Regrounding in the Long View
The beauty of community in helping you see the big picture.
“I see you wondering and striving hard to answer the question ‘Why hasn’t the thing taken off yet?’ It’s ok… it will. Don’t force it. Give it time.”
I soaked in the words as I stared at my friend Jen. We stood in the middle of a restaurant in one of Seattle’s eastside high-rise buildings on Monday, packed with female entrepreneurs, C-suite, and other movers and shakers in Seattle We held half-finished glasses of the small pinot grigio while as she dropped her always-on-point wisdom - the kind that reverberates throughout your body like a tuning fork. The insight you know you can’t turn away from because it answered something deeper than the questions you knew to ask.
I looked around that room and could feel my hands buzzing. I searched for people to meet, in the hopes that the right connection at the right time would lead to a brand partnership or more. As my eyes darted, the question I thought I was asking was “Who in this room can help me bring BEAM to the next level?”
With a knowing, compassionate look, Jen helped me realize the real question I needed to answer:
“Am I worthy because my business doesn’t look like anyone else’s?”
The answer: hell yes.
If I’m honest, building
has been one lesson after the next of what happens when things don’t break your way. I know that everyone who builds businesses feels similarly, but it’s even more acute for women and BIPOC individuals. Looking at the “business world” from the outside in, you can quickly suss out who will have the better deals and the easier times getting traction from the jump: men. Specifically white men. The facts don’t lie when it comes to venture capital and small business funding disparities.If we see what is deemed “successful,” we try to emulate that model. It is basic human behavior. We’re just recycling the same system that isn’t a foundational structure for more than half of the population to be profitable.
It is easy to get sucked into that system of thinking and operating when you just want to succeed. Take it from me, someone who learned more about business and startups in the now-defunct “GirlBoss Era” where a company’s mission was supposed to define your life no matter the cost, and the competition was just as fierce to be seen, noticed, liked. Once I left that environment for a hot second, it was easy to see how much it degraded my self-worth and how it wasn’t the way I would build a business if I got the chance.
The catch: You can take the girl out of the “GirlBoss Era,” but sometimes you can’t take that mentality out of the girl.
When we’re shown that there are only a few specific ways to build companies, we internalize that it is what it is. “It’s just how it’s done” is a phrase that I’d love to light on fire, but it’s one most uttered by those in charge who have seen success. So why shouldn’t we believe them?
Because each of the CEOs I’ve heard utter that phrase are ones that burned out bright. They grew, they scaled, and it looked successful. Somewhere humanity and compassion leaked out of their SOPs and modeling, and when it did, the long-term sustainable nature of the business did as well.
Businesses are often built on scarcity. Sometimes we thrive on the belief that only a few select ones will make it, so we need to grab what’s “mine” instead of thinking more broadly what is “ours” to share. What is best for the collective in this moment? The world we’re in will reward the flash-in-the-pan, catch-lightning-in-a-bottle businesses that burn out bright, but what about those who are bringing their best in ways that are sustainable and long-lasting? They build day-by-day, behind the scenes with goodwill and grit.
I know a handful of women who have crafted their companies for the long haul. Is it the sexiest, eye-catching option for investors and partners? Maybe not. And yet, each of them believes that we all win when we collaborate in ways that rise the tides and raise all ships.
And so, when I looked around the room before Jen intervened, I was looking for the next helper. It was part desperation, part hope, a dash of fear, and a heap of scarcity mindset that I had integrated from past experience.
Jen’s gentle nudge was calming, grounding, and claiming one simple truth that has proclaimed itself loudly throughout my year thus far with one question: “Let’s write a new story, shall we?”
Rising the Tide and Raising Ships
Over the past year, I’ve spent more than 542 hours on the phone with startup founders, non-profit executives, C-suite leaders, CMOs, and big brand product owners. (This doesn’t include podcast interview/prep or the 4 standing weekly or bi-monthly calls I have with my “inner circle” - those that keep me accountable.) Each…
Where I’m Hopeful:
Now that we’re shuttling all my fun links to the Slow Jam Sundays posts (check out last week’s here), I do want to end each weekly newsletter with hope. With all that is going on in the world, hope is just the thing we need to cling to.
I’m hopeful for community. I’m watching incredible people building in new ways to connect us more deeply to each other and ourselves. One of those is Jen Bunder. Not only is she graciously asking me to think deeply, but she’s building an incredibly supportive, intersectional movement community with Be Here Now.
If you’re in Seattle or heading here for our glorious summer, come with me to a class or join with me as a founding member. You won’t regret it.
Onward and upward, my friends. So much love for you!
