Episode 001: Welcome Message From Founder Rachael Meyers

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Welcome everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. I am Rachael Meyers. I am a South Shore native, a designer and creator at heart and founder of The Collective Co. The Collective Co. is a creative co-working space dedicated to women here on the South Shore of Massachusetts. At The Collective Co. we foster connection, learning and growth within our vibrant community. We encourage South Shore women to gather together and support one another’s career goals and ambitions through collaboration and networking. Membership will provide access to our co-working space as well as exclusive curated programming and events, space rentals, workshop opportunities and so much more.

As you know, we are all navigating this strange new world that we live in and I hope that everyone is safe and healthy and at the very least, while you may not be thriving, I hope you are surviving and managing this new way of life during covid. While our doors are not open yet I wanted to introduce our brand and find a way to connect this local audience virtually which is why I started this Podcast.

So I’d like to provide you with a little back story as to where this all began. Being surrounded by so many talented women here on the South Shore and going through the process of creating and launching The Collective Co., I had SO many questions along the way. This process for me started a while back and I found that it was extremely easy to doubt my own abilities and play the comparison game or just get down on myself during the process. As I came up with the idea for The Collective Co. there were so many days that I thought about throwing it out. In the beginning I would talk to my husband and family or a few close friends but I finally decided to simply just REACH OUT to local women who were accomplishing so much and simply start asking them questions.

I realized that my own fears of failure or rejection had gotten in the way and held me back. Instead of starting I was overthinking every decision. I also realized just how important those conversations were. As nice as it is to rely on family and close friends for feedback, sometimes you just need more answers. I was able to ask detailed questions about money, funding, what programs to use, what items I needed. Basic things like business insurance, how to create an LLC. and more were all being answered not only by friends but by women whom I admired right here on the South Shore who were running their own businesses and were in the thick of it and I finally felt like I was making true progress.

As a natural introvert it took a lot for me to take that leap and actually reach out. Many women I knew personally or through friendships but there were also many women that I spoke to whom I had simply admired from afar. What I found was that we were all connected through this amazing local network of women — and as I reached out, not one person said no and that was really inspiring for me!

As I’ve worked to build and launch The Collective Co. the importance of these local conversations, support and connection was not lost on me and I truly want The Collective Co. to be that bridge for you! In the meantime as we prepare to launch our physical space, I figured a Podcast is the perfect way to start! So I am diving in with all the questions along the way. I’m speaking to women on the South Shore who are working full time, working part time, balancing motherhood, who are running successful businesses and building brands and who are simply doing what they love. I’m asking them questions about how they got started, what they’ve run into along the way and essentially how they got to where they are today. So many times we hear the end story. We see the success and the celebrations but we miss out on the hard work that happened along the way. So here, we’re talking startup, money, growth, a behind the scenes of what it means to build and run a local business from the perspective of our peers. My hope is that by hearing these conversations it will provide some insight, knowledge and inspiration to you in chasing your own dreams as well as start to build a local network of women supporting women right here on the South Shore.

Thank you for your support and for tuning in. I SO appreciate you listening and I hope you enjoy The Collective Co. Podcast! If you continue to listen and follow along I am going to be providing all of the updates along the way with our physical space, launching and opening as well as membership and what that is all going to look like. For now you can follow us on social media @theccsouthshore and sign up for our newsletter for regular updates and if you are interested in membership to the co-working space you can get on our membership wait list. You can do this all by visiting the website which is www.theccsouthshore.com

Thank you so much for listening. I am Rachael and this is The Collective Co. Podcast. I hope you have an amazing day!