Community Over Competition — Making Your Business Stronger Than Ever with Natalie Franke.
Episode 22: Show Notes.
With half of small businesses closing down within their first five years, the odds are stacked against us. But you have an unlikely ally — your competition. Today we speak with Natalie Franke, the HoneyBook Head of Community and co-founder of the Rising Tide Society. As a pioneering voice of the Community over Competition movement, she helps foster creative communities and support networks for small businesses. We open our conversation with Natalie by talking about her journey into photography and how her love for being behind a camera complimented her college studies into visual neuroscience. After chatting about why there is no such thing as wasted time, Natalie opens up about the pressures of hustling and the lonely road of being an entrepreneur. As she explains, this inspired her to found the Rising Tide Society, a community dedicated to putting people before competition. We discuss the many benefits of connecting with your business community and Natalie shares some of the challenges that she faced when starting her movement. A key distinction, Natalie emphasizes that she still believes in competition but that success doesn’t need to be built on the back of someone else’s failure. We explore practical steps in how you can develop your community and the value of cognitive reframing in developing healthier thought patterns that allow you to celebrate others’ success without feeling inferior. Tune in to hear more about putting your community above competition.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Introducing Natalie Franke and her journey into photography.
- How Natalie’s studies in visual neuroscience fit in with her photography career.
- Why, for creatives, there is no such thing as ‘wasted time.’
- Experiencing loneliness as an entrepreneur and falling out of love with photography.
- The Rising Tide philosophy; putting community above competition.
- How connecting with your business community gives you access to cutting-edge content and news.
- The link between nurturing valuable relationships and business success.
- Challenges that Natalie faced when starting the “Community over Competition” movement.
- Examples of healthy competition and leading your business with self-confidence.
- How criticism helped Natalie better understand what she was fighting against.
- What you can do to take action and develop your community.
- Side-stepping the comparison trap through cognitive reframing.
- Neglecting your service and customers by comparing yourself to competition.
Tweetables:
“The beauty of being a professional photographer is that you take what to others seems ordinary and you capture it in a way that feels extraordinary.” — @nataliefranke [0:03:38]
“The Rising Tide Society is a community that educates but also empowers. That ensures you’re not alone on your journey and when things get really hard.” — @nataliefranke [0:12:26]
“Together we can do something extraordinary, if we raise the tide, uphold good business ethics, and don’t undercut one another.” — @nataliefranke [0:17:08]
“We are built to belong but we are also created to compete.” — @nataliefranke [0:21:05]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
