Exploring Entrepreneurship

Brafe Tuesdays

Last month, we hosted our first 'Brafe Tuesday' session.
These sessions are an opportunity for a deep sharing between entrepreneurs (incl. founders, activists, artists, & more). We've seen how challenging it is for entrepreneurs to create something fundamentally new, real change, when the gravity of the status quo is constantly pulling us to repeat the patterns of the past. Often this manifests as a misalignment between the entrepreneur, their team, and the system they are working within. In our Brafe Tuesdays, we bring together twenty entrepreneurs from our community and hand-picked externals to explore these challenges. During these sessions, our intention is to create a space in which entrepreneurs feel comfortable to share in a deeply person, vulnerable way. We believe by reflecting on our inner experiences & challenges, we can learn to include more of ourselves when we are in our roles as entrepreneurs, and that by including more of ourselves, we improve our ability to relate to the teams we are working with & the systems we are working within. We recognize more easily where we are repeating harmful patterns that exclude, and we open up a space for new ideas & new ways of working to emerge.

A Founders’ Sharing

Last month I attended the first Brafe.Space "brafe Tuesday" at Brafe.Space's new venue "The Square". The premise of these monthly get-togethers is to provide a sharing space for entrepreneurs. Lisa from the Brafe.Space team opened the session, inviting us all to soften our gaze or close our eyes, and--as the lights were dimmed-she guided us through a brief meditation. Here, I realised how disconnected I was from my body. The meditation, a body scan if I recall, brought me back in touch with the stress I'd been carrying (& avoiding). It wasn't pleasant, but it was there, after all. And as the lights brightened I noticed how much I didn't want to be there in the world with this chest-bursting worry.

Anna introduced the topic for this first-ever Brafe.Space sharing: How our companies have impacted our identities and how they have been impacted by our identities. The worry that had been humming in my belly the past week or so was related to a challenge I presently faced in the leadership team. A few weeks prior, we had a new joiner in a leadership role and he brought a new kind of energy to the team, an intensity and conviction I hadn't experienced before. The impact this had on the team dynamics was already palpable. The decision-making complexity had soared; nothing felt simple anymore. So when Anna introduced this topic, it hit home.

After Rolf shared his own experience with this topic, we had five minutes to reflect silently on our own experiences of the topic. Very quickly, I noticed my mind go to autopilot. There was a narrative already there, something automatic that had been written into my mind without much thought. I noticed how much of this narrative was derivative of experiences I had read about or the archetypical experiences of founders that are embedded into our culture. "It's super hard work." "The board always breathes down my neck." "The hours are crazy." "It's my baby." "Employees can never really be my friends." "It consumes my life."

„There was a narrative already there, something automatic that had been written into my mind without much thought. I noticed how much of this narrative was derivative of experiences I had read about ...“

I noticed, perhaps, this wasn't exactly how I was relating to being a founder. More, it was how I imagined I should relate to being a founder, based on the cultural meme of "how to be a tech founder". It's hard to admit sometimes, but being a founder isn't everything. And yet, believing that it is and identifying absolutely with this archetype, absolutely leads to me performing behaviours that are inherited & imitative. In other words, I'm absolutely less able to be myself (or even to understand what this means) when I'm identified with the idea of being a founder. I'm less empathetic as a "founder" than I am as myself. I'm less inclusive as a "founder" than I am as myself. And so on. After we'd had time to reflect, we broke off into smaller groups of three. Then in these triads, we shared with one another what had arisen for us during our reflections, how our companies impact our identities & vice versa. And though I tried, it was difficult to admit to these two strangers in my triad that being a "founder" changed me.

It was only later that I noticed how much fear I hold in myself in relation to my role as a founder. I fear I know nothing. I fear I'm not working hard enough. And I fear I will let myself & others down, that I will waste everyones time (mostly my own). I fear being exposed as mediocre in a system that swears it is meritocratic
(ahem). And so I fear of failing. And it was only later that I noticed how I cling to the archetypical playbook of a founder in order to avoid fucking up. The archetype is a safety net, a comfort blanket. It's less scary to be a bit shitty than it is to be myself.

„It was only later that I noticed how much fear I hold in myself in relation to my role as a founder. I fear I know nothing. I fear I’m not working hard enough. And I fear I will let myself & others down. I fear being exposed as mediocre in a system that swears it is meritocratic (...) And so I fear of failing. “

We closed by discussing in the larger group anything that had surprised us when we shared in our triads, anything new that had emerged.
There was plenty to discuss.