Lara’s Story: How Tide Risers Began

Hi friends, I’m Lara Holliday, and I’m the Founder and CEO of Tide Risers.

I want to share with you what inspired me to launch this community for women, and a few of the many lessons I have learned from the experience.

I am a career and executive coach, focusing on leadership and work-life integration, and I specialize in women leaders.

A number of years ago I started noticing a pattern in my coaching practice: a number of my female clients were coming to me with very similar issues, and feeling completely isolated within those issues -- like they were the only one this thing was happening to.

They were wanting to make a change to enable them to live a more fulfilling life, but they were unsure how to shift direction or make meaningful plans for their future. They were experiencing a lack of mentorship, sponsorship, and inspirational leadership. They were feeling like their professional and personal networks were too limited, but frustrated by the networking opportunities open to them.

They were feeling stuck.

And that feeling of being stuck was creeping into every aspect of their lives.

I sat in my chair day after day listening to the women sitting on my couch share remarkably similar stories. I started having this powerful urge to introduce them to one another, if only to let them know they weren’t alone. 

There was something bigger, however, behind my desire to bring these women together: every one of them were tremendously talented, accomplished, and resourceful. I couldn’t stop thinking about the power that could come from enabling these women to find what they were looking for in collaboration with one another, rather than going at these challenges alone.

To do that, however, they would each need to reclaim their agency.

That would require a process of deep introspective reflection on who they were, where their strengths lie, what was holding them back, and what skills they needed to build in order to advance. 

I was pretty sure that was something I could create for them.

Here’s why: 

I was raised by strong feminists to believe that as a woman I could do anything, and that’s been a huge advantage for me. What happened over time, however, was the notion I internalized that ‘I can do anything’ somehow transformed into ‘I should do everything’. So I had this huge work ethic, and between work, volunteering, and family, I would take on way more than I should. I would go through periods of huge stress and productivity, and then as soon as I had delivered on something, I would collapse and be ill for days. This obviously wasn’t sustainable, but it took me some time and some deep reflection to understand why I couldn’t break out of that pattern.

I came to realize I was working within a framework that I hadn’t designed for myself or consciously agreed to.

That framework of ‘I should do everything’ had become a part of my identity and my operating practices, and I wasn’t even fully aware it was there.

You see, I hadn’t actually created intentions for how I wanted to BE in this world; I was simply following what I felt I should DO in this world. I didn’t have a framework to help make decisions to proactively design my life. So I began to imagine what that framework might look like, and as a result I designed a concept I call the Emprise, which you can read more about here.

Following the framework of Emprise gave me the agency I needed to live with intentionality, design my own pathway, and play a leadership role in my own life.

Before I continue with the story of building Tide Risers, however, let me say this: We’re at a point in history that is totally unprecedented. It’s hard for us to find mentors and to determine our pathway forward because the challenges we are facing and the opportunities within our grasp are like nothing previous generations have experienced. 

To add to the complexity of our situation, as women we have been taught from the very beginning to put others first, to be ‘nice’, to avoid confrontation, and to play by the rules. Many of us have made important life decisions based on a narrow range of options that were presented to us, rather than taking the reins and designing our own destiny in an intentional and strategic way.

In short, we have not been playing a leadership role in our own lives.

Somehow, I knew we could change that tendency together. Once I got the idea into my head, I couldn’t let it go. So I did what I do best: I brought together a small group of trusted colleagues and friends. I let them know what I was thinking and asked for their help. What resulted was one of the most creative, productive, and fun series of ideation sessions I’ve ever participated in. And at the end of it, we had designed Tide Risers.

I launched Tide Risers in January 2017 thinking I’d have to twist the arms of my five closest friends to participate so we could pilot our newly designed curriculum. To my utter surprise, we received 47 applications to our first cohort. Clearly we had struck a nerve.

Since then, Tide Risers has grown and evolved, and we now serve hundreds of members across North America, the UK, and Europe.

I could not be more proud of how we have grown as a community of support and advancement, and I am so grateful to the brilliant work of my leadership team, who have shaped our programming to be some of the most outstanding professional and personal development offerings available.

We have grown fast, and learned a lot. And while our program has evolved tremendously, the core values and purpose of Tide Risers have not shifted since I started dreaming it up on my coaching chair many years ago.

What has held us together is a core set of leadership principles.

They are as follows: 

Abundance: We give generously and unselfishly, believing there will always be enough and we are all we need.

Ownership: As a community that actively supports and uplifts its members, we recognize that each of us as individuals are responsible for doing our own work.

Courage: We courageously and openly embrace discomfort, challenge, and new learning as we take the bold risk of trusting our community. 

Authenticity: We do not seek perfection in ourselves or others; we show up as we are and meet each other where we are.

These leadership principles are invaluable to our work, and central to our success.

They help us orient ourselves to the highest standards of relating to one another as women and as professionals. They enable us to create and sustain a culture that is supportive of the Tide Risers mission and our vision for the spirit of collaboration we want to model. 

These principles form the backbone of our curriculum and serve as a guide for our members as they learn to play a leadership role in their own lives. The Tide Risers leadership team uses these principles to guide our strategic planning, to develop our program and offerings, and to make the hard decisions we are all faced with along the way. Without them, I believe we may have strayed off course at any number of inflection points.

My greatest takeaway from the experience of founding Tide Risers is that leadership requires intentionality.

Women who are looking to make a change must be intentional about learning to play a leadership role in their own lives. Once that internal, personal leadership position is established, playing a leadership role in your family, industry, and community will come along much more effortlessly. 

Thank you for taking the time to hear my story. I could not be more proud of what we have created together, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to share what I have learned.

-Lara

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