When IRL Events Stopped, The Founder Of Okreal Leaned Into Community And Purpose. Here Is How You Can Too

Coach, business owner and community builder Amy Fraser is the founder of Okreal: a resource of wisdom, connection and mentorship that gives women the tools and courage to take charge of their lives. As a panel moderator for IRL events hosted by Okreal (as part of its “Girl Talk” series cohosted by Lou & Grey), Fraser has interviewed some of the leading female figures of our time (from Cleo Wade and Elaine Welteroth, to Beanie Feldstein), has an enviable list of clients and collaborators, and a self-developed mentor circle program that has attracted thousands of applicants.

After experiencing a personal setback and life shift as a newly single mother, Fraser had the gumption and resiliency to forge ahead and focus on building Okreal — the platform had just celebrated having its best business year in 2018, when Covid hit and forced Okreal to halt all IRL events, essentially the core of the business.

Many entrepreneurs had to pivot as a result of the pandemic, but Fraser did so while remaining intentional to the core of Okreal and her skillset: serving as a community builder, mentor and business coach.

As a result, in addition to running Okreal, Fraser recently launched amy.studio as a consultancy and coaching agency.

Originally from New Zealand, Fraser moved to New York in 2010, where she focused on building her business and community, and ultimately launched Okreal in 2014. Now back in New Zealand, she’s spent 2020 and most of 2021 figuring out what’s next — basically, like so many worldwide.

Her answer? “If you could start all over again, what would you do differently? Particularly with your career — what would you hang onto? What would you get rid of? Even if it’s precipitated by loss, even if you have new limitations — starting again can be hugely liberating. The biggest disservice I have ever made to myself has been underestimating my own capability. It was only when I had to start again that I met my true strength.”

These aren’t just platitudes exempt from experience — Fraser’s personal life reverberates the grit that give her messages clout. In late 2017, she found out that her then-husband was living multiple lives with various women around the world, who got in touch with her once they discovered her existence. Fraser was five months pregnant at the time. Now, she recounts with a laugh as to how she stays in touch with some of them: “Isn’t it incredible how the camaraderie of women rises above all?”

This has surely proven to be the case of the community Fraser has built, and how it has continued to evolve. Two of her key brand pillars are advocating for yourself and cultivating self-worth: “In all of my work, I want to show women how to decide who they are, to not let anyone or anything get in the way of that, and how standing up for yourself will always lead you to a better place.”

Returning to family in New Zealand after this first personal blow or challenge, back in 2019, Fraser continued to run her business from afar. “I started traveling back to the U.S. from New Zealand at eight weeks postpartum for work. I couldn’t take my son for practicality purposes — as soon as I landed I’d be working around the clock, sometimes hosting multiple events a night. Being apart from my son, for sometimes up to two weeks at a time, was painful in ways I can’t describe. But I’d had so much taken away from me — and I wasn’t going to let my business be one of them. I also wanted my son to know that if you get knocked down, you sure as hell get up again. You hold onto the things that make you who you are. You do not let others define the trajectory of your life.” Fraser continued to travel to New York from New Zealand for the next two years, building Okreal. And then, Covid hit and the world basically shut down. 

“First and foremost, it is gut-wrenching to have something you have poured yourself into get taken away. Overnight, my business model became defunct and I wasn’t able to do what I do,” Fraser shares. “While pivoting became a necessity, no one has really talked about the strain of what that does to the people re-rerouting the ship. I think a lot of business owners have suffered quietly, with a brave face masking their fears around an unknown future. While it looks like we went quiet for a while, I was going full-steam in the background building our online course platform and a coaching model that would appeal to women who felt like there was no coaching that catered to the messy, in-between areas that we so often inhabit as women — that gray space between work and life.”

So what do women want in this new world? And has it changed? 

Fraser shares this critical reminder: “It’s natural to feel depleted because you invested a lot of yourself into something that hasn’t worked out. But don’t confuse a loss of energy with a loss of identity. You are not your circumstance.”

There’s also been a dichotomy of needing to focus on self-care, while in the same breath, you have mothers working from home with young kids — one of the costs of the pandemic.

“There’s still this rhetoric around women trying to achieve balance when in reality, a lot of us are just trying to get through the day,” Fraser says.

It’s this need for real talk — the original catalyst for Okreal — that’s seen Fraser returning to her roots of coaching women who need support, to help hold up in the chaos of real life.

“While Okreal is a business that I own, I also wanted to be able to evolve outside of it — so I recently launched my own consultancy. I offer one-on-one mentorship and the occasional group mentorship, both of which are open to women worldwide.”

If you’re curious about the nature of these sessions — think of them as the tough love you know you need, but struggle to implement on your own. One topic is the ever-continuing quest for purpose in our careers.

Fraser suggests these tips to help women hone in on their purpose:

1. You’re giving your purpose too much (magical) power. You need to build your purpose, often blindly. Not hope that you’ll stumble upon it. 

2. You’re measuring your purpose by how much money it can make you, and linking its validity to how commercially viable it is. You’re thinking of it in terms of ROI — where if you can’t guarantee the success, approval, applause, or acceptance, then you’re not going to invest your time (or precious ego) into it. ⁣But purpose is what you do whether or not you get paid for it. 

3. You’re too focused on outcomes. The value of purpose is in its process. 

And how did the power of community motivate Fraser to just keep going? 

“Community has been my life raft. I wouldn’t have such a fortunate life if it wasn’t for the people around me, which is why I’m such a proponent of helping people build it for themselves. What’s happened in my personal life and my business life are not extraordinary. Life happens to people all day long. I’m not open about my challenges because they’re special, I’m open about them because we need to normalize the bad things that happen as much as we glorify the good. Pain is amplified by isolation, and community is a salve for that. Talking about my achievements helps no-one — but talking about my struggles? That can help so many. Which is why facilitating connection, putting empathy in action — that’s at the core of what I do. It’s why I’m so excited about mentorship. We’re all just trying to figure our lives out. Our chances of getting it right, of increasing our opportunity, is so much higher when we have the right people around us.”