Conversations with Women, 3.0

The first episode of my podcast Positively Gotham Gal aired in November of 2016. The podcast was conceived as an evolution of something I had been doing on my blog since November 2010, a weekly post called ‘Women Entrepreneur Mondays’. These blogs were transcribed interviews and stories I wrote about a specific woman and the business she had started. So many readers reached out to me and told me how much these stories of their fellow founders in the trenches inspired them and helped illuminate problems they had been having in their own ventures. Those stories tied perfectly into the Women’s Entrepreneur Festival that ran from 2010 to 2016. I wanted to highlight that female founders are building successful businesses and I wrote hundreds of them. The podcast was a way to get even more personal and invite people into the room for these frank discussions, stories of their businesses, from the spark of an idea to growth and fruition. Since the launch of the podcast we’ve captured 127 conversations and reached listeners across the world. 

At the start of this new decade, I began feeling the itch again for an evolution. I started thinking about what the next iteration of the podcast would and should be. While highlighting female-identifying entrepreneurs has always been a focus and passion of mine, it felt like the conversation wanted to be bigger. Our world was changing and shifting in ways that felt radical and I thought that instead of just looking at one woman and her business, we could shift to looking at a topic or challenge or posit a question that would have resonance with our community at large. What if we brought together smart, thoughtful, boundary-defying women to tackle these topics and bring our myriad of experiences to the table to have the frank conversations these big topics warranted? How could we use the podcast to get us even more connected? 

So we’re entering into our next evolution of Positively Gotham Gal. We’re now moving away from individual stories of startups and upstarts (though those will still be a huge part of what all of our guests bring to the table) and positing the big questions that so many of us have to tackle as we grow and move through this world, both in life and business. In addition to this thematic pivot, we’re also adding video to these conversations. We’ve always wanted our listeners to feel like they’re in the room with us and having these conversations for consumption both visually and auditorily is something we hope can enhance that sense of connection and belonging. 

Little did we know when we embarked on the 2.0 of the podcast how prescient this shift would be. The global pandemic we’re all facing has turned our lives around at breakneck speed, challenging all of the ways we know to connect and grow community. Out of nowhere, we’ve been asked to isolate ourselves and take our ambitions indoors. It’s scary and destabilizing and frankly, it’s lonely. 

So I’m excited to share this next chapter of Positively Gotham Gal with you. And I want to hear from you- what are the big questions that keep you up at night? What are the conversations you want to be having that you don’t hear? 

We won’t be releasing these weekly but the conversations can and should be ongoing. We will have a new YouTube channel where you can find the videos, my Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook.  I will share those links tomorrow.

I hope you’re all making good use of this time, while also allowing yourselves to feel scared, sad, freaked-out, more in tune with yourself or however you feel. Let’s keep connecting and keep talking.