Susan Rockefeller Reflects on Entrepreneurship, Focus, and Knowing When to Ask for Help

Susan Rockefeller didn’t plan on building a media business. But as she developed her reputation as a film producer, philanthropist, and connector for sustainability innovators, the opportunity was clear. “As an entrepreneur, you want to look at where the white space is,” she says. Over the past decade, Rockefeller built, scaled, and sold her 10,000-subscriber newsletter, Musings—exiting the company last year on her terms, with its future in solid hands. Her secret? Maintaining a tight focus, making good use of her existing network, and knowing when to ask for help. “This was an outgrowth of what I felt needed to happen in a world where there is so much noise and so much distraction,” she says. “But you have to have a goal. It is about specificity, because you can’t be everything to everybody.

What were the roots of Musings? What gave you the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship—and, specifically, to launch a newsletter that highlights new businesses in the world of green products? It’s an unusual niche!

There was nothing coming into my inbox that was what I wanted. It started off very organically, as I was feeling the pulse of the sustainability field for so long. There were a lot of news bites and feel-good information, but not really anything about other entrepreneurs and solution-based companies that could move the needle on climate. That’s why I started it. It was a labor of love, a slow process of acquiring a very sticky list of people. We now have a 55% open rate with about a 10,000 person community.

As an entrepreneur, you need to find something that you think is different and where you can gain traction. How do you create a community, and then how can you monetize it?

Publishing and media are notoriously fickle businesses, and creating dedicated audiences can be a real challenge. But that was your strength: you had a specific target of both subject matter and audience, and a strong brand identity. How did you find that focus? How did you keep it?

I had decades of experience working in the nonprofit world and in agriculture and oceans, including 16 years on the board of Oceana. And I’d spent nearly 15 years traveling through Asia, doing work in sustainability through the platform that my husband and I created, Protect What Is Precious. We had three pillars: family, art, and nature. We would talk about the importance of those values to philanthropists and business people around the world. That became part of the Musings community. I’m also part of a film company, and many of my films are related to sustainability. My name was out there. You build a reputation based on the work that you’ve done prior.

I wanted to cut through the noise, and create something that would come into your inbox and you’d say, “Oh my God, I want to read this and be inspired, and feel that there’s hope to make the changes that are vital for our common future.” It’s not something that you could find in your other news channels.

It’s always interesting when a founder decides to move on. What sparked your desire to exit Musings? How did you go about the process?

It’s been over 10 years, and I’m at a stage of life where I wanted to free up some bandwidth to do other things. Time is the most precious thing we have.

I had three potential offers: one from a tech firm, one from an investment bank, and one from Blue Horizon, which is a portfolio of alternative proteins. When I met that team, I felt that they were most aligned with Musings, based on their mission. You have to ask: where is the company’s value proposition? Blue Horizon was something I could get behind.

I had a good track record at finding great companies in Musings. We did some analysis on the Musings profiles and found that within 12 to 18 months of my profiling the companies, they were either given huge investment, or were acquired. It was time to integrate that into something broader.

Are there particular resources—people, partners, educational tools, or tech—that you found helpful in this entrepreneurial process?

It really helped to have nonprofit partners. I worked with Parsons to vet fashion. I worked with MadeSafe to look at clean beauty and green chemistry. I worked with Manna Tree Partners, which is a food fund that is doing really interesting work on food systems change. I also worked with FoodSystem 6, which had a nonprofit incubator with really interesting programs.

Then it was exposure. I would speak at a conference on innovation and the environment and learn about something new, or ask questions of a private equity fund about their portfolio. Musings is like a three-dimensional resume, right? I’ve been asked to mentor and advise smaller startups, too.

What skills did you wish you had when you started Musings? What skills would you recommend early-stage founders focus on developing?

Find people that fill the gaps that you have. I don’t know how to create a website. So I hired people that can do the website. It’s like being an orchestra conductor. I would say to founders—especially female founders—you really need to reach out. During the acquisition process, I reached out to an expert in email lists to understand the value of what I’d built.

I worked with someone very good at analytics who helped me with my deck for the presentation. I also hired someone with a business background to help me close the deal. And then you find the right lawyer that does the contracts. It’s about creating a constellation of trusted advisors that can help you, because you can’t do it all.

You also have to find organizations like Entity where you can gain skills. I took a course at the Cambridge Judge School of Business, on sustainability and business. You need to have continuous learning. Now, there are also some great tools with AI—I just created a deck with an AI tool in 20 seconds!

It’s staying on top of the tech tools, knowing who are the people that have more expertise than you, and realizing that the only way that you’re going to move forward is through collaboration. It’s all about the team.

What is your biggest piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, especially women?

As an older person, I wish for all women to find your joy and be really upfront about what it is that you want to do—and then ask for the help that you need. It is a joy to mentor people, too. And then it becomes a beautiful cycle of reciprocity, where I learn so much from young people that have different skill sets and different ways of understanding the world.

Any entrepreneur, anybody that’s on their journey, should ask for advice or mentorship. You will be surprised at who will come; the doors will open if you ask.