Trish Thomas - Designing Your Life to Realize New Ventures

Trish Thomas Suite Escape Lunch Series                                                      Sept. 20, 2025

Summary:

Trish discussed her journey from co-founding a successful company to advocating for psychological resilience in entrepreneurship. She highlighted the importance of identifying problems worth solving and mobilizing resources to address them. Trish shared her personal experiences, including her journey to understand and build psychological resilience and why it is a must for every woman entrepreneur, no matter where you are in your journey.

1.     Introduction – Challenges of Public Speaking

a.     It’s not easy to speak in front of a group, and when thinking about the title “Designing Your Life,” Trish decided to change the title of her talk to “I’m a Club Sandwich,” i.e., a member of the sandwich generation

                                               i.     The sandwich generation faces the challenges of caring for aging family members while at the same time raising children

b.     Trish acknowledged life has taught her a lot, from co-founding companies, balancing a family and teaching young professionals in her Entrepreneurship class at Northwestern

2.     Entrepreneurship and Resilience

a.     What do Entrepreneurs do?

                                               i.     Identify problems worth solving

                                             ii.     Mobilize people, resources, and networks to address those problems

                                           iii.     Assume a central role of purpose in driving and uniting people

b.     What does it mean to be Resilient? There are 4 types:

c.     Overcoming major life events

d.     Coping with daily challenges

e.     Healing from childhood trauma

f.      Reaching out to others for support

                                        i.     Trish shared her personal experience with grieving for the loss of a sister to suicide

3.     Personal Loss and Psychological Resilience

a.     The Impact of Loss and Grief - a year of profound grief followed the death of her sister which led to a deep exploration of the concept of psychological resilience through extensive reading

b.     Identified Gaps in Entrepreneurial Education – Trish realized a complete lack of entrepreneurship classes in university business school curriculums and advocated for teaching psychological resistance as the cornerstone for entrepreneurial education

4.     Building a Curriculum and Overcoming Challenges

a.     Trish began by volunteering at a business incubator program and then created an entrepreneurship program first at Lake Forest College, despite initial setbacks and challenges, followed by a teaching position at the Kellogg School of business at Northwestern

b.     Faced multiple rejections but remained persistent and after several years was named Entrepreneurship Professor of the Year.

5.     Understanding and Managing Fear

a.     Step one – recognize that fear is a natural part of the process and accept it

b.     Step two – work through the fear, it is the only way to move beyond it

                                               i.     Insights from Brene Brown

1.     Address feelings of inadequacy, “I AM _____ ENOUGH” and change the narrative in your head

2.     Vulnerability is important as an entrepreneur and living with and accepting that vulnerability is OK

6.     Managing Adversity & Scaling a Business

a.     Create a structured approach to managing current and anticipated adversity… “If X, then Y”

b.     Identify your worst and best-case scenarios and plan for them

c.     Trish’s example: Launching a food company during Covid-19

                                               i.     Financial strain – created a funding back-up plan/safety net

                                             ii.     Supply chain interruptions – closed shop and moved operations to her home

d.     Psychological resilience is necessary to navigate adversity, and thus crucial for any entrepreneur

e.     For Trish being prepared led to growth despite the pandemic and was ultimately awarded Whole Foods Supplier of the Year as well as expanding operations to a new facility.

7.     Raising Capital -overcoming challenges and lessons learned

a.     Women-owned businesses face unique fundraising challenges

b.     Must not dilute women investors on cap table to maintain women-owned designations, which grants access to opportunities and support

c.     Everybody Eat® is successfully closing a $5.5M funding round with Illinois and female investors

d.     When seeking capital balancing business expansion must be weighed against maintaining company control and values

8.     Building a Strong Team

a.     Find passionate individuals aligned with your company’s mission

b.     Look for diversity - for Everybody Eat® this meant creating opportunities for people of color and individuals who have experienced homelessness and food insecurity

9.     Personal Take-Aways

a.     Seek help when you need it and encourage open and honest conversations, even when difficult

b.     Recognize that what is portrayed in the media and even in corporate culture generally is not the “normal”

c.     Remember – “I AM ENOUGH”

d.     Keep learning! Embrace all opportunities for continuing education and learning, whether it is industry trends, customer research, or a graduate degree in a seemingly unrelated field – keep feeding your mind.