Less friction, more joy.

Every Thursday, I send you a letter. Each message includes 1 approach, tool or framework, 3 ways to use it, and 1 question to help you try it. The small weekly shifts make running your business lighter, and you steadier as you grow it.

Written by Virpi Tervonen: 20 years building four businesses, over a decade coaching founder-CEOs.

What Makes a Good Entrepreneur

To me, "the good entrepreneur" is not a standard to measure yourself against. It is a belief about what this path can be. Being an entrepreneur means freedom rather than titles: seeing what does not yet exist and turning original ideas into new value for others. It means taking full responsibility, carrying more risk than most would choose, and earning from results alone. And I believe all of this can happen without costing you your life, your health or your relationships. That is the good entrepreneur I write about, and write for: someone building a joyful, rich life, supported by the business they build.

The TGE Newsletter

One email worth opening, every week. Practical thinking for building a business that supports your life, not one that consumes it.

Read the letters

Tools & Frameworks

Simple, tested tools for running an entrepreneurial business well. Built to help you lead steadily, make clearer decisions, protect your time, and grow at a pace you can sustain.

TGE Membership

Join us for quarterly workshops, each built around one theme that matters: better thinking, calm productivity, creativity, and how to grow new ideas. Members get access to all of them.

Who's writing?

I'm Virpi and, like you, I'm on this entrepreneurial path, constantly exploring, learning and figuring things out as the journey continues.

I was a biomedical research scientist with a PhD. In 2005, my desire for more freedom grew: freedom to choose how I worked, with whom, when and where. So I quit my job to work from home. I have my daughter to thank for that. I wanted to be at home and more available for her while I earned an income. The truth is I wasn't as available as I had imagined I would be, and as her mother it still feels heavy to recall some of those early years.

For over two decades I've been an entrepreneur. My ventures have spanned digital marketing and small business consulting, which grew into executive coaching and building custom solutions for businesses.

By nature I'm a strategic, futures-focused thinker. I like to understand things deeply and see how the pieces connect, and where they don't, to find the gap and work out how to bridge it. But none of it means much to me on its own. What I value most is the people I get to think alongside, the close, honest relationships where real work and real life happen.

While I'm drawn to the ideas, tools and frameworks that help you see things more clearly, expand your thinking or shift your perspective, it's rarely just about how you build and run a company. It's mostly about who you are while you do it, and how you lead, decide and feel.