3 Things I Learned At A Week-Long Workaway

When people ask me what a workaway or incubator is, I don’t know what to tell them. This is probably because in my mind, those things are self-explanatory. I forget that not everyone is not familiar with the weird terms the start up world has come up with.

The workaway I participated in was hosted by WeFunder and in their words this was,

a trip designed to foster connection between idea-stage founders and propel them forward along their founder journeys.

Katie Powers, Ops and Business Development

WeFunder did a really great job achieving this. I’m so glad that despite my initial anxiety and financial uncertainty, I was able to participate. I learned so much from this experience and the people in the room. Here are the three main things I learned:

Like Nike – Just Do It

Nick Tommarello the founder and CEO lead a “How to Start Something With Nothing” session the second night. However, before this session Nick has been reiterating to me that I should “just do it”. The type of business I want to start has some similarities to this workaway, something Nick and his team planned in a matter of weeks. And this isn’t the first time Nick has taken a group of people somewhere within a short time period. He wanted me to know that it’s doable and that I shouldn’t be a afraid of just whipping something up. A direct quote from his presentation was,

better to make lots of mistakes and learn from real-world results.

How To Start Something With Nothing by Nick Tommarello

I’m still struggling to be okay with making mistakes, but this week gave me a lot of confidence to make the first step. For me, my first step is as simple as making a landing page. This was also a slide on Nick’s presentation.

People Set The Tone

Chris Smoak, cofounder of Atrium lead a session about company culture on night five. The people on your team make your culture. Especially early on the individuals you onboard can make or break your business. One of the first things Chris taught us was that,

in small teams, any one person can destroy the sense of a healthy team culture.

Team and Culture by Chris Smoak

This can also be said for the workaway. The cohort of people that participated in this trip set the tone for it. If there were even more than a couple of bad eggs, that could have ruined the whole vibe. Luckily, everyone was really nice and got along fairly quickly. I’d want the same to be said about my future team.

Nurture Connections

So technically, I didn’t first learn this in Hawaii, but it is something I am relearning. I met so many great people on this trip. It’s going to be hard to keep in touch with all of them, but I’m going to try. Everyone I met is doing something amazing and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for all of us.