Saying Goodbye to ‘Babes Who Hustle’
by Chelsea DuDeVoire Careccia, Founder
Sitting down to write this is, in a sense, the final piece of a puzzle—the puzzle being the incredible six-year journey that is Babes Who Hustle. I’ve actively been avoiding this, because how does one sum up something so meaningful and impactful in a single article?
I’ll start here: Babes Who Hustle has absolutely and completely changed me in more ways than I’ll probably ever realize. It’s my deepest hope that in some way or another, it’s changed you, too.
To rewind a bit, I created BWH in 2016—shortly after graduating college, landing my first entry-level desk job, and realizing I had no idea what I wanted my career to look like. With an English degree and a background in copywriting, integrated marketing, and social media management, BWH was initially meant to solely be a space where I could interview professional women I looked up to—and share those conversations with the internet—in an attempt to gain clarity about my own path.
Within a year, we were maintaining a full-time publishing schedule fueled by crowdsourced submissions, hosting 100+ person IRL events for our career-driven community, growing our team, managing an expanding social media presence, distributing an inventory of merchandise, and more.
Truthfully, this all started as something more self-serving than it’s become, and was initially a product of my desperation: desperation for a creative outlet, desperation for connection with others in a new city that was unfamiliar to me, desperation for something positive amid a hellish political campaign season, desperation for a clearer understanding of what I wanted to do with my career, and mostly importantly, who I wanted to be as a person.
The idea came to me on a lunch break in 2016, when I promptly secured this domain, created the Squarespace site and Instagram account, and emailed my then-small (but mighty) network. In 2017, I reserved our first P.O. box, opened a bank account, and incorporated the business. And while I’ve always had somewhat of an entrepreneurial spirit and a love for creating, I have been, and will be, the first to admit I had absolutely no business starting this business—but I genuinely don’t know who or where I’d be had I not. Looking back, it was pretty simple. I was brave. Overconfident? Sure. But brave, desperate, determined, and full of purpose.
That undeniable sense of purpose is what’s led us here.
By the numbers, here’s what Babes Who Hustle has looked like since that lunch break:
489 interview spotlights
300 creative articles
42 contributing writers
28 in-person events
24 book club meetings
12 team members
6 advisory board members
383,000+ website sessions
128,850+ hashtag uses
33,000+ social media followers
1,000+ shopify customers
What these numbers don’t illustrate are all of the collective, magical moments in-between: folks mentoring and hiring one another through our network, massive career changes with the help of our community, lifelong friendships being forged as a result of our in-person events. We’ve heard from readers in cities across the globe who have emailed women we’ve highlighted, and ended up in life-changing, informational interviews with them. Our merchandise has served as gifts among co-workers, families, and friends. We’ve published writers for the first time, helped them develop their skills, and watched them land incredible opportunities. We’ve hosted workshops with business owners and watched event attendees pursue careers inspired by them. We’ve seen impactful national and local brands recruit women we’ve featured as a direct result of their interview spotlights. Through the financial support we’ve received, we’ve been able to give back to so many organizations we’re passionate about, from JASMYN and the Women’s Center of Jacksonville, to The Loveland Foundation, and more.
I’ve said it a million times over the years: this has never been (nor will it ever be) about me. And while I feel incredibly privileged to have kickstarted this platform, the BWH brand has always had a mind, and life, and trajectory of its own.
This community has carried us all further than our ‘careers’ ever will. For many, it served as a life raft throughout the uncertainty of the pandemic, during a devastating and transformative 2020, and amid the constant cycle of ‘pivot’ we all continue to cartwheel through in a myriad of ways.
Since 2016, I’ve changed. We’ve changed. Together and apart, we’ve learned a ton, grown up a ton, and evolved a ton—and it’s time for our brand to fully reflect that.
Choosing to embark on the journey of working to build a new and improved iteration of what Babes Who Hustle was, rather than saying goodbye to our community altogether, has been the most empowering and liberating experience for me. Thanks to your ongoing support, feedback, and companionship, our team has been hard at work to make this vision a reality over the past couple of years.
Enter: Each is Every.
Inspired by our core belief that ‘Each woman’s progress is every woman’s progress,’ Each is Every is the next chapter in our journey—and we couldn’t be more thrilled to bring you along.
Our community knows that while career ‘success’ isn’t one-size-fits-all, creating long-lasting connections, sharing knowledge, evolving our skills, and celebrating each other are keys to navigating the workplace. We also know ‘hustle culture’ isn’t sustainable; burnout is incredibly real, and while our work doesn’t define us, supporting one another through community and shared resources only makes us better.
Together, we’re building a collective that accelerates and celebrates the advancement of each other’s unique career journeys—across every industry, role, and level—through a new, Membership-based model that will allow our community members to directly connect with, work with, and hire one another on a deeper, more intimate, and impactful level. Membership features include a Slack workspace, members-only webinars, content, and more—all at an affordable price point that will allow us to continue to elevate and evolve our offerings.
In addition to our membership will be the things you already know and love about us: editorials, interview spotlights, occasional events and merchandise, and more.
While babeswhohustle.com will continue to be accessible, it will no longer be updated—and this article serves as our final publication.
We can’t wait to see you over at Each is Every. ‘Thank you’ will never be enough.
All my best,
Chelsea DuDeVoire Careccia, Founder
