Sanders’ ‘Success Circle Live!’ Convenes In Crescent City
When Courtney Sanders attended college she was failing her classes and spending too much money on expensive dinners and designer clothes. But her poor habits and lack of discipline paid off. She said they ignited a desire to climb out of credit card debt and launch a women's empowerment brand to help others with personal development, money management and entrepreneurship.
“The thing I regretted most about that was I was not able to invest in my business for a while,” said Sanders, Think & Grow Chick, LLC founder. “I was not able to make the financial moves necessary when you’re trying to start something new because I was held back by all those financial decisions I made for things that weren’t even around anymore. All those expensive dinners? I had eaten them, yet I was still paying for them with the credit card debt and all the interest.”
As Sanders settled her debts, she authored “Get What You Want: The Ultimate Guide to Figuring Out + Getting What You Want in Life,” and launched her business, training and development company Think & Grow Chick, LLC that provides online and in-person education, mentorship and a vibrant business community for millennial women.
This weekend Think & Grow Chick, LLC presents its first annual conference “Success Circle Live!: Connecting the Dots” in New Orleans.
From Friday, Sept. 8, to Sunday, Sept. 10, at the Renaissance New Orleans Arts Warehouse District Hotel, 700 Tchoupitoulas St., more than 100 entrepreneurial women who are launching a wide range of businesses from all over the country will come together to enjoy an energized weekend supercharged with business strategy sessions, inspiration and the opportunity to make valuable connections.
“At its core, New Orleans is such a charming, amazing city with rich history so we wanted that ambiance as a backdrop for the attendees,” said Sanders. “And I also chose to hold the conference here because I heard New Orleans is having a renaissance when it comes to startups and entrepreneurship, but I wanted to see that for myself.”
At the Success Circle Live! event, participants will receive training from Sanders and her personal board of advisors, including W.E. Da’Cruz, Courtney Bradley, Jereshia Hawk, Jullien Gordon, Dominique Broadway and Regina Anaejionu, to “connect the dots” in their business, network and mission.
Keynotes and panels will focus on creating business models that work for unique products and services, marketing strategies to catapult businesses to success, savvy in-person and online networking strategies to help create an authentic and powerful business network, and how to impact the world through entrepreneurism.
“They’re going to be talking about how to go from zero to revenue in your business, how to set up your business to run without you and how to scale it into the future, how to get the connections you need for your business and how to network with people who can help take you to the next level,” Sanders said of her speakers. “Then we’ll have freestyle discussions for the members of the conference where the attendees can ask the panelists questions in a hot seat setting.”
Think & Grow Chick’s Success Circle is a monthly membership group that helps women take what they know and what they are good at and turn those skills into profitable businesses online. “The group empowers women by showing them to value what they know more than maybe just what they are getting paid for at a job,” said Sanders. “A lot of us do things for corporations, day in and day out, year in and year out, and we never truly know the value of what we have to offer to the world. I show women how to take what they have, how to show it to the world, how to get it out to a broader marketplace and how to get paid directly for their skills and services.”
The Success Circle Live! conference is open to the public through ticket sales and live stream access.
“It’s so important to empower women when it comes to developing financial skills because women really carry the purse strings,” said Sanders. “In households they make all the financial decisions, and women tend to be legacy minded. I wanted to strengthen women to understand that they don’t just have to be the administrators of the finances in their household. They can be the creator of income and wealth for their families and future generations to come.”
As a speaker and training program developer living in Dallas, Texas, Sanders has been involved with The White House’s My Brother’s Keeper and Council on Women and Girls, The National Black MBA Association, Credit Karma and Levo League, among others. She also designed personal and entrepreneurial development curriculum for Urban League Young Professionals and Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.
Sanders, whose financial mentors include “Rich Dad Poor Dad’s” Robert T. Kiyosaki, “The Millionaire Real Estate Investor‘s” Gary Keller and her own personal accountant, reaches more than 75,000 women every month through her blog and social media platforms, where she frequently provides self-help, entrepreneurship and financial literacy advice.
“Think & Grow Chick is really rewarding to run,” she said. “I recently hired two full time employees to help me grow Think & Grow Chick while growing the businesses of the women that we serve. We have hundreds of businesswomen in our community that we’re really invested in and are deeply committed to their success. So staying as committed to their success as we are, while also being committed to our own success as a business, can be a challenge, but seeing those success stories and hearing all the great things that the women who go through our training programs do in the world is its own reward.”
