Conversations with the Inspiring Sharise Erby

I am so blessed to have impacted over 11K women, assisted 63 women in establishing and or growing their own businesses, and have become a highly sought after speaker. The best is yet to come!

Has it been a smooth road?
It definitely has not been a smooth road. Entrepreneurship and philanthropy are absolutely amazing but there is also a dark side. In 2015, when I left my corporate job, I thought it was going to be smooth sailing after I came from the corporate arena where I managed operations teams from 500 to 1,000 people, and budgets of $8 million plus. Surely, I could run my own successful business! The first year and a half, I made little to nothing in revenues, I had to take on temp jobs, file for food stamps, my utilities here disconnected more than not. At the same time, I had to smile and build a brand. “Weeping may endure for the night but joy comes in the morning!” In 2017, all of the blood, sweat, and tears started paying off, the seeds I had planted began to sprout and my businesses began to soar.

My best advice to women starting their journey is to gain clarity, really and seriously get a solid understanding of your purpose and the life you desire to live. Then, focus and go to work planting seeds, cultivating those seeds, and preparing for the harvest. Then go WIN!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Phenomenal Woman Empowerment Network story. Tell us more about it.
I am the visionary founder/chief empowerment officer (CEO) of the Phenomenal Woman Empowerment Network and Go Tell It Communications & Publishing. Through PWEN, we offer workshops, seminars, and conferences in the areas of personal, professional, and spiritual development based on our seven pillars of wholeness:

Mental
Emotional
Spiritual
Financial
Physical
Relational
Professional

We are also excited to have hosted our 3rd Annual Grow Your Business Bootcamp in January 2019. We are also pleased to share that we are launching a PWEN chapter in Tulsa, OK in March 2019.

Additionally, we offer empowerment tee’s through PWEN Apparel, we offer discounted and wholesale travel through PWEN Travel.

Through my Sharise Speaks brand, I enjoy empowering predominately women audiences nationally and internationally with upcoming engagements in Toronto, Canada, and Sydney, Australia.

I definitely cannot leave out the joy of mentoring and coaching women one-on-one, this aspect of my business really allows me to make an up close and personal connection and impact.

I am most proud of my organization’s ability to meet women right where they are and help them to live their best life right now despite their past circumstances or even their current situations. I love to see women WIN!

I believe what truly sets my businesses and myself apart from others is our focus on wholeness, when we can put in the work in each one of the seven pillars of wholeness then success is inevitable. We are not called to be perfect but to be whole and whole women win!

Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
My mother is the primary women who have inspired me, she had such a heart for people and extended herself to help others around her prosper. No one ever knew what she was going through personally because of her selfless love and support of others. Then, in 1996, I watched her go through a heart and double lung transplant like a champ. Although she only lived a year to the date of her transplant she lived those days with passion and fire!

Oprah Winfrey is definitely an inspiration as I admire her courage, determination, and discipline to create the life she saw herself living. She has been fierce and stopping at nothing to achieve her dreams and then works just as hard to do the same for women across this world!

Finally, all of the seasoned women in my family and church family whom I have watched up close and personal raise families, care for the community and serve the church. I have been blessed to be surrounded by so many Phenomenal Women!