Castmates

Have you ever taken a work trip with your coworkers that left you all closer together? I find that traveling with anyone can result in closer bonds or decisions to never speak with them again. You see the fullness of your companions–the spectrum of their happiness and frustration–and it’s not always pretty. Ah, but when guards come down and everyone becomes at once vulnerable and sensitive to one another’s needs, you can guarantee that lives will be forever changed and those people will always hold a special place in your heart.

Me with my Certificate of Entrepreneurship

I just came back from a 14-week “work trip” called the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) program and let me just say, I have yet to experience anything like it. I was first introduced to the program six or seven years ago by Sugar Hill Moms (SHMOM) alumna Jessica Taylor who is now a Managing Director of the program. At the time, Nico was still very dependent on me, we had only opened a year or two earlier, and I could not imagine nor pull off being away from my baby and business for 200 hours over three months.

But, we’ve made some progress since then and I applied to the program this past summer. In September when the program started, I was joined by 39 other entrepreneurs spanning industry and annual revenues to work on our individual businesses while connecting with one another more deeply in the process.

It is rare to be able to connect with other adults in a professional setting without all of the pretense, but let me tell you, we did. I was able to work on my business while deepening my network of entrepreneurs.

Dinner with my cohorts the night before the program ended

We graduated last Thursday and we were so sad for the experience to end. There were tears! So many people cried, including me.

When I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you now that I’m done, I was thinking more about my takeaways from the program, but honestly, I’m still processing everything. Between the faculty and our peer learning, there was just so much information that came to me about myself, our business, our team, and companies as a whole.

I’m exhausted.

I was sharing in our massive group chat this past Friday that I felt wrung out after graduating. I had so many emotions–from accomplishment, satisfaction, and pride to sadness, longing, and relief. I felt like an actor who has been working for months on a production with a great cast and has just had the last show. After the curtain comes down and the show is over, where do you go from there?

In this case, I have so many things to do to implement the plans that I set out to complete to scale our business in a smart way, but I do miss my castmates.

At the podium sharing our growth opportunity

Now that I’m on the other side, I’ll be working on how to protect the one day a week that I was previously offline because of class. We all call it CEO Thursdays and so as I continue to lean into my role as our CEO, I’ll be working on protecting that time to work on tasks that only I can do for my company.

Petrushka

Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach