Tag Archives: entrepreneur

The awkwardness of it

I recently remembered a particularly awkward moment.

This year marks 30 years of my continuous work in research, and I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic about the journey. My career began with a summer job in an fMRI lab in 1996 and continued across settings, sectors and methods, comprising an adventure driven by a deep love of the work and gratitude for the people who help make it possible.

I spent nearly half of my career in an office environment that scarcely exists anymore, where my coworkers felt like family friends, my kids attended daycare onsite, and my colleagues and I had time to talk and catch up every day while still doing the work we knew deeply.  There, I had a lot of rambunctious fun with my colleagues, met my “work-wife,” and genuinely tried to learn how to walk in heels. 

But I also used my time there as a stepping stone; attending graduate school part-time, growing this blog and two kids, and serving on two AAPOR task forces while managing multiple studies. I became an expert in measuring employment outcomes, surveying high school teachers, measuring organizational climate, P- Stat and Unix, Multilingual, Multicultural and Multinational research, analyzing open-ended survey responses, and social media analysis. The extra effort led to a position at a large research company that was a real culture shock for me. In the office where I had spent most of my career, we worked hard and had a great time together. The new environment felt relentless by contrast, although I loved the work.

My new boss was someone I had come to know, respect, and genuinely like through our shared AAPOR activities. When she came to town, I was looking forward to our first lunch together as coworkers. But boyyyyy did I screw it up! I chose a nice vegan restaurant that was a little too far out of pocket and proceeded to get lost on my way back to the office. This was a company where meetings occurred nonstop on the half hour during business hours, and the reverberations from my wrong turn(s?) were significant. I couldn’t have felt more embarrassed.

Why tell this devastating story? Because it speaks to something innately relatable, a common fear we share about being out of our element. And being an entrepreneur involves a whole lot of being out of my element. 

I am proud of the company I’ve built. I’m proud of what it stands for and represents. I’m proud of what it does. I believe in its potential. I believe in the direction we are headed in and the changes underway to make the next big pivot happen. Being a business owner involves a lot of adapting, and my understanding of what we are and what we can be is clearer each day. Some of the work I love. Some I’m good at. And some involves me staring down my own weaknesses and shortcomings.

I have often compared being an entrepreneur to being one of those pop-up punching bag clowns that gets hit and bounces back with a silly smile pasted on my face. A business coach recently used better words, saying we all have to be a little witchy and magical to make something where there was nothing. I’ve called it world-building. I’ve compared it to being in a desert searching for water, but stubbornly of my own accord. I’ve talked about the roller coaster of ups and downs and highs and lows each day. It’s a lot of things. It’s all this and more. It’s not for everyone, but I choose it. It’s right for me.

But a part of me is back in that car, obsessing over a GPS device and an ETA, while driving through tree-lined country roads in autumn, forgetting to trust the wind and notice the color. I’ll own that. It’s part of the journey as much as obsessing over the maps and pulling over to actually get a good look at the view.

There are so many of us on this road who are at points in our careers where we expected everything to come easily. We thought the roads would be paved or our feet would be knowledgeable enough not to notice. But may our paths be lined with something greater. In the words of Pema Chodron, “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” May this day, this chapter, this walk through vines and rubbish, this drive through unmarked roads be our gift.

Another world is quietly awakening

It’s cherry blossom season in the DMV (Washington DC-MD-VA), and these blossoms are a metaphor for the moment. There is a flourishing and supportive entrepreneurial community in the area that has the fertile soil needed to grow and blossom, and the people feeding the soil are steeped in mission-driven service ethics, technical and policy-driven mindsets, and the hunger to create something new from the ashes of what was burned down.

Quote from Arundhati Roy, ""Another World is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

I recently graduated from the inaugural entrepreneurial cohort of Founders Rising, a business incubator for former/endangered Federal workers and contractors who are in the early stages of founding businesses, sponsored by the Maryland Women’s Business Center. The program gave me a window into many key aspects of running a business and curated some very important connections.

The final pitch competition was profound for me in a surprising way. When I entered the event, I found many women I had connected with over the past year across many contexts: fellow entrepreneurs, other members of the cohort, people I’d met through networking events, and others involved in supporting the out-of-work community. As I walked through the room, I found myself tearfully hugging many women, and I felt the power of many worlds colliding; and it struck me that I did not know a single one of these women a year ago.

As a researcher with a 30-year career, I am used to this type of joyful reunion and genuine connections within the professional research community. But it was mind-blowing to have reached this level of familiarity and care in a single year with an entirely different group. I’m repeatedly struck by the importance of these genuine connections in my professional life. I haven’t ever done it alone.

This is the warmth and sunshine.

After the darkest winter, the cherry blossoms are blooming forth in our area, and I’m struck that we are all cherry blossoms, sharing branches, soil and sun as we bloom against all odds.

Picture of cherry blossoms

The many flourishing entrepreneurial support organizations, business and nonprofit incubators, networking groups, organizations and events provide the soil for us to grow and help us develop the structure we need to flourish.

Something powerful is happening here. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m listening, present, and very excited to be a part of it.

I launched my own LLC in late December, The Community Stories and Conversation Project, LLC, built with the intention of reimaging research as a community resource. Our logo and foundation include the cherry blossoms. The LLC hosts the TCSCP (pronounced “Talk Soup”) Network for independent researchers and research entrepreneurs. We began with 20 founding members, and in our first 3 months, we have doubled in membership, become profitable beyond expectations, launched an internal Lunch and Learn series and, most importantly, begun to bring work to independent researchers.

Logo of the Community Stories and Conversation Project

The Network functions as an easy one-stop shop for those looking for researchers to work with. In addition to traditional research clients, we support small businesses and entrepreneurs, making research services available to new types of clients who could not engage a larger research organization. We are looking to build strategic partnerships that bring steady sources of work to our members, such as partnerships with tech ESOs supporting emerging tech entrepreneurs who would benefit greatly from having an accessible stream of user-testing researchers, or those looking to build new pipelines and connections between communities and community organizations and funding sources.

logo of the TCSCP or "Talk Soup" Network

You are welcome, of course, to be a part of our movement. Join the network as a researcher, collaborate with us, support our efforts or partner with us to help build something powerful and uniquely ours.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the April Fools’ HHS layoffs that affected many of my clients and set in motion the largest career shift of my life after nearly 30 stable years of working in the research industry. I gathered with other former feds and contractors through a WellFed happy hour, and I left feeling proud of the myriad ways in which people had reinvented themselves.

When I awoke, the blossoms on the cherry tree in my yard had turned mostly green, preparing to bear fruit, and the forest behind the tree had continued to spring back to life. I can’t tell you about the harvest or the summer, but I can tell you that what I feel is hope and a palpable anticipation of whatever is to come.