Los Angeles, California (The Hollywood Times) 4/14/2021 – HerHeadquarters app is used by thousands of women entrepreneurs nationwide who use it to discover and secure mutually beneficial brand partnerships with women-owned businesses. They just released HerHeadquarters 3.0 and debuted their Power of the Female Partnership campaign. It highlights founders who launched a $10 million investment fund, released a line in Bloomingdales, gained global exposure, and more, all as a result of using brand partnerships.
“I want to help break down any misconceptions, insecurities, and fears your audience has so they too can add the tool to their arsenal for massive growth.”- Carina Glover, CEO HerHeadquarters
Your vision is to build generational wealth. Tell us about your background.
Growing up, one of the primary memories is my ambition. I dreamed big and even as young as elementary school I had an entrepreneurial spirit. I used to sell full-page spreads of popular celebrities from magazines to classmates. This was so they could decorate their locker with images of their favorite music artists, which was a big thing at the time. The idea of fulfilling a need in a business-type way came naturally to me. In 2014 I started my first business in my final semester of college while attending the University of Nebraska-Omaha, which was an event planning business. Prior to the official launch party for that business, I had been approached by several women entrepreneurs proposing that we partnered on the launch. Each one had their own set of talents and expertise, but at the time I thought that partnering on my launch party would make me look bad, specifically weak and inexperienced. I thought that if you were good at something you could do it by yourself. That led to a disastrous launch party, no one showed up. I had invested thousands of dollars into what would be one of the most devastating moments in my entrepreneur career.
While many factors contributed to that outcome, I knew that not having the courage to use brand partnerships was a big factor. I didn’t give up though, eventually growing it into a successful event planning business and working with the Grammy’s and the NFL Honors Awards. There was a moment during my empty launch party where I sat on the bathroom floor and cried, ironically, that planted the seed for HerHeadquarters years later. I wanted to make success easier and more attainable for women entrepreneurs, I had experienced the consequences of not seeing the value of brand partnerships on my first day of being a business owner. I haven’t made that mistake since.
Tell us about HerHeadquarters.
HerHeadquarters app caters to women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses. It makes quality brand partnerships more accessible by matching women entrepreneurs to partnership opportunities with women-owned businesses nationwide. Based on their unique partnership preferences, users are introduced to ‘matches’, these are potential projects, events, and campaigns to partner on and women entrepreneurs they’d be interested in collaborating with. These mutually beneficial partnerships can result in more revenue, exposure, and impact for their company.
Beyond being an app for partnerships, HerHeadquarters provides a community of allies, these are businesswomen who are deliberate about working with women-led businesses. It unlocks unlimited partnership opportunities, peace of mind as our users can vet and see each potential partner’s background, and more freedom as we simplify the process of securing quality partnerships for their business.
How does the app work?
After joining HerHeadquarters, a user will complete a preferences quiz sharing the types of partnerships that would be ideal for her business. We inquire about preferences on location (such as local or national), industry, partnership perks (such as paid, press coverage, free services, etc.). Based on her preferences the app will generate matches, both potential partners (women entrepreneurs) and currently available brand partnership opportunities that align with her interests. From there she connects with and begins to secure opportunities for her business. HerHeadquarters is great for any businesswoman, rather she currently has a collaboration opportunity for an upcoming project, event, or campaign or if she’s simply looking to discover great opportunities for her business to be a part of. An app favorite is the amount of detail she receives upfront about an opportunity, such as the start date, length of the partnership, expectations, what’s being offered, and its total value. HerHeadquarters allows you to quickly determine if a brand partnership is a great fit for you without having to spend time in meetings and phone calls before getting key details.
We offer 3 different account levels, with each offering a different tier of features and perks.
Your expertise in brand partnerships and support for women entrepreneurship has gained recognition from Congress leading to your invitation to the 2020 U.S. Congressional Startup Day. What did this mean to you?
To this day I’m still in awe about that opportunity. I took it seriously and I didn’t make the moment about me. While in the early stages of research and development for HerHeadquarters and prior to launching, I worked full-time as a loan officer. I met with hundreds of current and aspiring business owners who were in need of funding to sustain an existing business or start a new one. I would see their passion and their vision, then after presenting their application to our loan committee, I’d have to go back and tell them they weren’t approved. Seeing their disappointment and the feeling of defeat on their face never got easy. Some of these people had golden business ideas, some of them already had flourishing businesses, but on paper, they didn’t look like a ‘safe’ investment. When I had the chance to sit down with Congressmen, I proposed an initiative to fix that problem. Visions were being killed in seed form because too many people, specifically women and minority business owners, were not being granted the capital they needed. It also sparked a decision to think bigger and be more intentional in how HerHeadquarters was going to be a part of the solution. A couple of months after the U.S. Congressional Startup Day, we gifted a $1,500 business grant to a woman-owned business in celebration of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. A small amount, but it made a difference to the founder we helped. We hope to continue gift funding to businesswomen and personally, I want to do more to bring awareness and change to this problem.
What do you enjoy most about entrepreneurship? Did you have a mentor?
What I love most about entrepreneurship is that there is no ceiling to what you can do, how big you dream, or the impact you can have. It’s the ultimate freedom, but if you want to succeed it requires new levels of discipline, strategy, and consistency. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it has shown me what I was made of because no matter how many hard days there were, I refused to quit.
I’ve been blessed to have some mentors, both official and unofficial. As a solo founder, having access to mentors has been pivotal to my growth and success as a leader and CEO.
You are an investor in women and minority-owned companies. What do you look for?
While HerHeadquarters has given away small business grants, I’m not an investor, yet. Within the next 2-3 years I plan to start a fund that exclusively invests in women-founded companies.
Do you have plans to expand HerHeadquarters in 2021?
This will be an exciting year for us, we plan to raise our first seed round this fall. This will allow us to not only expand our team, but expand into additional markets and maximize the impact our product has. We want to position HerHeadquarters as the business tool women entrepreneurs depend on for growth.
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