Why I Created the Big Whisper

We’ve come a long way as women, yes, yet we still have a ways to go. Only 4% of women-owned businesses generate over $1MM in revenue per year. And of all the businesses that are generating $1MM, only 1 in 5 of those businesses are run by a woman.

Our mission at The Big Whisper is to share learnings, strategy tools and resources, and make connections to inspire, support and help the rising generation of female entrepreneurs build thriving businesses.

I created The Big Whisper because I didn’t see a media outlet out there that covered topics that resonated with me in a deeper, more substantive way as both an entrepreneur and as someone who seeks an overall fulfilled life.

I was also really frustrated by the pervasive dialogue in media about the Unicorn business, this idea that in order to thrive as a business you have be an “overnight” success, you have to have 10x overnight growth, you have to be disrupting something, you have to be VC backed, you have to have and know your path to exit.

How we are different

WE'RE USING MEDIA TO CHANGE THE CONVERSATION AROUND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 

Too much entrepreneur-oriented media focuses on the “overnight success” stories, on the idea of being a Unicorn.

There aren’t enough stories about the builders of today who are changing things for tomorrow. By the time we read those stories they’re positioned as “overnight successes” yet those folks have been putting blood, sweat and tears in for at least 10 years+, usually, at minimum.

We invest in uncovering and sharing the stories of emerging women entrepreneurs and giving them a platform. We focus on the builders--who are usually not out seeking marketing attention because they are so busy building products and businesses that work. These builders are the ones with real in-the-trenches wisdom to share and help the rising generation of women entrepreneurs. Media generally hasn’t viewed these stories sexy but we find them SEXY AF.

 

WE'RE GIVING BACK AND CREATING A NEW SYSTEM AS WE WORK TO FIX THE CURRENT SYSTEM 

A portion of all profit proceeds of The Big Whisper goes to Women’s Campaign International a non-profit that leads after-school programs for underserved teenage girls in the US and around the world. Their workshops focus on confidence building, mentorship and leadership skills training in order to help girls overcome personal and societal obstacles to become leaders and agents of change in their communities and our future.

 

WE ARE ABLE TO STICK TO OUR MISSION BY RELYING ON MULTIPLE SOURCES OF REVENUE

We are part media, part community, part consultancy, part commerce.

Content & Media

We provide integrated branding packages to help brands get their messages out into world, raise awareness and build traction in growth. But I do not want this platform to become beholden to big brands that are not aligned with our mission to push out their messages. We’re more focused on building The Big Whisper to be a platform that is a place for emerging brands with smaller budgets to reach engaged audiences through our platform and through our community network, The Coalition.

When we do partner with bigger brands our focus is on working with them to innovate their business ideas, products and marketing to be more impactful and to do good.

Consulting  

We started off as a consultancy and will continue to grow and expand our offerings to support even more early-stage women founders.

Our consulting capability also allows us to provide 360 incubation support to early-stage women led businesses--from business roadmapping, to product strategy, to marketing strategy all the way to being able to execute and help build that initial momentum in growth with marketing campaigns on TheBigWhisper.com and with our partner network, The Coalition.

We work with big businesses as well on custom consulting projects to help them harness the entrepreneurial learnings we've gained from working with our growing community of entrepreneurs and to help them adopt business practices that will make their companies engines for good.

Community Membership

We offer two membership options, to support early-stage women entrepreneurs at different phases and with different needs on their entrepreneurial journey

The Originator

  • Get our How to Build a Business Workbook to guide planning and growth as you are originating your idea 
  • Access to our digital member community to chat with other like-minded women entrepreneurs, ask questions, gather resources, share updates and learnings
  • The option to e-mail two questions a week to Alison for responses
  • Access to The Originator only e-mail that includes a digest of all the questions Alison answers from other Originator members
  • Invitations to events and Big Whisper community experiences throughout the year

The Big Whisper Founding Member, Membership

  • Business Directory feature on TheBigWhisper.com
  • Founder interview profile on The Big Whisper.com and promotion through e-mail and social media in our Big Whisper Member Interview Series
  • An opportunity to speak at an offline community experience and/or host a digital webinar with our community
  • Access to the private Big Whisper digital community portal to chat, share stories, ask questions and brainstorm with fellow Big Whisper(ers)
  • Access to all the Big Whisper offline community experiences
  • Access to the growing resource portal of tools and templates in the resource library
  • Quarterly one-hour business strategy planning and strategy session with Alison
  • Unlimited e-mail access to Alison

If interested in membership, e-mail us at: hello@project-ag.co

Commerce

We are building a shop that features curated products from Big Whisper companies and strategy toolkits, resources and books.

The Big Whisper is currently operating as a newsletter, and as our community continues to grow, so will our platform. But The Big Whisper is more than a media platform and community. It’s the collective feeling, intuition, and voice that is both consciously and unconsciously guiding us to build a healthier world.

Join us.

Think big and build.

Listen to your Big Whisper.

Alison Gilbert