Speaker: Eric Harrison
Who are you and what is Thrive?
Eric Harrison: Hey guys, my name is Eric Harrison. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania here in the States. And I am the founder of thrive. Thrive is the only community built for bootstrapped entrepreneurs. So our members are building their business the hard way, you know, from scratch, our members are vulnerable about their challenges and extremely passionate about helping one another solve them. It is quite literally the exact group of people that I would have given anything to find when I was struggling to build my first business. And I'll tell you a little bit more about uh why I got into entrepreneurship in just a second.
Why'd you start the community?
Eric Harrison: So thrive is actually my second company. Uh I started my first company when I was about 20 years old with a few friends of mine, we did cultural transformation consulting for medium sized businesses over the course of about 2.5 years, we grew that company to be just over six figures. But um we're very young, very inexperienced and in a lot of ways, um really just got lucky. We made some hires too fast before we had a real sense of product market fit. And we just started burning cash very, very quickly. Um When our runway was getting quite slim and, you know, I was getting a bit anxious as the founder. I tried to find something like thrive. Uh and it didn't exist, you know, everybody that I spoke to wanted to give us cash in exchange for equity. And my comeback to that was sort of, I don't think we need more money. You know, my partners and I have a fundamental skill gap. We don't have experience running a company and we couldn't find somebody unfortunately, or a group of people that are willing to invest in our success in that way. So unfortunately, we wound up winding down that venture. Um We all went and worked for start up companies for the next couple of years. Um I became the head of sales, the start up and that experience was everything, you know, I was personally hoping to find in the form of mentorship and accountability. Got to work side by side the company's founder. Every single day, I learned how to bring products to market and find a fit hire fire and manage people, um manage money, manage cash forecast and budget, learn how to sell, learn how to have tough conversations. So all of these things that I didn't get access to as a young first time founder, I really found through that experience, I actually started thrive a little bit by accident. Um When I was working at that company, I just loved having conversations with boots trappers because that was my experience building a company. So, you know, the more and more conversations I did with these folks turned into me starting a podcast with them and me posting on linkedin toward that audience. To me starting a mastermind and one of our members, one day after a session said, you know, Eric, what you're building here really isn't a mastermind group. It's more like a community. Um That word really stuck with me and resonated with me. It started forcing me to march down this path of what are communities. What do they mean? What do they feel like, um are there any, you know, for something like this that I missed? And, you know, we kind of saw launched thrive over the course of that year and found people who believed in building their business this way and wanted to help uh and brought thrive to market and really positioned it as the only community built for bootstrapped entrepreneurs and the exact type of thing I would have given anything to find when I was struggling to build. Uh My first company about three years ago.
What stands out to you about the culture at Thrive?
Eric Harrison: To me, there's two things that stand out about the culture of thrive. And I think culture is an important word because communities are only as valuable as the people that, that make them up, right? So to me, it's really two things. The first is people are brutally honest and vulnerable about where they are in their entrepreneurial journey. You know, I think something I try to encourage folks to admit because this really helped me is like nobody has all the right answers. Even people that make a million dollars plus a year, 10 million a year, they're just trying to figure it out, right? No one has all the right answers. So being vulnerable and open and honest about where you're at, what you want to achieve and how the people in this community and in your corner can help you get there. It's something I really appreciate about the culture, just how vulnerable people are and about how honest they are. The second thing and something I appreciate even more is how willing people are to help without expecting literally anything in return. Uh the amount of people that have given me feedback on my own business on my own experience on ways I can improve our community and how I sell and how I market. It has been um insanely valuable. You know, I see very cool conversations start up in here and then, you know, these people get on the phone and they meet one another and sometimes it turns into a business opportunity and sometimes it just turns into a really cool um friendship to help one another. And that's what community is entirely all about. So, um I really love the culture that we're building here at thrive. I love that our members take ownership over that culture and feel like um it's their own, you know, this should be a place where every bootstrapper um is never made to feel alone and everyone has the right people to turn to at any stage of building their business. So we're working hard to build that every day. And it's something I appreciate more than anything about this community and more so than any other one that I've been a part of.
