Meghann Conter's The Dames Opens FunFerence for Women Building Six and Seven-Figure Businesses

The Dames has opened its FunFerence 2026 guest registration around a Denver gathering for women running and leading six and seven-figure businesses, with founder Meghann Conter positioning the event around business growth, wealth and leadership. A July 20 release lists FunFerence programming at the Limelight Hotel in Denver from October 7 to 10, including a welcome happy hour and two main programming days. The official guest page lists the guest experience from October 8 to 10 and describes the room as designed for women running businesses at $100,000 and above.

The founder requirement is met directly here. Conter founded The Dames in 2015 after seeing a gap in business spaces for ambitious women entrepreneurs. The current guest page says she built the room she wished had existed and describes The Dames as a global community of women running businesses from $100,000 to more than $8 million. The release describes the organization as a business accelerator for women running and leading six, seven and eight-figure businesses.

The money angle is also explicit. The release says women are expected to control about $34 trillion in U.S. assets within the next decade and links the conference to questions about how women will lead through that shift. It also cites the Wells Fargo 2025 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report for the claim that women-owned businesses have grown 43.5 percent faster than men-owned businesses since 2019 and now number about 14.5 million, nearly 40 percent of U.S. firms.

Those figures are not just event marketing. They reflect a wider strategic question for women business owners: what happens after launch? Many entrepreneurship programs focus on getting started, but a founder running a six or seven-figure company has different problems. She may be deciding whether to hire senior leaders, raise prices, leave a weak revenue line, enter a partnership, buy another company, sell, invest profits or design a business that supports her life rather than consuming it.

FunFerence is framed around those later-stage decisions. The release says the event will focus on right-scaling, co-creation and preparing women to lead through coming shifts in wealth and business structure. The official guest page emphasizes growth strategy, peer discussion by business stage and the idea that professional growth should not require depletion. That language is more personal than a conventional business conference, but the underlying issue is practical: founders need peers who understand both revenue pressure and the human cost of sustaining a company.

The speaker and facilitator list also points to a blend of finance, operations and personal leadership. The release names Jessica Sato, founder and chief executive of Jessica Sato Consulting, as leading a session on business crossroads. It names accountant and Profit First professional Megan Schawn for a keynote on women holding wealth and power. It also lists founders and owners including Debra Boulanger, Ashley Connell, Mara Whitener, Elaine Williams, Michelle Wilson and Shaina Jones Magrone among additional speakers and panelists.

For SheMeansNews readers, the important distinction is between networking and economic infrastructure. A strong peer group can move referrals, partnerships, hiring leads, deal intelligence and confidence around pricing. But it must be specific enough to produce outcomes. Conter's bet is that women business owners at similar stages need direct rooms where they can ask for money, partnerships and support without translating their ambition into language that makes other people comfortable.

The test for FunFerence will be whether the event helps attendees make decisions they were avoiding before arriving. A gathering can be warm and still be commercially useful. In a year when women-owned business growth and wealth transfer are being discussed together, Conter's event is part of a larger question: whether women founders will inherit more responsibility without also gaining the networks, capital fluency and peer power needed to use it well.