Permission Slips Are Not Required

If you can only handle me in small doses:

If you are inspired by all of the IWD, Equal Pay Day, and Women’s History Month posts and want to keep the momentum and learning going, here are three books that I recommend reading:

“The Trouble With White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism” by Kyla Scholler

“On This Day She: Putting Women Back into History One Day at a Time” by Jo Bell, Tania Hershman, and Alisa Holland

“Career and Family“ by Claudia Goldin

?And for extra credit- “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters” by Priya Parker.

?Building Prequal Vol. 31: Permission Slips Are Not Required

We live in an increasingly hybrid and segmented world. Our houses have become our workplaces, our attachment to community is weakening, and we more commonly don't live close to family. It takes effort to gather and even more so to do it purposefully. That's why when I have moments where I forge genuine connection and community, it feels profound.

Last week, I hosted what I called a Dinner Party for Badass Women in conjunction with my client and friend Janet King of the Gathering Lab. Close friends, long-time acquaintances, cherished work colleagues, and women I'd never met attended this event. With The Gathering Lab’s proprietary formula for setting intention and creating connection in a room of relative strangers, I watched with joy as the magic of purposeful gathering unfolded for attendees. There were meaningful conversations and no surface-level introductions that began with, "So, what do you do?" This was not networking.

The reaction to the dinner party was reaffirming and a little overwhelming. The women who attended echoed my same desires. I've been on the hunt this year for joy and connection, and through the words of the women who attended, it was affirmed that more of this purposeful gathering is sorely needed.

It's in this spirit that we’ve created something new. It's an offering through Prequal, but one where profit isn't the intention. That's not the purpose. Joy, fun, experience and connection are the purpose. At the dinner party, we soft-launched Field Trips by Prequal. Today is its official announcement.

My team and I sat down and brainstormed what fun things we'd like to do. That is the focus and our only requirement for deciding which Field Trips we want to host. Is it fun? Will this be an enjoyable outing or activity that we want to do with a group of women?

Turns out, there are a lot of fun things we can do.

So far, we have two events officially on the calendar—a custom lipstick-making workshop and a choreographed dance party. We have many more ideas in the works—making fancy cakes, breaking things in a smash room, rug weaving, an adult ballet class, and rock climbing, to name a few. With zero promotion, we've already sold six spots out of twenty available for each event.

Event registration is officially open. If you want to find and make a custom lipstick shade, register here. If you want to learn a choreographed dance, register here. Indicate your interest in a slew of other events that are in brainstorm mode here. Bring your friends and plan to meet some new ones.

Here's to a year of joy-filled experiences, creating connections, and gathering purposefully.

-A.

P.S. Is there an experience that ?you want to pursue? Is the sole purpose of why you want to do it to have fun? If so, we want to come along. We'll bring our posse. Email me and tell me about your idea, and we might add it as a future Prequal field trip.