BlogHer

Aug 21, 2012 by Laura Greb

Posted under: blog

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the founders of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort Page. There are three founders – all juggling insanely busy schedules and with the responsibilities; Elisa is COO and Co-founder. I am happy to share this interview.

Panel discussion at the BlogHer Conference 2012 | Photo Credit: Laura Greb-Anand

What advice would you give entrepreneurs just starting out in this industry?

1. Understand your passion, and what’s valuable about it. Because you’ll be working as hard as you’ve ever worked in your life…it better be about something you’re intensely passionate about.

2. Make your fears specific, not abstract. People stop themselves because they’re afraid they’ll fail. So make sure you specify exactly what would happen if you failed. Often it’s uncomfortable, unfortunate, unpleasant…but it’s not tragic. And it’s not a reason not to try.

Why did you begin BlogHer? My two co-founders, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, and I started BlogHer to answer a question we knew needed to die: “Where are the women who blog?” But we expanded and grew BlogHer to make a new kind of media company that made money *with* women, not *off* women.

What would you say your biggest challenge is TODAY (with BlogHer?)

The biggest challenge for most start-ups is scalability and sustainability. And these economic times just make that even more challenging than usual. We have pent-up demand from both our community and our brand customers. Knowing what to green light and what to pause in order to grow in the most intelligent way possible is always on our minds.

Katie Couric on stage at BlogerHer 2012 NYC

Recently you wrapped up BlogHer12 in NYC. How was the experience for you? I heard this is the largest event to date, is that true?

BlogHer ’12 was indeed our largest conference to date , with over 5,000 attendees! There were nine tracks of programming, 3 parties per night, our first Fashion Show, two 200-person full-day pre-conference events, not to mention our buzz-worthy keynotes…Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Soledad O’Brien, Christy Turlington Burns, Malaak Compton-Rock and, of course, the opening remarks live via video from President Barack Obama. Wow, I’m tired just listing it all out, so as you can imagine the event was a bit of a frenzied blur for me

If there is one thing that you learned this year at the conference, what would it be?

My lesson is *always* to remember to eat and drink!! Seriously, that’s just one way to nourish one’s self while working hard and managing something massive. Sometimes nourishment is a meal, but sometimes it’s taking that 15 minutes to connect with one person, and let all the frenzy around you fade away while you focus on their story. Don’t miss the opportunities to nourish yourself, even when you’re supposed to be taking care of others.

Why do you think women are so inspired by BlogHer? This seems like a really well knit community with strong individuals across all industries.

BlogHer’s mission, since 2005, has been to create opportunities for the women in our community…opportunities for education, exposure, community, and economic empowerment. We take that mission seriously, and that’s why we were so proud to talk about what we call the “BlogHer Economy” at the conference. We’ve paid $17 million dollars out to the bloggers in our community over the last three years…three tough years economically speaking. That’s fair payment for their words, for their work, for their reach. Not every woman in our community *wants* to monetize, but everyone in our community can appreciate how hard we work to be the conference, the network, and the media company that the community continues to build with us.

What’s next for BlogHer?

Well, we have built some strong verticals across our network that now we are working to bring the bloggers across every vertical more opportunities horizontally…meaning across mobile, across the rest of their social graph beyond their blog, via video. We have some exciting tools we’ve already launched (check out the new enhanced BlogHer.com profiles) and are getting ready to officially launch (such as BlogHer TV). So, more to come…

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