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It is both exciting and heartening to look back over the last year in Female Disruptors and see how the dozens of women featured have revolutionized and reshaped their respective industries in so many inspiring ways.
If you’re looking to make major changes—think great, big, revolutionary changes—in your personal life or business, you can lean on the women of Female Disruptors exceptional women for guidance. In this post, we share the stories and achievements of seven women, in particular, that you’ll want to keep an eye on in 2020 and beyond.
Conversion Copywriter/Comedian Lianna Patch is Sharing Her Skills & Sass in a Course on Marketing with Humor
New Orleans-based comedian and conversion copywriter Lianna Patch wants to help other women find their niche. She found a way to marry her life’s two great loves—comedy and writing—in her own business, Punchline Copy. Now, Lianna is teaching others to infuse their marketing copy and visuals with humor in a brand new online course.
Lianna will present the course live online over the course of 6 to 8 weeks. She promises to help others learn about the history of using humor in marketing, codify your own sense of humor, harness the cognitive and social power of that humor, learn standup and improv fundamentals, and put it all to work in your copy so you can “edit in the funny, no matter what you’re starting with.”
I first met Lianna at a Baby Bathwater mastermind. As I sat silently and watched man after man answer the call for contributions, doubting and questioning myself, Lianna raised her hand and owned her place in the room.
She’s been inspiring me and countless others ever since with her take-no-prisoners attitude to business and her commitment to helping other women realize their own potential.
2020 is looking bright for Lianna. On top of her online course, you can catch Lianna emceeing Microconf Starter, a conference for founders and aspiring entrepreneurs, in Minneapolis this April. Follow her on Twitter to see what else she’s up to.
Cat Howell Gives Us a Backstage Pass to Ad Agency Scaling, Failing & Derailing in Limited Docuseries
Pay the invoice! More than a request, it’s become a rallying cry for aspiring agency entrepreneurs worldwide thanks to Cat Howell, founder and docuseries director at Digital Distillery and founder of Eight Loop Social.
In her nine-part web series set in Auckland, New Zealand, Howell mentors seven agency start-up entrepreneurs from all over the world. Through crash courses, masterminds, one-on-one training and mentoring, Howell teaches Pay the Invoice participants to grow their respective businesses.
“I wanted to help others through the challenges I experienced alone as I was trying to grow and scale my social advertising business,” Howell shared with me in a 2019 Female Disruptors interview. “Pay the Invoice offers accountability and best-practices that actually work – they worked for me and other clients! It’s exciting to see the curtains pulled back and share the experience, both the highs and lows, of growing your business.”
As edgy as she is inspiring, Howell is giving entrepreneurs a previously unheard of look behind the agency curtain. Stay tuned for educational, entertaining new Pay the Invoice episodes in 2020 and pop over to Digital Distillery for products and resources to help you grow your freelance or agency business.
And if you missed it earlier, be sure to read her sage advice and leadership lessons for women in Cat Howell Gives Entrepreneurs the Who, What, Zen to Success.
‘Most Influential Woman in Tech’ Charlene Li Shares The Disruption Mindset with the World
Six-time New York Times bestselling author and Altimeter Group founder Charlene Li has been disrupting the tech industry for decades. Today, she’s a respected advisor to Fortune 500 companies, a sought-after public speaker, an Inc. Top 50 Leadership Innovator, and one of our most inspirational Female Disruptors, among other things.
In 2019, Li launched her latest book, The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail.
Daniel Pink, author of When and Drive, says of her latest, “Charlene Li is one of our finest business minds. In her latest provocative work, she startles us with a new insight. We can’t disrupt our way to growth, but we can create disruption from growth. If you want to develop a company culture that supports extreme growth–and the market-altering change it can bring–this book is an urgent read.”
Bestselling author and writing coach Joshua D. Bernoff hails it the most important strategy book of the decade, and Imagine It Forward author Beth Comstock promises “Charlene Li will help you and your team dance with disruption in this fast-changing world.”
Just in time for 2020, Li has made it even easier to learn how to transform your organization with the release of The Disruption Mindset as an audiobook, available now on Audible.
Wellness Mama Katie Wells is Disrupting the Personal Care Industry with All-Natural Products That Actually Work
Blogger, author, and mom of six Katie Wells has been disrupting the status quo in family wellness for years as Wellness Mama. She and her team have shared practical tips, real food recipes, DIY beauty instructions, green cleaning tutorials, natural remedies, and other information to improve the lives of American families in over 1,500 articles and three books.
“I had my first child in 2006. As I sat in the doctor’s office for my six-week follow-up appointment, I read in a magazine that ‘for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of American children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.’” Wells shared with us in a Female Disruptors interview. “That hit me like a ton of bricks as I sat there nursing my tiny newborn baby, and I resolved that I would do what I could to change that statistic.”
Now, Wells and her co-founder/husband Seth Spears are shaking up the personal care industry with Wellnesse, an all-natural line of personal care products that have proven more effective than conventional alternatives.
“It’s tough to find high-quality products that work as well as ‘regular’ alternatives. People aren’t willing to sacrifice efficacy to use a natural option,” Wells said. “We set out to create products that work while maintaining safety and clean ingredients.”
Just in time for 2020, Wellnesse has officially launched with subscription options, convenient product collections, and free shipping on orders over $20.
Wells and her Wellnesse team are committed to disrupting the personal care industry with a complete and total commitment to honesty and transparency. In that spirit, you can see and explore the origin and makeup of every single ingredient found in Wellnesse products here.
Keep an eye out for new Wellnesse products and collections throughout 2020.
Landscaping Software Co-Founder & COO Janna Bradley Continues to Disrupt SaaS and Inspire Future Leaders in Equal Measure
If you’re looking for the inspiration to ditch the corporate grind and make your own way in the world, look no further than female disruptor Janna Bradley.
Today, she’s the co-founder and COO of LMN, a landscaping software brand over 85,000 users strong. But even before her success with LMN, Bradley and her husband Mark built their small residential landscaping business into a $50M annual revenue industry powerhouse.
In fact, it was out of their need to efficiently manage that business that LMN was born.
“I was running a successful landscape company (TBG) in Toronto, Canada and we had a need for business management software that addressed our challenges, in the field and in the office. We were looking for software that would automate processes like estimating, scheduling work, tracking crew time and more,” Bradley shared with Female Disruptors.
“There was nothing on the market so we decided to build a solution ourselves. We ended up sharing it with the industry and they embraced it.”
Today, LMN is the #1 business management software for the landscaping industry. Stay tuned to the LMN Blog, where Janna and her colleagues share business-building tips and advice, feature interviews with inspirational business leaders, and more.
Dr. Ai Addyson is Transforming Digital Learning & Redefining Opportunity for Entrepreneurs of All Stripes
College-professor-turned-digital-influencer Dr. Ai Addyson is shaking up the way we learn and grow. On realizing that her college students weren’t as digitally savvy as she’d expected, Addyson made radical changes to her pedagogical practices, embracing social media as an in-class teaching tool.
Blogging, developing her online presence and building her online brand became priorities. And as Addyson overcame her fears of these unknowns and succeeded online her opportunities for speaking, collaborative research, guest blogging and podcasting grew.
Today, she teaches social media pedagogy and conducts immersive entrepreneurship intensives at Classroom Without Walls. Launched in 2019, it has already been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, HubSpot Academy and more.
Not content to sit still, Addyson has big plans for 2020. She’ll continue disrupting education and the way we learn this coming year with two more Entrepreneurship Immersion programs, an alternative education program for parents, livestreaming shows on social media marketing and disrupting education, and more.
“Don’t be your own barrier to success,” Addyson advises other female disruptors. “Stop doubting yourself and unfriend those who doubt you. As we evolve, we have to evolve our network too! As the saying goes, our network is our net worth. Choose your network wisely.”
Lifelong Entrepreneur and Agency CEO Lisa Buyer is Disrupting Digital to Create Happiness & Productivity with Digital Detox Secrets
Are you running digital, or is digital running you? Serial entrepreneur and The Buyer Group CEO Lisa Buyer is disrupting digital and inspiring entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, mompreneurs, and digital natives with her Digital Detox Secrets.
First released as the book (now in its second edition) Digital Detox Secrets: How to Create Space in Your Life for Health, Happiness, Opportunity, and Productivity, Digital Detox Secrets is now also a podcast available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Tune in for Buyer’s inspirational talks with guests including millennial mom Virginia Nussey, Buddhify app founder and Modern Mindfulness author Rohan Gunatillake, female disruptor Charlene Li, Baby Bathwater founder Michael Lovitch and more.
Buyer is on a mission to help people get the most out of digital while reclaiming their time, productivity, health, happiness and wellbeing.
“Social media should be adding to our efficiency and not creating a deficiency,” Buyer said. “Analyze your work ethic and life ethic. What are your standards? Raise the bar. Are you surrounding yourself with successful people you can learn from? Good. Are you self sabotaging yourself? Stop. Don’t let the guilt from your past get in the way of your future.”
Buyer is excited to bring a whole new season of Digital Detox Secrets in 2020 (her second season just began in December 2019 with all original content). Subscribe now to get new episodes as they’re released.
