Jenny Green Powers is the CEO of Running With Heels. Running With Heels is a New York Invitation Only Society for the “On-th-Go” “In-the-Know” Women Executives and Entrepreneurs. It is a members-only event series designed to elevate your personal and professional life through curated connections and inspiring conversations.
Jenny is a lifelong New Yorker and she is a graduate of the New York University and she doesn’t believe in strangers only people she hasn’t met as yet. In 2012, she became extremely tired of and exhausted in attending a series of awkward and just plain awful networking events and so she set out to create a different kind of Networking Event, one where women were excited to attend and left feeling educated, entertained, empowered and eager to attend future events.
As a first step she hosted a focus group and the criteria to participate was that YOU had to be a workingwoman who hated networking and networking events! These women were not hard to find, they were everywhere and they were all too happy to share why networking made them cringe. Armed with their plentiful feedback, Jenny took their advice and re-created the traditional networking event and Running with Heels was born. Today she hosts Women Networking events for women who hate networking and they love them. She is also mom to a lovely little girl who says she is going to be the President of the United States when she grows up whereupon she intends to move The White House to Brooklyn Heights.
- Jenny Green Powers started by sharing that she was the Vice President of a non-profit organization for a decade and she was going to networking events to just meet colleagues of other non-profits, potential donors and she realized the networking events just had this “salesy” feeling to them, everyone was just pressing business cards into your palm, everyone felt uneasy like they were being sold to. Jenny shared even though as consumers we all like to buy, no one likes to be sold to. Jenny shared that it was at this point she realized “Networking needed a Facelift.” Jenny shared that there are so many different industries that have dynamic changes from year-to-year and she said networking is not one of them. She further emphasized that networking has been the same forever and that she was sick of the “old boys club” and she was sick of the women events that she was going to that felt like sororities and that is when she brought the focus group together to find out what women wanted to see in a networking event and what they did not like. She then explained that is exactly how she built the first platform for Running with Heels based on the feedback she collected.
- Jenny shared the top 3 main reasons coming out of the feedback why the women hated the networking events. They hated because they felt as if they were being sold to, they did not feel as if it was authentic, they felt like people were coming to simply fill their quota. There was no time for that Know, Like and Trust Factor. It was just like everyone was being looked at like a cheque book. Jenny also shared there wasn’t any agenda and you go in and get a name tag and you move around aimlessly, there was no programme and so you just wait to be spoken to and if you went alone it can feel very uncomfortable and awkward. So that is when she created a format for Running with Heels and so all of her events has speakers which allows you to come and get educated but it also serves as an ice breaker for when seated together to all hear the same conversation and discuss the topic afterwards. Jenny said the final reason for women hating the networking events was there is either no food or bad food. Jenny then said as a result most of their events now are dinner parties. What she identified was most women would come along and be standing holding their briefcase, coat, gym bag, umbrella in their heels extremely uncomfortable. Now you can check everything in when you arrive and sit down at a table. Jenny says that she pre-matches all of her guests with different dinner companions. The example she gave was if I attended one of her events – I would be seated with five (5) different women that Jenny thought I should know based on my profile, however, at each course during the meal I would sit with another five women. She believes the awkwardness would be minimized because I would be already seated with people matched for me.
- Yanique shared that she does not really enjoy attending networking events and she feels there is usually never a direct strategy to actively engage the participants/attendees to engage in conversation with each other. Jenny agreed and added that is one of the reasons why she has a strict agenda that focuses on the guests being strategically seated in order to eliminate that awkwardness.
- Jenny shared that if you are in business, regardless of what business it is – you are always in Customer Service. Jenny says that she thinks Customer Service can always be improved upon. Jenny says that for her whether as a client or for her own clients – she wanted to treat everyone like a VIP. She says it is indeed true when someone is happy they will tell someone but they are unhappy they tell everyone.
- Jenny shared that curating the guest list and paying such attention to detail for the pairings has been critical to the success of Running with Heels. Jenny shared when she just started one of her clients who was at the time her business coach said, “This is first event I have ever gone to that I don’t want to leave.” Jenny said in a 2-hour dinner – her client shared that she ended up calculating that she brought in over US $16,000.00 worth of business. Jenny shared that she wasn’t handing out business cards, writing down names etc. but instead having these authentic conversations with people that followed up with her, hired her for coaching and then referred her. So in one event she saw US $16,000.00 of revenue and has been coming to Running With Heels events for four (4) years now.
- Jenny shared that right now – she’s running the business as a “One Woman Show” with her assistant but she has plans to have pop up events in other major cities around the United States and see if the Running with Heels brand will be a success there. Jenny is very committed to spreading the word on more people knowing that Networking is all about building relationships.
- Jenny’s first tip for business owners to be a success with Customer Experience is to ask and ask often. Jenny shared that she believes women in particular believe that asking may appear as if they don’t know how to do something or make them seem vulnerable. Jenny says that for her asking actually shows a sign of strength. Jenny says many times women are told to just do everything yourself, or fake it until you make it but asking for something is actually okay. Jenny says her #2 tip is about accountability, being a soloproneur – it can be hard as you do not have a board of directors or mentors…so who do you have? Jenny says for her having a Mastermind is critical – she said Masterminds are not new as explained in “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Jenny said her mastermind is her brain trust. Jenny says she has a mastermind comprising of four (4) persons who meet monthly and they do deep diving and it allows you to talk about things in your business and get into the weeds. Jenny’s #3 tip is try it….you only fail if you quit! She said her favourite quote in the world is “Never be afraid of something new remember amateurs built the arc, professionals build the Titanic.” Author Unknown
- Jenny said that she reached out to her network of persons, not necessarily her clients or persons that she was close to but someone who had a podcast that she loved and another person that had a book she really liked – people who were doing things that she wanted to do. She reached out to them and explained that she wanted to start a group so she could have an accountability partner and it was a great match. One of the two ladies that Jenny reached out to brought someone else into the group – when they all sat down and looked at their strengths; they realized they were lacking a member that had a strong financial background and that’s when they found their final partner – Farnoosh Torabi of the So Money Podcast. Farnoosh has written five (5) books on finance – many of them for millennials and even one for women breadwinners. So Jenny recommends just going into your network and finding people you admire and people who have done something already that you want to do. Jenny suggests no more than five persons for a Mastermind group. She shared that she loves doing her Mastermind in person but it can also be done via Skype, Zoom or just a conference call. She says there is just something about those monthly in person meetings that just cannot be replaced.
- Jenny says that she loves to read and she is always in hand or have a book in her handbag. Jenny says that she is always reading self – improvement books as they confirm things she already knows or she has the opportunity to learn new things. Jenny says another big motivation for her is self-care – she says she sees so many women entrepreneurs with families who always put themselves on the back burner. Her example was when you travel and the chief flight attendant/purser announces place the mask over yourself first and then help the person seated next to you is a key example of placing yourself first. Jenny says, “Every morning when I wake up I ask myself what oxygen mask am I going to put on today and what is going to take care of me so that I can be a better wife, mother and business owner?” It could be meditation, reading one of these self-improvement books but self-care is very important.
- Jenny Green Powers shares that her favourite book in the world is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and she also likes a book that was released a couple years ago called “Think and Grow Rich for Women” by Sharon Lechter that was approved by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Jenny also shared because she loves classic books – she would recommend “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and also “Eat the Frog” by Brian Tracy. Jenny then shared she never anticipated this as one of her favorites by a musician Amanda Palmer – “The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help”. Jenny shares that even though she is not very knowledgeable of Palmer’s music career – the books speaks to all of the jobs that Amanda Palmer has requiring her to have to ask. She was a silent street performer like one of those mimes – persons who do not speak but live on peoples’ generosity. Amanda would dress up, put on these costumes, put on make up and give people eye contact and really saw inside people’s soul.
- Jenny shared that the one app/website that she absolutely cannot live without is LinkedIn – Jenny says that she is a huge evangelist of LinkedIn and it is how she has gotten most of her clients as it is an invitation only society – you can profile the persons that you will be connecting with. She has secured almost all of her speakers through LinkedIn. Jenny has her own podcast “Broadcast: Broads Building Businesses” for the past year and she has gotten most of her guests through LinkedIn.
- Jenny shares one tip she would recommend for entrepreneurs using LinkedIn – she shared there is that default message that goes out when you send a request – “I would like to add you to my LinkedIn network” – but Jenny says that is just the lazy way out as you could be sitting there clicking on 100 people. Jenny says if she is sending a request for someone to be a speaker she will explain in her request that she came across their profile and they seem like great fits for one another’s business and she would love to have them as a speaker and that she wants to connect with them and share some more information. This way her message is not perceived as this random arbitrary thing that seems it is just another standard message sent to everyone else. She further shared it is the same approach she takes when someone reaches out to her with some specific details as to why they are connecting.
- Jenny says the best advice that she could give to a 9-5er looking to launch on the entrepreneur road is surround yourself with people who have done what you want to do.
- Jenny shares one thing she is super excited about is that she already runs Live Masterminds in New York called Running with Circles and it is framed after the Mastermind that she developed for her own personal group but what she is even more excited about is that she is going to start doing Virtual Masterminds Online as a way to connect with people around the globe. Jenny says the Virtual Masterminds Online will start in October 2016 and promotions for this programme will start in September 2016.
- Jenny says listeners can find her at running-with-heels.com
- Jenny Green Powers explains what inspired the name of her company – “Running With Heels” – she says as women we all know that we are running everywhere and usually running in high heels. She said it all started when she was in this high end shoe store in New York City, Bergdorf Goodman and she was trying on these expensive heels and it is a very sophisticated, serene and quiet atmosphere and she was in there all of a sudden and she stood up in the shoes and she thought to herself….”the only way I am going to buy these shoes is if I am able to run in them because I run everywhere – to the subway, to pick up her daughter from school” and so she did a bit of a sprint around the sofa in the store and everyone was looking at her as if she was nuts and the salesman looked at her like she was running off with the shoes. The salesman then asked her, “Are you okay? What are you doing?” Jenny said she responded by saying, “In order to know if I should spend this kind of money on these shoes, I need to know if I can use them?” She said she observed all the women just looking up and their expressions were like I totally get that. She further shares that is where her inspired name came from because she knows it resonated with so many women.
- Jenny shares a quote that she lives by so much – she actually has it tattooed on her right inner wrist – “Choose Your Own Adventure” – Jenny says don’t live by how someone else thinks you should be living, what your guidance counselor says, your boss, your mother…..choose your own adventure!
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LINKS:
- Running with Heels Website
- Jenny Green Powers LinkedIn
- Running With Heels LLC Facebook
- Running with Heels Twitter
- Jenny Green Powers Podcast – Broadcast: Broads: Building Businesses”
- “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill
- “Think and Grow Rich for Women” by Sharon Lechter
- “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie
- “Eat the Frog” by Brian Tracy
- “The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help” by Amanda Palmer
