MESSED UP MONDAYS FEATURING MICHELLE HORDAL

Messed Up Mondays is Edmonton’s only entrepreneur networking event built entirely around what didn’t work, told by the people who lived it.

This month’s speaker is Michelle Hordal, founder of Adaptabilities. She started it on the side in 2004 while teaching full time, supporting a handful of people, making about $2.85 an hour. Twenty two years later Adaptabilities supports hundreds of children and families across Edmonton on a multi million dollar budget, and Michelle is finally out of the day to day with two direct reports and an EA.

That gap between where it started and where it is now was not a straight line. She is coming to Messed Up Mondays to walk through the parts of it nobody puts in an annual report.

“I created something that was in so much demand I couldn’t hold it back if I wanted to.”

Michelle Hordal, Founder of Adaptabilities

What She’s Actually Going to Talk About

Twenty five desks crammed into her house, with the closet doors taken off so three more people could work in there. Shingles at 46 because of the stress. Going from roughly 200 team members down to 55. Keeping a high performing but toxic team member far too long because she could not picture doing that job herself on top of everything else, and the five minute coaching conversation about values that ended it the next morning. Two separate points where she came close to walking away, and the support network that talked her out of it.

Also the part almost nobody in the charitable sector says out loud: that she is done being asked to do more for less, and would rather do more with more.

How the Night Runs

Doors open at 6:00 PM for an hour of unhurried networking. No rushed mingling. No pitch stack handshakes. At 7:00 PM, Trystan sits down with Michelle for a live interview. No slides. No prepared talk. No selling from the stage. At 7:30 PM we open the floor to live audience Q&A, then close out the night with sponsor recognition and the draw.

What to Expect Inside

• Open networking from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM

• A live, unscripted interview with Michelle Hordal from 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM

• Audience Q&A immediately after

• A raffle and giveaway supporting Adaptabilities, drawn near the end of the night

About Michelle Hordal

Michelle is the founder of Adaptabilities, an Edmonton organization supporting children, youth, and adults with diverse abilities and their families. She built it while working as a teacher, went from full time to a 0.8 teaching load to keep up with demand, and ran the first five years as a for profit before converting it. For the first fifteen years she had no mentor and no peer group. She learned business from books, then from AWE, then from the Women’s President’s Organization, which she credits with picking her up at the point she was closest to done.

She spent most of those years believing she was not smart enough to be in the rooms she was already in. Her words: “I’m just a teacher.” She will tell you what changed that.
This Month We’re Supporting Adaptabilities

October is a charity month for Messed Up Mondays. Adaptabilities will have a table at the event, along with a raffle and giveaway on the night. If you want to give and cannot make it, or want to give more than a ticket, you can donate directly here:

https://adaptabilities.ca/donate/

Why This Event Exists

My birthday is October 4. Rather than make the month about me, we turned it into a charity event two years running. Last year I was the one in the interview chair, which was fun, but this year I would rather hand that seat to someone with a story worth twenty two years of build.

Messed Up Mondays started because Edmonton had plenty of networking events and none of them were honest. So I built one.

In Three Words:

Vulnerable. Real. Connecting.

Event venue & nearby stays

Brighton Block, 9666 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, Canada

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