This wasn’t our first time in the room — and it showed.
In April, Jaime and I came back to the Own It Women’s Agency Ownership Summit for the second year in a row, and honestly? Year two hit differently. Last year, we were finding our footing in the community. This year, we were part of it. The conversations were richer, the connections felt real, and there was this palpable sense that something was really building here.
And that “something” matters. Own It exists because women are still dramatically underrepresented as advertising agency owners — and that’s not just a stat worth noting, it’s a problem worth solving. Every spring, they pull together a room full of people who believe and are actively doing something about it. Being in that room, as a woman-owned agency, feels less like professional development and more like coming home to your people.
The Day Was Notably Not About AI
“In an industry that cannot stop talking about AI, it was genuinely refreshing how little of this day was
devoted to it.”
One late-afternoon session touched on how agency owners are actually putting it to use. The rest of the day? Entirely human.
The conversations filling that room were about leadership, vision, ownership structures, pricing, culture, exits — the real stuff of running an agency. And it opened exactly the right way: with an improv keynote that I kept thinking about all day. Choose connection through ambiguity. Choose excitement over anxiety. Simple to say, genuinely hard to practice when you’re the one carrying the weight of a business.
Connection Was the Point
Two full hours of networking before the formal programming even started. Own It knows what its attendees are hungry for, and it’s not another slide deck. It’s the chance to sit across from someone navigating the exact same thing you are and hear them say, “Me too.”
The panels brought together agency owners at every stage — building, pivoting, scaling, exiting — and they didn’t do the polished retrospective version. They told the version including the friction. What worked, what didn’t, what they wished they’d known. Sessions on changing course, ownership structures, team and culture, pricing and profitability. These were real conversations between people who had lived these decisions and were willing to be honest about them.
The Fireside Chat That Stayed With Me
The day closed with a fireside chat between Kat Gordon — founder of The 3% Movement — and Kai Deveraux Lawson of Valerie. It was the kind of conversation that lingers. The lessons on knowing when to set down the hard stuff, and how to pivot with intention rather than reaction — those really landed. It felt like the perfect closing note for a day about taking up space: a reminder that sometimes the most powerful move is knowing when to let go.
What We’re Taking Back to Boise
Stoltz became a woman-owned and women-led agency eight years ago. It changed how we lead, how we build teams, and how we think about the long game. Rooms like Own It put language to that. They validate what we’ve experienced firsthand: that leading differently is challenging but isn’t a disadvantage.
These lessons stuck with me: How you price your work signals what you believe it’s worth. How you handle a pivot — whether you react or redirect — shapes your culture long after the moment has passed. Prioritizing relationships over transactions, building teams where people want to stay, making decisions that account for more than the next quarter.
We came back to Boise with sharper questions and new relationships. That’s exactly what a good conference does.
See what they’re building → https://www.linkedin.com/company/ownitpodcast/posts/?feedView=all
