How To Find The Right Entrepreneurial Community For You

Sean: You follow this idea and a lot of people are in that stage, Carol, more than you know, that they have an idea. They like this idea. They believe it will work. But some people were strong with wondering about these things and ideation and maybe even part of the execution in their heads. They hesitate and they think of all the wrong things that could happen. And then they think, “Oh, well, but I don’t have the person with me to start.” You had your husband who helped you to start this. What would be your advice for these people?

Carol: So my husband was probably the least helpful of all the people I put together. I mean, he had a full-time job and he did some of the codings, but he actually didn’t believe in what I was doing. So there’s an important lesson here. He was kind of doing it because I’m pushy. If you don’t do things, I push, right? But what I think really mattered there is – partnering is core. Now, there’s one thing I do with my modern-day entrepreneurs, because my second book was dedicated only to entrepreneurs who wanted to do a responsible kind of business, not family or lifestyle, but ecological or fair trade or people of color, something they want to do.

And I said all of you will do better if you will find partners. Like in both cases, I found a partner here, and finding a partner gives you someone to think with. So I now pretty much quit doing this in the last year, but I have communities that entrepreneurs join. They’re all been online since COVID, right? And you have other people to think with because the most important thing is to develop your capacity to discern what’s right. Because our problem is we don’t trust ourselves and we don’t know how to think about it. So we want to coach or we want to mentor or we want like – I didn’t ask my husband for advice, not because he was not a wonderful man, but because I needed to learn to trust me and he wanted to invest it.

If you’re invested, gets a thinking partner and a group of thinking partners and they can be physically where you are. Don’t get coaches and mentors. I don’t recommend that. I get communities of other people who have different levels of experience. Some of them they’re called masterminds. But I haven’t found one of those I respect very much. It’s more like finding a group of people who want to

start businesses of their own. And you know that if you’re thinking with them and them with you, you’re going to have better thoughts. And then secondly, add to that what I make sure all my entrepreneurs get is critical thinking skills and personal self-management. Because what gets us in trouble, you were hinting at it is my own internal dialogue; “Oh, no, what could go wrong? What if this fails? Maybe I should just get a job and do this as a side hustle?” Well, maybe that’s true but the most important thing is to build the skill, to

sort through all that, and community and thinking partners are the way to do it.