So, the other night, I was invited to a wonderful dinner with some incredible women and it had a profound impact on my thinking (which is why I’m sharing with you all).
I was invited along by this powerhouse woman – Sahar Hashemi OBE – who has founded this amazing movement called Buy Women Built, now if you haven’t already heard of it you need to go and look it up…
You’ll have heard the statistic that less than 2% of investment goes to women founded businesses (it’s actually WAY lower than that at the moment) and there’s so much research around why women founded businesses are actually less risky and more likely to succeed than male-founded ones. However despite this, it’s so hard for women to raise investment to support their businesses to take off and grow.
So Sahar made it her mission to help do something about this and her sentiment is that whilst many people might not have the ability to invest in female entrepreneurs, everyone can contribute by purchasing from female founded businesses – closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship, supporting our women entrepreneurs and helping to inspire future generations of female business leaders.
Last night she brought together a group of inspirational woman founders – some of whom had received investment, others who had never managed, some who had exited their businesses but all who had incredible stories to tell and share with each other openly and honestly in the hope that their experiences could help shape other women’s paths – women they didn’t know and only met that evening.
Because that’s what women do. We have empathy and compassion, we share and nurture, we pave the way so that other women can follow the path we trail-blazed, and it was so inspiring to sit in that room in the company of some absolutely incredible entrepreneurs and witness the collaboration and openness and drive to help support.
I came away with my tank well and truly filled up, feeling inspired and driven to do more to raise awareness of the cause and mission. Sahar has built a network now of over 2,000 businesses, and they are making waves and changing consumer spending behaviours and it’s incredible.
Go look them up!