Meghann Conter
Founder & Chief Laugh Instigator at The Dames, LLC
Website Address: https://thedames.co
25 year motivational speaker and author Snowden McFall (www.firedupnow.com) welcomes outstanding first coast women leaders to this uplifting and interesting show, filled with practical advice and tips for women. Today, Snowden talks to Meghann Conter from The Dames, LLC.
Meghann Conter empowers women-led organizations to leap over revenue targets, grow professionally and personally, and form meaningful collaborative relationships as marketing strategy coach & founder of The Dames, an international community that celebrates and connects business owners and high-level leaders in nonprofits, corporations and government organizations.
To learn more check out https://thedames.co.
Tell us about The Dames.
Yes. So we’re an international organization for high-performing women in business who run their own six or seven figure companies and/or women who are in director and V.P. roles at large corporations and nonprofits. We are full of laughter and fun and connection and all kinds of good things.
So you bring together all these fabulous women and what does the organization itself do?
Yes. We’re all about connection first, specifically strategically match-making our members. So my belief first and foremost is that as women business owners we don’t want to do things alone and we are much stronger in community, especially in strong community of like-minded women, women who are in similar stages of business, where we can really help each other mastermind some of the challenges in business but then also be great referral partners for one another and just be giving each other the resources that we need in order to grow our businesses. So we’re an international company and we match a lot of our business owners strategically based on whether they’re B2B, B2C, what kinds of target audiences they share, and a whole bunch of other different factors that we bring into the offering.
And to be a member, is there an application process? Do women have to submit financials? How does that all work?
Yes, there is an application process and it is on the honor system, but they do have to report their annual revenue for the last couple of years as well as tell us about whether they would be a culture fit with us or not. We are definitely collaboration first. We don’t want our members to be coming in and thinking that this is a traditional network where you’re coming in to hunt for clients. We say no business card stabbing in this network. We’re all about finding those power partner relationships that are going to be strong and long lasting and are going to really help you as you grow your business.
I know, obviously, collaboration. I’ve heard that several times from you. Besides that do you have guiding principles and values for the organization?
Yes, we do. Yes. So fun and love are our top two values. And ever since the beginning when I started this organization, we were just a fledgling here in Denver, Colorado, with really amazing events that are completely different than anything else because we start all of our events with a female comedian, improv troupe, or humor-forward speaker to really help all of us typically stressed out, overwhelmed women to get out of serious and come together and connect more authentically. So that’s really what brings us together. We’re a community full of huggers and high fivers which now, of course, has turned into waving at each other on Zoom or fist bumping when we occasionally get to see each other. But then we also are all about flexibility. So there are all kinds of wrenches that get thrown at us in business and if we are so set on things being a very certain way or being rigid, we’re just going to make ourselves even more stressed out all the time. And fearless collaboration is another one of our values. Again, it’s about that understanding that we are abundant in and of ourselves, and that if we can believe that the universe is abundant and everybody else around us is, then collaboration becomes a whole heck of a lot easier and we can get rid of that old competition of the past that never was really natural to us as women anyways. And we can also look at our last value which is mentorship. So we bring in women. We have about 35% of our community is women who run seven figure businesses because we are on a mission to get more women to the seven figure mark and more women into the C-Suite. So we have this amazing cadre of women who are running seven figure companies that just love to give back and mentor in a way that we’ve made it very easy for them so that it’s not extremely time consuming.
So how many members do you have, Meghann?
We are over 300 members and we have local chapters in Denver, Fort Collins, Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, Phoenix Scottsdale, Arizona, and we’re opening one in San Diego this next month. And then we have members all around the world.
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