Cultivating Resilience: First Five Months As An Entrepreneur

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I started Mimir five months ago with the mission to shine light on incredible entrepreneurs who are working hard to bring their vision of the future into the present. I wanted to create a space on the internet where aspiring entrepreneurs could come together to learn, grow, and connect. As the author, it was always my intention for you to know my face; to feel my presence in these articles like you were sitting in the interviews with us. But, it was never my intention to write about myself on this blog. I thought I should stay in the background as the cheerleader for these founders, and keep anything personal to my social media. But, recently I've been thinking that as a founder myself, I should share my experience too.

The algorithms don't show you those who fall below a certain number of followers or percentage of engagement rate. But so much magic lies in what happens before the big break. When I interview founders, I ask about how they got started and what their path to success was. They always share their experiences in the past tense. If you're a fan of Gary Vee, then you've propbably heard him say to all new creators, “share everything.” I recall in one of his videos he talked about how he wished someone had followed him around with a camera in the early days, so he could show people what it was truly like in the beginning. So, as I build credibility as an entrepreneur through my own experiences, I want to show you the reality of what this journey is like for me, today. Instead of only looking back on it, years from now, and sharing only the highlight reel. I want to pull back the curtain and show you what five months as an entrepreneur looks like mentally, physically, and emotionally.

I can't actually believe it's been five months since I launched the blog. Somehow it feels like years ago, and simultaneously like it was just yesterday. To me, the blog feels like it hasn't grown at all, but I guess that's not true. I have an amazing community of 50 subscribers, 72 TikTok followers, and 944 Instagram followers. That's more than we started with and I am so grateful for each and every one of you. That's a lot of eyeballs on incredible, industry changing, founders and businesses. My greatest hope is that we've made an impact for them in some way. But more than the growth of the blog, the biggest growth I've seen in these last 5 months has been from myself.

I've confronted limitations I've set upon myself; insecurities, fears, and the discrepancy between how I see myself and how I act. These past five months have included embarrassing mistakes, constant battles to give up, and yet, I've never been more motivated to press on. Each chink in my armor is a story to tell and evidence of a battle won. I feel incredibly proud to call myself an entrepreneur and a content creator.

As we recap this journey, let's start the wins. One of my favorite experiences was getting the Bruvi interview. As the first official interview for the blog, it kick started my confidence in asking for and conducting future interviews. Also, that interview organically turned into a gifted partnership for social media posts. Little Maddie was really excited about that. It was always her dream to get paid partnerships through social media, and working with Bruvi, adds to my resume the next time I go to pitch my services to other brands. (Lauryn Evarts, if you're reading this, I'd love to work with you.)

But with the wins, came some L's. And by L's I mean learning lessons, not losses… Even during the Bruvi partnership, I failed to correct all the mistakes they had pointed out the first time, which was embarrassing. On a separate interview I was scheduling, I forgot that they lived on the east coast, so I set the interview for west coast time and completely missed the interview. Very professional. And these are only a few examples. But each time I got a little bit better, and now each pitch gets a little more polished, each interview gets a little easier, and each piece of content gets a little more seamless.

As I write this article, I'm still figuring out how to be the best blogger and entrepreneur I can be. From the beginning, I wanted this blog to be more than just a platform. This blog is meant to help the founders I feature, so maybe it will become a meeting point between investors and founders, maybe I will open my own consulting company, or I'll become an angel investor. Who knows where this entrepreneurial road will take me?

But I have a lot of work to do before I get to that point. Not just grinding for the blog to get views, but I have to confront a lot of my own issues. Like how to self-motivate and how to hold myself accountable. I've had to accept that I can't do this alone, and I actually don't want to. I know a lot of people out there (I think women specifically) feel the need to be hyper independent. But, as founders, we need a strong support system. So I asked my family members to come on board as “strategic partners.” Mostly, so I have someone to check in with about my goals, my progress, and call me out if they see me making a mistake.

But in order to persevere, ask for help, and be open to receiving it, that means I have to be incredibly honest with myself. Inevitably we're all gifted opportunities to address the icky parts of ourselves and blossom into our best selves. My entrepreneur journey has been just that. Of course, I didn't see it that way at first. At first it felt like a lot of rejection from companies who didn't want to hire me. But now, I see it for what it is, an opportunity to choose a different path and grow into my dream self.

So even on the days when I'm struggling, and all of this feels like a waste of my time, I force myself to think about my future self. I think about how she persevered past these difficult moments, how she never let that self-defeating talk get the better of her. The whole reason I'm here today is because I woke up one morning and decided that I wanted to prove to myself that I could make my dreams come true. That with hard work, a strong heart, and a desire to make the world a better place, I could do anything. So that's what I'm going to do.

Don't forget to subscribe to the blog to follow along on the journey. Also, check out my YouTube channel for my day in the life as an aspiring entrepreneur series. And if you made it this far, thank you for reading, you have no idea how much that means to me.

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