APW Happy Hour

Four day Business School Edition

Hi APW,

Thank you all for walking down memory lane and helping us celebrate Maddie this week, as she prepares to move on to the great wide world. Her last day is on Tuesday, and we’ll bring you live to her going away party on our Instagram Stories, and tell you all about it next week. Same time, same place.

This week though, I need to take a moment to talk about The Huddle: the womxn’s business retreat that I went to last weekend up in Sonoma. After eleven years in business, and nine years of working for myself, I felt remarkably chill about going to this retreat. Ten years ago I would have been terrified, but a decade later, it felt like NBD. Well. It wasn’t NBD. It was an emotional, intellectual, exhausting business-changing experience, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I wrote this right after I came back:

Before I get some sleep, I just wanted to take a moment of gratitude for the womxn I spent the weekend with. The Huddle is billed as a “retreat”, but I’d call it more “grueling business school 101 in three days for bad-ass-bitches.” I hear in B-School you don’t sleep much and learn financial modeling and figure out how to answer when someone yells “but what’s your wholesale margin and why?” with very little warning. So like that. Except where everyone is like “I trust you and I believe in you, and what’s your limiting belief here?” And you’re all “fear of abandonment” and start sobbing and then everyone suddenly group hugs you. So like that too.

I also came away feeling like I’d swept the cobwebs away off all the shit I’m doing that’s not working, and have a super clear roadmap for business. It’s a huge and mildly terrifying roadmap that I’m going to need a lot of accountability checks on. But I’m pretty sure I have a ton of womxn to help hold me accountable now too.

I’m pretty much always excited about where APW is going. If I wasn’t, I would have been out of this game long ago. But I finally have a pretty clear plan for the future, and I’m really excited for it. Even more than my usual level of sometimes tired and sometimes burned out excitement.

So here is to what’s next… and the amazing team that got us this far, and the amazing team that’s continuing to push us forward. (Plus, after a year in a transitional space, we’re moving into a bigger and brighter office down the hall in November, and Jenny and Liz are going to help us make it look cute.)

Here is too the future! And your open thread.

xo
Meg

P.S. We’re currently hiring for a sponsored post writer. Check out our first Instagram story highlight for details. If that might be you, send us an email to team at apracticalwedding dot com.

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