Co-founders of the 'Female Founder Collective,' Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt, join Cheddar News to discuss this year's 'Female Founders Day' conference in Austin, Texas. 

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'Female Founder Collective' Co-Founders Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt Welcome Back 'Female Founders Day' Conference in Texas

Welcome back to tuned bells, everyone. Beginning as a network of businesses led by women supporting women. Female founder collective is aiming to continue to offer carefully curated content and resources for future focused women. The company is returning. It's female founders Day conference in person beginning today with a slate of huge and impactful speakers joining us now are founders of the female founder Collective Designer Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt Ladies welcome to the show. Such a pleasure to have you on and Rebecca, welcome back. I know you've been on the show a few times. So the theme this year is stars align. I love that Rebecca, this will be the first event after a two year hiatus through the pandemic. How does this year's theme perfectly fit the returned event? You know, it really felt like with timing with things slowing down with omicron and women wanting to get together and be a community together, that the Stars did align, that we could come together in austin texas and revive ourselves. It's been a long, hard two years and the power of being in person together is overwhelmingly inspiring. So that's why we called the Stars line because it all worked out. I love that and Allison the pandemic, as we know disproportionately affected women in the world. How will this year's female founders Day conference impact those who are attending while it's in person or even virtually well you had a lot of of new founders step into the world after they got knocked out of the workforce, they actually decided to take their future into their own hands and start their own businesses. So we wanted to give them the groundwork and the tools to really build them out. So that's why this is super educational in nature, but also another reason um that we actually switched things up is to inspire confidence back into women today and we actually have partnered with Dove to have an entire track that is filled with individuals talking about different aspects of confidence, from grit to resilience to being able to um, speak on in a, in a public setting as well as go to raise capital from investors. The event, ladies has officially started, you're in austin texas a south by southwest. I'm actually leaving for Austin right after this show, I can't wait to be there. You've already spoken with Camila Alves, McConaughey at the event earlier today, what do you hope attendees gain from this Rebecca? I'll pose a question to you, You know what, there is so much knowledge to be gained and I think you're already dealing with women who have taken matters into their own hands. They're running their own companies, but there always exists a gap from when you started your passion to the actual, oh my gosh, I had no idea this is what I needed to know to run a business, so because we're coming covering so many subjects, you know, financial, marketing, e commerce, gratitude, confidence, I think women will come away kind of filling in all the holes that were stopping them from getting, you know, to the next level up on their career Allison on the heels of the great resignation. How do you think a sense of community impacts all these new founders and budding entrepreneurs aiming to start their businesses? Well, I think community is the only thing that got us all through the pandemic, even though we weren't together in person, physically, we're very excited to be physically here together today, sitting very close and um and these women were very much seeing that, but they've learned how to adapt and to find other people that are aligned with their same values, aligned with their same goals, so they can actually help each other move forward and actually learn how to ask for help to ask for certain things to um to move their business and as well as their personal lives forward. Yeah, we all know how important it is to network with other women Rebecca how do you guys curate the list of speakers to fit this year's theme? I'm sure it's pretty hard whittling them down. It's extraordinarily hard to whittle them down. We ask our community, we say, what do you need, where can we fill in the holes? And we really build the programming around that mentality. And so we reach out to the best of the best. Once we have those answers and try to make it an incredibly diverse and also women of different stages of companies because they have so much knowledge and we have founders of different stages and so we want to make sure that they feel like they can actually actualize the advice they're being given. The female founder collective is a platform, as you guys know, for connections education and pathways to for funding for 14,000 women and not just in our country but around the globe, which is very impressive. How is your company impacting the way women are now entering the workplace Allison? So we want to give them the toolkit that they need and and the great thing is, is because we have 14,000 plus women, they're all talking about exactly that right, what are their pain points as Rebecca was talking about? So whether it is, they're trying to figure out what is the best crm for their business or they are trying to figure out how to balance their time better with their partners or to be able to set an entirely new schedule or figure out working from home when their entire career, they might have been working from an office. These are all new things that we're learning together and we have to, since there's no sort of right answer or expert on it to be able to share that information. So our forum really is a platform for that where people have different conversations in different spaces around the key topics that are most sort of burning questions for for them Rebecca is the pandemic subsides more women are joining the workforce. What's next for the female founder Collective? Oh my gosh! Um we'd be here all day if we could share that with you, but we really want to grow and foster our private membership. It's called the 10th house. It's in astrology, the symbol of business entrepreneurship and inspiration. And so we can get more focus, we can get women of the same size and stage, same company all in the boardroom together sharing again and I think we can unlock so much more potential when they're all together in a room. Um and then you know, I've entered the metaverse, FFC will be entering the metaverse with something to be announced soon on the N. F. T. And token side. So we're excited to bring more females into that community because right now it is heavily male dominated. All right, well I'll be heading to Austin in a few hours, enjoy, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks to the founders of the female founder collective Rebecca Minkoff and Alison Wyatt, Female founders day conference is this weekend March 10th. Like I mentioned in Austin texas