"You don't know enough people," Kristina Bartold-Sorgota says.
She's not referring to me (though I make a mental note to consider it). She's talking about new business owners who are trying to brute force their funnel with ads and social media without having any audience trust.
Kristina is the co-founder of a fast growing community called High Vibe Women, based in the greater Toronto area. Along with her business partner, Maria Tassi, they went from hosting a small brunch every once in a while to regularly hosting multiple networking events, conferences, masterminds, retreats in a matter of a few years. They just opened spots for their October day long event in Hamilton, Ontario, selling over 100 tickets in two weeks.
The appetite is hot for what they're offering and they're not alone.
This Mother Means Business Live sold out at 160 tickets a couple weeks before their conference took place in Burlington earlier this month. Founder Laura Sinclair is already booking the 2027 event. The TMMB brand centers around a podcast but has grown to include networking events, retreats, mentoring, coaching circles and the annual conference.
I've been hosting local events for over a decade and I've never seen anything like what these entrepreneurs have created. What's even more interesting is that events are not their core business. Laura has a fractional CMO and business coaching business. Kristina and Maria run a marketing agency called The Social Snippet. They each created these in-person communities out of the demand they saw.
I wanted to know all their secrets about hosting, promoting and funding these successful events so I reached out to Laura and Kristina to talk about what makes them such a hit.
Why hosting events locally matters for online entrepreneurs
Before she moved into the online marketing space, Laura owned a gym north of Toronto for several years. She built a local network through that business, but when she closed it and went online with a different offer, she thought she'd be serving clients elsewhere. Instead, her local community followed her.
"While I do have clients a lot of places, I was really surprised by the number of people that were local to me that were finding me online, enrolling in my online programs and even listening to my podcast," Laura told me.
She didn't attract local customers on purpose, but she took notice of the pattern. Laura identifies as an introvert—I interviewed her on my former podcast about introvert networking tips—but she's prioritized attending networking events, masterminds and other collective business activities for years, often traveling a great distance for them. As a mom, Laura knew it was hard to fit networking in and even harder to leave town for it. Hosting events closer to home for her growing community became an obvious move.
Kristina is also an avid networker who spent many years flying back and forth to the United States to attend masterminds with Chris and Lori Harder. She'd come home from those trips and wonder why those same energetic spaces weren't happening in her city. Those feelings planted the idea for High Vibe Women but Kristina says the need is even more pressing now with Canadian entrepreneurs more hesitant about traveling to the United States amid rapidly changing tourist visa policies and more frequent detainments at airports.
What’s actually happening at these networking events
Speaking of changing policies, women's networking events are under attack in the United States right now. The Trump administration sued Coca-Cola in February for hosting one such event, calling it "discriminatory." Identity-focused spaces need protecting, not just because women are significantly behind their male peers in business, but also because the conversations change when the room is mostly women entrepreneurs or mostly mom entrepreneurs.
High Vibe Women lives up to their name in generating a better energy than a typical business networking function. I went to one of their brunch events in 2023 and I noticed other attendees were eager to chat even without knowing what you can do for me. Palpably different from the professional spaces I occupied in Los Angeles and San Francisco which, in my experience, tend to be more immediately transactional.
Photos from High Vibe Women events featuring founders Kristina and Maria and speaker LaShonda Brown
Kristina told me it's because women entrepreneurs are starting to realize community is the "secret sauce" they need to grow their business to the fullest potential. They want to invest in their relationships, share what they've learned and build alongside other ambitious people. At their smaller retreats, Kristina said "we're seeing a lot of problems be solved" because other attendees are stepping up with introductions and experience that are immediately helpful. For the larger events, the conversations continue beyond the first meeting because the crowd is primed to focus on ongoing relationships rather than a business card trade.
Over at This Mother Means Business, the conversations are about the tension moms face between lofty business goals and family priorities. Laura referenced the Emma Grede interview that's been going viral this week about whether working from home is damaging careers along with many social media takes about how mom entrepreneurs should spend their time.
"There's all these external judgments and pressures. These expectations of how we think it's supposed to be," Laura told me noting that it's worse for moms in business because they get the pressure from both the business crowd and the parenting crowd. She also hears conversations at her events about the private struggles inside marriages when someone's partner doesn't support their business.
Why demand is growing from sponsors, not just attendees
Ticket sales and repeat attendees are driving the momentum for both High Vibe Women and This Mother Means Business, but sponsors are increasingly knocking on their doors too.
For This Mother Means Business Live 2026, sponsors included the bank CIBC and IKEA, which offered a home office makeover to one lucky mom entrepreneur. The venue—The Pearle Hotel—also sponsored the conference and Laura found a print sponsor (TPH) for all the printed materials and signage. She even had a local boutique offer a fully comped custom suit for her to wear at the event.
These are not small sponsorships because the budget to pull off a thoughtful event like this is a minimum of six figures. I asked Laura about her pitching process with sponsorships and she said it always starts with relationships. With the bank sponsor, she had gone to another event they sponsored and made a connection there with the Head of Sponsorships before ever pitching her.
"The mistake people make is they just lead with the pitch. You can't do that. You have to lead with building a relationship because of the personal bias. You're dealing with people. You're not dealing with IKEA. You're dealing with a person on the other side that has to like you, believe in what you're trying to create, and be aligned with the mission of the event," Laura said.
Photos from This Mother Means Business Live 2026 by Kelsey Kubels (Cloud 9 Photography)
Kristina emphasized the importance of getting results for your sponsors once you have them on board. High Vibe Women has worked with big Canadian banks, international brands like Adobe and local service providers who share their ethos of building community.
"We want to show the return on the investment to our sponsors. We have people who have sponsored every single one [of our events] who have grown with us and who see the return," she told me, mentioning a mutual colleague of ours who has repeatedly sponsored and often gets clients out of the visibility. The High Vibe Women team takes professional photos of sponsored assets (like swag bags) and they make sure to introduce sponsors around the room too.
How to build your own local community
If you're as inspired as I am by what Laura and Kristina have created for their communities, you can learn from their experience to build something near you. Both of them recommended you start small with the people you already know.
Kristina joked they made $8 at their first brunch with 10 people and that didn't even account for the gas they paid to get there.
"I love our 200 person events and they're such a great gateway to people making amazing connections, but it's those smaller dinners where you can sit next to someone that's going to change everything for you," she told me.
Laura advised choosing a low cost venue that you know you can pay for, in case you don't get enough attendees. She emphasized gauging your risk tolerance for the expenses involved because it adds up quickly. As soon as you can, you want to chase sponsor support because ticket sales won't cover your costs for long.
It's worth mentioning that Laura and Kristina know each other and they show up at each other's events. They really mean what they say about supporting their community and they demonstrate how important their relationships are to them in everything they do. They don't just build communities, they lean on them for support. Kristina's about to host a mastermind on a yacht in the Toronto harbor and her first move was to message a group of founders to ask if they had any contacts. She received back five connections to yacht companies, all of whom are willing to offer her a discount.
You create a boatload of goodwill when you center generous resource sharing over competition scarcity. Those relationships you invest in are like bank accounts filling up with trust. You make deposits with people. They make deposits with you. And when the day comes when you need that to turn that boatload of goodwill into an actual boat, you'll know exactly who you can lean on 🛳️
Find Laura Sinclair on her website and listen to her podcast, This Mother Means Business. Find Kristina Bartold-Sorgota on her website and listen to her podcast, Community.
Leave a comment below and tell us what kinds of events you want to see in your local community.
