What It Looks Like When a Business Community Shows Up for One of Its Own

I have at least one call every single week with my community. It’s a general Q&A, come as you are, ask-me-anything -live kind of call.

Right now there are about a hundred women who have access to that room, and if you’ve never run something like this, I don’t know how to explain what it does to you to watch the same faces show up week after week. You go from a hundred strangers scattered across the planet to a hundred women who know each other’s businesses, each other’s families, and even each other’s moods!

I’ve known this community was different for a while, I just couldn’t point to the exact moment.

I think I found it this summer. I want to tell you about Antonia.

Meet Antonia

Antonia is a former Osteopath and bone health practitioner in the UK, which means when I start a call at 7pm my time here in Atlantic Canada, it’s already 11pm for her.

It’s well past bedtime for most of us! She still shows up.

She’s missed maybe three or four calls in almost two years, which tells you a lot about how much value she sees in our little corner of the internet. She, like me, is a single lady by choice, and is carving out her own place in the world. She knows her field like no other and like almost every single woman who walks into my academy, she has the purpose and the skill and she STILL gets stuck in her own head.

There is a heavy dose of overthinking and perfectionism. There is definitely a little pause before hitting publish that can often stretch into a much longer pause. I see it in woman after woman. I see it in Antonia too.

What Cindy and I Noticed

Then last week, one of my community coordinators, Cindy, and I were on a call talking about something we’ve both watched happen a hundred times inside this community. Someone shares a struggle on a group call and within minutes fifteen women have the exact right idea for her.

We are so good at solving each other’s problems. We are so bad at solving our own 🤷‍♀️.

We got to talking about Antonia, because Antonia is going through some health challenges at the moment. She’s mid treatment for cancer and she has STILL been logging into our calls, some of them from her hospital bed, dealing with complications that would give any of us full permission to disappear for a while.

I want to let that sink in. She’s been joining our weekly calls, participating fully, while fighting her way back to health. She could have cried uncle and given up. She did not.

Cindy and I looked at each other and wondered, if she can show up for us like that, what if we showed up for her?

The truth of the matter is that she’s been ready to offer her support for months. She’s got videos recorded that will help women our age strengthen our bones because she understands just how important it is and she’s always telling us that it’s never too late.

The Ask at the Writing Workshop

So last Thursday evening, we had our writing workshop call. That’s a separate call I co-run to help my members skill up on writing, because if you’re a solo entrepreneur, writing is not optional, it’s the job. Antonia was one of only three members on that call. At the end, I approached her gently with a request and told her what Cindy and I had been talking about.

I told her we wanted to show up for her. I let her know that we wanted to shower her with ideas she could actually use, and I’d record all of it and hand it off polished, so she’d have something real to work with, something that would keep her building community and attracting the women she’s meant to serve, without having to lift a finger to make it happen.

She said yes! We picked a day.

The Saturday Night Ask

That Saturday night, late, I posted the clip from the writing workshop in my community and told the ladies straight up. Antonia needs our help. Who’s free on this day, at this time?

You would not believe the response. Women rearranging client schedules. Moving their own client appointments so they could show up for her instead. Saying that if they can’t make it live, they’ll catch the replay and offer insight after the fact. I knew, in theory, that women could rally around each other like this. I don’t think I understood it until I watched it happen in real time.

What I Actually Built

That’s the part I didn’t expect when I started this. I thought I was building a place to teach marketing and sales.

I built a place where a hundred women over the age of 45 know how to take care of each other, because most of us have spent our whole lives taking care of everyone else first and finally know what it looks like when someone does it for us.

Will You Help Antonia’s Work Reach More Women?

So, here is my request of you, gentle reader: if you are a woman in mid-life knowing how important it is to strengthen your bones, would you consider subscribing to her SubStack?

If you know of any women facing a scary diagnosis and want to read about how they can help themselves by strengthening their bones, would you consider sharing her SubStack with them?

She’s got some incredible content coming for us. I’ve participated in a challenge she did earlier this year and can personally vouch that her methods work and they’re often less taxing than you’d imagine! Little things add up to big wins.