Insight: Carrie Forbes on making the leap to entrepreneurialism

There’s no better place to share my new journey as an entrepreneur than with the Women in Open Banking community.

I’ve met an army of incredible entrepreneurs who have moved past fears of failure, rejection and being sidelined to create innovative, meaningful and profitable companies that are making international waves.

As I approached my 50ᵗʰ birthday this year, I knew it was time for me to step into that dream. Winning Women in Open Banking Woman of the Year International at this year’s Open Banking Expo Awards on that exact day was a sign – and a vote of confidence!

Now, I’m the proud founder and chief executive officer of Rockstar Advisory, a transformational development consultancy that combines my past experiences, passions and drive to innovate.

I was intrigued by entrepreneurialism early in life, shaped by my experiences.

As a child, I grew up in a vibrant, but low-income neighborhood. My parents were able to meet our needs, but I learned early on that a little “elbow grease” and opportunity could provide me with my wants without getting a ‘no’. That was a powerful motivation for a number of money-making schemes I came up with.

Reminiscing about those years makes me realize that these experiences were the foundation of my beliefs, values and lessons that have helped me to be successful in the business world. They also align with many of the founder stories I’ve heard.

Lessons learned

There are three of these past ventures that clearly stand out to me.

The first was a creative enterprise where two willing friends and I created several drawings and playdough sculptures, displaying them with titles and descriptions around my bedroom. We invited all the adults we knew to attend our “art show” for an admission fee. As eight year olds, we felt this was a smashing success, allowing us to go to the corner store and buy tons of junk food.

We learned the value of knowing our abilities, the audience who would be interested, and what price the market would bear (I did research and asked my mother).

My next significant venture was a lesson in preparation and failure. I was 10, and convinced my best friend that we could make a ton of cash selling popcorn outside the entrance of our apartment building. We packaged 50 sandwich bags of air popped corn, selling for 25 cents – all supplies donated from our “parent organizations”. As we set up our table, posterboard sign and chairs, the weather quickly started to turn.

As often happens where I live in Nova Scotia, the wind suddenly picked up and blew all of our product down the street before we had a chance to sell a single bag. It only then occurred to me that we should have checked the weather forecast.

Maybe we should have thought more about how to secure our valuable resources from unforeseen events. It was not the windfall I’d hoped for.

Resilience is absolutely needed in these situations, so I didn’t give up. I had several more side hustles, like washing cars and selling my old toys, but my biggest venture was a lesson in motivation meeting opportunity.

The summer I was 11 was also the year that they widened the road and major intersection near my home. As my father was a tradesman, I knew exactly what hard working, overheated construction workers would want – cold drinks. Every day Dad would come home and drink nearly two litres of Kool-aid, so I bought a large tin of the pre-sweetened cherry flavour.

I got up early to set up my table and advertised fifty cents per cup. My first clients bought a cup each, then one asked if he could buy the whole pitcher for $5. Instant success! They were in my neighbourhood for four days, and after making a constant stream of pitchers, I made close to $200 – enough to buy my first ghetto blaster.

The lesson I learned here was powerful. With my inside knowledge, I could predict their needs. Most importantly, I seized the opportunity while it was there and cornered the local drink stand market.

Taking stock

As women entrepreneurs, we can feel pressure to become a persona, achieve specific milestones, or wear certain turtlenecks to fit the mold.

However, that space of discomfort, or the butterflies in the stomach, is what I call “growth factor”. If we’re not taking risks, we won’t achieve much.

But there’s a lot of wisdom we can trust by looking at where we came from. We are the sum of all our experiences, including those we are not compensated for.

Sometimes the clarity of the path ahead emerges when we take a look at how we arrived.

Carrie Forbes is founder and chief executive officer of Rockstar Advisory