Collaborative Entrepreneurship: Finding Your People

Finding trustworthy and fulfilling business partners is not much different than dating to seek your soulmate.

Some people seem great at first, and eventually you realize: this is a horrible match.

I’ve worked with people who massively overchange and screw their (our) clients… and have decided I’d rather not play a part.

I am a team player who has found what works for me: collaborating with many other “lone wolves” in the world. We all have our own businesses and entities, brands, visions, dreams, philsophies, ways of being and doing business… and that’s awesome.

I am an entrepreneur; I understand wearing many hats and hustling on little money. Thus I like to treat my clients how I would want to be treated: with fairness, kindness, and respect.

I’ve worked with business owners who are solely about the money, selling people shit and ripping them off completely.

I am certainly not a perfect person, but I have learned to trust my gut. When someone does something in business that seems wrong or unethical… don’t turn a blind eye.

In building Peace to the People, though I was simultaneously teaching yoga and meditation while managing many social media and marketing clients, I was convinced there was NO way I could fuse these two aspects of my life.

So I struggled to divide myself into owning Peace to the People, and contracting for OTHER entrepreneurs under THEIR business entities as a marketing specialist…

Getting played out and used while burning the mutual client… I’m out.

Alex brings his video equipment and we gather the team at Centered Yoga + Movement.

We can add them to client list.

For NH we represent:

Peace to the People

Pavilion Insurance Agency, Inc.

EyE

We all help each other grow.

My passion is seeing the universality in all—we are all made of the same stuff, and yet so inherently unique.

As a team built on respect and trust, I adore working within a wide network of talented people.

As they say, when you have friends, you have defenders.

So my way of living my truth in the twenty-first century as an entrepreneur is many-fold.

I have a degree from The Ohio State University in Narrative, Culture, and Representation along with minors in Studio Art and English.

My longest held and wildest dream is to be an author.

Upon graduating into the "real world" my skills in editing, writing, and photography launched me into a career as a Marketing Specialist, Social Media Manager, and Webmaster.

My deepest desire to write a memoir prompted me to balance mind, body, and spirit.

I became an experienced 200 Hour Registered Yoga Teacher, Meditation Teacher, and finally, a 500 Hour Registered Yoga Teacher specialized in

 Yoga Nidra meditation, Vinyasa Yoga, and Prenatal Yoga.

In the midst of teaching fifteen yoga and fitness classes a week and working with several prominent companies with marketing projects, my grandfather died.

I needed to be home with my family and my determination to build a work schedule that was as flexible and mobile as I desired became more real to me.

Seeing my mom and dad working alone without a day of vacation at our family agency my father and grandfather had founded bothered me greatly.

What was I doing in a big city helping all of these other businesses and leaving my mom and dad alone in my hometown?

I spent many tedious months studying to take my property and casualty insurance exam, and alas, I am (somewhat) randomly a certified insurance agent in the state of Ohio.

I help my family and little is as fulfilling as giving my beloved parents time off to rest and enjoy their days.

I am a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly felt driven to be a lot to myself, thus came the birth of this website: peacetothepeople.com

I wanted to reach people in an inspirational and authentic way and encourage people to be their best selves, to encourage self-love and to turn within to help the surrounding people of our planet.

Whether I am helping with marketing strategies, connecting real life people to other real life people, writing a book, remaking my website or teaching a yoga class, my intention is the same: I want to help people and leave a lasting impression of positivity and encouragement.

I want to fire people up and help them feel stronger, more stable, and be more productive members of society.

We endlessly complain about society, but WE are society.

I suppose you could call my efforts a grassroots effort to encourage people to take accountability for their actions, see the best in the world around them, and do their damndest to help themselves and those they love.

In other words, I hope to inspire people to live a meaningful life in a state of as much peace as possible.

Marie Forleo nailed it when she coined the term "multi-passionate entrepreneur."

From a yogic stance, I do not see the breadth of myself as something to be ashamed of.

In fact I find that knowledge of one subject only increases connection in another.

Everything is connected. (Us included.)

I.E. Even this statement—it is sitting openly on the internet, but until you read these words the work has not been done.

What is the point of writing, after all? To form connection with others in an extremely intimate and also extremely impersonal way.

(Who are you right now, reading these words? What decade are you seeing this? How did you find these words?  Where are you from? Will I ever know you read this?)

To me it is about building a culture of trust and collaboration while not sacrificing the immaculate individuality each of us inherently possesses.

Nobody is you and that is your power.

 Since I've been a nerd for now over a decade as the former president of my high school entrepreneurship club, I've been on a mission to eventually become self-sustainable and create a real business that could flourish for the rest of my life.

As the former president of high school my entrepreneurship club, I can admit I've been chasing the dream of building my own self-sustainable business as a writer and artist since I was at least 17.

In other words, this has been a dream of mine for so long.

People who say business isn't personal forget that people are people—and I purposefully aim to align with those who consistently are kind, work hard, have great talent, and make me laugh or learn or positively influence my days.