It was 11 a.m. on a bright Saturday morning, and I took a look around. I was on the second floor of a hip yoga studio in Los Angeles, with views of white apartment buildings and blue mountains in the distance; the air inside buzzed with energy.I'm in the right place, I thought to myself.Over four hundred women had converged at Wanderlust Hollywood for a day of talks by leading female change makers. How do you build a conscious business from the ground up? How do you initially fund it? How do you stay sane (and inspired) when things get tough?These were the kinds of questions that speakers addressed, and precisely what we'd come to learn about. For those of us who didn't need specifics as much as general confirmation that our ideas need to be heard in the world, well, we got that too.The author, Camille Robins, with Wanderlust Hollywood manager Dula Marx.The diverse, eclectic group that had gathered -- and oftentimes the wildly fashionable one -- had come for American Women Entrepreneurs 2016. With the apt acronym AWE, it was the first of its kind hosted by Wanderlust, and it pulled together an impressive list of change agents: NastyGal founder Sophia Amoruso, author and speaker Danielle LaPorte, and financial expert Kate Northrup, among others.Through talks and curated conversations across three beautiful spaces throughout the day, those of us who'd flown in or driven or walked or biked learned that we can certainly have it all but that we don't always need to; that it's important to lean in and direct our lives but that it's also important to know when to lean out and be taken by the flow; that it's important to give and also to receive; that balancing it all is possible but that we don't need to reprimand ourselves when moments of overwhelm inevitably occur.It all got me thinking: Drishti -- our very own Santa Barbara boutique and lifestyle brand -- is a female-owned and -operated business that's been running on kindness, integrity, fun, and good intentions since it started back in 2001. It strives to bring the best brands on the market to people just like us, who want to feel good in our own skin and the clothes we wear, and who want to support companies that have an ethic of care woven into their fabric. What an awesome, empowering thing.So, how did I feel at the end of that Saturday? Galvanized. Excited. Sparking with energy. And committed to being myself, expressing myself, and staying close to what I stand for. So here I am and here we are, as a powerful collective of women -- let's do this!Guest Piece by Camille Robins
