BrainTrust

BrainTrustLIVE is the only business conference that celebrates the mistakes and failures.

The BTLive speaker lineup is here, and these women are not coming to give you the highlight reel.

First up: Ginger Aydogdu, Founder & CEO of Simply Southern. One mall kiosk. Then 30+ stores. Then 6,000+ retailers carrying her brand. You don't build that without some dark moments, and she's coming to talk about all of it.

This year's theme is Messy in the Middle. It's the time after the early excitement of starting and before the success. Come spend the day with nationally recognized founders on one stage, telling the real stories of how they faced the hard parts.

Tickets at the link in bio.

Most networking events give you a room full of strangers and a name tag. BrainTrust gives you a room full of women who know your business, your goals, and whether you actually followed through on what you said you'd do last month.

That's why BrainTrust works.

Same group. Real trust. And the kind of accountability that actually moves things forward.

Curious what it feels like?

Our next application window for Atlanta opens June 23rd. Attend a Lowdown and come see for yourself.

Not in Atlanta? Submit an interest form to learn more.

Link in bio.

BrainTrust Brag for our member Trish! 🎉

Trish had an idea she wanted to bring to life, so she wrote her first novel. The Right Kind of Family is an upmarket book club fiction story set in Charlotte, following a PR professional whose personal and professional life are challenged after an unexpected revelation in her family.

What started as an idea became a finished novel through drafts, edits, rewrites, and the quiet discipline it takes to stay with the work until it is ready to be shared.

Writing a book is no small thing, and bringing a first novel to life is the kind of milestone worth celebrating.

This is exactly the kind of story we love to see across this community. Congratulations, Trish! 👏

Something is shifting inside our community right now.
BrainTrust members are making decisions faster. Strategy is getting shaped in real time instead of after the fact. Ideas are being shared while they're still forming, and progress is happening in conversation instead of isolation.

This is what it looks like when women stop building alone and start building together. The clarity comes sooner. The confidence follows. And the growth compounds because it's not happening in a vacuum anymore.

Since Laurel joined BrainTrust, she doubled her company's revenue. When she talks about how, she doesn't point to one strategy. She points to the women in her Vault - what we call her small peer group- who held her accountable, stretched her thinking, and pushed her forward when she couldn't see the next step on her own.

That's the pattern we're seeing across the community. When founders have a room full of people who will tell them the truth and help them think bigger, they move differently.

Women are building businesses at record rates.

And what surrounds us matters.

The people we stay close to shape what we believe is possible. Their stories, choices, pivots, and hard-won lessons change how we think, how we decide, and how we keep going when the work gets hard.

Because building a business takes grit, but it also takes proximity, honesty, and women who understand the road you’re on.

That’s where things change.

BrainTrust Brag for our member Jennifer! 🎉

Jennifer saw a gap in the corporate gifting world where no single partner could handle branded merch, custom curation, and premium delivery all under one roof, so she built one herself. In 2022, she founded Gift House, and what started as a passion project has grown into Nashville's premier corporate gifting resource.

With an all-women team and a culture rooted in thoughtfulness, Gift House now serves businesses across the country and is moving into a newly constructed office and warehouse this September. Jennifer was recently featured in NBJ's People on the Move special edition for Women's History Month, recognizing the work she's doing and the impact she's making.

This is exactly the kind of story we love to see across this community.

Congratulations, Jennifer! 👏

There are more than 14 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. Only about 2% of them have crossed $1 million in revenue.

BrainTrust exists to change that number, one Vault at a time.
Our members meet monthly in small, confidential peer groups where they open their books, share what's really happening, and help each other make better decisions. Because getting to the next revenue milestone shouldn't require figuring it out in isolation.

Now in Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta, and virtually. 📰 Read more about our mission in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (link in bio).