Rachel Payne and Natasha Mohanty share what they've learned building companies. They stress resilience, learning to sell, surrounding yourself with supportive teammates, and letting passion drive the work rather than chasing money.
So now I'd like to switch gears just a little bit and talk about what have we learned as entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur is a continuous learning process, as you all know. And no matter what you think you know, you're going to continue to learn more. And you'll be corrected a lot. So I'll actually turn it over to Natasha. And maybe you can talk a little bit about what you've learned as an entrepreneur.
Well, I've learned I can be wrong a lot, which is an exciting learning. But I've also learned that there are more things I'm capable of doing than I ever imagined. Like, I'm pretty good at building things and I really enjoy them, but Rachel's always forced me, now let's go meet a partner and let's go do some sales. And I'm like, sales? I don't do that. But you know, when you're a small team, you do every freaking thing. So yeah, there are times when I'm like, sure, I can do that too. So I think, and in some sense those things amaze me because I also, I had put myself after working for a while in a bucket being like, this is what I do and I do really well and I'm really scared to do other things. But having been in that position, I'm impressed with myself that I can do other things. And there's a lot to learn and I can improve, but I can do them. And I think that's a great feeling. I think the other one thing I'm learning is resilience matters. Like tenacity matters. Again, I used to think, you know, I lived in the Bay Area now 10 years. I used to feel like the way startups work is it's magic. You have magic, you do a startup. If you don't have magic, you don't do a startup. And now when you're in it and when you meet a lot more people, you realize that what people are describing as magic is literally tenacity. You do something, it fails, you change it, you adjust, you learn, you pivot. And then we celebrate the success stories, we forget like it's a journey. And to be honest, I'm also learning to enjoy the journey versus constantly being like, what's the outcome, what's the outcome, what's the outcome? And I think that's a life lesson for me, that, you know, it's okay to enjoy the journey and, you know, enjoy the process. And I think part of that is I'm enjoying the journey because I love the people I work with. And I mean, it would be It would be totally different if I did not adore all my coworkers. And I think that has really helped kind of me at least kind of go through this process, learn together. And sometimes you're in the trenches and they're there with you, and sometimes you're celebrating and they're drinking with you, and both of them are kind of equally awesome. So yeah, that's pretty much it.
So I guess what I've learned is that passion really is at the core of all of this. Being an entrepreneur is the hardest work that you will ever love. And you will work harder than you ever thought possible. And it's so worth it. And I think also after meeting Natasha and working with Natasha, I would agree. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to be surrounded by such amazing people and who I adore as well. And that anyone can be an entrepreneur. And being an entrepreneur isn't a silo. You can be an entrepreneur in every aspect of life. You could be an entrepreneur in the arts, in a big corporate environment, in a nonprofit organization, in a hybrid organization. Being an entrepreneur is, you know, more around that drive and that passion and that spirit than it is about a particular way of being an entrepreneur. And there's a lot of room for diversity.
