The beginning of an entrepreneurial journey is always pretty lonesome. Most entrepreneurs like thinking about the future, which makes living in the present disappointing at times.
Without the desired traction, how does one push through the hard early days of building a business?
This week, the EnTRUEpreneurship podcast welcomes Matt Reynolds and Scott Leonard, co-founders of fair trade and organic fashion company, Indigenous. Founded in 1993, Indigenous was one of the very first B Corporations, certified to meet standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today, Indigenous partners with over 1500 artisans in Peru and pays them a living wage for their work producing handmade garments for both men and women.
Matt and Scott explore what it means to use fashion as a force for good. They reflect on the unique challenges they’ve faced in their more than 20 years they’ve been in business together, the notion of “fair trade,” and how they can provide economic opportunity to marginalized communities while respecting native culture and also turning a profit.
“What you aim at determines what you see.” I’ve been mulling over this quote the past week and it has served in both sharpening and convicting me of specific areas in my life. If you aren’t aiming big, how can you expect to notice big opportunities?
Life is hard. When we succeed, it’s easy for entitlement to creep in. When we face setbacks, it’s easy to play the victim card. But as I’ve (hopefully) matured, I’ve learned to adopt a mindset that helps me combat both. You can read about it below.
I’m taking a moment at the end of quarter one, 2018, to conduct an audit of intentions I set at the beginning of the year and how I’m tracking along. This is how things went.
We commonly attribute “death” to the loss of life, when in actuality, death can also symbolize the end of a dream, an idea or a particular season.
I recently resigned from my job and I’m recognizing that the finality of it has me in a mourning process requiring reflection.
These are my thoughts.
Silence is becoming both a rare and more-valuable commodity. So many of us have our default set to noise and distraction. So how do we stop and savor the silence?
For many achievers, there are two extremes — anxiety and burnout. I’ve hit my share of both along the way and have spent considerable time isolating why this happens and how to mitigate it in the future. These are my findings.
I once had a professor tell me, “You’re considered a success if you make over $200k a year.” I laughed because that was the first time I had heard anyone quantify success. I realized, however, that personal success can’t be achieved unless you define it for yourself. Here’s how I’ve tried to make every day a success.
There is no such thing as work/life balance. There will always be areas that demand more attention than others. This is my technique to managing all of it.