For creative, driven, entrepreneurial people, ideas are the easy part.  What’s harder is evaluating the idea; what’s hardest of all is actually doing something with it.

In my experience, that’s where ideators need support.  But it’s hard to find.  Unless you’re lucky enough to know someone unusually wise and experienced, you’ll end up reinventing wheels and using them to roll down dead ends.

In this group, dedicated Doers come together to support each other.  We’ll pool our collective knowledge and experience to help each other build, create, and Do Your Thing, more effectively and constructively than you would have flying solo.

What We Do Together

• We’ll actively listen to each other’s challenges, then offer frank, honest, constructive feedback.  No expertise is required; only your ear and whatever experience you’ve gained from living and doing.  This will include both commiseration over challenges and encouragement or discouragement, as members judge to be appropriate.
• We’ll share our half-baked ideas and help each other bake them until the toothpick comes out.  Of course, members may also share these in the general forum that’s open to all Third Factor members, where there will be more eyes on them; the difference is that, if you share them here, there is an expectation that the group will give you rigorous feedback, and that you will return the favor when others offer their own ideas.
• Offer each other accountability and sanity checks, keeping us ideators from sailing off into the stratosphere.
• As a passive benefit, I hope this group may eventually become a space to find partners and collaborators who you already know and recognize as committed Doers, and who may have complementary visions or skill sets.
• While most engagement will be written via this Circle forum, we’ll hold live video check-ins through Circle or Zoom at times that work for as many of our members as possible.  (Lest these become yet another distraction from Doing the Thing, they will not be required, but we’ll aim to make them as constructive and useful as possible.  They’ll likely include both venting of frustrations and some positive peer pressure to actually do what you intend.)

Membership Requirements

There’s only one:

• At least one project that you’re actively working on—one that, ideally, can be seen through to completion, or at least to maturity.  In other words, this is not a space for developing a creative habit or working on your physical or emotional health.  While those are worthy endeavors, those merit separate groups because they have separate demands.
  • It can be marketing a creative project (including a finished book) or building a creative brand.  (Note that if your project is writing a book, that technically qualifies, but you may prefer to join our creative writers’ critique circle and support group, which will be coming soon.)
  • It can be building a social group, online or off.  Those leading other groups here at Third Factor qualify to join this space by virtue of trying to cultivate those spaces.
  • Any form of business or proto-business is a match for this group.
  • Any form of activism or organizing is also a match for this group, and for the purposes of this space, your leader will strive to be politically agnostic.  In that case, a good complementary group would be the Sorting Out Your Values group, where we’ll get into the substance of ideas and debate them; in this one, we can talk about strategy and tactics, which will be largely the same regardless of your political alignment.

Questions about whether you’re a fit?  Reach out and ask!

How to Apply

The first step is to join our community, if you’re not already a member at the Community Member tier. If you’re at the Subscriber Tier, please log in to and upgrade.

For those who are members of the community, the next step to joining is to log in to our forum to send a DM to group leader Jessie Mannisto with a description of your project.

Launch Date

The group will formally go live with a kick-off live video circle on Sunday, February 26. Attendance is not required to join the group, but we’d love to have you!