Dare Diary, Page 1: An Introduction

Welcome to Dare Diary, a newsletter built to connect and inspire founders and small business owners as they traverse the ups and downs of starting and running their business. My name’s Adam Conner. I’m the author of this newsletter, a Pittsburgh resident, and a founder myself. If you’re reading this: welcome, and I hope you stick around!

(And if you see this, whether you stick around or not – I’d truly appreciate your feedback. If this isn’t valuable, why not? Please, be brutally honest.)

The goal of this whole thing is to bring together entrepreneurial people who have either launched their own business, manage one today, or are planning to start their own venture in the near future. The reason is simple: the ups and downs of any business journey can often leave us feeling isolated, and as if on an emotional roller coaster. We’re on that ride together – and perhaps this newsletter will serve as a source for you to relate, celebrate, and/or commiserate along the way. So hop on!

By subscribing to this newsletter, here’s what you can expect:

• Adam leading by example. To jumpstart this thing, I pledge to be as transparent as possible about my own entrepreneurial journey – my Dare – to set a standard of openness and authenticity about this overall topic: being an entrepreneur, something which has a whole lot of good, bad, and ugly, especially early on.?
• Reading real stories of other entrepreneurs. What I love more than anything is learning from those more successful than I (see: most people) – so another crucial part of Dare Diary is a pledge to “get real” with those who have made their own Dares, learn about their story, and share it here. This will pair with a video podcast series titled To Dare is Human, which is a relaunch of the first show I ever produced.?
• Sharing in the support of Dares from this growing readership. My hope, as this Diary is read, is that we amass a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who are undergoing Dares of their own. As that happens, I pledge to lift up the stories of folks from this very group, to serve as a platform for the very people who join in this journey to benefit from.

If you believe any of the above would educate, entertain, or serve as emotional support for you as you build alongside so many others, I’d encourage you to subscribe and use Dare Diary as a beacon of reality amongst a sea of guru worship.

Sound fair enough? Good. Let’s set a foundation, then.

In 1711, Alexander Pope famously penned: “to err is human.” A few hundred years later, Adam Conner adapted the line and claimed, “to Dare is human.” What is a Dare? In essence, it’s an intentional and ongoing erring from the typical corporate career to the unbeaten path of rugged entrepreneurialism.?

In late 2016, I launched my first ever show, To Dare is Human, to tell the stories of those who were living their Dare – the good, the bad, and the ugly – to inspire others to start. That show lit a fire under me as well – and a little over three years after launch, in late 2020, I made my own Dare: to found Authentic Avenue, and live my life creating content telling the stories of businesses all over the world.

The last two years have been a whirlwind, with plenty of ups and downs. I’ve felt an equal amount of thrilled, strong-willed, motivation-killed, and unfulfilled – but no matter the color of the day, more than anything, the most consistent takeaway I have…it’s been lonely. Being a founder, especially a solopreneur, can be an incredibly isolating experience – and I’m by no means immune, no matter how many hundreds of CXOs I sit with for an interview.

Assuming I can deliver on those pledges I bulleted earlier, hopefully this Diary becomes a way to combat that feeling. So, in case you’re wondering, “Alright, what’s really in it for this guy?”, it starts with that. Getting to know more people in my position. Maybe making some friends. And selfishly, yeah – I hope it turns into something bigger. But this is where we are for now.

In time, we’ll have a wealth of fellow Darers willing to share their story – in the meantime, the best I can do from the outset here is be transparent about my own journey. By being as open and authentic as possible, I aim to set a standard for a space where all entrepreneurs can come together and be shamelessly real about theirs.

So: Authentic Avenue is a business content production company specializing in video and podcasts for high-stakes lead gen and executive thought leadership. It’s made $0 this year. (It’s been a week, to be fair.)

As founder, there are a few personal goals which I pledge to document progress in here, as a foundation of openness – goals like (but not limited to):

• Learning how to decouple professional success from personal satisfaction – I suck at this, big time; it is my #1 weakness,
• Building habits that build happiness – something I’ve back-burnered in the pursuit of revenue,
• Meeting new entrepreneurs every month – to fight that isolation, and
• Writing more.

There are commercial goals too, but without excessively self-serving here, let’s just start by saying that the wave of Q4 layoffs, budget cuts and “capital preserve” MOs weren’t kind to ol’ AuthAve – and that 2023, as though I were the Baltimore Orioles, is going to be a rebuild year for the franchise. New year, new me -- and, necessarily, new business.

As that (re)build happens, I’ll be using this as a written crutch to help enjoy the journey just as much as the destination, whatever the destination. As you progress along your Dare, I hope we get to meet, and that I get to share your story here as well.

To that, here's how to best help kickstart that community:

1. Subscribe to this newsletter,
2. Connect with me on LinkedIn,
3. Share it with your colleagues,
4. And let's pick up a pen together.

Consider this the first page of the Diary turned – here’s to the pages to come.

Together, let’s be open to share, create community to care, and tenaciously Dare.

Because, after all, to Dare is human.