Deciding if Entrepreneurship is Right for You with Allie Egan

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with Allie Egan. Allie is the founder of Veracity, which is a hormone wellness brand that helps women find hormonal balance to look and feel their best. Allie, welcome to The Daily Bolster.

Allie Egan: Thanks for having me, Matt.

Matt Blumberg: I'm so glad you're here, and I love the topic that we've decided on for today. So the question for you is how do you decide if entrepreneurship is right for you? And the reason I love this, there are two reasons. One is everything else we're doing on this show is about once you're already the founder and CEO. Yours is the sort of fundamental question of should you be there in the first place? And I just think there are a lot of people that should be founders that aren't, and a lot of people that are founders and probably shouldn't be.

Allie Egan: I agree.

Matt Blumberg: So I'd love to hear your top three. How do you decide if entrepreneurship is right for you?

Allie Egan: Yeah. So first one that comes to mind is would you care about what you're doing even if you weren't CEO? Because I was a CEO before I was a founder, and the difference between just being a CEO is you don't have to live and breathe it every second of your personal life, like it feels you are one with this company. So you have to really believe in the mission, the product, the vision, all that stuff.

Matt Blumberg: Absolutely. Founder market fit is so important. And I always think that the litmus test, I think it's kind of the same thing you just said, is if you believe that something needs to exist in the world, and it doesn't exist, and you're the person to put it there.

Allie Egan: Yeah. I mean, for me, it was my own health issues and I was so frustrated that I couldn't get answers and I had to go through infertility to get there. And so that's what keeps me going every day.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. Okay, what's number two?

Allie Egan: Number two is a question to yourself, how well do you deal with rejection? Because no matter what, no matter how successful you are as an entrepreneur, you will be rejected more times often than you are accepted. And that I think rings through for the Googles, Facebooks, of the world as well as the even unsuccessful companies. So it's really getting deep with yourself and being like, " Can I deal with that level of rejection basically every day?"

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, you do have to have thick skin, for sure. All right. And what's your last one?

Allie Egan: Last one is just also being honest with yourself if you have the financial and emotional support. Something I feel very obligated, especially as a female founder to talk about, is that it's not all rainbows and butterflies, but you really got to look at your finances with your partner and decide whether you can take those risks. And I feel very honored that my partner has supported me in this journey because I would not have been able to do that without him.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, it's so true. I mean, the founder journey is one that is full of highs and lows, and as I frequently say, sometimes they come to you at the same time.

Allie Egan: Oh, most of the time.

Matt Blumberg: And having, whether it's a network of friends or a partner or a broader family or kids that can support you through it, is so key.

Allie Egan: Right, I mean, went to business school and there's the people stuff they can't even, no matter how much they try to teach you it, you can't. And so you just need someone to lean on, cry on, yell at, all those things.

Matt Blumberg: Absolutely. Allie Egan from Veracity, thank you so much for being here.

Allie Egan: Thanks for having me.