LinkedIn is genuinely good at what it does. It’s where you post the launch, get discovered by a client three timezones away, make valuable connections or find the supplier you’d never have met otherwise. If you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur, leader or run a business you should be on it. Nobody’s arguing otherwise.
But LinkedIn was built to broadcast, not to sit with you. It can tell a thousand people what you do in eight seconds. It cannot tell you, at 11pm the night before a launch, that someone’s rooting for you and means it! Those are different jobs, and increasingly, female business owners and leaders are noticing the gap between them — and going looking for something a little different.
That’s what’s driving women who run their own businesses — consultants, founders, leaders: the ones juggling client work and a P&L and everything else (children, caring, home and everything else) — toward social networking clubs. Not instead of LinkedIn, but alongside it.
Two different kinds of value
LinkedIn scales. A social club doesn’t, and that’s the point. One gets you reach — the audience, the algorithm, the visibility that actually helps a business grow and increase your profile. The other gets you women who show up, in person, because they said they would.
You need both, but you can’t get the second from the first. Reach doesn’t remember your name (although AI and algorithms help). It doesn’t ask how the pitch actually went, or notice you’ve gone quiet, or turn up to your launch with a bottle of something nice. That takes a room. An actual room, with actual people in it, who genuinely care.
This isn’t for everyone and that’s OK
A club like Hotsy Totsy isn’t trying to replace your professional network or out-scale the internet — it can’t, and shouldn’t try. If what you’re after this month is more reach, more visibility, more inbound leads, that’s a LinkedIn strategy problem, and a good one to have.
But if what you’re missing is the other thing — a group of women who get it, who’ll tell you the truth about your pricing, who’ll remember what you told them last time — that doesn’t scale, and trying to make it scale is usually what kills it. That’s precisely why it’s worth protecting. Women who are genuinely interested in how its going, how they can help, and yes those conversations can lead to amazing recomendations and introductions that can really make a difference. This is not all about the number of leads you generate each time you meet – its longer lasting, supportive and authentic; oh and fun too – nothing starchy here!
What face-to-face actually gives you
This is the part a feed can’t replicate, because it isn’t really about business content at all.
It’s walking into a supper club — Art Deco lighting, a table already half full of women you’re about to like enormously — and feeling your shoulders drop an inch before anyone’s said a word. It’s not having to explain, for once, why you left your job to do this insane, brilliant, terrifying thing. Everyone at the table already knows, because they did something similarly terrifying too.
There’s something a little decadent about it, if we’re honest — good gin, a ridiculous dessert, a venue you’d never have found alone. But underneath the sparkle is something plainer: being seen by people who aren’t trying to sell you anything and aren’t measuring your engagement rate. Running a business or being a consultant is one of the loneliest things a person can do while looking completely fine on the outside. A room like this is where you stop performing, being you, for a few hours, with people who’ll remember the experience and you!
Both, deliberately
Keep posting the win on LinkedIn — it’s earned, and it’s good for business. And your wonderful Hotsy Totsy network will help you there too. Share the wins, the successes, where you nearly gave up with the people across the table who’ll say “same” and pour you another glass. That’s not a downgrade from digital networking. It’s the bit digital was never going to do.
If that sounds like the piece you’ve been missing, you’re exactly who we built this for.
For more details on membership, or coming along to an event to try us out email [email protected]
