Why Promote Partnership and Collaboration Among Women
Dr. Nancy O'Reilly, Psy.D
International philanthropist, esteemed horsewoman, and popular author | President, Women Connect4Good, Inc.
A. Margot Blair, founder of AMB Consulting and Company, is a business and partnership strategist whose central theme throughout all her initiatives is collaboration. It’s also the central theme to this conversation, or as Dr. Nancy says, “None of us gets anywhere by ourselves.” Margot specializes in creating strategic partnerships, marketing events, and developing social profits (non-profits that benefit the people they serve). Her fascinating journey began as an entrepreneur life coach for teen girls who faced adversity, much as she had herself. It was her own childhood adversity and that of her early clients that inspired her to help others learn how to define themselves by their own terms instead of allowing their situations and circumstances to define them.
Today, that organization is called DiscoverHer Worldwide and it provides personal development training to 4,000 incarcerated women and girls, focusing on leadership behaviors, resilience and collaboration between women. This work, in combination with her for-profit business has earned her several awards, including being recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 Leader and Top 35 Millennial Influencer.
DiscoverHer
In discovering herself as an entrepreneur and college graduate at the age of 19, Margot faced a lot of competition and realized that she didn’t want to do it alone–that we’re not meant to do it alone. This led her to studying the psychology of collaboration that became the core of all her work. Margot says, “One of the things that I make sure to teach the people I work with is really understanding that as you’re being poured into, whether it’s mentorship or it’s a business-coach relationship, whatever the dynamic—as you’re being poured into, it’s important to pour into other people. That’s really the premise of the DiscoverHer movement. It’s discovering her, the woman you’ve been designed to be.”
In her own journey, she said that it’s a process of really figuring out, “What’s my calling? What’s my purpose and how does that relate to my destiny and then how do I come into the full version of myself?” Margot says that she totally believes we have all we need right inside ourselves. She explains, “We have to learn and sharpen our skills in diverse areas and unlearn certain things that no longer serve us and remove ourselves from certain relationships that no longer serve us or propel us forward to who we’re supposed to be.” This is what she has been doing for the last four years with a partnership strategy that starts with being intentional about collaboration.
The Partnership Approach
Listen to this podcast to learn more about Margot’s journey and how she has turned partnership strategies into collaborations with major organizations, such as The Obama Foundation, The Black Enterprise, LinkedIn, ADP, Toyota, and many more. Discover how to amplify your own events and initiatives with her new resource and free download, The Partnership Approach. Margot says that you will shift your mindset in several ways to position yourself to partner with people you’ve always wanted to reach out to. Margo invites you to connect with her to learn more at amargoblair.com or on her social media platforms.