At just 20 years old, while still attending college at the University of Illinois, Eric Harrison signed multiple consulting contracts for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year. Neither Eric nor his cofounder had yet worked a single day in the corporate world.
However, the initial excitement soon turned into panic. Eric had no experience managing finances, scaling a team, or finding clients beyond his initial network. After two chaotic years, their consultancy ran out of cash for payroll and closed its doors. Through it all, Eric felt deeply isolated and misunderstood by family and peers. Who has sympathy for a 20-year-old who’d already made six figures in revenue?
Determined to learn from his mistakes, Eric spent the next three years mastering sales at a bootstrapped storytelling agency, Woden, where he helped grow revenues beyond a million dollars. During his after-work hours, Eric found himself constantly drawn to conversations with small business owners and agency founders. All of them openly admitted to their struggles and isolation.
For the first time, Eric felt like he wasn’t alone. Then, he realized more founders needed support too. Living off his savings, Eric quit his job in 2023 and founded Thrive – a small, curated community where founders can be vulnerable, swap insights, and find the support he once lacked.
Today, Thrive’s members have become Eric’s closest friends and trusted confidants. The community has grown to over 200 paying members and is on track to surpass $200,000 in revenue by focusing on real, honest conversations.
This is a story about how Eric learned entrepreneurship the hard way and used those lessons to help others avoid the same mistakes. Read on to hear how he did it.
How a Dorm-Room Idea Turned into a Six-Figure Startup
Eric’s leadership experience started in the Boy Scouts, where he spent most of his childhood. It was also where he met Michael, his future co-founder and lifelong friend.
Michael was the year ahead of Eric and served as the National Vice President of the Order of the Arrow in 2018. Eric was elected as his successor the following year, representing 2.4 million Scouts across the country. That shared experience formed the foundation of their partnership.
In 2019, Eric and Michael built an internal change-management program focused on helping local Boy Scouts chapters adapt to national initiatives, retain members, and regain momentum. They called it Thrive. The two friends spent up to 60 hours a week coaching volunteers, collecting feedback, and reporting back to national leadership. Eventually, they asked themselves a simple question: why not do the same thing for real companies?
That idea became Sensus, their consulting business launched in mid-2019. Eric and Michael’s pitch was that they’d help the leadership at mid-sized companies build mission statements that their teams actually believed in. Their first big break came through a friend’s father who introduced them to a real estate company in Missouri that had recently gone through an ownership transfer. Eric and Michael offered to run a free cultural audit.
After interviewing employees across the company, they concluded that the recently-appointed CEO wasn’t aligned with the values employees actually cared about. Most didn’t trust him the way they trusted the original founder.
That honesty landed Sensus a $9,800 contract with the real estate business, its first paid project. From there, the same client introduced them to other CEOs in his network. Within a year, they were running paid engagements with multiple real estate companies, had passed six figures in revenue, and had full-time employees on payroll.
But their early success lacked fuel. They overhired, had no outbound sales strategy, and burned through cash. By early 2021, Sensus shut down. Eric was 22, broke, and unsure of what came next. But that feeling of building a company without mentors or guidance stuck with him.
The Job That Taught Eric How to Really Build a Business
After Sensus shut down, Eric became determined to learn exactly what he’d done wrong. To that end, he joined Woden, a bootstrapped storytelling agency in Philadelphia that helped tech companies clarify their positioning and narrative.
Eric’s primary goal was to learn how to run a real business – managing cash, building sales, and positioning services the right way. He got all that and more.
Eric started as a brand storyteller, writing messaging frameworks for clients. Over time, he moved into sales, eventually becoming Chief of Staff. He spent nearly three years at the company, helping it cross $1 million in annual revenue.
Still, something was missing. Most Woden clients were venture-backed tech startups with big teams. Eric didn’t relate to these founders.
“I’ve never built a tech company. And I will never build a massive team spending a ton of investor money,” he says.
After hours, he found himself talking to small business owners on LinkedIn. Founders with one to ten employees, often bootstrapped, doing over a million dollars in revenue but still unsure how they got there. Eric realized this was a great market opportunity, and one in which he knew how to source clients.
In September 2023, Eric quit his job and went back to building for the group he always felt closest to: founders like him.
The Peer Network That Early Founders Need
Before launching Thrive, Eric didn’t just take a leap of faith. First, he conducted over 60 one-on-one conversations with potential customers. Eric listened carefully, took notes, and validated his hunch.
“I asked, ‘If I built something that solved this for you, would you be interested in hearing about it?’ A lot of them said yes. I took their info, built the thing, and went back to sell it to them.”
Then, Eric got Michael on the phone and asked him to be his cofounder. By October 2023, Thrive was born; a tight-knit community offering peer groups carefully matched by revenue, business type, and even personality traits.
Initially, Eric opened a general Slack-style forum where everyone mingled freely. He quickly saw that this unstructured approach overwhelmed his early users who wanted meaningful relationships with a handful of peers rather than many. Eric redesigned Thrive around small, curated peer groups of five to six entrepreneurs, each meeting twice a month in guided Zoom sessions.
The new model immediately resonated. Members praised it as life-changing. Thrive was a space to open up honestly about personal struggles, financial insecurities, and tough leadership decisions.
Members felt a weight lift from their shoulders as they finally found peers who could truly empathize and offer concrete advice. Eric himself even joined a peer group.
Growing steadily, Eric intentionally slowed growth, focusing on building deep relationships and a robust community infrastructure. Thrive limited its initial membership to around 200 entrepreneurs, charging a straightforward $1,000 annual subscription. Eric recruited carefully knowing that a strong internal team was crucial.
Thrive soon grew through word-of-mouth referrals and Eric’s personal LinkedIn outreach, which resonated deeply with founders craving connection. To increase the personal connection within the community, Eric recently introduced in-person events, including an annual summit designed to foster even deeper bonds along with local monthly meetups.
“I just connect with people, chat, and see if we’ve got something in common,” says Eric. “I don’t go in trying to sell. I just try to build relationships. A lot of times they’ll ask about Thrive, and that opens the door.”
Today, Eric’s startup is exactly the support system he wished he’d had back in 2019 and then some.
“They’re not just like business partners to me,” he says. “Those guys are my best friends who also happen to be entrepreneurs. They know stuff about me that only my best friend from high school knows.”
The Right Six or Seven People Can Change Your Life
Looking forward, Eric plans to keep Thrive intentionally small and impactful, ensuring every member receives deep value from the community.
“The right people are worth more than money,” he says. “Meeting the right six or seven people can transform your business and your life”.
Eric is convinced that the biggest misconception in entrepreneurship is that success requires raising venture capital or projecting the appearance of perfection. Through Thrive, he hopes to advocate openly for bootstrapping, authenticity, and vulnerability—values that attract the kind of founders who most benefit from the community.
“There are so many people on LinkedIn who are interested in appearing to be a successful entrepreneur instead of going and being a successful entrepreneur,” he says. “I think just being vulnerable in public is cool. I trust a lot more the person posting, ‘I totally messed up and lost this customer.’ That’s cool.”
