Jill Crossland brings over twenty years of business experience to her company. She has the ability to provide perspective for entrepreneurs and business owners. Jill also has a number of authors on her client list because writing a book is just the beginning next comes the business of marketing it. From strategizing, to market research to social media Jill knows how to put all the pieces in place for her clients. www.jbcrossland.com
Entrepreneurs know their path is fairly solitary but we also recognize the importance of finding the right organizations for networking and education. When I arrived in Strathmore over 11 years ago no such group existed for female business owners. Fortunately my inquiries did produce an introduction to Eliza Hogan with Community Futures Wild Rose and Wheatland Business Women came into existence. The third integral person in making this happen was Jeanine Jamieson who handled marketing and branding. With the Boulevard Café in Crystal Ridge providing a meeting place in their side room for a nominal fee we were up and running! This September Wheatland Business Women is ten years old and that is something to be proud of. We have grown a lot in that decade. We became self-sustaining, elected a leadership team each year to handle administrative details and moved our meetings to the Days Inn. Most importantly we established a mandate of ‘Educate, Network, and Connect’. This is what we strived to provide our members. Did we always get it right ‘No’ but we learned from our mistakes, made changes and moved on.
At any given meeting attendees had businesses in start-up phase to those with years behind them and we wanted to ensure everyone’s needs were met. Our first speaker was the dynamic Kari Fulmek, who today owns Equine Connection. With time the speaker roster grew to include Troy White, Michele Cederberg, Ian Hill, Patricia Matthews, Mayor of Chestermere and Amelia Clark, President Old Sun Community College. With our member’s professional diversity been nothing short of staggering; we also tapped into them to provide talks and workshops.
We hosted a day-long women’s workshop and two evening “Women, Wine & Wisdom’ events. These were all successful with requests for more but like so many organizations we found them overly time consuming. We decided to concentrate all our efforts on making sure each monthly meeting was focused, supportive and informative.
Today our legacy is business women who no longer feel isolated, speakers who inspired them to make positive changes and members sharing their expertise with one another.
I use the word legacy because we have decided to close our doors. There are many reasons behind this long thought out decision but we don’t end quietly or sadly instead we are “Celebrating 10 Years of Connexions” Monday, October 6, 2014 – 6:00 pm at the Strathmore Travelodge
This retrospective evening celebration of Wheatland Business Women will provide an opportunity for business women & business men to connect. The Keynote Speaker is Profit 500 Entrepreneur Tonia Jahshan; Founder & President of Steeped Tea, Inc.
While I will miss the meetings hopefully as our Chairperson, Marcy Field put so eloquently “Out of the ashes of WBW a new business group may emerge. Perhaps it is time for both male and female businesses persons to share a room once a month with a mission to network, educate and connect.”
For ‘Celebrating 10 Years of Connexions’ information & tickets visit www.businesswomen.ca
