Today we’d like to introduce you to Victoria Sherman.
Victoria, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I graduated Suffolk University in 2001, with a major in International Business and ended up working in Corporate Finance for the majority of my adult career. I believed that having a corporate background and experience is great, but always felt that I was meant to make a difference in a different way – the entrepreneurial way. Some would say, I always had the ‘entrepreneur bug’ in me.
I had dabbled with entrepreneurship a little bit in the past. My brother -in-law and I started an online Russian bookstore that catered to libraries across the US as a side gig with big hopes and dreams. We had some initial success but we ultimately failed and failed quickly. We learned some great lessons along the way. More importantly the desire and drive to figure out how to succeed kept growing. I’d like to believe that the entrepreneurial gods heard me.
I met my current business partner and founder of The Lonely Entrepreneur – Michael Dermer about three years ago. He had just successfully sold his company (the first company to financially reward people for being healthy) and was doing some entrepreneur coaching. Long story short, he realized that there isn’t a brand that captures the energy of the struggle of being an entrepreneur and that can actually help them turn their struggle into success. Michael asked me to help him think through the idea of not only writing The Lonely Entrepreneur book (which we published last year), but also about creating this brand to help entrepreneurs worldwide. I was hooked from day one. The idea of building something and helping millions of people deal with the struggle of bringing their vision to life and living a more fulfilled life often wouldn’t let me sleep at night. It was much bigger than me and my initial career path.
I had a pretty demanding full time job during the time Michael asked me to help vet this idea of the brand and write the book. So for about a year and a half I would come home from a full day of work, take care of my two kids (some will agree that single parenting is a job of its own) and then spend many hours late into the night working on The Lonely Entrepreneur. It was pretty common for Michael and I to get on the phone at midnight to talk about all the ideas we had swirling in our heads. Early in 2016, I quit my day job and as we often joke – came over to the dark side. I’m now a Partner and Director of Operations for The Lonely Entrepreneur.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As many of us know – being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart and as we at The Lonely Entrepreneur say – being an entrepreneur is not a job, it’s an identity. Obstacles and challenges are an everyday occurrence in our world. Here are a couple of the biggest ones that I had to face:
– Accepting the fact that I was lucky to have met Michael at the time when he came up with the idea of The Lonely Entrepreneur. He is an amazing mentor, business partner, colleague and a close friend and I’m now part of something bigger than I could have ever imagined helping millions of people.
– Continuously being out of my comfort zone. As we say this is big girls and boys shit. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s a good thing I love rollercoasters because that’s what many of your days are like as an entrepreneur. Constant highs and lows. You can’t let self-doubt get in the way of realizing your dreams. Having talked to many female leaders and entrepreneurs, I know that could be a real issue. Just know and believe that you can.
– Setting guardrails and discipline within which we operate and run the business. When you’re in Corporate America you don’t often get to see how different pieces of the business fit together. When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re building a business, you are every piece of the puzzle and you have to understand how everything fits together and create the discipline to successfully run a business across all departments. If you don’t, the daily chaos can quickly turn into the daily feeling of being overwhelmed and in turn stifle your progress.
– Accepting that you don’t know everything and asking for help is completely and totally okay. In the book, we wrote that great leaders are humble and learners. I think we all have self-doubt at times where our inner voice says “how can you not know this?” Well, get over it. Accept that you will not know everything and part of being a leader is being able to ask for help without compromising your self-confidence. Always a work in progress.
– As entrepreneurs we don’t always have enough resources (both human and financial) but we do have the ability to think differently and creatively. That’s what sets us apart from others and fuels our success. There’s always a way to get things done.
Please tell us about The Lonely Entrepreneur.
The Lonely Entrepreneur is the go-to destination that helps entrepreneurs turn their struggle into success.
We are known for tapping into the energy of the struggle and providing solutions and insights to all the business and personal issues we as entrepreneurs face on a daily basis. We are honored to wake up every day and help turn entrepreneurs’ passion into success. The idea of The Lonely Entrepreneur is steeped in Michael Dermer’s experience of building a company – the first of its kind to reward people for being healthy and becoming a pioneer of the health rewards and incentives industry. He watched the company he built for over 10 years collapse in almost 10 days during the financial crisis of 2008. So Michael knows about the struggle of being an entrepreneur.
As I mentioned, The Lonely Entrepreneur book was published last year, and we recently launched what we call The Lonely Entrepreneur Community. It is an online subscription based learning platform that includes over 150 learning modules organized into 12 areas of the business ( Setting Up Your Business, Generating Revenue, Differentiating Your Offering, Managing Your Business, Raising Money, Managing Yourself, Marketing, People, Communicating, Leading the Company, Financial Management, Legal). Along with a Community of where you interact and learn from fellow entrepreneurs, we provide over 50 tools and templates entrepreneurs need in their business and vendor reviews of the most commonly used tools and software. And of course weekly live group conversations with us to tackle any issue the entrepreneurs are facing.
There’s so much information out there for entrepreneurs and most of it is disorganized and hard to sift through. Michael and I spent the better part of last year developing this platform where information is organized, bite sized with videos and is easy to digest so the entrepreneurs can actually implement solutions on day one. I think we’re most proud of the ability to really help entrepreneurs worldwide. The book was published in Spanish in August 2017 and we now have an international presence in Mexico, Dubai, Singapore, Slovenia and Croatia.
Pricing:
- The Lonely Entrepreneur Community subscription costs $60/month or $500/year. You get:
- LEARNING: Robust online learning (150 modules) covering what every entrepreneur needs to know
- CONVERSATIONS WITH MICHAEL: Weekly group video conversations with founder Michael Dermer and our team
- COMMUNITY: A vibrant online community of your fellow entrepreneurs
- REMINDERS: Daily reminders to keep you on track
- TOOLS & TEMPLATES: Over 50 tools and templates you’ll need in your business
- VENDOR REVIEWS: Vendor reviews of the most commonly used tools and software
Contact Info:
- Website: http://lonelyentrepreneur.com/
- Phone: 617-966-8484
- Email: victoria.sherman@lonelyentrepreneur.com
- Instagram: the_lonely_entrepreneur
- Facebook: TheLonelyEntrepreneur1
- Twitter: @thelonelye
Image Credit:
Teddy Tellis
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