New year, New Newsletter
Hello! Welcome to this edition of Misfit Multipreneur.
I'm Amanda and I'm here to share how I'm building intentional businesses to create a better future.
I've done a terrible job at keeping up this newsletter for the past few months.
But I don't feel bad, because the time and energy went towards moving projects forwards instead.
One of my big mental transitions recently has been to see my work in categories (beginning with C because if you hadn't noticed, I like alliteration).
They are:
Creating, Community, Coaching and Connecting
I will use these as newsletter sections from now on.
Some projects overlap multiple areas, but they are still useful 'buckets' for me to define my work.
Hopefully this will help me (and perhaps you) connect with the most relevant ideas and resources in each of these areas.
Creating
I am (very slowly!) building some of my own projects and businesses.
Things I'm currently working on:
- finance course for HR professionals
- yoga/meditation/breathwork/digital wellbeing sessions for tech founders
- Brighton-based events for first-time founders and entrepreneurship skills
- figuring out possible speaking/teaching gigs through Jigsaw Journeys
You may have also heard me talk about being an artist.
I draw, paint and generally try to bring into being: mandalas, patterns inspired by geometrical shapes and symmetry, bright colours and metallic shiny things.
This work is the most 'pure' creation that I do, and for now it serves mainly as a hobby, an outlet and a relaxation mechanism.
Community
I've been a part of various communities, slack groups and meetups over my professional life.
I actually LOVE networking and meeting new people, which many people find really weird.
So it's not surprising that I have gravitated towards community-related businesses and projects for this next stage of my career.
(I also think that unless very technical, most businesses are having to do more community, media, content, etc in general, so this is probably partially affected by that trend.)
One of the most helpful communities in my startup operations journey has been Operations Nation (ON).
Incredible founders and team, really helpful community members and lots of fantastic resources that accelerated my career very quickly into Heads of Operations roles.
I am thrilled to be officially joining the ON team from January this year to help them build on their amazing success over the past few years, help to develop their products and grow their membership!
This is a very exciting privilege to work alongside some of my OG ops mentors and give back to the community.
And it's going to be fascinating to learn from a more established community when thinking about my other projects...
I moved to Brighton at the beginning of 2024 and quickly appreciated the different vibe from London.
The startup scene shares this difference. There are very few tech/product-based startup meetups, events or resources. And to some extent, not much ambition.
Now I have been through the Entrepreneur First program and most of my startup career has been framed by the VC-backed, ambitious, build-the-next-Google type of startup mentality, which can definitely be overdone.
But I think Brighton could do with some more of that. There's no reason why the next UK unicorn couldn't be built by a Brighton-based founder.
I've met some great people and thinking about what I could do here, which is currently a work-in-progress. But watch this space for things happening in 2025!
Coaching
This heading is a bit of a misnomer, but I had to stick with it to keep the words beginning with C.
One thing I've been really successful at in 2024 is avoiding building a coaching business.
Despite my personal branding and most obvious career path (at least for earning income) being to do more coaching for founders and growing that side-hustle, I have done everything in my power to not do that.
By the end of the year, I realised that it's clearly not the path I am going down (whether I like it or not).
It was an understandable (for me, and others) path, a logical path.
The one that gave me something to talk about and for people to understand me.
But that's pretty much it.
I realised though, that I am a 'coach' at heart, and I tend to 'do coaching' whenever I am around people I can help.
So that's my excuse for maintaining it as a category here - essentially to lump things in it that don't go anywhere else.
I am early in my experience as an angel investor, but I really enjoy the process of meeting founders, assessing deals, and being part of the community of startup builders from a board and angel perspective.
I think I am good at some parts of this (board construction and management/chairing, coaching CEOs and founders, connecting relationships and introductions (see next section).
And I am keen to develop the parts I'm less good at (sourcing and assessing deals, understanding more business models, industries and technologies).
I really enjoyed running events with South East Angels' Kristina Pereckaite last year to encourage more women to get into angel investing.
I joined Alma Angels recently in order to deliberately balance my portfolio and invest in more female founders (although not exclusively).
So I'm really looking forward to where this takes me...
Connecting
This is something that threads through all my work, and has come to my attention as a major strength of mine.
I'm therefore trying to focus on it more and see how I can bring it into all my different areas of work.
I naturally connect dots between things.
Whether it's ideas, industries, people... I am interested in lots of things and so tend to just bypass distinctions that others see as more fixed.
This can be a great asset, but of course will have its disadvantages too.
I realised this through a combination of reflecting on my past experience, joining Generalist World in 2024 and meeting others who are also like this (including learning more about systems thinking which I think I naturally am drawn to but want to learn more about).
I also did some personality/type tests (yes, I know, they're usually full of ****) which showed me this way of thinking through connection is a thing.
In terms of this newsletter, this may mean I share links and resources that either don't obviously fit into my categories of the three Cs.
But I think if you subscribed to this (and even read any of it) before now, you will probably enjoy that too!
I hope you are feeling positive going into 2025.
I'm always around to chat if that would help you on the journey of putting all the pieces together.
Happy New Year!
