Thank you, Cher! This article brought me to tears. I never planned or wanted to be an entrepreneur, had actively resisted, it until I was trained as a coach. I knew it was what I was meant to do. Yet, running a business is a whole different thing and I have experienced the exploitation model of my industry so often over the past 9 years that I experience great trepidation reaching out to anyone. That is in part why I refuse to market to coaches and I always welcome new coaches reaching out to me to "pick my brain." My favorite masterminds have been the few small peer masterminds I've been part of but they don't give you access like the "pay to play ones." At this point, like you said, I'd still love mentorship though I'm so many years in and I deeply appreciate your reflections on what that can look like.
I'm so glad this resonated with you, Valerie. I had no idea that you were an "accidental entrepreneur." You are so generous your time and attention, and I truly appreciate the way that you do business. We'll have to chat offline about what kind of mentorship you're looking for 💁🏻♀️
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one thinking about this! When I started my career in the '90s, networking was the thing to do. As you said, we were supposed to reach out and ask people for a bit of their time, and we were supposed to be generous about responding to people who reached out to us. After a while, it came to feel a bit oily. Everyone was reaching out with solely instrumental aims. It was not a path to genuine relationships and, ultimately, it led us to this state of affairs. Now, I feel almost unethical scheduling time with people if I'm not planning to buy their services. I might see a lot of commonalities with them, the potential for idea swapping, mutual support, collaboration, etc. But I know that their intent for the call will be to sell. It feels wrong for me to show up without the intent to buy.
During an epidemic of loneliness, we are locking each other out with paywalls. It's damned hard these days to find anyone to talk to about anything without having to pay them. I bet a lot of people would like a shift, but getting the ball rolling on collective change is hard, especially during a time of such economic duress and social instability. The thing is, this is exactly when we need each other's generosity and care. One of the strands of hope I am holding onto during this time is that the dissolution of our scant governmental supports will press us toward reweaving the fabric of local and kinship community (kinships of the heart, not only of genetics). We are all toiling away and slumping under the weight of earning and caregiving and all the things. We don't seem to realize, collectively, that we are the solutions to each other's biggest problems.
Thanks very much for putting these thoughts out there.
We are 100% the solutions to each other's problems AND we are also the ones perpetuating the problem (with paywalls), like you said. Such a beautiful reflection. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Cher! This article brought me to tears. I never planned or wanted to be an entrepreneur, had actively resisted, it until I was trained as a coach. I knew it was what I was meant to do. Yet, running a business is a whole different thing and I have experienced the exploitation model of my industry so often over the past 9 years that I experience great trepidation reaching out to anyone. That is in part why I refuse to market to coaches and I always welcome new coaches reaching out to me to "pick my brain." My favorite masterminds have been the few small peer masterminds I've been part of but they don't give you access like the "pay to play ones." At this point, like you said, I'd still love mentorship though I'm so many years in and I deeply appreciate your reflections on what that can look like.
I'm so glad this resonated with you, Valerie. I had no idea that you were an "accidental entrepreneur." You are so generous your time and attention, and I truly appreciate the way that you do business. We'll have to chat offline about what kind of mentorship you're looking for 💁🏻♀️
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one thinking about this! When I started my career in the '90s, networking was the thing to do. As you said, we were supposed to reach out and ask people for a bit of their time, and we were supposed to be generous about responding to people who reached out to us. After a while, it came to feel a bit oily. Everyone was reaching out with solely instrumental aims. It was not a path to genuine relationships and, ultimately, it led us to this state of affairs. Now, I feel almost unethical scheduling time with people if I'm not planning to buy their services. I might see a lot of commonalities with them, the potential for idea swapping, mutual support, collaboration, etc. But I know that their intent for the call will be to sell. It feels wrong for me to show up without the intent to buy.
During an epidemic of loneliness, we are locking each other out with paywalls. It's damned hard these days to find anyone to talk to about anything without having to pay them. I bet a lot of people would like a shift, but getting the ball rolling on collective change is hard, especially during a time of such economic duress and social instability. The thing is, this is exactly when we need each other's generosity and care. One of the strands of hope I am holding onto during this time is that the dissolution of our scant governmental supports will press us toward reweaving the fabric of local and kinship community (kinships of the heart, not only of genetics). We are all toiling away and slumping under the weight of earning and caregiving and all the things. We don't seem to realize, collectively, that we are the solutions to each other's biggest problems.
Thanks very much for putting these thoughts out there.
We are 100% the solutions to each other's problems AND we are also the ones perpetuating the problem (with paywalls), like you said. Such a beautiful reflection. Thank you for sharing.