Meet Ankita Terrell of My Founder Circle
About: Ankita Terrell is bringing her experience in venture capital, in scaling startups and in funding nonprofits to help female founders build socially-good and profitable companies. She has previously consulted for organizations such as American Express, Target and General Motors, and she holds an MBA from Georgetown University. She is the co-founder of My Founder Circle, a platform where experts behind the world’s leading brands help female founders build their businesses for profit and scale.
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The beauty about being an entrepreneur is we can choose to do whatever fills our cup while being authentic and in service to our client. It’s such a liberating fact and a privilege that as entrepreneurs we get to choose how and when we show up. If I want to work at 8 pm on a Thursday, cause I’m in a flow, fine – I allow myself that grace. If I choose to go on a midday hike cause I need to move my body to get the creative juices flowing, also totally fine.
One of the early pandemic activities I have kept up with is taking voice lessons every Wednesday afternoon. I grew up with music as a big part of my life – many friends are musicians, growing up, family gatherings usually involved singing along to my cousin strumming his guitar, and music has also always been a big part of my life in the form of worship. Since we had time, I figured I wanted to learn how to sing.
My voice coach is in Mexico – we meet every week on Zoom. When we first started working together, her instructions were pretty basic – focus on breathing into your back and listen to the sound of the instruments as you practice your scales. Even that seemed so hard to do – my constant question was “how do I do both?”
Two years into my study, there’s added complexity – now her instructions are: focus on breathing deep, keep the diaphragm lowered, leave your tongue down, sing clean vowels, lift your notes, listen to the notes before you sing, etc.
During a recent voice lesson, I realized that singing is very similar to entrepreneurship. At first doing everything all at once seems overwhelming. As an entrepreneur, we’re thinking about marketing, building funnels, automation, developing content, getting on sales calls, showing up on social media, collaborating, and more.
The fact is – just like with singing, in entrepreneurship, as you keep going, your techniques advance, you get better each and more comfortable, you learn what resonates with your audience, how you can focus on the biggest needle movers, and you also learn what to let go of.
You start with the basics – understanding what your audience wants, and showing up to serve them authentically. And just like my voice coach is always there for me, with no judgment, I encourage you to seek out communities where you feel held and supported – places to ideate, to simplify, to help you achieve the goals you set out for yourself.
As entrepreneurs and humans, we get to keep growing personally in addition to growing our business, and that is so cool.
