Blaze Your Own Trail - S2: Episode 2: Building WNorth with Heather Odendaal

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

WNORTH is the vision of Heather Odendaal, an accomplished entrepreneur, brand builder and an acclaimed event producer in Western Canada. While working as a sales executive at a Fortune 500 company, Heather’s pursuit of finding a leadership conference for women on a path to senior executive leadership fell short. In spring 2015, Heather co-founded the inaugural WNORTH Conference with her husband Mike. The WNORTH Conference is now heading into its 6th year, taking place April 15-17, 2020. Past events have featured speakers from IBM, CISCO, TELUS, Google, PwC and Lyft. In 2018, The Members’ Club at WNORTH was launched to support the growing community of female executives and provide them with networking opportunities and resources to support their leadership journey. In this episode we discuss: Heather's upbringing What activities she was into How she turned her passion into her business What she's up to now Connect with Heather: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherodendaal/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherodendaal/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/hmwhistler Website: https://wnorthconnect.com/ Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Heather will let us know about her upbringing, the kind of thing she was into when she was a kid, and how her business got started and what she's up to now. So I hope you enjoy the episode, and I can't wait to chat with you after. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest with me today. Her name is Heather Odendahl. And Heather, if you can just take a couple seconds and give the audience a little intro about you. Great. Thank you. My company is called W. North, and I'm the co-founder and CEO.

And I formed W. North a few years ago while I was working at a Fortune 500 company seeking out leadership development that would get me to the next stage of my career. And when I couldn't find it, I created a conference that served mid-career, executive women. And we've now expanded into a global network. And we do training and development workshops for women in North America and beyond. That is awesome. And so, you know, on this show, we like to take a dive backwards and just learn a little bit about you, get some context. So where did you grow up, you know, and how were you when you were a kid, like an elementary school? Were you, you know, an athlete?

Were you more on the reserve side? Really, let's get some context for the audience. Great. So I was actually born in Sydney, Australia, but I moved to Canada when I was four and a half. So the Canadian accent, my parents were both British and they met in the United. London, moved to a rural part of Australia, and then eventually became Canadian citizens. So I grew up just outside of Toronto in the suburbs, and I was, as far as high school was concerned, I was a very involved event organizer, even from high school.

I was on the student council and I was head of social events for a couple of years. And as far as sports goes, I was a provincial competing gymnast. So I did that for quite a few years and then transitioned to coaching when I was a little bit older. So that was kind of my journey in terms of high school. And then I moved from Toronto out to Vancouver. Western Canada when I went to university and I've lived out here ever since. That's awesome. So I actually grew up in Pacific Northwest in Portland. So that's where I was, you know, born and raised, lived there for 20 years. So I really enjoy that part of the country.

Have you spent much time down there? Have you been down to Portland or Seattle, those areas? Yes. So I have been to Portland. Well, Portland and the surrounding areas. I love the coast down there. definitely get to Seattle more. Seattle's a fairly quick trip from the Vancouver area, and that's just such a beautiful part of the world of the Pacific Northwest. So when you finish college, did you have a concrete idea of what you wanted to do next,

or was it kind of like, all right, let me just see what my options are? So I was rounding out the last six months of my term and I did a degree in general arts. He was a major in sociology and I had a course where I had to find a co-op, an internship. So I had been working really closely with an organization that at the time was called IntraWest. They were a Vale Resorts type conglomerant of ski resort, and they were headquartered in Vancouver. I had been working with them in a role that I had, which was an executive of the ski and snowboard club at my university, which was the largest club on campus. And I did an internship with them, which turned into my first job.

So my first job out of college, I moved up to Whistler, a ski resort, where I live now. And I had a marketing role at Whistair Blacom, which is the ski resort here. And I did that for my first five years. And it was an incredible marketing role right out of college. That's awesome. So in terms of marketing today in 2020 versus when you had that first role, What are some of the biggest changes that you've noticed? So my specific role was in corporate sponsorship and events.

So as it related to our large corporate partners and how they activated their brand on Mountain. And interestingly enough, transferred my skills from that role. into an events company that I own now. So we do brand activations on the mountain. So almost 15 years later, I'm still working with General Motors and Coca-Cola on brand activations on the mountain

that I started to work with them when I first watched my career. So as far as things changing, that consumer interaction on the mountain hasn't changed too much. The way that we utilize technology has definitely changed. You know, on Mountain we did an activation icebreaker, which is the clothing company last winter.

And, you know, just in terms of the ability to communicate with those consumers right after the activation, be able to send them photos to be able to engage them on social media that obviously has changed in 15 years but that organic relationship that you're building with them face-to-face hasn't and I think that it's something in this digital age that brand activations will remain really important because of that face-to-face interaction yeah and I really believe in that because you know at the end of the day we're all human right and we need we need that connection and you know my role my corporate role I do training and development and I oversee training

from Atlanta to Boston. And I facilitate everything from sales to, you know, a six-month leadership program, emotional intelligence. And, you know, we have lessened the amount of, you know, face-to-face instructor-led just with the times and the technology and having people away, you know, all of those things that come into play in 2020. But, yeah, to me, there's nothing better than being able to be. to be in front of somebody, you know, really dive into deep context when it comes to nonverbal

communication, right? Having these exercises and breakout sessions, you know, and really just learning together, you know, I think that's where growth happens. 100%. And it's interesting to say that about the face-to-face interaction. and I'm sure we will get into this, but it made me think about it. We had a difficult decision to make this week with regards to our conference. And, you know, at the current situation with COVID-19, we had to postpone our conference until the fall.

And one of the things that came up was a conversation around, are we going to move the conference online, which is a very common trend right now in terms of that experience. And for me, it was really important that, at least for our conference, that it needed to be postponed. And that face-to-face interaction is vital for the experience that we are trying to deliver at our particular event. So 100% agree, we can improve technology, we can improve, accessibility to content through online and virtual training, but at the end of the day, that face-to-face interaction is.

Absolutely. And so tell me a little bit about, you know, this company of yours coming to fruition. So it sounds like, you know, you obviously had the skill set. You had the background, right? You were a practitioner. You were doing this stuff, just not with your name on the door, right? Not your organization.

So was it just one day you sat around and said, wow, like, I think I should be able to do this? Or was there something a little deeper that went into it? I'm very interested to find out about that. Yeah. So my journey to entrepreneurship was a little bit more gradual. I started the W. North Conference as a sidehouse. hustle for a good four years, three and a half, I guess, until I took the full plunge into entrepreneurship. And reason being, you know, I had the, yes, I had the skill set to create

the conference. But at the same time, I still really loved the job that I did. So I was a wine sales rep. And, you know, I'm very passionate about wine and I'm very passionate about the industry. And but at the same time, when I went looking for that next level of leadership and that conference that I was seeking, I couldn't find it. So it was a passion project for many years and beyond the conference, it evolved, you know, to a membership where we have now over 400, members in six chapter cities, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto, New York, and London, and a number of events and trainings throughout the year. So there was a point at which it grew from just being the conference to being a larger organization, and that was when I took a full plunge into running my own business.

And so that's not everyone's journey, but that was my path. Okay. Definitely, definitely an interesting path, right? But I would say in 2020, it's very, it's a lot more common now, right? There's a lot of people that are doing a full-time gig and then they've got something else going on and then, you know, they may even have other endeavors, right? And to me, I think it's, it's almost a necessity now, right? To have multiple income streams is especially, you know, I know, I know you're a parent. And so we'll get into that here in a second. I'm also my father of four

plus one on the way. So I definitely know the importance of multiple streams of income. So, so you have two children. Is that right? Yes, I do. I have a one-year-old girl named Carmen. and a four-year-old boy named Luke. Okay. And so one and four, I know those ages very well. So we have two boys and two girls at the moment. We just found out that the official tiebreaker is a boy. So we're going to have three and two.

You know, the boys win, which is I'm excited about. Not competitive at all, though. You know, yeah. So our boys are three and 15. so quite a big gap there and then the girls are 8 and 11 so now we get we get this new adventure of another another boy joining the family in June I feel like I should turn the mic around and ask you like I mean with one it was a game changer with two it's a life changer and then beyond that I don't even I can't even recollect um

Yeah, it's, it's, kids are, they're a lot. They're amazing. The ages that my kids are right now is, that is very consuming. So yes, I know that you get it. I definitely, I can definitely relate, you know, and I think so when you get to three, you know, most people think they're like, man, three. Like, I just don't think, how is that even possible? And really, it actually gets easier. believe it or not, when as you, like, at four was like, oh, this is, this is like walking the park, right? So now it's five and it'll be like, you know, this, you know, it's another, it's another addition. So, but it's interesting to like, you know, really start to realize their personality types, right? Because you, you start to see it. Now, of course, that first six month that you feel like it's changing every day, right? They're doing something new every day. And then they get to a year and you're starting to kind of figure them out. And then as they grow, it's amazing to see, you know, which ones are more extroverted, which ones are more introverted, and which ones are

more organized, and which ones are more carefree and go with the flow. You know, it's really, really cool to see those things start to develop. Yeah. And how one can also influence the other. My daughter is going to be a really tough cookie because she has a very, brother that, you know, is tough on her. And so she's just started to, she's 15 months now, and she's just started to, you know, punch back a little. And, you know, my four-year-old's, like, really starting to realize that he needs to, he needs to watch his back. So, yeah, it's an amazing time right now, just watching them grow with them. Absolutely. All right. And so let's, let's get into a little bit about the events that that you're hosting. And really, you know, what I think has been been cool

to learn about is that this, this went from, you know, this conference that could fulfill everything that you wanted to have now to a community and now a global, a global business. So what has it been like, you know, on this journey so far from, you know, that first event that we had talked about to, to now today where you're seeing your organization, you know, cross state and country lines. Yeah. So one of the things that is really interesting about this journey in terms of expanding beyond this conference was it was really the women who were attending the conference that were part of the community to begin with that kind of put their hands up and said,

we really need this in our city. I had one city director from San Francisco who she became city director because she had attended the W. North Conference and said there is not a community that is serving this demographic of highly driven and ambitious women who are on the journey to C-suite. And I would like to get together

some women for Connect dinner, which is one of our signature events that we do. And, you know, will you support that idea? And 100%? Yes, I will. So they started small with doing curated dinners with speakers in many of the cities that we are now, now have chapters. And as we did those dinners, we realized that there was an appetite for building more of a community beyond that. So it was kind of the customers looking for it. and asking for more that pushed me to expand the model. Interestingly enough, we launched our membership two years ago.

So at the time I had a small child, and at the time I wasn't necessarily geared up for a huge expansion, but as, you know, with entrepreneurs, when you have customers that are very passionate about the product, you know, it puts, me and gave me that extra motivation to say, yeah, you know what, we are going to expand and we're going to open chapters in six cities, and this is what it's going to look like.

And so the last few years, it's been growing, and we are now doing about 36 events annually in those six chapter cities altogether. And those events range from our Connect dinners, which are intimate dinners of 24 people with a speaker all the way up to the conference and what one of the events that we did for the first time last year was a one-day summit with about 200 people in toronto so we are constantly evolving our um our events and our content based on what the women in our demographic are really looking for we've started to do a lot more events um at 9 o'clock in the morning during business hours because of the feedback that a lot of these women are not available in the evenings.

And so we were doing evening events and finding that our attendance is getting less. And so we researched and surveyed our members and turns out they want to meet during office hours. They want to meet for breakfast. So it's all about kind of understanding the demographic that you are serving and making modifications to ensure that you're giving them right tools. Okay, that's awesome. And so what is a typical sales cycle like, right? So let's talk business a little bit because you have a sale, every business has some type of sales cycle. what are kind of the touch points that that you're doing to or were the places where you're

driving traffic to to learn about your product get on the email list and then hopefully convert into a member right because now you're you're offering membership now so what is your what does your process look like definitely so we are a membership based organization membership is $30 U.S. a month or $300 a rest of the year. And the initial intake, we took strictly from past attendees of our events, which was about 1,800 people. And when we sent that initial, when we sent that initial email out, we signed up over 150 new members. So I think we figured it was about a 10% redemption on the past attendees, which by all accounts, we had been told that was really good. So that was our initial intake. Since then, we have really used the events model to build out our

membership. We find that a lot of people really do want to have some sort of experience with the product in person before making that transition to committing. There are a lot of membership organizations that are strictly online, but ours has a focus on at least having a couple of touch points a year. We usually try for three to four personal in-person touch points to keep those members engaged. So our cycle often refers around our revolves around, sorry, our event cycles. So our conference is a big part of that, as well as smaller events throughout the year. One of the strategies which really came out of a bit of testing and figuring out what was going to work was our referrals.

So whenever we have a new member sign up, we ask them to recognize. recommend two people to join the membership. Our referral, our referral success is about 50%, which means of those two people, we most likely will sign up a new member of those two. So that is one thing we've really focused on. And as a result, we've grown organically. We've grown mostly through word of mouth.

And in fact, we do engage and online advertising campaign. But our highest success and our highest retention is among our customers that have been referred by another member. Okay, awesome. And so I've got two questions. First question is, why did you guys pick two?

Did you guys do some split testing, like two or up to five? I'm just curious on the referral. And did you guys do any testing to where you figured out that two was kind of the magic number? I would love to say we had a really complicated split testing analysis, but we talked it out and we determined that we wanted people to complete the form. And if we made it too long, if we asked for too many names, and people wouldn't complete it. And so we just, we didn't want to just ask for one, but we asked for two and that's where we kept it.

if we had maybe found out that it was, you know, we weren't getting about 50%, we maybe would have taken it down to one. But two seemed to stick, and it seemed to work. So that was our method. Okay. Yeah, I was just curious about that, right? And I think, too, like you said, shorter form, lack of friction, right? It's all about speed these days when it comes to people and filling things out like that.

So, and my other question would be, what is your attrition rate, right? So you, you know, I'm sure you're looking at the data of, you know, I'm getting X members a month, but we're losing X members a month. So is your attrition high or does it kind of fluctuate based on, you know, when the last messaging went out or when the last chapter meeting was, have you noticed anything in that regard? Yes, we definitely have. So when we initially launched, we did launch with more of an online-only strategy. And not that it was online exclusively, but that we weren't going to have, you know, monthly events in every city. We were still growing our membership, and so that was not necessarily logistically possible. one of the things that we noticed we were we were retaining most members for about a year and then we would always ask them when they canceled why they were canceling and oftentimes the answer was

they wanted to be in-person experiences and there wasn't something happening in their area so we changed our strategy a little about a year ago and I will say on that note of our initial we call them our founding members i would say 30 percent of our membership still signed up in the first three months which we considered our founding membership so we still have a fair amount of founding members that have stuck with us through over two years in terms of the community and they are the highly engaged members that attend our webinars frequently participate in our masterminds. So with regards to changing our strategy, we've started to do more in-person events. In our smaller chapter cities, we were keeping it simple.

So we were doing small dinners with a maximum of 10 to 12 guests. We also do holiday socials. So we're not trying to make things overly complicated. We're just bringing people together and as we engaged that strategy of having the personal in-person in-city touch points, we started to retain members for much longer. And now I would say, and I even said to my co-founder and husband the other day, we have had very few cancellations lately and a lot of new membership. So I definitely think that that is that in-person contact that people are still creating in addition to the online component. Okay.

And so with everything that's happening right now, and it's just looking like the narrative is at least three weeks, right, or so, where all of us are going to be like this, like meeting virtually for the most part. So how do you think or what's your strategy to add value to the community over these couple weeks, right? Because I'm sure that's something you guys, I know you had mentioned, you know, doing something online, a summit like that, but how else do you think that you can, you know, create content around just, you know, keeping the community intertwined, if you will, and just keeping, you know, keeping the momentum going, right? Because you said you've had a lot more memberships and cancellations. And, you know, one thing you don't want to do is lose that momentum. 100%. And so one of the things that we did recently are in-person member meetups, which are essentially in-person workshops that we do once a month in a couple of our chapters. Those were all coming up in the next couple of weeks. And although they're small, they're 20-person gatherings, one of the things with COVID-19 is it doesn't seem to matter the size.

there are restrictions around large events, but at the end of the day, no one is doing even one-on-one meeting in scenes right now. So we decided to move those online, which was actually a win for the rest of our members because now some of the content that was only going to be delivered in person

will now get to be experienced by our members in the other cities. So we are building out a communication for Monday, which outlines all of our upcoming online and virtual trainings and workshops, which will actually be pretty comprehensive because we had a number of events happening in other cities. So that is something we're working on. I think in terms of the virtual conference angle, we're not currently planning to go that route, although I am exploring a few things on a conference call this week. A lot of people will be the next few weeks people will be looking for that community.

And so one of the ideas that I had was to potentially do a town hall and get everybody kind of online and get a little bit more interactive than maybe our workshops and have more of a loose theme, but not necessarily having a structured, you know, workshop or webinar format. But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting. interesting time and some of you know I've been really impressed with some of the organized the tech companies and organizations Cisco has made WebEx free for a 90-day trial as well as Zoom has just announced that they are making their

software free to school kindergarten to grade 12 so there's a number of organizations and tech companies are really stepping up to the plate to helping community during these dark days. But yes, for our community, it will be about continuing to offer our programs, but just in a different way. Awesome. And so where do you get, you know, the community together online? Do you guys have like a Facebook group where you guys do live streams so often?

Or like, so where's the place where you can kind of reach the most of your community at once? So we do monthly workshops. So we'll bring in guest speakers from all over the world. I mean virtually though, virtually. Like if you... Oh, okay. Oh, these are virtual.

Okay, that's awesome. I should probably say that. We have in-person workshops and we have virtual workshops. Yep. So we do monthly virtual workshop. And those ones are on Zoom. And we also live stream those to our private Facebook group. So we do use the Facebook.

group model we also use the Zoom meetings as far as getting together as well online we offer an online leadership masterminds one of the things that I noticed about the entrepreneur community was that they were doing some incredible masterminds where everyone would get together collaborate ideas share best practices and for women who are working more in the corporate worlds there wasn't that same there wasn't that same space so when I formed the W North members club we decided to launch members sorry leadership masterminds which are group group facilitated peer to peer almost like coaching calls and so they have five five members in a facilitator and they meet every

two weeks and they tackled different issues that the women in the group are facing in the workplace. So it could be from hiring or firing employees to how to have a difficult conversation with your boss about X, Y, and Z. And that has been one of our most successful program. Yeah, no, I bet. I think, you know, being able to meet intimately, right, and where everybody's on camera so you can see each other and you can have those amazing breakouts. I think those are of high value. You know, I do a, I created a show for my company called the, the Gable Sales Insights Live Show and we invite on winners of our quarterly sales

contests and bring them on. And it's like exactly how we're meeting right now, video style. And it gives them an opportunity to get some FaceTime, share some best practices with the organization. and anyone, you know, that's in a sales role can join, right, through Zoom. So, you know, more of that, I think, is coming than not, right? And it's amazing what you can do in 2020 with the technology. Definitely. And I think one of the things that COVID-19 and our, let's say, self-isolation practices for the next few weeks will teach us and will improve upon is organization's ability to actually adapt.

these. There are, you know, a number of large enterprise organizations that are very well equipped to working from home and having, you know, great group discussions globally and that type of thing. But there are a number of organizations and most organizations that are not well equipped for it. And have not necessarily made that transition to, you know, best practices of working from home. And I've spoken to a number of people that are, you know, are grateful for the fact that their companies are finally making this transition and finally striving to improve their VPN access and a number of things that have been hurtled. And so I do think that we will start to see some transitions, which I will be honest, will very, will greatly benefit. women because women in the workplace number one thing that I still hear is that my employer does not have a lot of flexibility in terms of my hours and working from home

and you know there's still this in some cases stigma if they have to leave early to pick up kids I mean those types of things still exist and women greatly benefit when there are organizations that will have flexible and agile working scenarios. And I think we will see those things improve over the coming weeks and months. Oh, no, I completely agree. I mean, if this is doing one thing, like you said, is it's shining a massive light bulb on the real and sheer need for being able to have that flexibility. And being, because, listen, whether you're in an office or you're at your kitchen table,

I mean, you're still having the same productivity, right? I mean, you're still able, especially when you're meeting and face-to-face through video, like you're working, you're collaborating. And, you know, with this amazing technology, you have the ability to put up whiteboards and send people to breakout rooms and have polls and make it interactive so that you can see that people are actually, you know, retaining the information. You know, one of the things I like to do is I like to say, hey, if you all agree with that, go ahead, type yes and chat or no in chat, right? And you make it interactive for people because, you know, if, and that's the other thing that I've noticed is we've all been on webinars that were not exciting or interesting.

And when you didn't have to be on camera, it was very easy to put it on mute and to keep plugging away. Well, guess what? When you're on camera, you're on camera, you know? And if the camera goes off, then someone knows that you're probably doing something that's not conducive to what's actually happening in front of you. So I think that, you know, being able to do it in this context and have the ability to do this, it's foundational. And it shouldn't be a maybe we will. It should be a, this is what we need. Definitely.

And this is the push that a lot of organizations may have needed to get there. Absolutely. So what I want to find out about is, you know, all the audience that's been listening, they've been getting some really good context about your business and, you know, they've heard a lot about the workshops that you do and the content as it relates to a plethora of things, really, you know, leadership being one of them. So if somebody in the audience is saying, you know what, you know, I'm a woman, I'm an entrepreneur, I live in one of these markets that you offer these things. So how do I get in touch with? W North. Great. So we have our website, has a lot of details about our upcoming event, events, our conference,

we are WNorthConnect.com. We're also on social at W.NorthConnect. And we, I, we would love to connect with people on LinkedIn as well. And so I am Heather Odendall. You can find me on LinkedIn. But in terms of our next few months in the year, we have an event roadshow that we're launching with indeed the job site in September.

And I'm coming to every single one of our chapter cities, which are Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, and I would love if you live in one of those. markets. I would love to see you at our event, which will be showcasing three different women and their journey to the C-Suite. Awesome. Awesome. Well, listen, it's been so awesome, getting to know you a little bit better and hearing your story and your journey. And I definitely think that people out there have a lot more context about everything that you do. So, thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope that you and your family, you know, stay safe over the over the next few weeks while this blows over. So thanks so much again.

Thank you, Jordan. Thank you so much for listening to that episode with Heather Odendahl. Make sure you check out all of her info in the show notes, as she is definitely somebody that's helping empower and impact women through the conferences that she's hosting. If you haven't already subscribed, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. It is available here on Anchor.

It's available on iTunes, Spotify, IHeartRadio, really everywhere that you would listen to a podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and I can't wait to chat with you on the next episode.