Tips for Finding Your Business Bestie

Emily Thompson 0:00
Hello and welcome to being boss. This minisode is all about growing creative friendships

Kathleen Shannon 0:05
and finding your business bestie Yeah.

Kathleen Shannon 0:15
So we've got a question from our clubhouse member Iris all about finding your business bestie will let you listen here.

Iris 0:24
Hi, Emily and Kathleen. My name is Iris and I'm the owner of project intention. A community of soft wild hearted women looking to grant themselves permission to be unapologetic about their needs and make their wellbeing non negotiable. As someone who works from home, my social world is pretty isolated. Even just since joining the being boss clubhouse, I feel like my well being and connection to my work has gotten stronger as a result of socializing with other boss ladies in the slack group. Even with that boost, though, I still feel a lot of loneliness in my day to day and I've been craving a biz bestie to bounce ideas off of. So my question is, what are your go to tips for growing creative friendships? Thanks.

Kathleen Shannon 1:07
Ooh, I like this question tips for finding your business bestie. Let's just ping back and forth. What's your number one tip?

Emily Thompson 1:14
Well, okay, before Okay, before we dive into that, something I want to point out is sometimes you don't need to have someone there all day. Like, you know what I mean?

Kathleen Shannon 1:31
So what you're what you're saying is being a creative entrepreneur might be lonely and just embrace it embrace me.

Emily Thompson 1:39
Yes, but I, I feel like this is coming from like introverted, Emily, who really loves being alone a lot in that sometimes you need to find comfort in quiet and like being able to put your head down and do the work. So like,

Kathleen Shannon 1:55
okay, that is not irises question.

Emily Thompson 1:57
I know. Well, I am going to challenge Iris to reframe her loneliness, to quiet time that allows her to do the work.

Kathleen Shannon 2:07
Iris, Emily wants you to be best friends with yourself

Emily Thompson 2:10
Amen, I'm my best business bestie I have the best ideas. But sometimes I need to make sure they're not crazy. And that's why I have you.

Kathleen Shannon 2:23
Okay, Iris, you're off to a good start by just being in the clubhouse and connecting with other creators, but I totally get that you might feel isolated and lonely. So my number one tip would be to direct message someone in a Facebook group or in a club that you're already in and ask them if they would like to hang out on Skype and have a conversation or a 30 minute conversation. This is a really great way to make friends. And one thing I want to point out is that you might have a business bestie without knowing that they're your business. bestie like I didn't know that Emily was my business bestie until I reflected upon our relationship after he started a podcast together. That's another great way to make a business bestie is to collaborate on projects with someone and so it might start off more as a creative project and kind of more of a business arrangement than it is a friendship but being in the trenches with someone can absolutely lead to having really great business bestie relationships.

Emily Thompson 3:25
Yeah, I agree. So back whenever I was like a maker doing the maker thing, my business bestie then her and I were on Skype all and like not like face Skype, like not like videoing each other all day long. But like we were like I iming I guess constantly like all the time. And that was that was really good for me. That was when I was really isolated. So I totally get the isolation. I'm not trying to be unfeeling here. Whenever I lived in the mountains in North Carolina, like sincere isolation, like in a small town in the middle of the mountains, the you know, the friends that I had were online and I spent a lot of time like on Skype I iming Kathleen and I were doing a lot of FaceTime on Skype back then. And I think so I think that having a business bestie that can be there with you pretty consistently is really nice. Someone who's just gonna be you know, chatting it out. I am style or having a weekly meeting. I think like especially if you do it on Friday like something into the week like you're gonna hustle it out all week and like, you're like cherry on top of your week is being able to have some face time with with a person or multiple people and if you're in the clubhouse, I think finding a couple people and doing some sort of like lunch gab fest on Fridays or, or ending the day with a cocktail or a glass of wine or simply a business chat is really good. And it can be about

Kathleen Shannon 4:50
any of the friends with Emily unless you drink.

Emily Thompson 4:54
People who don't drink I'm very suspicious of

Kathleen Shannon 5:00
I'm suspicious of people who don't watch TV. Yeah.

Emily Thompson 5:08
That's fine. That's fine. Um, so no, I think that I think that having a weekly or bi weekly just sort of standing meeting with someone, it can be really helpful as well to like help you push through those like more lonely times to that one time that you know, that you can interact with someone can make it can make it feel a little more like a fun marathon and less like a snail race.

Kathleen Shannon 5:33
I think another great tactic is meeting with not potential clients, I don't know how to phrase it. But Emily, you do a thing called three and 30, where you give away 330 minute coaching sessions for free to your email list. And I've certainly done this before with my list whenever I was growing my coaching practice, and it was a really great way to just get some face time with some creatives who I mean, more than anything, it helped me actually dig down into my expertise that helped me create content, it helped me get new clients, but there were certainly plenty of creative friendships that have blossomed out of those calls. But more than anything, it just got me some FaceTime and made me feel a little less alone in what I was doing. And that made me feel like I was actually making a difference by giving away some free gifts of knowledge and being generous with my time. I think that's another really great way to do it. Joining a mastermind is another really great way to find a business bestie. And so you can pay to join a mastermind, or you can put one together yourself by getting with some other creatives in a place like the being boss club house, and, and just get a group of people together. And like you were saying, Emily have a standing meeting every week or every other week. I think that's another really great way to do it.

Emily Thompson 6:57
Yeah, and then other than that, I think, I think you can also sometimes tap your like real life friends. And this can be tricky, because I know like plenty of my real life, friends have no idea how to wrap their head around what it is that I do all day. So like talking about business isn't, isn't really something that is easy to do, but there are some of them that I can. So I think even tapping some of the relationships with other real life relationships, you already haven't seen any of those can blossom into anything, anything more like ongoing and standing on a business bestie standpoint can be good. But I also think, I think Iris that your best course of action is getting into the places where you're already active online. So in your case would be the clubhouse and other people's case and maybe a Facebook group that you're a part of, or what or whatever. And just pose a question to out, see if anybody wants to have have a Skype date. I actually have a coaching client who did this in the big boss Facebook group, I ended up hooking up with a girl who they now they have a weekly standing meeting and are totally turning into each other's like business bestie just from the Facebook group and her posing that question and then they ended up hitting it off really well. If it doesn't work out the first time around, do it again, until you find someone but it can be as easy as just opening yourself up to that making it a standing meeting so that those ongoing times are a little a little less lonely. And if you need to fill the in between open up a slack or slack private message and just gab it up about whatever you got to gab it up about.

Kathleen Shannon 8:31
Thank you so much for your question, Iris. We love hearing our questions from our clubhouse members. And if you guys are interested in that just go to being boss club slash clubhouse.

Emily Thompson 8:43
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