Accidental Entrepreneurship and Personal Branding

In Episode 20 of the 'Build Your Own Digital Community' Podcast, Kristina invites her friend and mentor, Jess Burgio, to come and talk about building community. Jess is one of the coaches in Fast Foundations, she was previously a hairdresser for 20 plus years, but had to close down due to the pandemic. On the contrary, it still worked out because during that time what was important to her in her own life now that she’s in her forties.

Jess realizes that her place was not managing people on a small scale, but rather serving other people and helping them grow their business in whatever way she can. From there, she started to serve others and eventually met Chris Harder, another mentor who started Fast Foundations, and became a mentor as well. With this opportunity, Jess was able to coach other people who also wanted to grow their business and scale and see what was possible. During her time as a mentor, she felt that she was back in school, learning many different skills. It really helped her change to the core. It is completely different from when she was a hairdresser, and it was difficult for her to find her voice and what she really wanted to put out into the world. She mentions how as entrepreneurs, a lot of them are good at a lot of different things. So sometimes, it is hard to really hone in on what it is that you want to create and do. She explains how people always say that entrepreneurship is sexy and glamorous, but when it starts to feel frustrating and difficult and you’re hitting the walls, you start to feel like this is not what you should be doing. But Jess explains that it can be the same for any other career, and you just have to get through the sticky parts as well to celebrate the more glamorous and sexy bits of it. 

Words for a Beginner

Anything new that you are trying, you will be a beginner and it will be challenging and difficult at first. Guaranteed, there will not be east and flow when you’re learning something new. There will be times when you mess up, stumble, or make mistakes such as investing in something that ends up being a huge waste of money. But even if it may be hard, it is important to take it as a lesson and learning experience. It is there to teach you and question you if this is really for you. We can feel a lot of emotions when we’re doing something we’re interested in. When it comes to business, if we only base all our decisions on what we feel, then it will be very chaotic. And it will feel sticky. At that time, you have to really get rooted into your why. Why are we doing this? Why are we showing up everyday? So it’s really important to decide your vision and get rooted into your why, because when you hit those hard points, you can look back to your vision and tell yourself that this is why I am doing this. This is why I’m not going to quit today. 

The Importance of Community

The beautiful thing about building a community and growing your own personal brand is that you have opportunities in the future to do something with that community, to build an audience that trusts you. So when people start coming to you for one certain thing, you can talk about it because you’re passionate about it. And then people start asking you for it because you’ve grown a community of people that know and trust you based off of the things you share. As this goes on, it can suddenly turn into a business, like it did for Jess. She explains that this is where they use the term ‘accidental entrepreneur’, because it was never their intention in the first place to start a business coaching others, but it just happened unintentionally.