This week, we talk to Chiquita Searle, co-founder of FemmeCon, an online community that aims to connect women with one another and empower them mentally, financially, and emotionally in the midst of the challenges they currently face, one of them being the ‘pink recession’ wherein employment of women fell during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through her experiences as an entrepreneur, Chiquita hopes to inspire other women to discover their full potential and enjoy the life they deserve through this venture. FemmeCon recently held its inaugural event earlier this month in Melbourne.
ISB: How did the idea behind FemmeCon come to life?
CS: Being self-employed and working from home, I felt quite isolated and lonely during the pandemic and realised that I had been deeply missing being a part of a community of women so I decided to create one myself and designed an event around what I’d like to experience myself as a consumer. I floated the concept to my friend and now co-founder Shani (Chantel) Aziz and she got on board immediately and that is how the idea of FemmeCon came to be.
ISB: Why is it important to have a community like FemmeCon to address the ‘pink recession’?
CS: Women in Australia have been heavily impacted by COVID with women’s employment 3.4 per cent lower than it was in February 2020, before the impact of COVID-19. Between February and May 2020, 482,000 women lost employment and the women’s unemployment rate rose by 2.0 percentage points to 6.9 per cent and many female dominant industries such as tourism, retail and events were also decimated. We wanted to highlight this issue by bringing women together to support each other, promote female-owned businesses and encourage attendees to support each other post-event.
ISB: How does FemmeCon empower women to become entrepreneurs and contribute to Australia’s economic recovery?
CS: A part of the remit of FemmeCon is to create a thriving feminine economy where women support women-owned businesses with many of our sponsors being female-founded. We wanted to highlight the importance of getting behind other women post-pandemic and made this a core value of the event and the ethos behind it. We hope to provide an inclusive community where we can connect like-minded women, women who understand the value of true connection, friendship and support in their entrepreneurial and life journey while contributing to the effort to support small female-led businesses.
ISB: What has been the most challenging aspect of doing this initiative and how do you manage to address it?
CS: Definitely getting bums on seats. Because we were yearning to be a part of a community and attend events again and basically ‘get amongst it’ we naively thought that others would feel the same. We didn’t anticipate that people were still anxious to go to crowded places and were more circumspect with how they were spending their money. It took a while to gain momentum and because we were a new business without an audience we had to really hustle to spread the word.
ISB: Having just hosted your inaugural event on 12 August, how has the reception been from the community you’re reaching out to?
CS: With any new event, you’re never quite sure how it will all come together on the day. You always hope for the best but until it unfolds in real time it’s an unknown quantity. We honestly couldn’t have anticipated how well it went. The audience engagement was amazing, the level of support from our sponsors was unprecedented (we had gift bags worth $800 retail and a gelato cart) and the post-event feedback has been extraordinary. We will be holding a long lunch in mid-October and expect it to sell out quickly based on how quickly the community has grown since the event.
ISB: What is your vision for FemmeCon for the next couple of years?
CS: We want to hold the FemmeCon flagship event annually and increase it to 1000 women in attendance. We’d love to hold monthly Long Lunches, will launch our podcast FemmePod by the end of this year and just continue to push the boundaries of the content we cover so our audience never becomes disengaged by what we are offering. We won’t be for everyone but those who do resonate with us, and are happy to come on the ride, will be well rewarded.
