We recently connected with Kristina Todorova and have shared our conversation below.

Kristina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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.

The inspiration to launch the Co-created Hub came after a period of setbacks in both my personal and professional life that led to experiencing burnout and severe depression. I found myself in a rather dark place mentally and emotionally, while I was juggling building a digital coaching platform (my previous business), being a senior manager in a scaleup and navigating family issues all at the same time.

I found myself feeling alone, without a supportive circle of people who understood what I was going through, and being under pressure to consistently perform at a certain level. I remember lying in bed, in tears, saying to myself that I do not want another entrepreneur to ever feel this way and not have a safe space to feel heard, supported and helped with growing their business. There is so much pressure on founders to show up in a certain way, even in entrepreneurial communities, having to constantly wear the founder hat. This can feel heavy at times and it almost prevents us from showing up in a more vulnerable and authentic way. which is how we connect and build relationships that lead to mutual support and growth.
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I founded the Co-created Hub because I needed such a space. We bring startup founders and service entrepreneurs together in an informal, safe and collaboration-focused environment to be there for each other through peer and mentoring support and to explore ways they can grow their businesses by collaborating, sending each other clients or contacts, and exchanging resources. We also provide them with holistic wellness and business growth tools and workshops and connect them with trusted service providers to help them navigate the uncertainty of the entrepreneurial journey and not feel alone doing so.

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

I have always been passionate about developing people and, as cliche as it sounds, helping them explore and realise their potential. I studied Hospitality Management at university because I wanted to open a wellness hotel, but once I started working in the industry, my passion shifted to the learning & development side of things and I transitioned into pursuing a career in L&D and corporate coaching. After a few years of working in the corporate world, I decided to open my coaching practice, and this is how I entered entrepreneurship.

My journey of building a business from scratch and all the bumps in the road deepened my interest in alternative healing modalities, spirituality and community-building. In the space of a few years, since I started my business, I experienced a tumour diagnosis, multiple losses, family challenges and bankruptcy, and that had an impact not only on my mental and physical health but on my performance in business. It isn’t with a light heart that I write about these setbacks, yet it is important that I openly speak about them because they were the stepping stones to what inspired the creation of the Co-created Hub platform and membership. We focus heavily on giving our community the resources, services, support circles and collaboration opportunities to deal with any challenges they may face in business and life.

We host weekly collaboration meetups and educational wellness and business talks, and we personally connect our members with other startup founders and service entrepreneurs within the community to explore potential business growth synergies, giving them a support circle that helps them grow their businesses and withstand the turbulence of life. We also provide access to trusted energy healers, coaches, therapists and business experts that our members can hire or exchange services or resources with, when in need of assistance.

When I was at my lowest point, it was reaching out to other founders and having the courage to be vulnerable that unlocked incredible opportunities, gave me strength and helped me to pivot in business. In the hub, there is no need to “dress to impress” or paint a “pitch” picture of your business as you would at networking events to make an impression and secure connections; exactly the opposite – we’ve been able to create a safe, inspiring and collaborative environment for people to show up genuinely and get others’ support not just business wise but with personal setbacks too. And whilst we are at the very early stages of our growth journey, just based on the first 20 founding members, we’ve had more than 40 member collaborations that have led to product development epiphanies, clients, cross-marketing and all sorts of partnerships. So I am looking forward to continuing to co-create the community experience alongside our members and business partners.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

There have been quite a few of those pivot moments; one, in particular, was when I was about to deliver a talk for a Female Founder Series by a well-known bank in the UK and just before the talk, I received the news that my main income stream – a freelance project, was being cancelled as the client was no longer in a position to invest in working together and a prospective client cancelled their invoice. At the time, I had just returned to the UK and relaunched my coaching business, starting from scratch and I did not have much savings to rely on so I remember giving it a good cry, showing up for the talk and praying to my Higher Self for solutions. If I were to give this story a title, it would be “When it rains, it pours and you are the umbrella” :). This experience taught me resourcefulness, self-trust and finding creative ways to secure the funds to keep my business running (and pay my rent!).

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A key lesson I’ve had to unlearn has been about control. I realised that most of my anxiety comes from feeling the necessity to be in control of all the moving parts of my business, which is impossible. As a founder, the responsibility is on you so it is only natural to feel the need for control. Unlearning that and replacing it with trusting others, delegating and understanding that you can only control the controllable (the effort, not the outcome) has been quite helpful to my mental health.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thecocreatedhub.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinartodorova/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-todorova-14269240/

Image Credits
These are lifestyle images from my daily life.