By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 10 Bootstrapping has a good reputation. Work with what you have, keep costs low, figure it out on your own, push through. That approach has real merit — especially at the start. But there is a point in every leader’s growth where the bootstrap stops being resourcefulness and starts being a ceiling. And if you have been in business for any length of

By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 9 You have a vision for what your organization could look like. The events, the reach, the programs, the team. And then you look at what you have in the bank – and the gap between those two things feels like it has no bottom. You may be inclined to shrink the vision. Make it more manageable. Scale it back to something the

By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 8 You are in the middle of something hard. The plan hit a wall. The timeline shifted. The thing you counted on did not come through. And now you are standing in front of an obstacle — the kind of obstacles in leadership that do not care how prepared you were or how much you needed this to work. What you do next

By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD  ·  The Sappari Group Originally explored on the Victoria & Nettie LinkedIn Live — Episode 7 Event marketing for women leaders starts long before anyone walks through the door. You have planned the agenda. You have the venue, and you have a vision for what this event could be. And then the question arrives: is anyone actually going to show up? How do I actually get butts in seats? Event marketing is an almost universal challenge

The Complete Guide to Delivering a Successful Live Event By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group Originally explored on the Victoria & Nettie LinkedIn Live — Episode 6 Getting people to register is one challenge. Delivering a successful live event that makes them glad they came — and eager to come back — is an entirely different one. Most event organizers spend the majority of their preparation energy on marketing and logistics. The agenda gets built in the final days. The

By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD  ·  The Sappari Group Originally explored on the Victoria & Nettie LinkedIn Live — Episode 5 There is a particular kind of stuck that does not look like stuck from the outside. Your calendar is full. You are delivering results. People respect your work. And yet underneath all of it, there is a persistent, nagging sense that you are not quite where you are supposed to be — that something bigger is waiting, and you cannot

Originally explored on the Victoria & Nettie LinkedIn Live — Episode 4 Few professional experiences sting quite like low event attendance. You planned for weeks, maybe months. You built the agenda, drafted the emails, posted on social media, confirmed the venue, and showed up early to make sure everything was right. And then you stood there — in a room that was mostly empty — and tried to figure out what went wrong. If you have been there, you know

There is a version of business ownership that looks like dedication from the outside but feels like slow suffocation from the inside. You work constantly. Generosity flows from you freely . You say yes when you should say no, charge less than you’re worth, and pour every available hour into serving clients — leaving almost nothing for the actual development of the business itself. And underneath it all, there’s a missing foundation: sustainable business pricing. It looks noble. However, it

There is a question that follows a lot of women leaders into the boardroom, the event planning meeting, the late night before a big launch, and the rare quiet moment between commitments: “If I take time for myself right now, does that make me selfish?” This is the central tension in self-care for women leaders. If you have felt that guilt — the kind that makes you eat lunch at your desk, push through exhaustion, and wonder whether your needs