We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Golden Girls. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Golden below.
Golden Girls, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?
The idea of turning Golden Girls into an operating business blossomed in 2018 after we hosted our first event “Live to be Golden”. This idea came into fruition from one of our friends who proposed we throw a charity event to bring people together and help those in need. This pitch was met with enthusiasm since we all had a love for the Dallas community and giving back. After the success of that event, we realized we had a calling and an opportunity to grow the business.
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 back background and context?
Golden Girls is a women-owned organization dedicated to connecting millennials to the Dallas community through curated experiences such as networking mixers and charity events. The company was founded by five Dallas natives Shelby, Kourtnie, Bridget, Brittany and Alex. We started off as a close knit group of friends who just wanted to give back to our community. The first event we hosted was a charity event to raise funds for the Genesis Womens’ Shelter here in Dallas. After seeing how impactful our first event was we were inspired to do more. Now Golden Girls is a formal business dedicated to improving the experiences that minority entrepreneurs have while growing their business. We create unique experiences that are focused on advocating for and showcasing minority owned businesses and young professionals.We are so proud of how Golden Girls has transitioned since the start of our journey. During the peak of Covid we were still able to host virtual events and launch a new subsidiary company, The Tipsy Tent.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Prior to Covid, Golden Girls hosted networking events called “Golden Hours” as well as charitable events. We were in the middle of planning a collaborative women’s event for Women’s History Month when Covid came through like a storm and quarantine begin. We realized that life as we knew it was going to change. This forced us to get creative and reimagine what our events would look like. We knew we had to keep Golden Girls active and on everyone’s radar so we began doing virtual events. We had a virtual Golden Hour for Breast Cancer Awareness that had a really good turn out. All attendees were gifted with branded wine glasses and a bottle of wine. We really wanted our attendees to be able to have the Golden Hour experience even though we were all at home. To bring awareness to voting, we also hosted Instagram live segments with a few candidates who were running in the Texas Primary Elections. Although we were having good turn outs from our virtual events, we wanted to do more. We missed bringing real experiences to people in person. This led us to our idea of starting a luxury picnic company. This was a new way for us to bring curated experiences to our customer base while still generating income and abiding by Covid regulations. We all agreed that this was on brand for us; from there we hit the ground running to start our new business endeavor The Tipsy Tent. We had our soft launch August 2021 and business has been growing ever since.
How’d you meet your business partner?
Golden Girls organization was originally founded by ten women who are friends from different time periods of life. The group has a couple of friends who went to high school together at Cedar Hill High School who kept up with each other throughout college. During those years, we began merging friend groups with some other young women, with common interests, we met from Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas. After we all graduated we decided to start a texting group thread in hopes of starting a book club (which we will use the term loosely). Since we were all black women in our early 20’s and we were feeling very grown-ish with this new endeavor, we landed on the name Golden Girls. This “book club” decided to begin with the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Once we finished the book we were pumped and finally met up to discuss. This meeting consisted of thought provoking dialogue with wine and charcuterie of course. Long story short, The Alchemist was the only book our “club” actually read. Towards the end of 2018, one of the group members presented a new idea for us to switch gears. Since we all had a common interest and love for the community of Dallas, we began working on our first community event “Live To Be Golden”. The rest was history! Since then, our business has certainly grown and evolved, as did our founders. With some making career changes, even moving states, Golden Girls is currently comprised of five official business partners. Though all ten women are not business partners, they are all still honorary founding Golden Girls who continue to love and support the organization. Till this day, we are active in our original “book club” group message where we celebrate, laugh, and encourage each other through our life’s journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wearegoldengirls.com
- Instagram: wearethegoldengirls
- Facebook: wearethegoldengirls
Image Credits
Feature image: IG: dontements WDEXGG EVENT: Sykiastudios Christmas event & Networking event: Torry Williams