A Chat with Lucy Kebbell, Founder at Entrepreneur Community: The WIP

The WIP is a digital membership platform for sustainable brand founders, entrepreneurs and side hustlers. A ready-made community with easy connectivity for our members, we will also provide learning resources for those who join, with an emphasis on ethical and eco-aware business practices.

Members will be able to purchase courses, workshops, webinars and toolkits, created by us and some amazing Activators in the eco-aware space. We want our network to learn and grow in a space that feels safe and inclusive and by purchasing content as and when they need it, we are empowering them to take control of their personal development and set their own goals to further their business.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for The WIP?

 
Through my time working in media, I have grown a contact book of incredible individuals. I consider it a real pleasure to connect with people in order to help them get business done, but I dreamed of a platform that would allow them to do it for themselves.

Correct information can be hard to find, and I’ve heard firsthand from a lot of people that they struggle to find trusted information, as well as collaborators to help them scale their business in line with their values. Many founders now are solo entrepreneurs, it can be a lonely existence, and when you don’t have a community to ask questions to and share advice with, that doesn’t benefit anyone in the long term.

During the first lockdown, after providing free webinars and consultancy sessions for a few people, I realised that there was nothing currently on the market supporting these brands.
 

How did the pandemic affect your ideas for The WIP?

 
The WIP wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the pandemic. I run a sustainable fashion media platform, and at the start of the first lockdown, brands that would previously partner with or advertise with us suddenly had no budgets.

I had to diversify if I was going to stay in business. However, it was through my genuine concern for the sustainable business community that I came up with the idea; I didn’t want to live in a world where these businesses became casualties of the pandemic and only big, faceless corporations survived. During lockdown I spent a lot of time on Zoom calls speaking to founders and entrepreneurs, learning their pain points and barriers to growth. The entire concept has been created from these honest conversations.
 

What can we hope to see from The WIP in the future?

 
We launch in October 2021 with our brand-new platform. As our community grows, so will we. The WIP stands for Work In Progress, because we can never be 100% sustainable, we are always growing and evolving so the space we are creating will too. The platform will evolve with our members’ needs, and we will encourage members to support each other and invest back into the platform with what they have learned, creating a circularity of shared ideas.

As well as being online, we’ll also be taking things into the real world with events and seminars, and hopefully one day a summit. For now, we are working hard with brand partners to create valuable and relevant content for our members to help them grow and scale their businesses, but maybe one day the platform can become self-sufficient, with members providing their own content and community.