Today I want to talk about community. I want to talk about the importance of building and maintaining community during the K-R transition, and I'm actually going to start out by using myself as an example, not in the sense of the K-R transition specifically, but in the sense that I started out as a baby business owner many, many years ago and years later have been a member of a community of other women business owners in the academic space, and that has allowed me to grow in ways that I never could have anticipated, and so I want to talk a little bit about that first, before I talk more specifically about how I see it as being useful for anybody who is navigating the K-R transition. And I think it's important to bring up my experience here as well, because I am not really the type of person who seeks support or guidance, and or at least I didn't used to be I was the type of person who very much believed that I could figure it out on my own and would feel ashamed or embarrassed, admitting that I didn't know how to do something or that you know if something had gone wrong. I didn't want to open up about that, but my experience in this group of other academic, adjacent business owners has really shown me what is available to me in terms of support and solidarity and encouragement, and I feel so incredibly grateful to have had that over the last five, six years. And I mean, I suspect you know of some of the members of this group. They all have their own podcasts as well and are running very successful businesses, but being in a small group where we can share anything that is going on in our lives, in our businesses in particular, has just been so enormously helpful, and I just wanted to talk about the ways that it has been helpful and how I see parallels in the ways that it can be useful for you as you navigate the K-R transition.

So again, I am typically the type of person who suffers in silence, the type of person who just tries to figure it out on my own, and so even just the act of bringing a challenge to the table and admitting that something isn't going as planned felt initially like a growth point for me. That was a big deal for me to say I tried something and it didn't work and I'm not sure what to do next, and just allowing myself to be vulnerable in that way and to recognize that I'm not perfect, I don't always know what I'm doing and that admitting that is not a failure and that it can be held and supported in ways that I didn't really even know that I needed until I started doing it. So that's the first one is just having a safe, supportive space to be vulnerable. That is hugely important, especially when you are navigating uncertainty, when you are trying out new things that you've never done before and you truly have no clue how they're going to go or what's going to happen. Just being able to share your worries, your insecurities and, ultimately, the disappointments that you experience, and for it not to be a big deal or a major disaster. It's just. You know it happens to everybody. It really does sort of normalize those experiences because they are normal. You're never going to get everything right. It's not a linear path. There are a lot of twists and turns, a lot of disappointments and setbacks, and being able to share those openly and frankly in a space where you aren't judged for that is just so valuable and really, really encouraging. So that, I think, is one of the key features of community.

For anybody who's navigating uncertainty, navigating a big career transition, is just having a space to be able to talk things through without judgment. But then the sort of added piece of that around talking things through is to just have a sounding board, to have a group of people who have different experiences, different levels of expertise, different insights into your situation and can act as that sounding board for you. So, again, if you're able to come into a group with vulnerability and say, I'm not really sure about this, can I talk it out with you, how might this go? And just kind of laying it all out there on the table and having other people provide insight, perspective, their own experience trying something similar, that is just again so valuable and you can gain so much from the ways that the other community members encourage you to think differently or examine something from a new perspective.

I think that is also incredibly valuable in this small community that I have been a part of is just the encouragement, the solidarity. We're all going through roughly the same thing. We all have our own unique experience with it, based on, you know, the businesses that we run and our own personalities, but we're all trying to achieve roughly the same thing in our own way and just being able to come to a space and be encouraged and celebrated for that is so necessary, I think, for anyone's success. It's one thing to learn how to celebrate yourself and I really do think that we can all do a better job at celebrating ourselves and encouraging ourselves but knowing that you have other people around you who genuinely want you to succeed and who are cheering you on to succeed is so necessary. And then, on the just the solidarity side, knowing that others are going through the same thing and are having their own ups and downs, and that you're able to support and encourage them through their trials and tribulations, that is a way to really strengthen those bonds and strengthen that community and build that feeling of we're all in this together.

And I think the last thing, perhaps the most obvious one, is just having other people in your world to know what is going on. And I know that sounds a bit trite perhaps, but it can feel really isolating when you are trying to build something that is important to you, when you are the leader and making important decisions you know we've talked about having sounding board and having support and encouragement but even just somebody or a group of people who are familiar with what is going on for you on a regular cadence right, you might meet weekly, you might meet every other week, you might meet monthly, but there is a consistency there and a continuity there that is really supportive, just having people who know what's going on with you and who know what you are trying to build and who check in on you. That really combats that isolation that is so easy to fall into when you are building something as a leader and you are, at least in the beginning, very often doing it on your own. That is really what I wanted to share today, really as a love letter to the community of women that I have been so lucky to be a part of over the last several years, but also as encouragement to all of you to go out and build those communities for yourself. They don't have to be formal.

In fact, this small group that I'm in is incredibly informal and we ended up coming together sort of haphazardly, but it has been a touchpoint for all of us over the years and that consistency, that continuity, has been so meaningful, I think, not just for me, but for everybody in the group, and so I really encourage you to first of all just consider what type of community you want to build for yourself, to support you as you are making this K-R transition and then think about how you can go about building that, because you cannot do it alone.

And please take this from somebody who really did try. In the beginning, I really tried to just do it on my own, but I really believe that there is absolutely no way that I would be where I am today without that group, without that support, without that ability to lean on these other women for support and encouragement and ideas and continuity and consistency. So please find a way to create that for yourselves and just watch how quickly you grow. All right, my friends. That is it for this week. I will see you next time.