Kimberly Hobscheid argues entrepreneurs isolate themselves unnecessarily. She recommends building a personal board of directors with peers, niche experts, and business advisors, or joining a mastermind group to share struggles you'd normally hide.
Brene Brown: "we do not have to do it all alone" (idea on vulnerability and shame).
Chapters
Hey, folks, it's Kimberly Hobscheid with Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel. I'm excited. Today we're gonna talk about a quote from an inspirational speaker that I really adore, Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability and shame, which are two things that plague entrepreneurs like mad, Right? We're all covered up in our armor and trying to pretend everything's perfect, especially to our friends and family. Oh, no, we got this. It's totally fine. And we don't talk about the speed bumps, we don't talk about the difficulties with anybody, and we don't talk about the challenges. And Brene Brown is famous for the quote, we do not have to do it all alone. We were never meant to. That means that as a human race, we were brought here for collaboration, for the idea that we were going to be in a community. We're going to have other people around us, supporting us, interacting with us, being with us. And as entrepreneurs, we have a tendency to forget that a little bit, right? That we're in here and we're all alone. Maybe our family doesn't, you know, wants the best for us, but they don't necessarily believe we're going down the right path of entrepreneurship. Maybe our kids are like, I have no idea what mom does. She spends a lot of time on the computer, but I got no idea. Maybe our nearest friends are like, I want her to do really well, but I'm really not sure what it is that she's into these days. And that's because we're changing and pivoting as we go and as we develop. And, you know, what we started out doing might change next week. And we're like, all right, this path is better, and that's a good quality for an entrepreneur to have to be able to pivot and change and. And do new things. And that's great, but sometimes our friends, our family, our parents, our kids cannot keep up with us. And that's just very, very common. But we were still. We were not meant to do it all alone. We were never designed that way. That's not how human nature is built. And so what I wanted to offer up to the community is that what you really need is some sort of community to belong to. Now, entrepreneurs. Rocket Fuel is a community by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to support entrepreneurs. And that's what it was built for, but in more of a microcosm. I strongly recommend that you get into a mastermind or some sort of group where you can have your very own version of a board of directors to bounce ideas off of. Now, this may not be your friends, your family, your parents, your kids. It may not be those people at all. It could be, but it's very, very possible that it's people completely outside your realm who share knowledge about the topic that you're working in. Right? So. So if you are serving hikers, which is an example I use all the time, get out there and get somebody who works for a company that sells hiking equipment. Go out there and get somebody who runs a hikers group and go out there and get somebody who is a hiker and put them on your board of directors. Ask them if they would be willing to meet with you once a month or once a quarter so that you can share ideas about what you're creating and what you're building and what's good for.
The next quarter or the next month or the next week even. But go ahead and get a board of directors that you can bounce ideas off of and share real honest things about what's going right and what is not going right and where you're getting stuck. You can also have somebody on your board of directors who is unrelated completely to your niche and just knows business, right? So somebody who knows how to be able to drive a business from start to finish, who knows how to be able to position a business for sale, maybe somebody who may know how to get information to how to position a company to get angel investing, they would be a good person to have on your board of directors. Maybe you're not ready for that, but they do have a wider perspective and if they're a friend of yours or in a mastermind group with you, then that you can reach out to them and say, hey, you know, I'm not ready for funding yet, but I am interested in like what you would have to do to position for being able to get funding. Because that's where I want my company to be healthy and happy and to that level. And you can also get somebody who's interested in technology. So if you have somebody who does, who knows how to build out funnels or has a company that builds technology for somebody, they may have insight on a technology piece that you didn't have. Now be careful when you work with these people because you don't actually want them necessarily selling their solution to you because they'd be biased, right? They'd be coaching you into buying that particular solution. You really just want somebody who's going to be agnostic so to any technology or any solution, but give you ideas from their knowledge and expertise. And if you have one, you might need to balance it with another alright, folks, I'm Kimberly Hobscheid. I hope this tip was helpful for you. If you don't already have a mentor or a guide or a coach or somebody amazing to work with who can help you through the murky waters of entrepreneurship, I would love to work with you. Go to entrepreneursrocketfield.com apply, fill out an application, and all it means is you and I will get on the phone, or you'll get on the phone with one of our experts and we'll chat with you a little bit about where your business is and where you want to be, and we'll talk about any programs or ideas that we have that can get you to that next level. All right, folks, I'm Kimberly Hobscheid with Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel, and I look forward to working with you. Cheers.
