Building Bellingham Episode 2: Heather Simpson - She Leads Me

Heather Simpson, longtime real estate agent and more recently, founder & director of She Leads Me, joins Leo to discuss her journey from living life on autopilot, to seizing each opportunity to live with intention.  We were inspired by the raw and real story of how she has developed moxie - force of character - through severe lows in her personal and professional life, and how choosing to grow from these episodes has led her to start a growing training and support community for professional women.  

Building Bellingham is hosted by Leo Cohen of the Cohen Group NW. Each month, he sits down with an entrepreneur in our community, to learn how they overcame challenges, and what they’re learning along the way.  The conversations get personal, and get real, and get practical for those who aspire to leadership and building into their own community.

Heather Simpson was born and raised in Bellingham, and only left to pursue a certification in dental hygiene - and ended up never spending a day in a dental office. Surprised by an unexpected pregnancy, Heather and her husband at the time were thrown into a world of checking off the boxes of a normal life - working jobs, paying bills, changing diapers. 

All this crumbled with a cancer diagnosis just a few weeks after her second child was born. But that wasn’t all. Heather describes how she and her husband realized their marriage wasn’t meant to be:

“We went through life checking all these boxes, but we weren’t checking in with each other. We weren’t making sure that this is what we really wanted; we were just kind of on autopilot.”

Health issues and divorce proceedings are stressful enough on a person; financial woes also added their weight to the stressors on Heather and her young family. She had to move out of her home into a little apartment, and saw her car repossessed right out of her driveway.

And yet, it was this lineup of crushing events that led to a crucial pivot point in Heather’s life. 

“I remember sitting in my daughter’s room and just sobbing because I was just experiencing all this loss - and that’s when I woke up. I realized that I had a very large part to do with all of that, and I’ve just been sleepwalking through my life, and I did not ever take any responsibility - again, I just was checking boxes; I was doing what I thought I had to do, but I wasn’t ever doing that with intention… .I felt like I had been sleeping through my life, and I woke up.”

“A lot of us just kind of sleepwalk through life, and we do so many things without intention,… then one day you just kind of wake up with ‘wait, where am I and how did I get here?’ and for me, that moment was so devastating that I knew I never wanted to go back.”

Rising from the Ashes

Heather sees her actions after her “wake up” moment as twofold:   

        1) Taking ownership

        2) Getting curious

Heather decided that while events in life often, as in her case, happen to us, we always have some amount of agency over the outcome. She determined to take control of the circumstances of her life. It would take a year and a half to get her house back - and this because of day in and day out followup and follow-through. 

She also chose to constantly be curious about what could be, and not settle for the easy options.

“It’s about finding out how many ways could this actually end here? How many options do I have? I’m not stuck with one option; I don’t have to live in this apartment forever; I don’t have to move back into this house. I have a whole myriad of options that I could choose from to make my life what I want it to be.”

Living out a Life of Intentionality

Heather continued on in the real estate industry in Bellingham, and was integral in founding a respected brokerage in this community. 

It was in this time, she told us, that the early ideas for She Leads Me sprouted. Heather planned and coordinated a conference as the inaugural event, and had over one hundred women registered. 

But life had another curveball. Heather was fired. 

In the episode pre-interview, Heather didn’t gloss over the devastating effect this type of event can have on a person. Consider the pressure of a huge, brand new event all on your shoulders. Over a hundred registrants and their expectations. The nerves and anticipation of preparation. Then - the loss of a job and the stability of a paycheck.

What did it take to overcome this?

Grit. Resilience. Moxie. Ingrained from years of catching all the curveballs life had already thrown at her, and her own choice to take ownership and control of her life and live each day with authenticity and intentionality, Heather made some hard decisions. 

And thus, She Leads Me was born. 

It turned out differently than Heather had planned. The large event was cancelled - it was so embarrassing to have to send out that email - and instead, Heather invited the registrants into her own living room, to talk over her vision for this group, this movement. About thirty women attended, and they had a raw, real, and vulnerable discussion, and Heather calls it the best beginning to She Leads Me that she could never have planned. 

“When you show up with intention, when you know who you are and you have a heart to back it, it will come together.” 

She Leads Me

She Leads Me is designed for the professional woman looking to step into leadership in their lives. Heather started out with in-person workshops and also began the She Leads Me podcast as a way to build credibility, provide free content, and gain exposure in the community. She now hosts monthly breakfasts in both Bellingham and Oak Harbor, and these events regularly sell out.

It didn’t all happen at once.  Heather explained to Leo that it wasn’t wise to just jump full-time into a new project. In the episode, she talks about how she became more comfortable with personal finances, and really got to know the true costs of funding and running a household (that honestly, most people don’t really pay attention to). Heather went back to selling real estate temporarily, and stored up seven months’ worth of padded home expenses before phasing into She Leads Me full-time. 

No Business Cards Allowed

Monetization began through one-day workshops. Leo asked her about the challenge of pricing for something like this, when aren’t really (to use real estate language) comparables in the neighborhood. Heather looked at the patterns set by larger conferences and scaled them down to a workshop size. Since it was initially a one-woman show, she saw the registrations and the responses first-hand, so she could test the market and make shifts as they were needed. 

“Until you’re more known, sometimes people will question pricing...we’ve definitely overcome that, especially as each event we’ve launched has continuously sold out.”

Now, the monthly connection breakfasts regularly sell out, and some women even drive over two hours for the 7AM events. Heather credits part of the success with one cultural choice: no business cards allowed. 

“If I truly want women to connect, if I want them to feel like it is collaboration over competition, where it’s not who’s what, and what title, and how successful they are, but it’s just about who we are as people and as women...it’s a much easier place to hone in and create that culture when we don’t - it’s as simple as not having business cards there.”

True Connections

The choice to avoid business cards has helped She Leads Me become just another networking event, with their quick pitches and elevator speeches. There’s an emphasis on being authentic, and not just being ‘connected’ in the sense of a Facebook friend or an Instagram follower or another name to remember. Instead, the focus is on building true friendships, meeting people who will follow each other’s journeys and support them along the way, and creating relationships rather than contacts. 

“I’m serving the woman that wants to grow as an individual. She’s willing to put in the hard work; she probably needs resources along the way. She might be a business owner or she might work within a business that’s already established, but she wants growth for herself, and she wants a team of people going through that journey to be able to tap into so she doesn’t feel alone.”

Expansion

It hasn’t even been a year since Heather dove into this project, but already she’s expanded into the Oak Harbor market. Other locations have asked for expansion, but she’s cautious about scaling too quickly. The character of She Leads Me was carefully developed in small groups, and the culture is too precious to hand off right away. Heather’s working on finding the balance of being strategic - obviously she wants her business, and the larger movement, to grow - while also protecting the integrity of the brand she’s worked so hard to develop.

“To have them feel the things I want them to feel when they walk in this room--they get a personalized thank you card from me every single time there’s a new person. If I scale too fast, I can’t do that, and my business loses the integrity I started with.” 

When You Need Help

In her journey into taking ownership and living with intentionality, Heather learned the benefits of therapy. Mental health is so important, but since it isn’t often as apparent as physical health, it’s difficult for us to really tell how a person is doing. Heather believes everyone benefits from going to therapy and that as a society, we need to stop seeing that as a taboo topic. 

“I do the work. I get in there and talk about the hard things with the right people - the qualified people - to make sure that I am moving forward and progressing and I’m not letting anything hold me back from where I’m supposed to be going.”

Final Questions: Success & Opportunity

How much of your success is hard work, and how much has been luck?

“I’m in a place where I’m able to actually see more opportunities because I’ve done the hard work on myself. So I think that there’s opportunities out there for everybody, it’s just if you’re awake to them or not. If you’re not constantly working on yourself and looking to evolve who you are, you’re not going to see those opportunities.”

What does success mean to you?

“Success isn’t necessarily measured by how much money I make, or where I live, or the things that younger Heather would have valued very much as success. For me now...it’s about the work that I’m doing and the impact that I’m having, and...going to a coffee shop and seeing people [who first met at She Leads Me] having coffee..., and watching those relationships unfold, both personally and professionally.”

Links & Credits

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher 

Hosted by Leo Cohen, Cohen Group NW  |  Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram

Guest appearance by Heather Simpson, She Leads Me  |  Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Podcast

Produced and Edited by David Pender Lofgren 

Recorded and Mixed by Andy Rick

Social Media Jedi: Cooper Hansley

Recorded at Binary Studios  |  Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram

Building Bellingham is a member of The BellPod Network  |  Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram 

Blog copy by Tiffany Holden