Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jonathan Rosen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

My whole life I never wanted to “go it alone.” Maybe I just wanted to belong. I also never wanted my desire to belong to be in the hands of others who may not include me. I also knew that’s what everyone wanted. When I was in elementary school I was the kid who organized the kickball games during recess. As I grew older I continued to cherish group collaboration in sports teams, student activity clubs, study groups and later neighborhood associations.

In my career I know that the single most important factor in any successes I’ve had has been the authentic, long lasting, personal relationships. These relationships have been invaluable in both my personal and professional growth.

In founding my company I combined the need for a sense of belonging, a sense of community, a sense of collaboration with the mission of creating the most meaningful, impactful, personal relationships between business professional.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started on a fairly traditional educational and career path. Business degree, MBA, Finance, Law degree. Practiced corporate / small business law. Bought a high end furniture business, founded a more mass market furniture importing / distribution business. Did a few corporate turnarounds for small businesses. I had my decent success and some huge (in my mind) failures.

These experiences all lead me to start Collaberex. I know all my previous successes would have been amplified and my failures would have been diminished if I had a community of support and guidance that I could have relied on.

Collaberex now has 14 online relationship focused groups all composed of members who are small business owners, professional service providers and entrepreneurs.

Our meetings are unlike all others. We build deep, impactful relationships during our meetings that lead to others providing invaluable advice, support, accountability, high quality client referrals, strategic partnerships – whatever help you need.

Our model of what a business group should be is one where there are no elevator pitches, no “buy my stuff” small talk. Just engaging, meaningful, authentic, curated conversations. Show up as “who you are” vs. “what you do.” Join like-minded curious professionals for accelerated personal and professional growth.

I am most proud of the feeling our members get from being a part of our community. All members can attend all groups and in every group they can show up authentically, express vulnerabilities and challenges and receive unconditional, non-judgmental support and guidance. For many we have become a necessary ingredient to their business success and personal growth.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Before the Covid pandemic all of our meetings were in person. The professional, personal and relationship building growth skills we learned was done face to face in conference rooms. When Covid hit, as with many of us, it was a punch in the stomach. I thought, “this is going to kill my business,” “how are we going to be able to build impactful relationship on a video conferencing platform?”

That’s when I decided I had to pivot. I had to change my “in-meeting” model to adopt to the new Zoom world we were all now participating in. I had to make our meetings MORE meaningful, MORE personal, MORE impactful. I hired high emotional intelligence, experienced facilitators, I focused our agendas on more emotional topics such as – gratitude, vulnerability, resilience, science of happiness and empathy. I even added joyous music videos to end our meetings (this surely would have gotten us kicked out of the conference rooms we used to use).

The pivot served to attract more people who valued what we provide.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Our lives are like a roller coaster and mine hit bottom when my furniture importing business was failing, my kids were little, I was filling up the gas tank in the car 1/4 of a tank at a time. I was maxing out credit cards, and my Dad died (he was my mentor among other things). I thought “I hope this is the bottom because I’m not sure how much lower I can go.” Things were so bad in my business that a freelance writer found me and wrote an article that was published in the NY Times business section entitled, “Know when to fold them.” Really !!

Seeing that article made me think, yep it’s time to move on. This is my situation, now what. I never ever thought “why me?” I always thought “why not me?” Businesses fail everyday, parents pass away everyday. Don’t let circumstances define you. Define yourself by how you react. What new choices did I want to make? I also was so grateful to have the love and support of my wife and family.

So what did I do? I closed the business I was hanging onto. I found a job to turnaround a local small business and make it profitable and sustainable. I slowly paid off my credit card bills over 2 years. And the roller coaster slowly made it’s way back up to the top.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://collaberex.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanrosencollaberex/