Team Profile: Nicola Sapsford

Leadership Coach, Facilitator, Training Consultant – Perth

Nicola Sapsford could have never predicted that, following the loss of her mother, buying a pink notebook would end up transforming her career and lead to finding professional and personal contentment.

From early childhood Nicola’s innate passion has been to enable others. From being a carer of a fellow school student suffering from spina bifida, through to many managerial and leadership roles in her corporate career, Nicola always used her natural bent for communication and connection to enable others. Today the ongoing success of her company, The Pink Book Club, is the embodiment of this abiding passion. Having now grown to thousands members The Pink Book Club is an ‘enabling’ space – both literally and virtually. It provides a platform for women to look at real life in all its true grit, to be real women, and to listen to real stories through exclusive and intimate events, and useful resources. But the journey to this success – like Nicola’s other love of long-distance running – wasn’t easy – both journeys involve elements of timing, perseverance, commitment and learning to deal with loss.

With her extensive background in corporate facilitation, Nicola understood the best way to progress her newly blossoming business was through corporate networking. Suffering from self-doubt, based on not having a tertiary degree, she often felt ‘out of her league’ and lacked the confidence to promote her business. But she persevered. In this process of observation and just listening, Nicola saw unfolding in front of her a gaping niche in the market. A niche that was a natural fit for her temperament, and a perfect fit for her business. Her business epiphany was based on the idea of ‘connection’ before ‘accreditation’. The idea was to connect with women by finding out who they were first, as opposed to what they did. This saw The Pink Book Club flourish with cooking classes, progressive dinners and her hugely popular signature event – Wine, Nibbles and Chatter.

Membership soared to 400 in just 3 years and then into the thousands. But with growth came change and like any good long-distance runner, the business almost lost sight of the finish line. Heartbreakingly 2012 saw Nicola handing the business over to a business partner.

Fast-forward to now and Nicola is again in charge of her business. But this time, like her prep for a long-distance run, her calculations are clear. She has returned to her core audience – women in small business – and focussed on her signature event, Wine, Nibbles and Chatter. Pink Book Club now enables women to share their gritty and real life stories to live audiences, with the clear goal of finding out ‘who you are’ before ‘what you do’, as a tool for connecting and ultimately to doing better business through authentic business connections.