We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Connie Spruill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Connie, 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?

My Girlfriendz Place came from my desire to create a place where women come for support, encouragement and refreshing. It started during a time in my life when I was pushed to my limit and looking around for all the people who always promised to be there for me when I needed them. Although, I spent most of my life giving to and caring for others, there was no one there for me when I was unemployed, grieving the loss of my mother and my grandmother, trying to keep my mom’s house as well as my own and caring (if you could call it that) for my aunt who had suffered several mini strokes.

It was at a particularly hopeless moment that I wished for my best friend–the one who knows everything about me–who knew me since second grade. I thought if I could talk to my girlfriend for just a few minutes, she would know just what to say and do to get me back on track.

She is the girlfriend that I grew up with, fought with and cried with–the one who would show up for me, cuss me out, pray with me, cut up with me, or just tell me that I was wrong… As girls, we shared our hopes and dreams and we could tell each other anything without fear. I wanted to create that kind of space for women. We do so much, for everyone but seldom put ourselves first. Seldom do we take time out to renew and refresh our spirits.

While I was struggling to make ends meet, I would sell anything that i could get my hands on… writing, proofreading, jewelry, journals, candles… old clothes (I’m a thrifter) and I like to bake. I also have girlfriends with similar mindsets and so we set out to create a space for women to connect and collaborate both personally and professionally.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The thing about My Girlfriendz Place (and we get plenty of jokes from men who come through and nosy people who don’t know what we are about), is our place is your place. When women walk in, we hope that they are enveloped in an atmosphere of pure love and acceptance. People often come in and declare that they don’t know what it is, but they feel a certain level of peace. One acquaintance always points out that people don’t seem to want to leave.

We opened in 2020, right before the pandemic and we had two good months before things shut down. I like to say that we didn’t thrive, but we survived. We had community yard sales on the lawn, a 4th of July function called make American Black again during which we celebrated our culture with African vibes, a mini fashion show, and fireworks. We held an all white party on the lawn and a roaring 20’s party to celebrate two (mine and my birthday twin/business partner’s) birthdays. We have hosted fashion shows and business launches and even a casino bus ride with the goal of increasing our exposure.

What Is most fulfilling to me, however, is the evolution of our monthly prayer breakfast. We planned, initially when we first opened to host a two hour prayer meeting every fourth Saturday. We had two and then the pandemic, but from April 2020 until June 2021, when we resumed the monthly event, i would pray by myself every 4th Saturday for two straight hours. Each month now brings the same core group of women who continually bring new faces. The tears, the release, the breakthrough has been phenomenal. This tells me that the church (with its closed doors) is not just a building but more a spirit. Because we aren’t doing religion but welcome women from all walks of life to share, to sing, to speak (yes spoken word has opened some hearts) in a loving supportive atmosphere, women feel free. The breakfast is free but we do try to PARTNER with different non-profits and collect items such as hygiene products for teenage girls and devotionals for women coming out of domestic violence or sex-trafficking situations. We rent to venue for small and intimate events, but the prayer breakfasts give me the most joy.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The thing that I (still) struggle with is believing that people will keep their word and/or treat you the way you treat them. We are still in the process of creating our policies and processes and any new stipulations seem to result from some unanticipated problem. In other words, we have been reactive rather than proactive and mainly because, people schedule appointments, but don’t show up… or (and this really gets me) they show up two hours early or, I tell people that we don’t provide something and invariably, a caterer shows up and gets an attitude because we don’t provide something. As I mentioned earlier, we want our place to be your place and when you have an event and you forgot to bring foil, for example, I am glad to provide it–but most people seem to take little stuff like that for granted. My business partners say that I give too much away, and I probably do, but I truly feel that when the interaction is genuine, the return on the investment (for foil) is exponential. The problem, for me, is the interactions with people who are not genuine and would really seek to exploit the purity of the vision. Still working on it… :-)

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I started on social media with one minute videos… selling jewelry, giving glimpses of my life, and offering words of wisdom in addition to promoting events at My Girlfriendz Place. We recently had a new face at the prayer breakfast and the lady told me that she had to check me out before agreeing to attend. She said, “I feel like I already know you because I went back and watched all your videos for about two years.” Surprise, surprise… you never know who is watching. The other thing that I do is promote other women entrepreneurs. If there is an event, a product, a service that I can promote for other women, I am sharing. The website features some spotlight articles that I have written on other women, but not nearly as many as I would like to have written. Right now, full-time employment (as an HR professional) does NOT allow enough time to do all that I would like, but I try to leverage our Facebook and Instagram ( with a little Tik Tok) presence as much as possible.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @MyGirlzplace
• Facebook: My Girlfriendz Place or Connie Spruill
• Other: Website: www.girlfriendzplace.com