Professional business women have empowering day at BBB conference

The Better Business Bureau of Southeast Texas brought women and business together for its annual Professional Women’s Conference at Doggett Ford Park Thursday.

The arena was filled with vendor booths offering everything from handmade artisanal goods to a free massage or facial treatment to information from businesses and non-profit organizations.

A great number of the businesses represented were themselves owned by women or catered services to women.

Break-out sessions with various owners were held throughout the day, the highlight of the conference being the address by keynote speaker Meredith Jurica.

In 2017, shestarted the Conroe-based business Makeup Junkie Bags, which saw a quick rise to success with some 700 orders made in just the first month of creating a Facebook sale page, she said.

It’s not something Jurica planned to do when she made her first makeup bag in 2016.

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“I was just making one for myself out of necessity,” she said. “Makeup was changing, and you had these pallets that didn’t fit into regular bags any more. I was just solving my own problem.”

Soon, friends and family were asking her where she got it and asking if she could make one for them, too. The requests snowballed, and Jurica toyed with the idea of selling them.

She had no idea sales would take off so quickly and soon needed help filling the demand.

“I was a one-woman show — creating the bags, selling and marketing,” Jurica said.

She got skilled sewers to help make the bags as sales continued to soar.

Two years later, she applied for a spot on the television show Shark Tank, and got one out of out of 40,000 applicants for Season 10.

Jurica turned down her contract offer from one of the show panelists, choosing to retain “100% ownership (of the company and products) made in Texas,” she said.

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She’s since grown her products to include coin purses, cell phone cases, handbags and totes.

One more addition to her line is coming soon – a book talking about her foray into the world of small business ownership and the attitude it took to find success.

They’re insights she shared with other professional women at the conference.

“I’ll be talking a lot about my ‘says who’ attitude,” Jurica said. “When somebody would tell me, ‘You can’t do this or that won’t work,’ I’d always say, ‘Says who?’”

Jurica literally taught herself how to start a business using Google searches and put her “Never say never” mindset to work.

“All you have to do is have a dream and a step-by-step plan of how to get there,” she said. “And I relied on my sense of humor to stay positive and make it through the ups and downs.”