Every Awesome Founder Needs Social and Emotional Support. Welcome To GreatestFounders.com.
By: Henry Hawk
Tags: Networking, Support, Founders, Founders Under 40 Group, Founders Community

Founders Community like Founders Under 40™ Group Sets Out To Create Healthy-Safe-Collaborative-Fun Support Networks For Founders around the world — Sponsored GreatestFounders™

There’s not been a day when a founder has never being grateful for every great people, great support, unconditional love, communities, networks, grateful for the leaders that have being a great inspiration since day one.

We all need emotional and financial support to help us deal with life’s ups and down. It’s just a higher stress level when you don’t have places to turn to help you regain your focus or direction.

If The Young and the Restless star Kristoff St John, 52, can commit suicide when he had a wife, job, and daughter then surely anyone could use more quality support. Mr. Kristoff story is a reminder of the importance of the need for quality mental and emotional support. Also he had been dealing with the death of his son.

“Kristoff is best known for his role as Neil WInters on CBS’ enduring soap opera, The Young & The Restless.

The role, which he has played since 1991, has earned him nine Daytime Emmy Award nominations.”

“Kristoff and his ex-wife, boxer Mia St. John, lost their adult son on November 23, 2014. Their late son, Julian, took his life while undergoing treatment in a mental health facility. Kristoff and Mia later sued the facility, alleging negligence. The suit was eventually settled. This devastating loss had a long-term impact on Kristoff.”

I’m sure every founder has noticed an increase in people who don’t feel fulfilled in their lives or are not happy that they don’t have reliable social and economical support of some kind. E.g such as talking to others about life’s challenges or making difficult decisions.

Having support can really help you cope with obstacles on your own when you know there are others who care and love you. Your confidence and autonomy is refreshed much faster.

You necessarily don’t need huge connection from friends, strangers or family. Sometimes all you just need are few quality reliable people who share similar interest or similar situations or similar work environment or similar club.

However the reality is that having the social or emotional support that you may need requires constantly adopting and improving social skills and constantly making connections.

FIRST TIP

Get out and grow your support network today. You don’t have to copy others and you don’t have to make connection with others that need to hear and understand every detail of your life. Simply establish connections for different needs like a colleague for work needs, another close parent to seek tips for raising kids, health conscious person at the gym for health concerns.You always need to seek people who have your best interest, reliable, not destructive, or make you feel like shit after talking to them

MAKE THE EFFORT 24/7

You can’t sit still in one place and think support and relationships will always be there. You’ve got to make the effort to nurture the connections you have today while continuing to make new connections. With the rapid changes happening in terms of work, life, etc. This is crucial. Get out to offer others a hand, however know your limits. It’s to your best interest to assess the company you keep. Ask yourself do you have people who are there for you for better or worse? Or are they there for the good times? Providing support to others within a healthy dose can also do more for your overall health by simply giving you a purpose.

Note: GreatestFounders + Founders Under 40 Group Private Community is designed to encourage this mindset and actually be caring of each other.

USE ANY TECH TOOLS / NON-TECH

Use any tech tools or non-tech tool. Get out to the movies, arrage a day at the mall, a night to the movies, a volunteering outing, a charity fund raising grarage sale, build your own community, reach out to people via social media that you would love to learn from or be friends with or go out on a date with. Don’t worry too much about regetion just make sure to put the best approach that will resonate with them. In a hypercompetitive world, people are just terrified of people using them or people toxic their lives.

TAKE UP A HOBBY / AN INTEREST

Find something offline and online that has a concentration of people of similar interest and frequent it. You will notice that it doesn’t take time before you start to narrow who you’d like to spend more time with and who you need to stay away from. Just go out and enjoy yourself. One tip if you are not that into your interest but just want to be around people then you can do that. However you are more likely to enjoy yourself if your passionate about your interest.

Seek out peer support of some form. Don’t be afraid to lookup in Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, etc for support groups.

LEARN SMALL TALK

Put away your phone. There’s nothing more annoying than talking to a person who is constantly checking their cell.

Though you should look eager to talk to the person, don’t look too eager.

Don’t lean in so close that you overwhelm the person or scare him away. Many people are turned off by a close-talker.

Remember to smile and pay attention to the person when you greet her.

Don’t make it look like you’re just killing time until your real friends come along.

It’s true: it may be hard to keep things light and fun when you’ve had a really bad day or bad week. But remember that if you’re making small talk, then this person is not your closest friend, so you should avoid talking about anything too negative or the other person will be turned off.

GREET WITH WARMTH

Engage and introduce yourself with a sense of sincere taking interest without any agenda or ulterior motive. Just introduce yourself with a smile and say hey / hello. Learn to understand when someone is open to talk and when someone is not receptive to talk.

TAKE AN INTEREST

There are many opening questions you can use to help you get others and yourself talking.But In my experience it’s best to do your homework on types of events, what audience attend these events, what subjects to they like talking about, who they want to meet, what do they want to achieve, etc. If you are genuine willing to take interest in them you just will have a good time.Go and make connections for the long term not just transactional.

LISTEN WELL

There’s nothing much worst than talking to someone and finding out the other person wasn’t listening and was simply waiting for you shut up so they can talk.Use body language and verbal cues to indicate you are listening and that you understand.

STAY CURRENT

Always stay current with news, trends, diverse topics, etc so that you can always make a deep connection to anybody.

MAKING SUGGESTIONS

When people are not requesting for advice or suggestions be careful when giving it. In most cases people just want to be heard.Sometimes I’ve caught myself doing this and realize that it sometimes turns people off.

You will make more friends if you keep your advisor hat on the shelve, And simply wait for them to ask or ask them to contact you if they need further help.

CLOSE WELL

If you feel you need to move on from the conversation, just simply say within the lines, “It was great meeting you maybe we can reconnect? I don’t want to take up too much of your time at this moment so let’s meet others.” or “Would you happen to have a business card?” or “Are you on LInkedIn?”

TAKE AWAY

Hey if all fails. Simply go to community centers, support networks, trustworthy institutions, charities, libraries, neighborhood services, etc they may be able to help or point you towards a good direction.

I know that being a founder, entrepreneur, business owner or professional service provider is not an easy journey. It’s the pressure of normal life times two. You have to work harder just to make half of what your 9–5 peers make, very little time for a social life, your friends are likely right within arms length (co-workers), your sleeping pattern can be flexible. Relationships can deteriorate if you’re not proactive. We all need a place and environment you can just let out some steam and build awesome relationships. We are hoping Founders Under 40 Group + GreatestFounders.com can be that extra tool to help you. You are welcome to signup for a trial if you want.