee bean distribution, CBD retail, yoga, and more — to write advice on pink sticky notes. They shared their notes anonymously with a random person in the room. They discuss their wins of the week, how online tools have helped them run their businesses, and how chasing money can distract from their mission.

As more women come to the network, many members say it’s because they meet people who know them. The group’s sense of community made it a safe place to make friends and get feedback on their work.

Founder Sandy Bean, 45, started the group after transitioning from teacher to owner of an academic enrichment center for gifted students — realizing she was missing community in the process.

While psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs prioritizes security and consistency, Bean says, new entrepreneurs typically invert the pyramid to focus on self-actualization and sacrifice security to reach business goals. Having a supportive community is key to rebuilding those safety nets, she said.

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Bean said she tried other networking groups but struggled to form real friendships. She noticed that some women wouldn’t listen.

“Going to these networking groups, the women, are really talented. But you can’t always talk,” Bean said. “It’s different when you’re in a mixed crowd. I’m not trying to throw guys under the bus or anything, but it’s different.”

So Bean invited five other women she knew to meet at a bar and created a Facebook group, which she “surprisingly” chose the name St. Pete Girl Bosses. She hopes maybe 20 people will sign up. Within days, she said, there were a couple of hundred in the group, then a thousand. Now, there are women who come to meetings from Dunedin, Sarasota and Lakeland.

“We started doing workshops and volunteer events internally and (St. Pete Girl Bosses) quickly turned into a business, which was not something I expected to happen so quickly,” Bean said.

Clara Clayton, a 57-year-old health coach, said many networking groups closed during the Covid-19 period and have not restarted.

Early on, Clayton joined a Facebook group and began attending the Zoom Collaboration sessions. Then she started going to happy hour events before joining the big weekly gatherings.

The team helped her find new clients and get advice when she needed it. She enjoyed St. Pete Girl Bosses so much that she became a brand ambassador for them.

“It’s not just a business card exchange. It’s about making a deep connection.” Clayton said. “It’s not for me to go through cold roads.”

Many local female entrepreneurs struggle with a lack of education in business tasks outside of their knowledge — such as sales, marketing or pricing their products — or in finding investors and resources in the community, said St. Pete Girlit Principal Jennifer Schultz. Vice President and owner of The Crislip and the cafe’s attached gift shop, The Merchant.

“The magic of this group allows me to meet others who are experts in areas that help educate women,” Schultz said. “I never want to be the smartest guy in the room, I want to learn and meet other people who can help other women learn.”

Many women collaborate with each other and visit each other’s stores or book sessions.

A health insurance agent told her small group that every appointment she had in the last seven days was booked by a female boss.

When the Central Avenue home decor and gift shop opened in November, owner Ali Padin credited the team with helping her connect with a commercial real estate agent, a small business attorney and a general contractor — all of which helped her get the business off the ground quickly. Land.

Schultz hosted a pop-up at her shop during the holiday season to support The Roaming Petals, a “girl boss” floral arrangement.

Roaming Petal’s Erika Holland, 29, said the group helped her triple her network in a short period of time and opened up new opportunities to collaborate with other local businesses.

“I run my business by myself, it’s just me,” said Holland, 29. “Having a support system of other people to ask questions of when I need to vent my thoughts or when you’re tired of the craziness of everything has been very helpful in being in entrepreneurship.