Being able to serve as a Rising Tide Society leader for the past year and a half has truly been such an honor. Being able to foster a local community of like-minded creative entrepreneurs that continues to grow and grow each month is just so humbling! Watching these local small business owners pour into each other each month and create some really amazing relationships and friendships along the way is more than I could have ever hoped for when I set out to create our local Hampton Roads Tuesdays Together community back in 2015. 

Another amazing part of the experience of being a RTS leader is the community and relationships made with other leaders from all over the world!! I’ve had the opportunity to meet and create friendships with some of the biggest and baddest boss ladies (and boss fellas!) from all over the country AND world!! We are all able to reach out to and from each other in order to lead each our cities the best we can! And once a year, we actually get to meet each other in person!

The Rising Tide Society puts together a leaders retreat once a year for it’s leaders to come together from all over the world and learn invaluable tips and resources for how we can be the best leaders possible for our cities, while also working together to figure out how we can take RTS as a whole to new heights! This retreat is a jam packed two days full of hugs, tears, inspiration, themed costumes and more! This year was hosted in San Francisco! (Click here to see last year’s retreat in Charleston, SC!). And it was just as amazing as I knew and hoped it would be! Here were some of my favorite moments from this year’s RTS leaders retreat!

• Having my girl, Ruth, go along on this trip with me!! I’m so glad I convinced her to trek to the west coast with me! I had such a blast going on this adventure with her and deepening our friendship!
• Getting to really know which parts of San Fran are meant to be explored… and which ones aren’t. Let’s just say that we figured this out the hard way. Oops!
• Having lunch, drink and dinner dates with friends every single day! Sharing meals, milkshakes and wine with friends every day was so much fun!
• Getting in-person time with online friends! So many of these leaders are people that we would normally only get to interact with online, so being able to actually spend in-person quality time with them was such a treat! Especially, my girl Lauren Carnes! Lauren is a photographer from Georgia that is also a wife to a medical resident. She’s been such an amazing encourager and supporter of my business and life while holding my hand through the transition of Branden starting residency. Love that girl!
• Getting to hang out in the way-too-cool-for-me Honeybook office! This place is exactly what comes to mind when I think of a hip and trendy tech-startup office environment. This office actually used to be the office for Twitter! From the impeccable modern interior design to the plethora of succulents and all-the-trendy-plants galore, it was such a neat space to be in!
• Champagne galore! From the individual bottles of champagne we were each given, to the mimosa bar that was flowing all day long, there was no shortage of bubbly and boomerang cheers!
• Seeing everyone’s fun side at the 80’s Disco Welcome Party! Thank goodness for Amazon Prime where I could get my hands on anything and everything neon!  
• Learning a little bit of calligraphy! Josefina of Love Offering so generously put on a little lettering workshop for us! I definitely need to practice a little more and should probably start with just trying to spell my name correctly, as you’ll see in one of the images at the bottom of this post. Oy vey!
• Strengthening relationships and pouring into each others businesses. Some of my favorite moments of this trip were the intimate conversations had over a glass of wine where we shared our biggest dreams and fears in our businesses. These amazing ladies actually gave me the courage to get started on a big project that I’ve been too scared to put into motion for far too long now! 
• Getting to listen to amazing and inspirational speakers from all over sharing raw and vulnerable advice and experiences that gave us all the feels! Particularly when Jenna Kutcher literally stripped down in front of everyone (you had to be there! haha!) to expose her true self in it’s raw and real form! 
• Coming home to Branden admitting that he doesn’t know how to do life without me. Like music to my ears! 

But in all seriousness, these 3 days were nothing short of amazing (I know I’m using that word like a Bachelor contestant). I returned to the East Coast yesterday with a full heart and a lot of new friends! And I actually decided to leave my real camera behind so I could be hands free and really present on this trip! Here’s some iPhone pictures from our adventures in San Fran! Can’t wait until next year!

 This is definitely my favorite picture from the trip. Love my VA ladies!!! 

Group photo credit: Laura & Rachel