Made it Happen

This week's WE RISE Episode is featuring Shelby Pearce, founder of Lunar & Co.

Shelby grew up in a small town in South Western Ontario called Wallaceburg. Following high school, she moved to the big city of Toronto and began a career in the non-profit sector organizing leadership tours and speaking in front of thousands of youth Canada-wide. She also led international volunteer opportunities in Kenya, Ecuador and Mexico working with local communities and building much needed infrastructure. After going back to school at 24 and studying Advertising and Marketing, she brought her expertise to a communication and blockchain technology startup where her knowledge and hard work paid off. Starting as a Coordinator, team of 1, she quickly moved up the ranks to become the Marketing Director of a team of 10.

Due to COVID and some other extenuating circumstances, she found herself looking for a job for the first time in her career. Obviously not a great time to be looking, however, job posting after job posting, she just wasn’t finding anything she was interested in. 

She's an experienced and creative leader bringing a growth mindset to her work - using content and marketing to help organizations grow in fast moving industries. She's also an eternal optimist, a proud feminist, and well, a bit of a control freak to be honest, but in the best way possible. She knows what she wants, and she goes for it. That's how she's decided to branch out on her own and start Lunar & Co. It's something she's dreamt about for a long time, and is proud to say, she's channeled all of her wisdom into action, and this is the result! 

Over the years, she's had the privilege of working with and seeing so many women in business, and one common theme, no matter what industry or experience level, is the undying support we have for one another. Seeing this and being inspired, she knew Lunar & Co. needed to stand for something and be different from every other agency out there. She also knew that she wanted to work with people that she would admire, and there’s no one that she admires more than female bosses killing the game.

We talk about: 
- What made her decide to start Lunar & Co.
- Going back to school for marketing
- Breaking into the industry while working as a server 
- Starting her business during a pandemic 
- The biggest change from working in the industry to running a business 
- Focusing on female-owned businesses with her agency
- The importance of having a strong brand and how to build this 
- The biggest obstacle for businesses when creating a brand 
- Being nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year in her Hometown
- and much more!

Alyssa is a Productivity Strategist for creative entrepreneurs and founder of Your Most Profitable Quarter Yet. A recovering procrastinator herself, she became obsessed with figuring out how the Oprah’s, the Beyoncé’s, and the Marie Forleo’s of the world were running empires, staying creative AF, and making it all look easy.  As soon as she figured this out, her business did a complete 180. She mastered the exact process to take entrepreneurs from over-worked and under-slept to productive, profitable and FREE, and, from that, the Freedom Rebellion was born.

Alyssa Coleman is the productivity guru to the baddest on the internet, founder of Your Most Profitable Quarter Yet and, the Free Spirited Babes Community. She’s the “left-brain”, behind the scenes, silent productivity partner helping creative entrepreneurs, bloggers, influencers, and coaches to work fewer hours in their business while getting more done and making a bigger impact. 

We talk about:
- How she became a productivity strategist 
- How she learned everything on productivity 
- Burnout as an entrepreneur & how to overcome this 
- Creating her services and programs
- The biggest obstacle she sees with entrepreneurs in terms of productivity
- Tips & advice for becoming a productive entrepreneur 
- Creating collaborations and the value behind them
- Tips for those looking to collaborate with other entrepreneurs or businesses
- One key productivity tip anyone can use
- Marketing her business and finding clients
- What she would've told herself when starting her business
- And much more!

This special edition WE RISE episode is focusing on the importance of mentors and advisors to founders and the power within the network, brought to you by WEtech Alliance and Haltech Regional Innovation Centre. This episode is featuring Yvonne Pilon, President & CEO, WEtech Alliance, Kate Tomen, Women’s Entrepreneurship Coordinator, WEtech Alliance, Shann McGrail, Executive Director, Haltech Regional Innovation Centre, & Julie Ellis, Coach to Executives and Entrepreneurs and Co-Founder Mabel’s Labels.

WEtech and Haltech are both Regional Innovation Centres in the province of Ontario. They have recently partnered on a new program, Power Panels, aimed to expand mentorship and strategic connection opportunities for women-owned technology and innovation companies in Southwestern Ontario. Julie Ellis works closely with Haltech and is an active coach to entrepreneurs. She is also the co-founder of Mabel's Labels, the leading provider of labels for the stuff kids lose!

We talk about:
- The importance of mentors and advisors to startup founders
- The power within a network
- Key pain points female founders are dealing with
- Both sides of being a founder & an advisor
- Key advice for finding the right advisor for business growth
- Networking tips
- The new Power Panel & F5 Program for female entrepreneurs & how to get involved with the program
- And much more!

Andrea Moxham is the Founder of Horseshoe + co., a platinum HubSpot Solutions Partner. Andrea revels in the details of inbound marketing and thrives on helping her clients squeeze every ounce out of their HubSpot investment. In her spare time, Andrea can be found cuddling her baby girl Sadie, watching true crime documentaries or trying to convince her husband to get goats for the hobby farm where they live.

Andrea founded Horseshoe + co. in 2014 focusing on graphic design and evolved into focusing solely on HubSpot when she made the jump to full-time in 2016. She has since largely built the company on her own, becoming one of the few Canadian HubSpot partners that isn’t a large agency. Andrea has over 10 years of experience in the marketing industry and a Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing) from Ryerson University.

We talk about:
- How did Horseshoe + co business got started  
- A unique way of finding clients and marketing her business
- What she had advised clients on and then implemented herself
- Two things she learned the hard way
- Common misconceptions about entrepreneurship 
- How COVID affected her business and work-life balance 
- Embracing the mindset with clients and processes
- Finding structure in her work
- What she wish she had known beforehand about managing expectations
- Working on the backend of the business to thrive 
- And more!

This week's WE RISE episode is featuring photographer, Vicki Bartel. As a self-taught photographer, wife and mother of two,  her journey began over a decade ago when her son was born, after purchasing her first camera. From there, her career bloomed into photographing some of the most beautiful and luxurious weddings in Southwestern Ontario.

It was during this time, she began noticing how many women-owned businesses were emerging around her, and she wanted nothing more but to support their entrepreneurial journeys with brand photography. For the last three years, she has been focusing her efforts on capturing women in every aspect of their lives. From maternity and boudoir to lifestyle branding, she set out to celebrate the professional and most intimate qualities of women through her lens. 

Sarah is joined by co-host Nicole Anderson of RISE WindsorEssex, as they speak to Vicki about her journey as a photographer including:

• How she got into photography
• How it's never too early to start your personal brand
• Taking it step by step when starting a business
• Making genuine connections & word of mouth marketing
• The number one piece of advice for a new photographer 
• Creating your own opportunities
• Specializing in branding photos for female entrepreneurs
• Educational resources to use 
• Creating her small business pay it forward initiative 
• Work-life balance 
• And so much more!

Picture a musician. Now, picture a businessman or businesswoman. The two images are probably polar opposites. But, for Lauralee Sheehan, former Lovely Killbots rockstar / indie record label owner turned founder and CCO of her own digital agency, the latter could never have happened without the former. Lauralee is living proof that music, tech, entrepreneurship, and being an artist are all completely intertwined. 

Lauralee is a design thinker, a digital addict, but above all an artist. With years of experience working in the creative and digital product development sector, Lauralee is a trailblazer in the digital space, pushing forward how creative and tech intersect. She has lead dynamic creative and dev teams on various award-winning digital, interactive and research based projects. Her unique background, having her own product line (with a product design shoutout on Buzzfeed) and as a former owner of an indie record label, Lauralee brings a fresh, authentic and innovative approach to the design and learning space.

We talk about transitioning from music to entrepreneurship, how musicians are natural entrepreneurs and the connection between the two, knowing it was time to take her side-hustle full time, having an impact by sharing important stories & causes, challenges she's had to overcome with her business, the importance of self-care & balance, having hard conversations with clients, what she's learned from scaling quickly & more!

This week's WE RISE episode is featuring Linsey Pecile, founder of Urban Artistry! Her pursuit for passion had been a long time coming until she founded Urban Artistry. Their mission at Urban Artistry is to help people create the events of their dreams without the financial burden that typically comes along with that. Of course in the process of that, she also gets to follow her dream which encompasses everything she loves; design, art, construction and nature. She's done many things so far in not too much time some would say. She went to school for architecture, proceeded to work in an engineering firm in the USA, developed a post-diploma degree in 3-D architecture at Fanshawe college, Taught at Fanshawe college and is still in their architectural BIM program, taught at St Clair college and was the manager of research and development.

She can now say she is comfortable enough at this time in her life to know what she enjoys and what she does not enjoy about a career. So when she thought about launching urban artistry it was very clear to her what its intent should be. She has always loved design and seeing how things are built, come together and showing a beautiful final piece. This speaks not only to architecture but design as a whole. She is a self-taught woodworker with help from her husband and it is absolutely a passion of hers that she's recently been able to spend more time on due to Covid. Urban artistry was created in the midst of the pandemic. Not because that’s when it was first thought of but simply because that’s when she first had the time to actually sit down and think about her future.

We talk about what made her decide to start Urban Artistry, where she learned the art of creating event rental pieces, what it was like launching an event rental business during a pandemic, where she finds inspiration for her products, how she manages her time while running her own business and working full-time, what she's learned about herself in the process, what advice she would give to someone else starting a business, challenges she's overcome in creating her business, future plans & more! 

Lauren Cook, PsyD has a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and Master’s of Marriage and Family Therapy. She is a clinician working with individuals, couples, children, and families. She practices Emotionally Focused Therapy to help clients improve their communication while enhancing emotional closeness. She speaks around the country providing audiences with education about mental health and wellbeing. She is the author of Name Your Story: How to Talk Openly About Mental Health and The Sunny Side Up: Celebrating Happiness. 

We talk about why she decided to go into the mental health industry, the highs and lows of being a therapist, what made her decide to start her own business/practice, publishing two books and the process of writing them, what people can do to deal with stress during these times, how she got into public speaking, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, imposer syndrome & how to overcome it, the process of rebranding her business & why she decided to do this, what she learned about happiness from her studies and how this changed her outlook, what she would've told herself when she was just starting out, how to get involved with mental health & ending the stigma, and so much more!

Website link: www.thesunnygirl.com. 
Instagram: TheSunnyGirl5

This week's WE RISE episode is featuring Melinda Rauch, founder and curator of NOMAD - a furniture, home decor and design boutique in Kingsville ON,  with a global perspective where profits have purpose via social impact endeavors and community engagement. Prior to opening NOMAD, Melinda has previously been a Partner and Founder of HDI Capital based in Mexico City holding the position of Chief Operations Officer and Chief Compliance Officer, published in London based publication Global Custodian " The Hedge Fund Giving Back," and had previous roles with leading global financial institutions and consulting firms as VP of Accounting. She has advised US-based hedge funds on regulatory and compliance controls and best practices in operations, & has 20 years of experience in alternative investment.

Melinda has traveled to over 35 countries and lived in 7 different countries for work. She is a doggy mama to Murphy, proud farmers daughter, and lover of all things to do with traveling, culture, food.

We talk about what made her decide to start NOMAD and where the idea came from, how social impact plays a role in her store and is one of the guiding values of her shop, where the name come from & the meaning behind it, what attracted her to build her business in Kingsville, where she gets her products from and how she decides what to bring in, how COVID 19 has affected her business, how she markets her business, some of the challenges she's had to overcome & the big success moments, advice she would give to someone thinking of starting a business, future plans & more!  

Anthea is the founder of Clear Margins Consulting, a CPA and numbers nerd. She's obsessed with accounting & numbers. She believes in their power to tell truths and inform the future. With a background in accounting, performance analysis, and financial & strategic analysis she helps business owners go from avoiding the financial side of their business to confident money experts.

We talk about what made her leave her corporate job to do something different and start a non-traditional accounting firm, how one client inspired her to start consulting, her strategy for finding clients, one piece of advice she’d give to new business owners from a financial standpoint, a common financial mistake she sees with new businesses and what she’d recommend, what you should do before you even start your business, what she has learned from starting her own business, what inspired her to start a group program, how to find your support system & more!