We were lucky to catch up with Niki DeConcini recently and have shared our conversation below.

Niki, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

The risk we took was starting something from scratch in a space that already had so many good things in it.

When we started Female Founders Twin Cities, there were already incredible organizations supporting women in business. There were networking groups, events, professional communities, and rooms full of smart, talented women doing meaningful work. So in the beginning, there was definitely this quiet question in the back of our minds: who are we to create another one?

And honestly, that question felt fair.

We didn’t start because we thought something was missing in a critical or competitive way. We started because we kept feeling like there was a kind of room we were personally craving and couldn’t quite find. A room where women didn’t have to walk in and perform how well everything was going. A room where you could talk about leads, pricing, offers, and strategy, but also talk about fear, capacity, identity, resentment, motherhood, money, burnout, and all the very human things that shape the way you build a business. We wanted a space where ambition and softness could exist in the same sentence. Where women could be deeply driven without having to pretend they were never tired. Where collaboration wasn’t just something people said, but something people actually practiced.

At the time, we didn’t have proof that it would work. We didn’t have a huge audience or some perfect roadmap. We had an instinct. We had a belief that women were craving something more honest. So we decided to trust that and build it one gathering, one conversation, one relationship at a time.

And then, once the community started growing, we took another risk.

We stopped trying to explain Female Founders Twin Cities as simply a networking community and started owning what we were really doing: embodied business development. That language felt risky because it’s not for everyone. It’s not the cleanest elevator pitch. It doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional business box. But it was the truth of what was happening in the room.

We were watching women come in thinking they needed another strategy, another funnel, another content plan, another “fix” for their business. And sometimes they did need strategy. But often, what was actually underneath the business question was something deeper. A belief about what they were allowed to charge. A fear of being seen. A pattern of over-giving. A nervous system that didn’t feel safe receiving more. An identity that had been built around doing everything alone. A version of success they were chasing because they thought they were supposed to, not because it actually fit the life they wanted.

So we started saying that out loud.

We started building a community around the idea that the founder and the business are not separate. That sustainable growth requires both strategy and self-trust. That you can’t always out-plan an identity that no longer fits. And that women don’t need more spaces where they have to prove they’re impressive. They need spaces where they can be honest, supported, challenged, and expanded.

That was vulnerable because we knew some people wouldn’t resonate with it. Some people want business to stay clean and tactical. They want the checklist, the formula, the quick answer. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But we knew if we watered down the work to make it easier to understand, we would lose the very thing that made it matter.

So we chose depth. We chose specificity. We chose to build the room we actually believed in, even if it meant not being the room for everyone.

And that risk has changed everything.

What started as a small gathering has become a real community of women across Minnesota who are building business differently. Women are raising their prices, making cleaner decisions, pivoting with more trust, collaborating instead of competing, and realizing they don’t have to abandon themselves to be successful. We’ve watched women walk into the room unsure if they belonged and leave with new clients, new friendships, new language for their work, and sometimes an entirely new relationship with themselves as founders.

Looking back, the risk wasn’t just whether people would show up. It was whether we were willing to be honest about what we believed women actually needed.

And I’m so grateful we were.

Because the thing that felt hardest to explain in the beginning has become the thing women feel the moment they walk into the room. It’s also become the reason this work matters so much. We didn’t build another networking group. We built a space where women can grow businesses that actually feel like theirs. Businesses rooted in strategy, identity, community, and a version of success they don’t have to lose themselves to hold.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I’m Niki DeConcini, the co-founder of Female Founders Twin Cities, a community for women entrepreneurs in Minnesota who are building businesses with more depth, intention, and support.

My path into this work has not been perfectly linear, but when I look back, it actually makes so much sense.

I grew up as the daughter of two entrepreneurs, so business was never some far-off concept to me. It was something I watched up close. I saw the work, the sacrifice, the creativity, the pressure, and the deep personal investment that goes into building something of your own. But more than anything, my parents always stressed the importance of community. They taught me that success was never meant to happen in isolation. Relationships mattered. How people felt mattered. The way you showed up for others mattered.

That shaped me more than I probably realized at the time.

Later, I became the Director of Marketing and Events at a shopping center in Fargo, North Dakota, and that role became such a clear stepping stone into the work I do now. On paper, it was marketing and events. But really, it was community building. It was creating experiences that gave people a reason to gather, connect, linger, discover businesses, support local vendors, and feel part of something. I learned how powerful it can be when a space is not just about the transaction, but about the feeling. The energy. The relationships. The experience people remember after they leave.

From there, I eventually stepped into entrepreneurship myself. I built businesses, supported other brands, created content, helped women tell their stories, and learned so much in the messy middle of actually living the founder experience. Not the shiny version. The real version. The one where you’re holding big dreams, client work, family, identity shifts, money decisions, self-doubt, leadership, and the constant question of “am I doing this right?” all at the same time.

And the more I built, the more I realized how much women were carrying behind the scenes.

So many of the women I met were incredibly talented. They had beautiful businesses, real expertise, strong visions, and deep care for the work they were doing. But they were also exhausted. Isolated. Overthinking every decision. Comparing themselves to everyone else online. Trying to follow strategies that didn’t fit their life, their nervous system, their season, or their actual desires. They didn’t need another room where they had to prove they were successful. They needed a room where they could be honest about what it actually felt like to build something.

That is really where Female Founders Twin Cities came from.

I launched FFTC alongside my co-founder, Brittany, and our partnership is a huge part of what makes this community what it is. Brittany is a Master Practitioner in subconscious reprogramming and NLP, and she brings such a powerful lens around identity, belief systems, nervous system patterns, and the deeper inner work that shapes how women lead and grow. I brought my background in marketing, events, storytelling, experience design, brand building, and community. Together, we realized we had this really beautiful combination of expertise, The strategic and the subconscious, the practical and the personal, the business development and the identity work.

That blend became the foundation of Female Founders Twin Cities.

We didn’t create it because we wanted to host more events or add another networking group to the mix. We created it because we believed women founders needed something more human. A place where strategy and identity could exist together. A place where a woman could talk about her pricing, her offers, her messaging, and her lead generation, but also talk about the fear underneath the decision, the pattern of over-giving, the capacity she doesn’t actually have, or the version of success she’s realizing she doesn’t want anymore.

Today, Female Founders Twin Cities supports women entrepreneurs through in-person meetups, community, workshops, deeper coaching spaces, retreats, and our signature approach to embodied business development. That phrase has become central to our work because it names what we believe so deeply: you cannot separate the founder from the business she is building. The way a woman leads, sells, prices, creates, receives, collaborates, and makes decisions is connected to who she believes she is, what she feels safe holding, and what kind of life she is actually trying to build.

We help women build businesses with both strategy and self-trust.

Sometimes that looks like helping a founder clarify her offer, refine her messaging, raise her prices, simplify her business model, or make a decision she has been circling for months. Sometimes it looks like helping her realize the thing keeping her stuck isn’t a lack of information, but a belief she has been carrying for years. Sometimes it looks like reminding her she doesn’t have to do it alone anymore.

What sets our work apart is that we are not interested in teaching women how to build businesses that look good on the outside but feel impossible to sustain on the inside. We care about revenue, strategy, visibility, leadership, and growth, absolutely. But we also care about capacity, values, nervous system safety, identity, and the real human being behind the business. We are not here to hand women a one-size-fits-all formula and tell them to squeeze themselves into it. We are here to help them build something that actually fits.

I think what I’m most proud of is the way women feel in our spaces.

I’m proud that women walk into our rooms and exhale. I’m proud that they say things like, “I didn’t know I needed this,” or “I thought I was the only one,” or “I finally feel like I can trust myself again.” I’m proud of the collaborations, friendships, clients, pivots, brave decisions, and new levels of confidence that have come from this community. But more than anything, I’m proud that we have created a space where women don’t have to perform their way into belonging.

They can come as they are. In the middle. In the question. In the growth. In the messy, beautiful, unfinished parts of building a business and becoming the woman who can hold it.

What I want people to know about Female Founders Twin Cities is that this is not just networking. It’s not just business education. It’s not just inspiration for the sake of inspiration. It is a community and movement for women who want to build successful businesses without abandoning themselves in the process.

We are here for the woman who is ready to grow, but wants to do it differently.

The woman who wants strategy, but not at the expense of her intuition.

The woman who wants success, but wants it to feel like her.

The woman who is done building in isolation and is craving honest rooms, real support, deeper conversations, and women who will celebrate her, challenge her, and remind her what’s possible.

That is the heart of this work. Helping women build businesses rooted in strategy, identity, community, and a version of success they can actually hold.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Brittany and I actually met in the most modern mom way possible… through a local mom Instagram DM group.

At the time, she found out I was a family photographer, and eventually that turned into me photographing her family. Later, as my work expanded into brand photography, I photographed her brand too. And somewhere in between family photos, brand photos, motherhood conversations, and business conversations, we just clicked.

There was this instant ease between us. We were both women, moms, and entrepreneurs trying to build something meaningful while also craving deeper community with other women who understood this season of life and business.

When I opened my agency, Brittany became one of my clients. And in our very first meeting together, I brought up this idea that had been sitting on my heart: creating a local community for women founders in the Twin Cities (and now all of Minnesota).

I remember telling her what I was envisioning: a space that felt less like traditional networking and more like real connection, support, collaboration, and honest conversations about what it actually takes to build a business as a woman.

And then I basically asked, “Do you want to do this with me?” And she said yes.

So, we walked up to the front desk at ModernWell (a local co-working space) right then and there, booked a room for our very first meetup six weeks out, and decided to figure it out as we went. And then we sold it out.

That first yes became Female Founders Twin Cities. It started so simply (two women following the pull toward something bigger) and it has grown into this incredible community of women who are building businesses, supporting each other, and proving that entrepreneurship does not have to be done alone.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think what has built our reputation in this market is authenticity, intention, and experience.

From the beginning, Brittany and I were never building Female Founders Twin Cities just to create a business. It really grew out of something we personally felt was missing.

We cared about the community before there was ever a business model around it. And I think people can feel that.

Every decision we make comes back to the experience of the women in the room. How do they feel when they walk in? Do they feel seen? Do they feel safe enough to be honest? Do they leave with clarity, connection, encouragement, or the courage to take a next step? We’re not just trying to host events. We’re trying to create rooms that women remember because of how they felt inside of them.

A huge part of our growth has come through word of mouth, and I think that says a lot. Women come into the room, experience something deeper than surface-level networking, and then they want their friends, clients, collaborators, and business besties to experience it too. That kind of awareness is something you can’t manufacture. It comes from trust.

We’re also extremely intentional. Nothing we do is just to do it. The topics we choose, the way we structure conversations, the venues, the partners, the language, the energy in the room… it all matters to us. We’re constantly asking, “Does this serve the women we’re here for? Does this create depth? Does this support the kind of community we say we’re building?”

I think our reputation has been built because women know we mean it. They know we’re not here to compete, posture, or create another performative business space. We’re here to build something rooted in connection, generosity, and real support.

And over time, that consistency becomes your reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://femalefounderstwincities.com/
• Instagram: @femalefounderstwincities
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/female-founders-twin-cities

Image Credits

Kassie Leigh Photography