Resilient by Design: The Inner Traits That Power Social Entrepreneurs Through Adversity
What makes a changemaker endure? Beyond strategy, funding, or innovation, there’s a less visible but essential set of traits that sustain impact-led entrepreneurs through the inevitable highs and lows: resilience, self-knowledge, and persistence.
In the social impact space, the path is rarely linear. Failures sting, burnout looms, and staying connected to the ‘why’ can be hard when outcomes are uncertain.
Yet, the changemakers who persist and thrive often share one thing in common: they cultivate their inner world as carefully as they build external solutions.
Drawing on the lived wisdom of entrepreneurs featured on the Impact Boom Podcast, this article explores the inner strengths that empower social entrepreneurs to navigate challenges while creating change that lasts.
The Inner Journey of a Changemaker: Why the Inner Self Matters as Much as the Mission
Behind every impactful social venture is a deeply personal story, often marked not just by strategy and hustle, but by introspection, doubt, and persistence. For social entrepreneurs and changemakers, the journey is as much inward as it is outward. The success of a mission often hinges not just on clever ideas or market fit, but on the leader’s ability to connect to their deeper purpose, their ‘why’.
Time and again, Impact Boom interviewees remind us that social entrepreneurship is not just an external pursuit of impact; it’s an expression of identity, of lived experience, and of personal convictions carried into the world.
As Robert Pekin and Emma-Kate Rose put it succinctly,
“Having that sense of purpose has always been the thing that has kept me going.”
This is not a sentimental aside, it’s a lifeline for entrepreneurs navigating complex social issues where wins can sometimes be rare and the emotional stakes are high.
That personal connection to the mission isn’t just motivational, it’s strategic. Michael Lim captured this beautifully when reflecting on his educational and entrepreneurial path:
“My passion in social impact is deeply personal… This was the first time in my whole education career where I was asked, ‘what do you want to learn and how do you want to learn it?’ I was given the opportunity to not only take responsibility, but ownership and accountability over my education.”
This ownership of one’s learning, growth, and path becomes the bedrock of effective changemaking. Without it, leaders risk becoming unmoored, swept away by external pressures or performance metrics that can easily disconnect them from their original purpose.
For some, this clarity comes from a lifetime of values alignment.
CV Harquail reflected on her lifelong activism:
“What has propelled me is my whole life I have been a feminist and I’ve been concerned about social justice and trying to change the world to make it a better place… I’ve always been aware of oppression and in tune with this idea that we want to make the world a place where all people can flourish equally.”
Purpose, then, isn’t a vague north star. It is a guiding principle that roots changemakers when the journey gets hard, when the mission feels compromised, or when inevitable failures shake confidence. Without that grounding, burnout or misalignment are all too common, especially in fields where the work feels infinite and the wins feel fleeting.
Image Credit: CoWomen
This is why for Paul Mergard, leading in the social enterprise space continually returns to one central question with his team:
“What is your why? Why do we do what we do?”
For any changemaker, asking, and re-asking that question provides both anchor and fuel. It helps maintain integrity between personal values and the social impact being pursued. It also fosters resilience, because when setbacks come (as they always do), having a clear ‘why’ prevents temporary failures from becoming personal defeats.
In the sections that follow, we’ll explore the other essential traits; emotional resilience, deep self-knowledge, and persistence that accompany a strong sense of purpose, shaping the internal landscape every social entrepreneur must cultivate to thrive in the long term.
Resilience; Growing Stronger Through Setbacks and ‘Battle Scars’
If purpose is the compass guiding social entrepreneurs, resilience is the fuel that keeps them moving forward when the road turns rocky. Behind every social impact success story lies a litany of mistakes, wrong turns, and painful lessons. But far from being signs of weakness, these ‘battle scars’ are often the very marks of credibility in the impact space.
Nicholas Marchesi, Co-Founder of Orange Sky, a not-for-profit known for providing free mobile laundry services to people experiencing homelessness, reflects candidly,
“We made lots and lots of mistakes which really set the solid foundation of where Orange Sky is today.”
This reframing of failure, from an endpoint to a learning opportunity, is a hallmark of resilient leadership. Yet, resilience isn’t simply about gritting teeth and pushing through. It’s about cultivating adaptability, emotional endurance, and a mindset that embraces growth.
As Julian O’Shea observes:
“You’ve got to realise that these things are muscles, and things that you grow over time.”
Resilience, like any muscle, strengthens with use. It requires enduring discomfort, reflecting on experiences, and gradually expanding one’s capacity to face uncertainty and disappointment without crumbling.
At the same time, the impact space brings its own unique pressures. When the work is rooted in social justice, community well-being, or environmental sustainability, the emotional toll can be intense.
Sarah Gun, a social entrepreneur and founder in the impact space, points out the stark reality:
“This work is hard, burnout is rife and without health, we can’t sustainably create impact.”
Without proactive attention to mental and physical well-being, even the most passionate founders risk burning out; an outcome that not only stalls ventures but also inflicts personal harm. For some, it takes a confronting wake-up call to reprioritise their health and boundaries.
Mike Dyson shares a sobering personal account:
“I spent 15 years as a Chinese medicine practitioner… I found myself on an emergency department hospital bed thinking I was having a heart attack. The doctor said, ‘there is nothing wrong with your heart, Mr. Dyson. This is an anxiety attack.’ It was a really disorienting moment for me because I thought I was doing all the right things… It forced me to rethink some things. That was a major event for me.”
Dyson’s experience reflects a broader truth; resilience isn’t about ignoring stress signals, but about learning to heed them early, adjust course, and develop more sustainable ways of working.
Sometimes, resilience is built over decades, forged through life’s personal and professional trials.
Bron Williams, reflecting on her own life journey, shares:
“My hair is rather grey, so I’ve been around the sun quite a few times! I’d been trying to keep it together for about 15 years but was not happy… it took me a long time to reach the point where I left the relationship.”
This kind of hard-earned wisdom reminds us that resilience is often intertwined with broader life choices; the courage to leave toxic environments, to reinvent oneself, and to prioritise well-being over appearances of success.
In cultivating resilience, social entrepreneurs not only weather the storm, they also develop the reflective capacity to evolve from it. Resilience is not just survival; it’s transformation. It’s what enables changemakers to reframe challenges as chapters in a longer narrative of growth; one where the scars are not just visible, but worn with pride.
In the next section, we’ll explore how self-knowledge complements resilience, providing changemakers with the tools to understand their triggers, working styles, and personal boundaries for more effective and sustainable leadership.
Self-Knowledge: The Changemaker’s Greatest Asset
Resilience may keep changemakers moving forward, but it is self-knowledge that helps them navigate with wisdom, balance, and clarity. Knowing oneself, understanding one’s limits, triggers, strengths, and optimal ways of working, is not a luxury for social entrepreneurs. It is a strategic imperative.
Matthew Taylor, reflecting on his own entrepreneurial journey, emphasises this point:
“You’ve really got to know yourself and know what makes you work optimally, know when to pick up on the signs that things are operating optimally and be able to navigate around that as best as you possibly can. Do all that really important life planning, self-profiling and understanding yourself.”
This kind of self-knowledge isn’t static, it evolves as entrepreneurs encounter new challenges, gain new insights, and reflect on past experiences. It requires active attention, intentional reflection, and the humility to accept one’s own patterns; both helpful and harmful.
Christian Duell offers a succinct but powerful observation.
“We do that through self-awareness.”
Yet self-awareness, while essential, is often hard-won. The emotional intensity of changemaking can blur personal boundaries and identity, especially when your mission is tightly bound to your sense of self.
As Ben Pecotich cautions:
“A key thing I’ve learned is because we love the work that we do, it’s easy for it to become all-consuming. We invest everything we have (sometimes more than we can afford to lose), and our identity can end up completely wrapped up in it. This can make it easy to lose perspective and balance.”
When identity and mission become indistinguishable, failure or setbacks in the work can feel deeply personal, even existential. That’s why cultivating self-knowledge is about more than understanding one’s working style; it’s about maintaining a clear separation between self-worth and professional achievements.
For some, emotional self-knowledge involves embracing what makes them tick, even if it doesn’t align with conventional notions of leadership.
Caleb Rixon speaks to this candidly:
“I’m very emotionally focused, but I’ve learnt that that is my why and there’s nothing wrong or sad or embarrassing about that.”
Recognising and owning one’s emotional drivers can turn what may initially feel like vulnerabilities into unique strengths, fuelling empathy, connection, and purpose-led decision making.
Changemakers gather at the Reignite Retreat 2025.
Self-knowledge also requires reflection on past experiences, reframing them with the benefit of hindsight. In one of his more reflective moments, Matthew Taylor uses a metaphor that illuminates this beautifully:
“On reflection, one thing I’ve observed is that we play out our lives like the reader of a good crime novel. We get to the final chapter, and we witness the big reveal… And suddenly you look back at all the preceding chapters and you notice all of those clues… the evidence is obvious and unignorably so.”
This analogy underscores how clarity often comes in retrospect, when we have the distance and perspective to piece together the clues that were there all along. But cultivating self-knowledge means not waiting until the final chapter; it’s about building practices of reflection, mentorship, and feedback into the entrepreneurial journey.
Finally, knowing oneself isn’t a solitary pursuit. Community, mentorship, and even therapy can play crucial roles in revealing blind spots and reinforcing strengths. Changemakers who prioritise this inner work find themselves better equipped not only to survive the demands of impact entrepreneurship, but to lead with authenticity, clarity, and renewed energy.
In the following section, we’ll explore how persistence and grit (the willingness to stay the course despite setbacks), ties together purpose, resilience, and self-knowledge into a disciplined, enduring practice of changemaking.
Persistence: Communicating the Mission and Staying the Course
If purpose is the spark, and resilience the fuel, then persistence is the steady engine that keeps social entrepreneurs on the road, even when the terrain gets rough, the map is unclear, or the journey seems never-ending.
Persistence in entrepreneurship isn’t just about doggedness; it’s a mindful commitment to the long game. Social impact work is rarely a sprint, it’s a marathon littered with obstacles, shifting landscapes, and unexpected detours. To persist is to find ways to keep moving, recalibrating when needed, without losing sight of the mission.
Jaison Hoernel, captures this with a dose of humour:
“My wife says that I’m nagging, I say persistent. I think that that’s really important. Just communicate your message as clearly as you can, to as broad an audience as you can.”
This blend of persistence and communication is critical. Staying the course requires not only internal tenacity but also the ability to articulate your mission repeatedly, to different audiences, over time. Especially in social entrepreneurship, where public support, funding, and community engagement are vital, the work often demands repeating your “why” in a way that continues to resonate.
Yet staying the course isn’t about blind stubbornness. It also involves emotional agility, or the ability to adapt your mindset and expectations when plans go awry. Aaron Mashano shared a vital insight from their mentor;
“One of the things I would love people to take away is something that I learned from my mentor and that is managing your own emotional expectations… I was spending more time feeling bad about why it didn’t work the first time. So I was losing money, losing relationships.”
This admission speaks to a common pitfall; letting the sting of failure derail not just the project, but personal well-being. Effective persistence means recognising that failures are data, not destiny. By adjusting emotional expectations, entrepreneurs can focus energy on recalibrating, rather than ruminating.
Persistence is also fuelled by a sense of personal responsibility; a refusal to let future generations inherit unresolved problems. Rochelle Courtenay, founder of Share the Dignity, illustrates this drive:
“I just knew… I do not want my daughters reading about this in 10 years thinking, ‘why has no one done anything about it?’ I just jumped in and thought, ‘let’s create a solution, because every sister is looking after another sister.’”
This is the persistence of purpose; the belief that action, even if imperfect, is better than inaction in the face of injustice.
Still, persistence does not mean losing one’s joy or lightness along the way. As Ben Pecotich reminds us:
“Even though we are working on serious things, it doesn’t mean we need to be serious all of the time.”
Maintaining a sense of humour, play, and perspective can be an antidote to the grind. It helps changemakers pace themselves, ensuring that the mission remains sustainable over the long haul.
In essence, persistence in social entrepreneurship is a disciplined practice; it’s about knowing when to push, when to pause, and how to stay connected to your ‘why’ without being consumed by it. It’s the art of staying in the game with a clear head, an open heart, and a willingness to adapt.
As Alex Hannant once pointed out in one of his workshops, it’s important for us to know, ‘when we need to kill our zombies’. Whilst persistence and grit are important, knowing when to change course, respond to the market and find the next steps towards true sustainability are very important.
In our final section, we’ll look at how these internal strengths; purpose, resilience, self-knowledge, and persistence, not only sustain individuals but can help build systemic impact that lasts beyond the founder themselves.
Social enterprise leader and serial entrepreneur Alex Hannant.
Creating a Sustainable Legacy: From Personal Resilience to Systemic Impact
At some point in every changemaker’s journey, the focus must shift from personal endurance to collective empowerment. The question becomes not just: “How can I keep going?” but “How can we create impact that outlives me… that endures beyond any one founder or initiative?”
Ultimately social entrepreneurship is about systemic impact and moving from being about individuals and founders to being about movements, ecosystems, and legacies is vital.
For many social entrepreneurs, the spark to build something greater than themselves comes from deeply personal experience.
Ally Kelly, reflecting on her motivation, shares:
“Long story short, I have a lived experience of mental illness within my household… I am a survivor of post-traumatic stress disorder, so I’ve gone through the system which taught me what gaps we have. On the pathway to seek help and get support, there are so many opportunities for improvement, and that creates the fire in my belly to want to do more.”
Ally’s story underscores an important truth: personal hardship can illuminate systemic gaps, and it’s this insight that drives changemakers to build solutions that aren’t just personal responses but scalable, structural shifts.
Similarly, Rich Harwood reflects on the impact of his early experiences with the healthcare system:
“I learned really quickly what it feels like to be invisible, to not be seen and heard, to be chewed up by a medical system that’s intending to actually heal you but did more harm than good. I lost my sense of dignity really early on and struggled for many years to regain my health. That experience has sat with me all these years.”
These reflections remind us that resilience and persistence are not ends in themselves. They’re foundations upon which empathy-driven systems change can be built. When founders root their work in lived experience, the solutions they create tend to be more inclusive, compassionate, and sustainable.
Yet, creating sustainable impact also means shifting the focus from being the voice to creating the channels through which others can speak and be heard. Sarah Davies AM puts it succinctly:
“It’s not about giving children a voice, they’ve got voices! What we’ve got to do is create channels to power for those voices to be heard.”
This is the essence of a sustainable legacy: not just leading, but building infrastructure for others to lead, speak, and create. It’s about designing organisations, networks, and platforms that decentralise power and ensure continuity, even when the original founder steps aside.
Of course, legacy is not just about structures; it’s about the cultural DNA of an organisation: the values, principles, and practices that endure. Founders who model self-knowledge, emotional resilience, and persistence embed these traits into their teams, cultivating leadership that mirrors these inner strengths.
And, crucially, sustainability means practicing what we preach: maintaining health, balance, and perspective so that leadership can endure. Impact is not created in a vacuum of sacrifice, it is cultivated through self-aware leadership that values longevity as much as immediacy.
The balance between gravitas and play, urgency and patience, is what ultimately sustains not just the work, but the people who drive it.
Moving Forward: A Call to Inner Work
Cultivating the inner changemaker isn’t optional, it’s foundational. Without purpose, resilience, self-knowledge, and persistence, social entrepreneurs risk burning out before they can effect real change. But when these inner traits are nurtured, they not only sustain the individual, they ripple outward, shaping teams, organisations, and systems.
For the next generation of changemakers, the invitation is clear: do the inner work as seriously as you do the external work. In doing so, you’ll not only build ventures, you’ll build legacies.
Building social impact is hard, messy, and often deeply personal. But the founders and leaders who sustain their work, and their wellbeing, aren’t just the grittiest. They are the most self-aware, the most purpose-driven, and the most committed to playing the long game.
Resilience, self-knowledge, and persistence are more than traits; they are practices. They are the quiet disciplines that shape changemakers into leaders who can weather setbacks, evolve through reflection, and continue amplifying impact in ways that endure beyond themselves.
If the world needs more changemakers, it also needs those changemakers to be whole, grounded, and ready. Doing the inner work is where that readiness begins.
