Picture this: You’re driving the kids to school, they’re screaming at each other in the back of the minivan, and all you can think about is the crazy day that lies ahead with soccer, laundry and grocery shopping.
But into the back of your mind creeps that little daydream you’ve had for years: the idea of opening up that perfect little shoe shop where you could work for … well, yourself.
Whether women are stuck in corporate jobs they hate or they’ve had their own business for 20 years, Ladies Who Launch offers those with a business dream a chance to develop it online and in local incubator sessions.
The group’s incubators are four-week workshops for two hours each week that are designed to move the projects forward, said Melody Biringer, state leader for Ladies Who Launch.
Each woman presents her project to the group during the first week. For the next three weeks, everyone in the group does exercises to move them all forward.
“You can always see more for other people than you can do for yourself,” Biringer said. “Other people’s vision for you is much greater than your own. It helps you be creative by being creative yourself.”
Biringer, owner of Crave – a national party business where women can get together and eat, shop and receive spa services at one venue – heard about the program from a friend. When she checked out the Web site, the name caught her attention, since she had always wanted to bring a very different, cool women’s network to the area, she said.
Ladies who Launch incubators had been going on for three years in New York. Biringer wanted to bring them to women in the Puget Sound area. In February 2004, she did just that.
Michael V. Martina / The Herald
Sheryl Mann of Snohomish went to the incubator workshops. A frustrated herbalist who had a practice for a while, she describes the incubators as a fancy name for a think tank with like-minded women.
“I wanted to put my products in the Oscar goody bags,” Mann said. “When I went in there, I said, ‘I don’t know how it’s going to happen but this is what I want to do.’”
There were about 12 women in Mann’s group. Some worked in the world of marketing, some with computers and some in the business world.
“In a strange way, you have an entire team to help you,” Mann said.
She presented her idea, and the other women gave her 12 versions of what she could do.
“The group offers honest, compassionate opinions about your project,” Mann said.
Mann liked the unique, feminine approach to the workshops, where women were honest and told each other what they could see the other doing or not doing.
By the end of the four weeks, Mann had a product representative, she had products in stores from Canada to Oregon, and she had a Web site.
“It got to the point it was so big I couldn’t keep up with it,” she said.
Mann now owns C’est La La and makes chocolate lavender soaps and bath products, which she sells to day spas and small boutiques. She had to move from her small business space back into her house until she can find a bigger outlet to accommodate the addition of classes.
Leighanne Preuss of Everett was thinking of expanding her interior design business. Her experience at the incubator sessions made her concentrate on being a consultant specializing in color.
“I work under my own name,” Preuss said. “Through (Ladies Who Launch), I went from interior design to straight color consulting.”
The incubator workshops helped Preuss bring her ideas to fruition.
“Everyone in there is so full of ideas,” she said. “Maybe you just have a small seed of an idea, but it feels halfway done to you.”
People tend to think of their own limitations. A group can dream something bigger for you, she said.
She enjoyed gleaning information on how to market a business and making connections.
“Most important, it’s about having a small idea and making it bigger and better in ways you never thought of before,” Preuss said.
One woman in the class had always dreamed of opening a kick-boxing studio. Preuss recently received a call with information on the studio’s grand opening.
Preuss herself is more focused on her specific consulting than she was before. She works with builders and has built her business by word of mouth.
“I’d gladly knock on doors and tell people what colors they need,” Preuss said. “But it’s great having someone pay me to do it.”
Biringer says incubator sessions are for all women who have business ideas or who want to get started on a project but feel stuck.
“You never know who you are sitting next to,” Biringer said. “The networking is incredible.”
Biringer was one of the featured ladies on the national Ladies Who Launch Web site in June.
“I’m still talking to people all over the country about that,” she said.
She sees women come to the incubators with ideas they haven’t had the confidence to tell others about.
“Something magical happens,” Biringer said. By the end of the incubators she’s asking them, “Are you the same person we met four weeks ago?”
Christina Harper is a former Herald writer who is now a freelance writer.
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