Community: The Re-Invigorator
I will be the first to admit; since starting up the studio a few months ago and most of my energy, brainwaves and attention being focused on that alone, I’ve been feeling rather disconnected and unbalanced. A few months previous to taking up the small business owner title, I had managed to decently split up my time between work, life and community, community meaning my various volunteer and organizing endeavours. Fast forward to starting a small business, and that balance has quickly shifted, unequally distributing my carefully balanced time allotments in the favor of work.
Community fills me with the ‘good feels’.
Earlier tonight, 100+ Lancaster-based women entrepreneurs, myself included, came together at the Candy Factory for the inaugural #SheOwnsIt forum, presented by ASSETS. Majora Carter gave the event’s keynote, before women split up into three groups, based on their business’ current growth stage. Prior to the talks and working sessions, we networked.
Here’s the thing, networking has become second nature to me. Between AIGA, the Lancaster tech community, the various meetups, and whatever other event is going on on a Tuesday night, networking has become less of a fear and more of a routine. I started out small talking to a few folks I ran into, walking in, and then ran into a closer friend, and then saw another, and another, and another — you get the point.
The realisation dawned on me that I have begun to surround myself with a community of people who influence and inspire me — and push me to be the very best me. And while networking has never been my favorite aspect of any given event, as I slid from group to group, congratulating her on the launch of a side project, and her on the completion of a project, I stopped thinking about it as networking, and more as connection.
Community fills me with possibility of connection.
I stood in front of a colleague as she told me about the growth of her organization, the one she had built and I listened. I really listened — and let her words wash over me. I patiently heard another woman tell myself and a third woman about her new idea for a business, and let her words surround me. I found myself in a place of contentment and with each new story, felt another spark of inspiration inside me. I stopped looking at networking as a chore, and instead let it be a chance for genuine connection, and a door to an entire community of possibility, support and growth.
