Transcript
Most members are joining our club to combat that feeling of isolation. They just want to be surrounded by people that they can relate to. I remember before I started the club, I would find that my closest friends who didn’t have businesses would get sick of hearing about my business blab, you know, you get all excited and you crack a puzzle, you realize that you conquered your SEO thing that you’re trying to figure out or you launch your email list. I would always be telling my sister who’s not an entrepreneur and she just like didn’t care about, mailing list growth or my new website. So one aspect is just the relief and the fun of being around people who get your excitement about business, that get fire about talking about, you know, business nerdy things like the latest business self help book that you read or your sales funnel software that you just got. These are things that entrepreneurs have that in common that they get excited and find these topics fun. And so one is just having that group of people that get excited and want to talk about the same things as you.
And on the same token is combating that feeling of isolation besides what you want to talk about. Just being an entrepreneur is hard and there are always days for everybody that you want to throw in the towel. I have a throw in the towel day, at least once a week and I’ve been in this for 20 years. So on those throw in the towel days, it’s so important to have a just a cheerleading team that gets it, that wanted to throw in the towel yesterday. Cause in a group there’s always somebody who’s not having to throw in the towel day and they can say, hang in there. I was there yesterday. Like things will get better. And give me some kind of pep talk or maybe show you something from another angle. One of the greatest values is that our community comes together online in a chat forum and people can drop any issue they’re facing in there. And within a few minutes, we’re usually able to give them a scattering of different perspectives. You know, if they’re stuck on something, which happens all the time.
Having that valuable input from just different perspectives and different levels of experience can shake you out of a stuck rut and get you rolling again. Another thing that we noticed is when I originally launched the club, I envisioned it as a 100% online virtual resource. That was my background. So I thought, okay, we’ll have e-courses and live online workshops and we will support each other in this chat room. And we will market to the Mamahood audience online as well. And this was about two years ago and the launch members, about half of them asked me, are we going to get to meet up in real life as well? And I’m a mom of five, I was feeling kind of overwhelmed by the idea of throwing a party every month. And I’m also a songwriter and I have a history of having a band in the city for 14 years and throwing and promoting all of those parties and shows and events. So I didn’t want to, and I very reluctantly agreed to having at least a monthly gathering. And what I saw was that the people who showed up at the monthly gathering were having an entirely different experience and a much better one than the ones who were only able to connect online.
I just, it sounds maybe obvious, but seeing how, you know, people are starved for real life connection and just so hungry for getting out and having that break that we realized people needed much more of this. And so it started out just a couple of women in a room with cheese and crackers and we went full on into the party. So we started throwing a major monthly bash that was all around the aspects of self care because we also saw that the first thing to go for a busy woman entrepreneur is taking care of yourself, giving yourself that break, that social life. Because socializing is self care. They have lots of studies showing that your ultimate physical and mental health is determined by whether or not you’ve made time to socialize with other women and specifically other women. My functional medicine doctor actually prescribed social life to her patients when they are suffering from anxiety, depression or any physical ailments. And she has a minimum prescription of one face to face with a girlfriend minimum per week and one phone call per day. And that will turn people around out of anxiety or depression. So a girlfriend call a day and a girlfriend meet up per week. And I know a lot of us aren’t hitting those goals and so I built the club as kind of like a one stop plugin so that no matter how busy you get, you’ve got that social life kind of built for you.
Most of our members tend to join the club in the earlier stages of their entrepreneurship, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that earlier stage of their entrepreneur journey. So somebody might be on their fifth business when they’re motivated to kind of jump into community. And it really doesn’t tie into age either. Our members range in age from their twenties to their seventies and not always an age correlation. Some of our people in their twenties are actually quite experienced and savvy and some people in their seventies are starting their businesses for the first time because they’ve possibly had a corporate day job or been a stay at home mom or both. And now they are venturing into their own thing for the first time or for the fifth time. So not necessarily an age correlation or even an experience correlation, but I think a lot of people do get motivated when they are switching businesses or starting a new venture to look around and think, you know maybe I need some friends because it’s that early stage that’s typically kind of the scariest part of the grind.
And the part where you, you need that cheerleading team and support and also where you have the most questions. So you, you want to tap that hive mind a lot more than somebody that’s in, you know, comfortably coasting along in their eighth year of business. We all naturally sort of mentor each other and it really depends on, I think more than some being more experienced over all that we all bring a different kind of experience. So it’s kind of a group mentorship going on. For example, I feel really confident helping people out with their Facebook group growth or community building strategies or even just community leading or communication. Those are my strengths. But somebody else in the club might have a ton more experience in bookkeeping tax write offs and the financial aspects that are not my strengths. So we all sort of symbiotically mentor each other because our businesses and our business models are so different. We all bring something unique to the table, whether or not we’re a new entrepreneur or a really seasoned one.
