Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ashley Vaughan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ashley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Deciding on the name was hard! Originally I started out with names that included “female” “entrepreneurs” ‘women” – all words that clearly indicated what we do and represent. However, none of them really resonated with what we are creating.

I live in Mexico City part-time, and “Pitahaya” is the name of one of my favorite vegan restaurants. While looking up the nutritional information of dragon fruit, I came across a story about how dragon fruit is regarded as a symbol of victory. Dragons represent “power, vitality, and luck” – everything I want for everyone who’s touched by our company. After learning this, I knew I had found the name for our company. Our name, Pithaya ,is an everyday reminder of why we are building and what we want to put into the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We want to be the first place aspiring and new women entrepreneurs turn to in their journey for guidance and emotional support. Our suite of services provide members with the foundational education they need to launch their businesses and the community support that make it possible for them to endure the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

There are 3 core solutions we offer:

1. Community – A member-matching service that connects our members to like-minded women and peers with complementary skill sets who can support them personally and professionals. We also host ongoing events to provide members with connection opportunities.

2. Fundraising Assistance – A streamlined funding tool with a comprehensive list of funding opportunities and criteria that saves our members time with fundraising.

3. Education and Strategic Planning Support – Our 6-week Jumpstart program helps new entrepreneurs develop a launch plan for their new venture and is a great reset for our more seasoned members.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Statistically, I shouldn’t have had many of the life experiences I’ve been afforded. I was born to a teenaged, unwed mother and an immigrant father into a situation that was riddled with hardship. To my parents’ credit, they raised my siblings and me with a “can do” spirit and the belief that we could achieve anything through hard work and persistence. However, the things I’ve had to do to build the life I have required a large dose of scrappiness, grit and, you guessed it – resilience.

There are two times in my life when I’ve taken a leap of faith and had to lean on said resilience in order to achieve my goals – when I graduated from college and when I started Pithaya. In the summer of 2005, I moved to DC with $1,000 in my pocket. My childhood best friend had an apartment until the end of August, and we figured the 10-week timeline was plenty of time to start our new lives. Boy were we in for an awakening.

Our introduction into adulthood included a disastrous apartment search (because, of course, we had no credit and unreliable income), working full-time at a bar, handling daily doses of job rejections, and trying not to think about what would happen if the plan didn’t pan out. While I had the option of going home to Alabama if I needed to,that wasn’t the plan I had for myself.

One day in July my car wouldn’t start, and I burst into tears. Not because of the car, but because several months of getting my butt kicked had finally caught up to me. I had my meltdown, but didn’t let the exhaustion deter me. I continued applying for jobs, searching for apartments, networking, and believing in myself. And within a few weeks I’d secured a full-time job, an apartment within my budget, and within a few months I fully settled into my new city where I lived for the subsequent four years.

I remind myself of this story a lot because my journey with Pithaya has felt similar at times. I started my business with the odds stacked against me, with limited resources, and I’ve faced rejection at every angle. However, I am a firm believer that tough times are some of the most powerful teachers. I’m grateful for the lessons that have helped me become a better leader and shaped our company to better serve our members.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Managing a team and maintaining high morale requires regular maintenance and a commitment to finding ways to bring out the best in your people. In a perfect world, work would be straight-forward endeavor. People would do the task at hand and communicate perfectly; however, the reality is that we are all layered beings whose life experiences shape how we work and relate to each other. As a leader, your job is to understand what drives your team members and to use that information to corral them towards fulfilling the company’s vision.

Here are 4 tips I’d give to anyone who’s managing a team and striving to maintain high morale:

1. Take care of yourself – Make sure you are doing what you need to be healthy and grounded. It’s hard to lead from a place of service and maintain high morale when you’re feeling burned out.

2. Communicate with transparency – Keep your team informed about goals, changes, and potential challenges in a timely fashion. When people know what’s going on, they’re better able to tie their contributions to the bigger vision and feel good about the work they’re doing.

3. Seek out the good – Regularly find reasons to highlight what your team members are doing right. Doing this reinforces the desired behavior and makes people feel seen and heard for their contributions.

4. Assume positive intent – When things go poorly, resist the urge to immediately blame your team. Assume they operated in good faith, and seek to understand what happened before giving critical or highly feedback.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pithaya.app/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinpithaya/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pithaya
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pithaya_app

Image Credits

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