Timing Is Everything
How does your business meet the cultural moment?
As a television development executive, whenever I heard a pitch for a new show, the most important question I would ask the creative team was: Why now? Why does our audience need to see this show at this moment in time? If they couldn’t answer this question in a way that spoke to the current cultural moment for the platform’s target demographic, I knew we would never get to a greenlight.
In show business as in entrepreneurship, timing is everything.
Timing is everything in business too. Why does your target customer need the solution, product or service you provide *right now*? The way you’re telling your story and marketing your business should answer that question before anyone even has to ask.
Broad Collective members are women in midlife who have become entrepreneurs out of a burning desire to own the future of their careers. And the majority of us have started businesses that are deeply meaningful to us, because in midlife we have no interest in doing anything that doesn’t really matter.
Successful women in our 40s and beyond have been following someone else’s script for most of our lives, and becoming an entrepreneur in midlife means closing the door on a prescriptive approach to work and career. It means breaking all the rules in order to write new ones we are excited to live by. If we’re going to take on the risk of self-employment, we better freakin’ mean it - and the timing better be right for what we have to offer.
Our members are savvy, and they are experts. Not surprisingly, their businesses are of the moment. Here are some examples of how our members’ businesses answer the question “why now?”:
A fractional head of HR and People functions - reflecting the changing nature of corporate structures and staffing
An AI consultant for filmmakers - helping artists to adopt new tools rather than be replaced by them
A Human Design informed business consultant - because insights from sources outside the business mainstream offer a fresh perspective on how we work
A divorce mediator who trains divorce mediators - because people are tired of contentious, expensive divorces
A former Pilates studio owner with a solution for pelvic floor issues - because fresh solutions come from proven methodologies
A doctor who specializes in lyme disease and mold - because auto-immune issues from environmental factors are on the rise
A teen parenting coach - because your kids don’t have to be misunderstood like you were (Gen X, I see you!)
A menopause influencer - because menopause education is paltry and women are hungry for solutions to what they’re going through
A PhD therapist with a growing psilocybin specialization - because psychedelics are having a therapeutic moment
An art consultant humanizing corporate spaces - because if companies want us to go back to work, we have to want to be there
Members’ companies drive solutions to the problems so many of us are facing today, and they mirror cultural changes we’re seeing all around us. What I admire most is how on-the-pulse our members are - and how strategically we are all working to speak to the cultural moment we’re living in, harnessing every DIY media channel to connect with our audiences and offer practical answers to sticky problems our customers are facing in real time.
I want to know:
How does your business meet the zeitgeist?
And if you’re still forming your entrepreneurial vision, how will your offering answer, “Why now”?
Love,
Erin & Sarah
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