Starting and running your own business can be incredibly stressful. One survey of small business owners about how Kelly Phillip’s approaches business in her post about putting employees first, not customers.
Another way to get support is to build up a community around yourself — both of other founders who understand what you’re going through and are facing similar challenges, and also to look to your community of customers, who understand your business better than a lot of others.
Holly explains it as, “Who are those people that you can go to, that you can speak to about what you are going through?” She says that gathering can be really powerful because “everybody goes through the same challenges as an entrepreneur, and when we see our peers, and we have that camaraderie with our peers.” And this group environment is better for growth, too. “It's actually much easier to change than when we're isolated. So that support network of other people who understand what you're going through and you can lean on each other is really important.”
The co-founders of Harlow have been doing this since the beginning, proving that it’s never too early to start building a community. Samantha explained that they’ve been building up their community for the past eight years, it includes other founders and freelancers, and it has a very positive effect on them because, as it stands, Samantha said, “I don't think we ever have a problem that we need to solve, that we don't have somebody in our community that we're like, ah, we should go talk to that person.”
Community can also be found through more traditional business groups. Sheena Russel is the founder and CEO of Made with Local, a Canadian snack bar company and a certified B-corp. She’s found a lot of support through the movement. “I absolutely feel like we're part of an incredible purpose-led business community.” Sheena knows the importance of community through her own experiences, “It can be lonely out there as a founder and as an entrepreneur.” She looks not only to her community of other entrepreneurs but also to her customers. “We have an amazing community around us of other businesses, but also of our customers as our community.”
The theme with all of these business owners, as Rand Fishkin, the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, is that he calls “an intentional investment in building a network of like-minded founders and like-minded companies.” There are a lot of ways to go about building up a support network through community, the key is just to get started.
Sometimes there is already an existing community where you can find support. Kelly is a part of an organization called …read more
Source:: Buffer Blog
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