Business Chicks

Dom Farnan
2 min readMay 4, 2019

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This week I had the pleasure of attending the Business Chicks: Knowledge & Study Tour in LA. I spent the week at UCLA Anderson School of Business with 25 other female entrepreneurs. I am still processing my experience but my initial thoughts are how incredibly similar we all are, even though we are individuals and work in different industries, roles, locations, companies. I found myself relating to everyone deeply in more than one way this entire week. A common theme that emerged was “culture”. Every person I met, every company site we visited all mentioned culture. This resonated with me because as a newly created business with a geographically dispersed team, one challenge I am feeling daily is the challenge of building a culture given these constraints. There are so many tools we have to foster collaboration amongst the remote workforce, but I still feel like there are pieces missing. Important pieces of culture that will make or break this thing we are building.

More than a few times I heard this week: happy people=happy customers. The CEO of Advice.Period said “If the culture isn’t right; nothing else matters. Culture is driven by champions, experienced with celebrations and remembered in artifacts.” As a freshly minted “leader” I feel this is something I’m not great at. I overcommunicate on Slack, I don’t communicate enough on video or voice, and I don’t always celebrate things. Even the little things should be celebrated. You don’t always have to wait to celebrate a big win, or wait until a big project ends. Celebrating the little things along the way, throughout the process, is a big morale booster and can help to reinforce the behaviors you want to see more of. I loved this. I made a commitment to myself to do more of this now.

There is still so much more I am processing. I have 15 pages of typed notes and another 15 pages of handwritten notes that I am excited to dive into on my long haul flight to Australia this coming week. Overall, I am satisfyingly exhausted, with a full head and heart. This week couldn’t have come at a more perfect time for me and exactly where I’m at on this #startuplife journey. I can’t wait to share with my team not only through my words but through my actions how much this week has made an impact on my life.

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Dom Farnan
Dom Farnan

Written by Dom Farnan

Conscious Connector, Magic Maker, Humble Student of Life

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