Member in the Spotlight: Bex Porter

Meet One of Our Youngest and Most Committed Athena Women

A celebration worth pausing for

In this week’s Monday Muse I talked about celebration. About refusing to rush past joy. About making space to acknowledge the women around us who are quietly doing remarkable things.

So in that spirit, I want to introduce you to someone I think you should know.

Her name is Bex Porter. She is a personal trainer based in Thatcham. She is one of the youngest members of The Athena Network, and in two full years of membership, she has not missed a single meeting.

Not one.

The kind of commitment most business owners take a decade to learn

Bex joined Athena when she was 23 years old. She is a member of the Thatcham & Theale group, led by Regional Director Lara Lauder. During a recent renewal conversation, Lara confirmed what she had long suspected. Bex has shown up to every in-person meeting. Every Cappuccino Connection. Every online gathering in between.

Two years. Zero misses.

Lara said, when she submitted Bex for this Spotlight, that she could not think of another person in her region with the same attendance record. 

We talk a lot in business about consistency. About showing up. About the compound effect of being in the room, week after week, when so many around you drift in and out depending on how they feel that morning. Most people understand the principle. Very few people actually live it.

Bex lives it.

And she has been living it from the age when many young women are still being told, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to wait their turn. To gather more experience first. To come back when they have built something more substantial. Bex did not wait. She walked into a room of women in business and decided she belonged there. Then she proved it, meeting after meeting, for two years and counting.

What young women bring to a network like ours

There is a particular kind of energy that arrives when a young woman commits fully to her own business at the start of her career rather than the middle of it.

It is unhurried, in one sense, and electric in another. She has time. She has stamina. She has not yet been told no enough times to filter her ideas before she speaks them. She brings questions to the room that more experienced members had stopped asking. She brings courage. She brings a clean kind of hunger that reminds the rest of us why we started.

Athena has always been a multigenerational network. That is not an accident. It is the design. Women in their twenties learning alongside women in their fifties and sixties is not a charity model. It is a compounding one. The younger members gain decades of perspective in fast-forward. The more established members are reminded of who they were when they began, and what is still possible.

Bex is exactly the kind of young woman this network was built to support. And, in turn, she is exactly the kind of young woman who reminds this network of what it is for.

A WhatsApp post that changed everything

When Lara asked Bex what she valued most about her Athena membership, Bex told a story that I think will resonate with anyone reading this who has ever hovered over the send button on a brave idea.

She had been developing a new online coaching offer. She was not entirely sure about the copy. She was not entirely sure about the pricing. So she did what Athena members do. She posted it into her group’s WhatsApp and asked for feedback.

She expected a few comments to come back over the week.

What she got, by the end of that same day, was paragraphs. Detailed, considered, generous paragraphs from at least six different members. They told her she was undercharging. They asked her sharpening questions. They reworked her angle. They gave her the kind of feedback you would normally pay a consultant for, and they gave it to her freely, because she is one of theirs.

In Bex’s own words:

“Reaching out for help can be hard, but with the Athena ladies it’s not. I had a new idea to start online coaching, however I wasn’t sure if the post I’d made was clear and the pricing correct. I sent it to my group for feedback expecting a few comments throughout the week but what I got blew me away. By the end of the day I had at least 6 paragraphs from different people outlining questions that could actually help me make my launch clearer, smoother and more successful. They all suggested I was selling my services too cheap for the time I’d put in, which is great feedback. I was so grateful that my fellow members had clearly put time in to think about how I could improve my offering. The support was next level.”

She launched the course in March. She is now supporting women through her app as well as through her in-person sessions in Thatcham.

That is what a network is for.

This is what Athena is built on

For twenty years, I have been quietly building rooms where this exact thing can happen. Where a young personal trainer in Thatcham can post a half-finished idea on a Tuesday morning and walk away by Tuesday evening with a fully reworked launch strategy, properly priced, championed by women who have her back.

That is not a feature of Athena. That is Athena.

It is what every membership fee is paying for. It is what every weekly meeting is building toward. It is what we mean when we say this is a network of substance, not just a directory of contacts.

A network is not measured by how many people are in it. It is measured by how much support, encouragement, and honest feedback moves through it. By how generously the women in the room think about each other’s businesses. By how quickly someone with a brave idea finds six people willing to make it braver.

Bex’s story is not a one-off. It is the rule. It happens, in some form, in every Athena group, every week. The only difference is that this time, we are stopping to name it.

Congratulations, Bex

Bex, on behalf of the whole network, congratulations.

On the course. On the commitment. On two years of unbroken attendance. On the woman you are clearly becoming, in business and in yourself.

You are exactly the kind of young woman this network was built to support, and exactly the kind of member who reminds us all what we are doing here.

Thank you to Lara for putting her forward.

If you are based in or around Thatcham and you are ready to be coached by someone who shows up the way Bex does, you can read more about her on her instagram feed here