A Woman's Take on Networking

Jodi Womack (front and center in the black top) and some of the women who attend her female business meet-ups.

Image: Courtesy of Jodi Womack

A few years ago, Jodi Womack started attending business-networking events in Ojai, California. The cofounder of workplace-performance consulting firm The Womack Company, she was looking for a social experience with fellow businesspeople.

“They were so depressing,” she says. “Everybody seemed scared of future forecasts, it was just a very sad experience.” So in February 2009, she got together with 13 female friends who also owned businesses in her town to talk and socialize. After everyone went home, she began getting phone calls and emails about when the next meet-up was going to be. And so No More Nylons was born.

Over the next three months, the numbers attending the women’s business socials grew from 14 to 80, in a town of 8,000. In January, No More Nylons expanded into Ventura County, where in June 130 female entrepreneurs gathered at the monthly social. Two hundred women attended the Ojai branch’s Christmas party last year, and Womack is working on licensing out the idea to other cities.

It’s about community and engaging with other businesswomen in a noncompetitive, nurturing way, she says. “It really just came out of a need and desire for something social.” The name of the company represents getting out of uncomfortable work clothes and doing something you really enjoy.

Every event is held at a local venue that donates the space. There’s no speaker, no structure, just a place to talk and meet other entrepreneurs. “I sometimes have to kick people out at 11 o’clock at night,” she says.

Womack and her husband Jason, who have lived in Ojai for 16 years, both started out working in the school system. She eventually moved to the David Allen Company to do event planning before the pair founded the Womack Company.

Now she’s taking No More Nylons further abroad. There have already been three socials in New York this year, and another is planned for the fall. London is also on the agenda, and some former attendees who have moved to other cities are asking about starting up branches all over the country.

It’s the new face of small business, she says.

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