Liverpool group aiming to kickstart women's new business ideas

A new organisation in Liverpool is aiming to inspire and empower women to start and grow their own businesses by sharing experiences with other female entrepreneurs.

Bridge the Gap has been set up by Molly Kelly to create a community in the city which supports female founders on their journey.

She wants Bridge the Gap to help improve women’s ability to launch a business and run one successfully by giving them valuable practical advice into the best ways to get started and secure investments, as well as the more psychological side including coping with stress.

The group will hold its first meet-up at LEAF on Bold Street later this month, with five female panellists offering insights and personal experience including mistakes and how they tackled them.

The event is free, and 23-year-old Liverpool Uni graduate Molly hopes it will be a great way of kickstarting women’s business ventures.

“The whole aim is to bring together women who are happy to share their knowledge and how they tackled various different issues,” she explains.

“If you don’t have a business partner, entrepreneurship can be incredibly lonely and difficult, so we’re trying to help overcome the fears and barriers that women say are reasons they don’t do it.

“There is still so much disparity between men and women in business around social and educational factors and access to technology, along with the psychological ones of women feeling like they don’t know where to begin, or they don’t want to do it alone.

“Even with jobs, women typically won’t apply unless they’re overqualified for a role whereas men will apply even when they’re underqualified. The same concept translates to entrepreneurship, women constantly want to be perfect before they do something. That feeling of not being perfect stops them taking the first step or means they pull the plug and don’t continue because of things like isolation, stress or not feeling they can do it all themselves.

“Bridge the Gap is about overcoming them as a collective rather than having to do everything individually.”

Molly says the meet-up is an opportunity to have an honest discussion with other women who’ve been in similar situations.

“It could be that their business looks completely different to when it first started out or they’re embarrassed by the first product they put out. We want to encourage a really open and humorous conversation about all the mistakes involved and how they overcame them, focusing on the fact that it doesn’t always need to be perfect.”

Bridge the Gap will be at LEAF on Thursday November 16 between 6pm and 8pm. There’ll be a panel discussion featuring five successful female entrepreneurs – Amy Yarker, co-founder of The Fermentation Station in Liverpool, Katherine Jones, the woman behind ThinK Wine Group and Eve Williams, founder of Ede skincare and aromatherapy brand.

They will be joined by performance under pressure coach Isabel Pollen and Lisa Jones, a passionate advocate for building resilience and supporting mental health.

This is the first Bridge the Gap meet-up and Molly hopes, if it proves to be valuable to the women going along, it could become a monthly event.