6 minute read
Supporting Women Through Storytelling and Personal Engagement
by Allison Wyckoff
Readers of The Franchise Woman (TFW) know Elizabeth Denham, even if they don’t realize it. Her voice, passion and personality are infused throughout the magazine. She is the reason a publication focused on business and entrepreneurship connects so personally with readers and leaves them feeling supported and inspired. After facing plenty of her own struggles in life and business, Elizabeth has found her path and she is driven to help others find their own paths as individuals, business owners and leaders.
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Elizabeth is my personal friend, and there is no way for me to write about her objectively. That would be a waste, anyway, and wouldn’t allow me to share the best parts of who she is. We talked deeply about what matters to her, and that’s what I’ll share here – the motivations, goals, struggles, and path of TFW’s Founder and Editor-in-Chief.
She Feels Like an Imposter. And We Need to Talk About That.
We talked about our toughest topic first – what do you NOT want people to know about you? For Elizabeth, like many of us, it’s her struggle to fully own her role and the value she brings to her work.
“I would describe myself overall as a pretty confident person, but imposter syndrome still creeps in,” she said. “I sometimes wonder if I’m out of my depth or lane. Why would someone want to pay me money for the work I do? What do I have to give them? And I think most women feel that at some point.”
She wants us to talk about this because we’re more likely to put on a confident face in the business world than with family or friends and to struggle privately with owning our successes.
“I think men are more willing to own every bit of their success, and we question every little bit of it,” she said. “We’re always fighting for a seat at the table. If we’re going to push through barriers, it’s important that we learn to own this and take the respect that is given to us by people in our professional space.”
She’s Driven to Support Women Through Storytelling and Personal Engagement.
Elizabeth is a storyteller, and through TFW and The Coterie, she has found her path. “Storytelling is one of the most powerful things you can do to make change and bring people in,” she said.
The stories in TFW are aimed at helping readers understand who these women in franchising are, how they did it, and how others can too. “Not a single one has done it alone. To know that their path has been imperfect, and they had a group of people supporting them, and they messed things up and still came out on top. Knowing what women go through to get where they are is the lesson,” she said.
Through The Coterie, an online community for women (and TFW’s parent platform), Elizabeth hopes to tell an even broader story in support of women.
“Women are becoming a greater and greater force in the world in terms of business, politics and influence. But we do have a unique path through life – we are often still the caregivers; the financial path is different; we still have glass ceilings to break. Those are things only women understand. And as a collective voice we have so much more power than we do as individuals,” she said.
In her personal life, Elizabeth supports and mentors young women through her work with the Dogwood Trail Pageant, a scholarship program that chooses ambassadors to serve her local region at festivals, parades and community engagements. She loves the founder’s take on teaching young women in high school how to be interviewed, to prioritize education and to value self-sufficiency.
For the past seven years, Elizabeth’s involvement in the pageant has grown. Today she interviews each girl to write their bio, evaluates the essay portion of the contest, writes the program script and directs the stage the night of the event, and overall coaches the girls on their performance.
“Young women don’t always embrace their own voice and use it. I want them to be confident and not say things with conditions, but to say things outright. We try to build their sense of self,” she said. “There is something about having impact on someone else’s growth that is satisfying, and you feel like you’re making a difference to someone by imparting what you’ve learned.”
She Finds the Gift in the Struggle. Or at Least Surrounding It.
Elizabeth is intentional about looking for the gifts in life’s struggles. It’s a habit she got into more than a decade ago during a divorce from her first husband while managing the daily struggle of a 2-year-old with Epilepsy.
“There’s no gift in a sick child. But there are gifts in the things that surround a sick child.”
It took more than a year for her son’s seizures to become manageable, and for a time he had seizures on the hour. As someone who doesn’t like to need or ask for help, Elizabeth found herself in a position where she had to have help to care for her two older children while she focused on her youngest son’s health. Her mother helped with childcare, friends brought the family dinner and drove her older boys where they needed to go.
“When the worst of the worst happens, you realize the value of the people you’ve surrounded yourself with,” she said. Elizabeth was surprised to also see her other children grow through experiencing their younger brother’s illness. “It was a gift to watch my kids learn empathy; to see them go from very ego-centric to not because they’re worried about their brother. If you can find the gift surrounding a sick child, you can find it in almost anything,” she said.
Vulnerability is Her Superpower.
Elizabeth describes her life 10 years ago as one of survival mode. As she dealt with her divorce and cared for her son’s health, she was also trying to figure out what she wanted from life. She could talk to people about her struggles one-onone, but she didn’t have the tools yet to be vulnerable about her experiences.
“I wrote a whole book about my experiences without true vulnerability,” she said. It was funny stuff about what I learned, but not the vulnerable stuff.”
Today, she’s committed to discussing difficult things openly to help us heal and learn from each other. Facing the difficulties in her own life has given her confidence to be more vulnerable, and to know that she will be stronger because of it. She hopes to teach others how important this skill is and to offer them a community of support through The Coterie.
“I think you teach it by allowing people to experience it without judgment, and the more we can do that as women and as leaders, the more we can teach it. Showing vulnerability is not as taboo anymore as it once was, and we need to show younger generations of women that this is important.”
One way The Coterie is accomplishing this is through a new Gift of the Struggle video series that shares the personal stories of women, told in their own words. Each video delves deeply into the lessons learned by one woman as she navigated her own difficulties in life and business.
“There is great strength in these women’s vulnerability. What these women are doing is incredibly brave.”
Learn more about The Coterie for Women here: https://www. thecoterieforwomen.com/ And tune in to The Gift of the Struggle series here: https://www.youtube. com/?gl=US&tab=r1
