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We’re not a social club. I’m a mom of three who has all these questions regarding my business so I’m the perfect person to be asking these questions. I was 36 when I started the company. The average age of the first time entrepreneur is 39. And that is a really complicated age for a lot of women. I knew I wanted to have more children. And I knew if I put the support around me I could do both of those things. Yes, it’s really hard when you are juggling all the parts of your life and I have moments when I wish I could hit the pause button for a month or a week. But I can’t. What do they say -- With great risk comes great reward -- and it’s so true.

What would you say has been the most rewarding moment so far?

I can’t pick just one because what’s been really remarkable to me is seeing women connecting and finding what they need within the four walls that we’ve built. Every month we have these breakfasts –- we call them morning assembly -- and our members can come to the group and say, “I need to hire a social media person” or “I need an introduction to investors,” and we’ve seen successful introductions made. I watched a woman get her first investor check in our space. I watched a start-up team hire a back-end developer that was another member of The Riveter. People have referred attorneys in our space to each other. Seeing that community in action has been so powerful.

We will no longer be silenced. Here's to a year of changing that for all women. #Timesup #TheRiveter #WhyWeWearBlack

A post shared by The Riveter (@theriveterco) on Jan 9, 2018 at 1:05pm PST

And finally, any advice to other female entrepreneurs and women thinking about starting a business?

My advice to other women is to do the thing. You can plan the thing for five years or 10 years. But at a certain point, you just have to do it. We’re not celebrities at The Riveter. We don’t live in New York. We’re in a smaller market. And so we had to work with really limited capital to build our first space. I had to sign a personal guarantee on the lease. That’s kind of the risk you take as an entrepreneur. And the one other piece of advice I would give -- this was always really helpful to me -- is that [hearing] \"no\" from one person doesn't mean \"no\" from everybody. And \"no\" from one person doesn’t even necessarily mean \"no\" from that person. It means \"no right now\" and \"no to that specific ask.\" Because it can be really hard hearing \"no\" and \"no\" and \"no.\" Yesterday I had an amazing day. I raised some really important capital for my company. I had some amazing meetings. Today I got turned down from an investment I was really hoping would happen. There are good days and bad days. It’s not easy. But I think it’s so important to take a leap and see what you can do because you can do a lot more than you think you can.

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