386 - My Journey Through Loneliness

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm sharing my story of loneliness and entrepreneurship. 

You're invited! I'm hosting a free live training on October 1 called Plan Your Best Year. I'll be sharing my planning process and how you can get your business besties involved to achieve your goals with the help of community and collaboration. Sign up for Plan Your Best Year at Bradendrake.com/training

 If you've heard the phrase, "You're only as good as the company you keep," I tend to think it's true. And the question is, who is the company you keep in your business? For many of us, it may be Claude, but we also need a human person. And I learned early on in my business that that human person wasn't always going to be someone close to me in my personal life.

And that's what leads me to my journey through loneliness. I started my business in 2017 and I was so excited but my husband at the time didn't seem that genuinely interested and I had a lot of insecurities about talking about my business as well because our biggest issue was money and finances and I felt like the conversation would pivot to when is my business going to be able to contribute more. My parents didn't really ask me many questions, they just wanted me to be happy and successful. My husband's friends thought I had "a cute little business" despite being a lawyer. I was losing touch with college and law school friends as we spread across the country. I felt like I was in a vacuum. 

I went out and got a WeWork office I could not afford to meet people. I met a few, started a networking group, started listening to podcasts, attending Rising Tide meet-ups and that was my intro to the wedding industry and working with creatives. 

Through this I met a woman who ran a $10k mastermind that I joined (note that the year before that I had made $30k for the year and was on track for $70k in revenue that year but with like $30-40k profit, a $10k mastermind was a lot of money). I was finding myself shuffling money around every month when it came time for my payment, but it ended up being one of the best investments I've ever made in myself or my business. 

I was put in a group of six and to this day, almost seven years later, we still meet every month (this is usually frowned upon, you would re-enroll in the mastermind, but the woman who led our program didn't host another mastermind). We still text almost daily and they are my core group of friends. 

I went on to join Amy Porterfield's program Momentum and was put in a peer pod for a couple years.  I then joined Stu McClaren's mastermind that went for the duration of his course and now I'm in another mastermind that meets monthly. As you can see, I've had a lot of iterations of business and brainstorming groups. At any time I feel like I need at least two places to go and ask questions. 

I'll often journal, then talk to my team and my mastermind about my ideas. Over the last seven years with my mastermind group, that's where I came up with the Unf*ck Your Biz name, created the Contract Club, was encouraged to launch my affiliate program, we navigated the launch of my podcast, its retirement, and its relaunch, and navigated a couple rebrands. We've talked each other down from wanting to quit our businesses. Sometimes we just need people in our corner to tell us we're doing alright. 

All this to say, if your friends and family don't share your business interests, it's okay and it's time for you to find some business besties beyond just the people who respond to your Instagram stories for surface-level conversations. People you can really talk to. 

This is why I'm launching my own mastermind on October 1st and it's wayyyy less than $10,000 (though I don't have beef with a $10k mastermind). Have questions about joining? Sign up to attend my webinar on October 1st or DM me @bradenadamdrake on Instagram