4 Lessons From Starting A Community
We are celebrating the one year anniversary of Creative Soul Sisterhood, my community for healers, soul-driven coaches, and professional women that know you can't focus on growing your business without also tending to your mind and body.
In this episode, I’m reflecting on four important lessons I learned from creating a community.
BE PREPARED TO LEARN:
1. My advice to anyone who has ever thought "I wish I could find..."
2. What *not* to tell yourself as you build a community (or anything else)
3. How to avoid burnout along the way; and
4. The open-ended perspective to have as you grow.
listen to THE EPISODE ↓
episode transcript:
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It has officially been one year since I started my community, the creative soul sisterhood. And the podcast is back to tell you four lessons that I learned from starting this community. I really had to sit with this. And I'm excited to share them with you. This is Don't Rush Me. Hey, I'm Maria Spear Ollis and I hate rushing. It never yields good things to rush, whether it's rushing to finish a client project or rushing to put on eyeliner. But when we have 10,000 things on our minds at any given moment, it's hard not to fall into that habit. I've had a lot of very specific technical training in my life, hello, music school and law school. But none of that training prepared me for being a business owner, a lawyer, a wife, a mom, or really just a functional adult woman with a huge to do list. I'm no guru. But I created don't rush me as a way to talk more about the Slow, simple tools you can start using today to make your life and business life a little easier. So whether you're a healer, a coach, or a business owner, or professional craving that slow down, come with me as we learn about the small, easy things that can make a huge difference in your mind, body, or business. Hello, hello, I'm so happy to be back doing this podcast and I took a little break. But once I got back into it, forgot just how much joy this podcast brings me. So I'm really excited to bring you back some really awesome interviews in the next couple of weeks. But before we go there, we recently celebrated the one year anniversary but the Solar Return of the creative soul sisterhood, which is my community for coaches, healers, professional women who know that you can't tend to your business without also tending to your mind and body and kind of integrating all of those things. So naturally, when this anniversary started to approach, I began thinking about just reflecting on the last year and how far it's come and how it's evolved and how the membership has grown. And just started jotting down these four lessons and I literally have the four lessons written down and nothing else. So I hope you'll stick with me as I kind of riff on each of these. So here are the things that I learned from starting a community for women, for coaches, for healers, for professional women. And the first thing is the first thing that came to my mind, which is create the thing you wish existed. Before I started creative soul sisterhood, I was sitting on the couch at my business coaches house on a retreat in the summer of 20. Let's see that was 2022. And I know yes, it's 2022. And talking about how we all knew each other, which was through another networking group in Detroit, Michigan, which is where I used to live. And I was talking about just how far I've come and all the wonderful lessons I learned from working with the somatic business coach, and wishing that more women can know about these things about rushing into the day, about mindfulness about balancing the divine feminine and the noble masculine and all of these things that I had learned, but also in a way that allows us to network I'm using air quotes. Without the typical networking and in a community where you know, you don't have to feel like you have to explain what it is that you do over and over again to people who look at you like a deer in the headlight. And I was talking about this and wanting to incorporate some of the things from the networking group we had in Detroit, which is now no longer and these three women who were sitting around me said why don't you start one in Nashville. And I thought oh boy, that sounds like it could be a lot of work but also could be a lot of fun and could just be like this breath of fresh air that I that I wanted and needed for years in my law practice I would tell my husband I just feel like something is missing. I feel like I need to be doing something else and it's not business coaching. I'm not a business coach. But it's something I need something other than this law practice and I love my law practice but just hello I'm a manifesting generator. I met multi passionate and I wanted some other outlet. So I started to outline and think about what creative sisterhood soul sisterhood could be and what I would want it to be and I just made it that I made it the thing that I wished existed. And now someone who does Family Constellations or Theta Healing can come and talk to someone who is a sound healer and and it's a comfortable open environment. And I'm just so happy with. I'm so happy with all of the women that that have come through. I'm so happy with all the things that I've personally learned talking to these other women. It's just been so incredible. And so things are changing a little bit next year, I've gotten some feedback from some members, and the membership is changing up a little bit, but, but in the end, I created the thing that I wish existed. And hey, it turns out other people wished this thing existed, too. So that is the first lesson that I share with you if there's something that you wish existed, do it, create it? What's the worst that can happen? You can create it and say, Oh, actually, this is more work than I wanted it to be? Or actually, this is not actually what I wanted. I thought I wanted to create this thing. And I didn't actually want it. What's the worst that could happen? If you if there's something you truly wish existed? Try it, create it and see what happens. The second lesson is, you can't do it wrong. If you're truly creating something that you wish existed, and you do it in a way that is aligned with you and your values, there's no Am I doing this, right? You you are doing a thing that is new for you, and it's new for someone else. And so don't second guess and say, Am I doing this? Right? Is everyone liking this? What if I try this out? What if I do that? What if I put flowers on the table? What if I don't put flowers on the table? You know, you can't do it wrong, there's no doing it wrong. There might be trial and error. But that's part of that's part of entrepreneurship, isn't it? Kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, none of it's wrong. All of it is learning. All of it is a step in the right direction into where you're supposed to be. So if you're creating something, don't worry about doing it right. You can't do it. Number three is ask your people in order to avoid burnout. So I'm going to be honest, because last month, October, how was I was during actually during eclipse season, I was sitting and thinking, Okay, we're coming up on a year creative soul sisterhood? Do I want to keep going? Do I want to keep doing this? Do I want to commit to another year. And I sent out a survey to the members because I I wanted to know what they wanted. These were my people. These are my core people. They believed enough in this community to want to be a member and to go deeper. And so I asked, What do you love? What have you loved? Who have you loved hearing from? What topics do you want to hear from next? What do you wish we had more of? And spoiler alert, everyone's at the consensus if you know a little bit more business, not we're not going to solely focus on business with because balancing the mind and body is an important part of the creative soul sisterhood, but having a little more business sprinkled in. And so asking my people instead of just putting it all on myself to come up with things to think of things to reach out to speakers, you know, who do you want to hear from, it's something just my community. So in order to avoid burnout, and feeling like everything's on me, or else it will crumble. asking my people has been a huge lesson in starting my community. And finally, and this is the last lesson, but be open to where it might guide you. So you create you maybe you're creating the thing you wish existed, you're confident that there might be some trial and error but you can't do this wrong. You're going to ask your people whether it's surveying people on Instagram or whatever it is in order to avoid burnout and avoid feeling like everything is on your shoulders. And then be open to where it might guide you and I am so so so excited. I'm just electric I'm I'm human champagne to use a phrase from my friend Taylor. I feeling like human champagne about where creative soul sisterhood is leading to because doesn't business partner and my new business partner and I are working on something really exciting for the summer slash early fall of 2024. So you'll have to listen to find out the details. We're still ironing out the details but going to be going to be something going to be a big gathering and I cannot wait to tell you.
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