Podcast Episodes

You can listen to all podcast episodes here. Learn about some of the most important topics raised by today's aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Filter

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Matching Results: 100

No results found for your search term, try something else.

Ep. 51: How a Patent Can Protect Your Idea

Protect your business idea.

Getting a Patent can be a complicated and expensive process, but it can protect your idea as you work on bringing it to market. Just ask Becca Davison, the CEO of UnbuckleMe, who got a patent early on in her small business journey. Becca explains how she came up with UnbuckleMe, why she decided to patent her idea early on, and what that process looked like for someone who was new to entrepreneurship. You’ll also hear from Colleen Chien, a professor at Berkeley Law School and the founder of the Paper Prisons and Diversity Pilots Initiatives. Colleen digs deeper into how a patent can protect your idea and breaks down everything you need to know before and during your patent application. Learn whether you should even get a patent, how you can protect your idea from copycats, and what the patenting process looks like.

In this episode you’ll hear:

(00:38) What is a patent?

(02:29) How Becca came up with UnbuckleMe

(05:28) The different types of Patents

(06:45) The process of filing a patent

(11:46) Why copycats can still show up even after you get a patent

(13:28) How to protect your idea from copycats

(14:41) The difference between copycats and competitors

Takeaways:

1 - Just because you can get a patent doesn’t mean you should. Colleen says that you should think about how it’ll benefit your business because a patent is expensive and the process could take a few years.

2 - If you’ve decided that a patent is the way to go, then you need to do a lot of research. First you need to find out if your product is novel and non-obvious by looking through existing patents and applications. You can look through online databases like the USPTO and Google Patents or you can hire someone to do it for you. Then you’ll have to decide whether you should get a design patent or a utility patent by figuring out what’s unique about your idea.

3 - If your budget is limited, the first step to the patent application could be filing a non-provisional patent. Colleen says that this patent acts as a placeholder for your idea and gives you 12 months to decide if you want to turn it into a full patent. A non-provisional patent or a pending patent application can also allow you to collaborate with manufacturers or do market research without being worried that someone might try to steal your idea.

4 - Unfortunately, having a patent doesn’t stop the copycats. But there are many ways you can protect your idea or product. Colleen suggests leveraging trademarks and copyright, and you can also try to broaden your patent claims like Becca did.

5 - Be open to healthy competition. It’s important to protect your idea from people who try to steal it, but there will be similar products on the market that will compete with yours. Instead of trying to take down every product that resembles yours, focus on making your product the best one on the market.

00:00:03

Andrea Marquez: There's a lot of benefits that come with getting a patent. It gives your product legal protection, it makes you look more marketable, and it lets potential investors, partners, and customers know that your product is unique and valuable. But a lot goes into applying for a patent. So where do you even start? When should you file a patent? And does a patent really protect your product from people who try to copy it?

Hi, I'm Andrea Marquez, and This is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today, we'll be breaking down everything you need to know about patents, whether you even need one, and the process of filing it.

00:00:46

Colleen Chien: A patent is a legal document granted by the government, in this case, the Patent and Trademark Office, that gives the owner the exclusive right to make, use, sell, import, and distribute their invention for a certain period of time. So what it is is it's not the right to practice your invention, but the right to exclude others from using or profiting from it without your permission. It's sort of like a fence. It keeps people away from your property, but you still need to commercialize your invention if you want to make money on it.

00:01:12

Andrea Marquez: That's Colleen Chien, a professor at Berkeley Law School.

00:01:16

Colleen Chien: Before I started teaching, I worked in patent law for several years, both as a patent prosecutor, writing patents, but also providing advice to businesses on their patent strategies. I've also worked in public service. I worked in the White House on patent issues. So today, I'm speaking in my own capacity, but I just wanted to let you know I've been around the block a bit when it comes to patents.

00:01:33

Andrea Marquez: Colleen is the person to go to for anything patent related. She'll be explaining the process and giving us insights throughout the episode. It's important for me to mention that none of the things mentioned on this episode should be taken as legal advice. We are here to provide with general information. So before you do anything, please see qualified professional counsel on your specific matter. The hiring of an attorney is super important, so don't make the decision lightly or based solely on anything we cover today on this episode or any other, for that matter.

So now, before we talk to Colleen, let's hear from Becca Davison, the CEO and founder of Unbuckleme, a small tool that helps unlock a child's car seat. Right now, Becca has six patents, so her idea is pretty original and unique. Before we get into why Becca has six patents, let's dig into how she came up with the idea. As most businesses do, Becca got into entrepreneurship, because there was a gap in the market that she could fill.

00:02:33

Rebecca Davison: I had my first daughter in 2015, and my mom graciously offered to help me out with childcare.

00:02:38

Andrea Marquez: But when she was showing her mom how to unbuckle her daughter's car seat, she realized that her mom lacked the strength to do it.

00:02:45

Rebecca Davison: And we kind of looked at each other and thought, “Well, if you can't unbuckle the car seat, you can't take my daughter safely out of the house. How are we going to solve this problem?”

00:02:51

Andrea Marquez: Her mom settled on spending time with her granddaughter at home. But as Becca's daughter got older, her mom started to realize that she was missing on key memories that she could be making with her granddaughter, so she relies on her experience as an occupational therapist to come up with a solution.

00:03:07

Rebecca Davison: She designed an adaptive tool that is just a C shape tool. It's very simple, and it uses leverage. So if you think of like an old fashioned nutcracker, it just wraps around the button, that's flat on the five point harness, and it applies leverage to make it 50% easier to unbuckle. And so, it was the difference for her of being unable to do it herself with her thumb pressure and some arthritis at the base of her thumb and then, applying some leverage with this tool. And she was very easily able to unbuckle it.

00:03:35

Andrea Marquez: And when Becca saw her mom's solution...

00:03:37

Rebecca Davison: I thought, “She can't be the only person on the planet that's having the same struggle, so let's sort of explore it and see if maybe we can start a business at this point.” So I think her first response was like, “Oh, I can make a few more for your friends.” But we quickly started thinking, “Well, maybe this product should exist in the marketplace for other people to be able to use.”

00:03:57

Andrea Marquez: The first thing that they decided to do was refine the prototype that her mom created.

00:04:02

Rebecca Davison: She spent her career making splints for patients with disabilities and making adaptive tools, using leverage and rubber bands and things like that. That's what her whole career was. So to use some leftover splint material, it's very pliable. It heats up, and you can bend and stretch it. And then, it hardens when it cools. And so, it's a perfect prototyping material actually, because you can just test different features.

00:04:21

Andrea Marquez: And they tested everything.

00:04:23

Rebecca Davison: I think we probably had, no joke, over 75 prototypes of just, “What if the lever arm was longer? What if it was taller? What if it was open wider?” At one point, I think my mom got screws or hinges. We were trying so many different things, thinking, “Well, if we're going to actually invest the money into bringing this to market, we'd better make it perfect.”

00:04:40

Andrea Marquez: And once they finally settled on a prototype that was up to their standards, they decided to get market feedback and research.

00:04:46

Rebecca Davison: I think that's a super important step for early entrepreneurs is to really validate your concept and your idea. So we went to a trade show. We talked to a lot of industry experts. We actually gave out a lot of samples to people and got feedback and said, “What would you change about it? And also, what would you pay for it?” And so, that feedback was super important, and having all those prototypes really helped us get a lot of feedback in the early days. We wanted a product that customers loved, and that was just the driving goal and it continues to be our driving goal. We want customers to be so happy with this product.

00:05:14

Andrea Marquez: Becca knew that she had to protect her idea before she went to market, so they filed for a provisional patent a few months after they came up with her idea. And if you don't know what that is, Colleen says that it's the first step to filing a patent.

00:05:28

Colleen Chien: A provisional patent is kind of a temporary application filed with the US PTO. It's inexpensive in the sense that you don't have it go through the entire process, and it's great, because it allows you to claim patent pending status on your invention for up to a year. When you go from provisional to non-provisional, you're basically entering the formal application process and starting the examination. And that's generally for a utility patent. And a utility patent protects these functional aspects of your invention. It's what most people think about when they talk about patents.

00:05:56

Andrea Marquez: And there's also other types of patents, like the design patent.

00:06:00

Colleen Chien: Which cover our new original and ornamental designs for articles of manufacturer.

00:06:04

Andrea Marquez: And even a plant patent.

00:06:06

Colleen Chien: For new and distinct plant varieties.

00:06:10

Andrea Marquez: So we've already mentioned that Becca's product was unique and original, which is a requirement for your idea to be patentable. But in order to find out if your idea is novel and non-obvious, you have to do a lot of research.

00:06:25

Colleen Chien: It's about looking through existing patents, published applications, and also just looking around in the field and trying to understand, “Has this idea been discussed before? Has it been put into a product or sold?” If it has, then you're not going to be able to patent that idea in that form anymore. You'll probably try to look for some of the more unique elements of what you're doing. So you can start with online databases, like the USPTO or Google Patents or you can hire a professional to conduct the search for you.

00:06:49

Andrea Marquez: But Colleen says that just because you can apply for a patent doesn't mean you should.

00:06:53

Colleen Chien: I think you always want to start with a business need and what the business purpose of the patent is. Patents are expensive to apply for, and then, going through the process can take several years. So if you are looking for some kind of thing that you can hold in your hand, negotiate with immediately, a patent is not typically going to serve that purpose.

00:07:12

Andrea Marquez: But if you decide that you do want to get a patent, there's a few things you need to do before you start the filing process. First, you need to figure out which patent to get.

00:07:21

Colleen Chien: Is it the design that's really unique and unusual about your product? Or is it really some idea or new way of doing things that you're bringing to bear?

00:07:30

Andrea Marquez: Then you have to think about which patent will fit within your budget.

00:07:34

Colleen Chien: You can still start by filing a non-provisional patent, which is kind of like a placeholder. It's a patent application, but it's a way to say, “This is my idea. I'm going to stake out this territory, and then, I'll decide whether I want to turn it into a full blown patent at the end of the year.”

00:07:49

Andrea Marquez: That's what Becca did when she first applied for her patent. She says that they were still refining their prototypes and trying to figure out what they wanted their product to look like. So they filed for a provisional patent.

00:08:01

Rebecca Davison: Which, in the US, gives you 12 months to continue to sort of iterate around the margin of your design before you submit a non-provisional patent that gets actually examined by the US patent office.

00:08:12

Andrea Marquez: And Becca says that they needed all the time they could get, especially since they were new to entrepreneurship.

00:08:18

Rebecca Davison: So it's going to take us four times longer than it could take anyone else to pop on the market tomorrow with this product. So we needed to sort of buy ourselves some time in a sense and make sure that we had protected our idea to give us time to go do the legwork and make sure, again, that we had the most perfect product and that we had designed it and marketed it in the right way that we wanted to.

00:08:34

Andrea Marquez: Colleen also says that filing for a provisional patent is a great way to protect your idea, if you're not going to be working on it alone.

00:08:41

Colleen Chien: Having that patent or even that patent filing in your pocket gives you the confidence to have those conversations and say, “Hey, let's work together on this, but I want to make sure my rights are respected.” And that can allow there to be a tradable asset for that patent-holder or that patent applicant, that then they can use to negotiate with the other parties to, again, bring this to market. And it just provides that trust and that sense of confidence that that patent applicant or patent-holder can bring into the process, that there is something outside of the negotiation that's protectable by the patent-holder.

00:09:13

Andrea Marquez: So just filing a patent application can give you some peace of mind. Having an early filing date can work towards your advantage, if someone tries to copy your idea, but a patent application doesn't give you immediate legal protection. You could only enforce a patent after the patent is granted.

00:09:28

Colleen Chien: That's why I always recommend that using non-disclosure agreements and other ways of withholding information if you need to are going to be smart ways to also protect your idea when sharing it with potential partners or manufacturers. But I think it's important to realize that patents, as much as they can be used to exclude others from copying your idea, they can also be used to include others in your process and collaborate with them in bringing your idea to market.

00:09:54

Andrea Marquez: Okay, so after you've done your research and verified that your idea is original, you can finally start filing your patent. We've already said that the first step could be to file a non-provisional patent. It'll protect your idea as you work on it. Then if you realize that your idea is gaining traction in the market, Colleen says it's time to convert that provisional patent to a non-provisional patent.

00:10:18

Colleen Chien: Once you're in that range of filing an actual application, you'll go back and forth with the patent office over several rounds, in most cases. Your application will be reviewed by an examiner, and then, there'll be a back and forth, some suggestions with ways you can amend or make your patent claim stronger. And then, hopefully, eventually, in about three quarters of the cases, you'll get your patent. Once you get your patent, you'll have that exclusive right to your invention for a set period of time. You can continue to pay maintenance fees and have your patent live out its full life to 20 years from the date of filing.

00:10:50

Andrea Marquez: And once you have your patent, the first thing you should do is celebrate.

00:10:55

Rebecca Davison: I think we have a video of my mom and I popping champagne, and we were like, “We have the patent. It's so exciting. It's great. Everything's going to be good now.”

00:11:02

Andrea Marquez: Until someone tries to copy your product.

00:11:06

Rebecca Davison: I think what really surprised us was seeing some of the competitive products that popped up that looked identical to ours, but perhaps had just changed the smallest of details, things that were so nuanced and specific, that doesn't change the function of the product at all, but it was just copying our idea with a small tweak, but then, they could sort of use that language to say, “Well, they said that the top arm was longer than the bottom.” So you sort of get into this song and dance of what words you've included in your claims. And that was shocking to me, because I thought, “Well, what do you mean? This is the identical product. They've just taken the smallest interpretation of words.” And I do believe you can take someone to court, and you can say, “This is basically the same thing,” and you can make all those arguments. But we didn't have the resources to do that.

00:11:47

Andrea Marquez: Copycats can still exist, even if you have a patent. Colleen says that it's important to remember that a patent protects the idea, not the expression of the idea in terms of product.

00:11:58

Colleen Chien: So you can have a patent over a particular aspect of a product, and if the copycat doesn't copy that particular aspect, but copies other parts, then it will still bear a resemblance potentially to the original item that's being sold. So that would be a situation where I would consider it to potentially be uncomfortably close, even though it's not infringing.

00:12:19

Andrea Marquez: There are still ways to protect your product, like leveraging trademark and copyright.

00:12:24

Colleen Chien: Are they trading on your brand or copying some aspect that identifies you to the consumer? That could be a trademark violation. If they use your exact words or a source code, that could be a copyright violation. Notably, with copyright, you don't have to file for it. It automatically exists. So even if you haven't filed for formal protection, you can still register your copyright. You might have a copyright claim. You can go through process to apply for a trademark, even after you've been putting it in use or you intend to use it.

00:12:53

Andrea Marquez: We can't stress enough the importance of getting the right kind of help.

00:12:57

Rebecca Davison: I definitely recommend anybody going down this path to work with an IP attorney, because they are very familiar with this process and how to craft your claims in a way that broadens your coverage as much as possible. And I think patents are so important to small businesses, because we don't have the big resources of big corporate companies. So the patents that we do have have given us a bit of a moat to succeed and have been really critical to our success.

00:13:20

Andrea Marquez: It's also important to remember that there is a difference between copycats and competitors.

00:13:25

Rebecca Davison: I don't mean to come across and say that we don't welcome competition, because I do think, if people come up with new ways of doing things that are different, I think that's fair game. And I would argue that we were probably not the first. There was another tool on the market before us, and we saw it and it didn't work for my mom. And so, we aren't the first either. So I do think that there's a healthy space for innovation.

00:13:45

Andrea Marquez: So it's important to be open-minded about the competitive landscape. There can be healthy competition.

00:13:51

Rebecca Davison: And I think that's hard sometimes for entrepreneurs to recognize is they want to be very territorial about their invention, but you're solving a problem. You're going to find your target market. You're going to find those people that really, really want your product and really resonate with your story, and that's really all you need to focus on is how to succeed and how to make your business succeed. I think some of the legal stuff can be distracting, and if you focus too much on competitors, I think it can take your focus off what really matters, which is your own business and how to grow it.

00:14:21

Andrea Marquez: I'm so glad Becca pointed that out. Protecting your idea is important, but don't get too lost in the legalities of it all. That time is better spent on improving your business, and if you're considering getting a patent, Colleen says that right now is the perfect time to do it.

00:14:36

Colleen Chien: I think there's been a realization that we really need all ideas to be out there and to come to market as much as possible. And good ideas can come from many places, and I think, for small business owners, there may be that desire to ensure that your invention, if you're putting out in the world, it can be something that you can control to some degree. And that's what a patent can help you do.

00:14:55

Andrea Marquez: I think anything law related and business could get a little overwhelming, but Colleen and Becca did a great job in simplifying the process and explaining what a patent is. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry, we've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. That's it for this episode of This Is Small Business brought to you by Amazon.

Reach out to us at thisissmallbusiness@ amazon. com to tell us what you're up to, or let me know what you think about this episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier if you do it through your phone. And if you liked what you heard, I hope you'll share this with anyone else who needs to hear this. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe you already have your small business up and running and you're ready for the next step, a super valuable resource that can help you is the Amazon Small Business Academy. Take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www. smallbusiness. amazon.

Until next time, I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta luego and thanks for listening. This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by JAR Audio.

Ep. 50: Why Public Relations Matter

Learn about public relations for your business.

Accidents happen, we make missteps, sometimes our brands are tarnished. So how do we prepare for the inevitable and mitigate impact? Indya ‘Icy’ Wright, the Founder and CEO of Artiste House, a PR firm that prioritizes diversity, inclusivity, and representation, has some answers. According to Wright, “all we can do is try to minimize the results of what happened, rectify it, and if things go well, move forward.”

In this episode you’ll hear:

(02:35) How do you figure out what your story is?

(05:22) How do you determine which issues to take a stance on publicly?

(07:52) You never know when a crisis will strike, how do you prepare?

(08:27) After a crisis, how do you deal with the potential loss of business?

Takeaways:

1 - Your story is one of the most important assets you have. Make sure you know what it is. Then create your content around what you have to say. We connect with the people behind the brand, so don’t be shy.

2 - Before you invest in public relations (PR), know what your goals are. If it’s improving invisibility, say yes to as many opportunities as you can. One of the few exceptions is if the offering brand’s values doesn’t align with your own. Another is creating controversy for attention’s sake.

3 - Being true to yourself and your brand will help you decide when and if you want to take a vocal stand on issues. Tap into who you want to serve and what matters most to you.

4 - If you find yourself in the middle of a PR nightmare, bring in crisis management. You’ll need to assess impact, take accountability and most importantly, outline actionable steps toward preventing the same thing from happening again. Another smart step is having a crisis management plan in place before you need it.

5 - PR crises are inevitable. No matter how well loved you are or how careful you are, missteps happen. Plan for it. And remember, the customers who stick with you through the hard times are the ones who are truly invested in you and your brand. Once you know who they are, you can focus your messaging to them.

00:00:01

Andrea Marquez: Whether you're just starting your business or you're well into your entrepreneurial journey, one thing's for sure: your public image matters. But how do you build and maintain that? If you're not sure how to manage your brand's public relations, or PR, then this episode is for you.

I'm Andrea Marquez, and this is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today, we'll be talking about PR, how to get started and things to keep in mind for you and your business.

00:00:30

Indya Wright: When you think of smaller businesses or even just different nonprofits, they can invest in a public-relations agency nine times out of ten, and then the work that they're doing gets ignored and then they can't raise funds for the important causes that they serve. And so I love being able to provide that service, a quality service, but prioritizing the people that otherwise get ignored.

00:00:51

Andrea Marquez: That's Indya Wright, the founder and CEO of Artiste House, a PR firm that prioritizes diversity, inclusivity and representation. Indya has been working in PR since she was just 14 years old.

00:01:05

Indya Wright: Being a DC native, I was in something called the Summer Youth Employment Program, so I've got to see firsthand creatives doing their projects, advocates doing their projects... I've always been in this field and didn't realize it.

00:01:17

Andrea Marquez: Indya eventually worked in banking and the legal sector, but those early experiences stayed with her.

00:01:24

Indya Wright: And while in my free time I was amplifying the work people were doing, I never considered that something that could be a career for me. But I finally had this random aha moment after quitting my job at the Superior Court. Like, “Okay, what next?” Because I had no backup plan, no money saved at all. My first thought was to tell my story.

00:01:45

Andrea Marquez: And two weeks after quitting her job, she ended up in Chicago, telling her story to Mark Cuban and Steve Harvey on Steve Harvey Show.

00:01:54

Indya Wright: They gave me a seed of a thousand dollars with the caveat that this money has to go towards your dream, and honestly, I did not know what my dream was, what my thing was, and so I just went back to doing what I did best in my free time: amplifying people. But what happened from that public exposure was that people that had the budget to invest found me, hired me to help tell their stories, and so that's honestly how my company was born.

00:02:20

Andrea Marquez: So Indya knows from experience how important PR is, because telling her story is how she managed to start her own business. But before you can get your story out there, first you need to figure out what your story is and incorporate it into your brand.

00:02:36

Indya Wright: Everything you do, consider the story you want to tell, and that's going to reflect in the content you share online, where your product or service is available, the people you serve. That all ties to the story of your brand. When you think about PR, what I find is a lot of small businesses think, “Oh, I'm not there yet. I don't have the sales. I don't have the client base. I don't have this. I don't have that.” All this imposter syndrome kicks in. But the reality is it really, truly is about the story, and more often than not, people are more interested in the people behind the brand than the brand itself. It's less about the product or service, more about the person and the mission, and I feel like that's across the board. Any industry, any brand, any goal. Who are you serving? Why are you serving them? I feel like that's the hook that makes things newsworthy.

00:03:25

Andrea Marquez: Once you've answered these questions, Indya says that the first thing you should focus on when you're trying to amplify your brand story is building community.

00:03:33

Indya Wright: They become your biggest supporters, your audience, your fan base. They continue to help amplify the news that you generate for yourself. So I definitely think any business, any size, big or small, should start with community-building and nurturing their desired audience.

00:03:47

Andrea Marquez: Indya also says that you need to consider what your goals are before you invest in PR. And if your goal, like most small businesses, is to make sure everyone knows who you are, then you need to say yes to as many opportunities as you can.

00:04:02

Indya Wright: I feel like in the beginning, the more visibility, the better. The one exception to that is if that brand's values completely are not aligned with your own. Then it makes sense to not want to introduce yourself to their audience. But if it's just a random preference thing, “I don't think my audience is here,” you never know who may take interest in your brand, in your product. There's different facets to everyone.

00:04:29

Andrea Marquez: And there's one more reason to say no to an opportunity.

00:04:32

Indya Wright: There are some PR agencies that believe in using scandal to get the community talking. Personally, in my career, I would never advise a client to do that. I do not believe all press is good press. I prioritize the mission and the importance of what they do.

00:04:50

Andrea Marquez: I think it's so important that Indya pointed that out, so I'll say it again: not all press is good press. Visibility is important, but you need to make sure that you're reaching the right audience. Indya talked about how storytelling and community- building are important. People connect to the story behind the brand, and we see that when customers get upset if their favorite brand doesn't comment on an issue that they feel is important. So how do you figure out when to enter a conversation? Indya says that it all depends on how your brand is positioned.

00:05:21

Indya Wright: So if it's a situation where you're just being true to yourself, true to your brand, and you've been mission-based at the onset of creating this brand, it's not out of place for you to be vocal. So I think it depends on what means most to you. Is it about being accessible to everyone, or are you not afraid to niche down and really tap into who you want to serve and what matters most to you?

So, for example, let's say it's a major bank, a bank that serves clients nationally, globally. They may want to stay out of the conversation. They may want to stay quiet. It really has nothing to do with the clients they serve, the work that they do. But there may be, let's say, a small minority-owned bank whose community is impacted by something happening in the world. It may be important for them to be vocal about it because the people they serve may be waiting to hear from them.

00:06:10

Andrea Marquez: And if you end up with a PR nightmare on your hands, that's when you turn to crisis management.

00:06:15

Indya Wright: The first step would be assessing the impact, what was said, and then taking accountability for that. And then also the biggest piece to crisis management that puts clients, customers, viewers, at ease: you always have to outline actionable steps that you will take going forward, because an apology is just words. People want to see how you're going to prevent something like this from happening going forward. You have to be vocal. You have to display actionable steps. Otherwise, people will feel like you're not taking the crisis seriously, and it really hurts public trust.

00:06:49

Andrea Marquez: So assess the impact, take accountability, and lay out actionable steps to show your customers that this won't happen again. But that's a lot harder than it sounds, especially if you need to address a crisis as quickly as possible. So Indya says that having a crisis-management plan before a crisis happens is essential, no matter how big or small your business is.

00:07:11

Indya Wright: Who do we contact when crisis strikes? Who's going to be the front-facing spokesperson when crisis strikes? Who's going to approve the messaging to make sure we're all in agreement? And how soon do we respond to this crisis? The best course of action is to stay ready so you don't have to get ready. Have a crisis plan. Even if you're at a place in your career where you can't invest in full-time public relations, or crisis management, you can reach out to a PR firm to say, “Hey, we would like help developing a crisis-management plan just in case so that we have this.” That's another affordable option as well.

00:07:43

Andrea Marquez: Do you think every crisis can be navigated? Because I think about this a lot when I'm on social media. I'm like, “What can they do?”

00:07:52

Indya Wright: All you can do is mitigate impact. Unfortunately, even the best of professionals in the communication space, we cannot completely prevent or protect people from crisis. All we can do is try to minimize the results of what happened, rectify it, and if things go well, move forward. That's the result of good crisis management. It's reflecting, adapting, and potentially moving forward.

00:08:20

Andrea Marquez: I know hearing this is scary, that it's impossible to get it right, but the plus side is that staying true to your values can be good for business.

00:08:28

Indya Wright: There's never going to be a perfect answer, a perfect solution for anything. There never will be. And I think honestly, there's peace in realizing that that's okay, because when you potentially lose part of your audience or potentially lose clients or lose supporters, they weren't aligned with you and your brand. And I think the key to being profitable, the key to building brand awareness, the key to getting out there, is making sure people that are really invested in you and what you're doing find you. And I think by weeding out those that aren't, it makes it easier for you to really hone in on the messaging for your audience.

00:09:06

Andrea Marquez: That was Indya Wright, the founder and CEO of Artiste House. Ending on a positive note, even though I hope none of us have to go through a PR crisis, I feel a little more comfortable knowing what steps I should take in case that happens.

We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. That's it for this episode of This Is Small Business, brought to You by Amazon.

Make sure to subscribe and tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode, and please, please, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier if you do it through your phone. Or send us an email at thisissmallbusiness@ amazon. com.

Until next time, I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta luego, and thanks for listening. This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by Jar Audio.

Ep. 49: Do You Have What It Takes to Own Your Own Business?

Learn what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

If there's one thing we’ve learned over the many episodes of this show, it’s that owning and operating your own business is hard. You have to overcome challenges you didn’t even know existed. Thinking of becoming an entrepreneur or you’re wondering if you should stick it out? We have Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts, scholar, speaker and consultant, who studies the science of maximizing human potential, to guide us through. “I do think for every market need, for every human desire, there is an entrepreneur who is inspired and equipped to meet that need and to help for people to connect with that desire”And Pamela Wirth, of Hello Health, will share what she’s learned on her path to entrepreneurship. Learn from an expert and those who have been there!

In this episode you’ll hear:

(03:49) Why connecting with others is one of the most important traits of an entrepreneur(05:23) What qualities you need to be an entrepreneur

(08:17) If you can't go all in on your business because you need the financial security of a 9 to 5, how else can you start your business journey?

(10:24) How do you start a business if you have too much on your plate?

(12:56) An entrepreneur is also a leader, so what qualities do you need to be a great leader?

(15:38) What are some hurdles that entrepreneurs might have to overcome when they're thinking about starting a business?

(18:45) What are some of the qualities you need to help you get through the tough times?

Takeaways:

1 - As an entrepreneur you need to be able to connect with people, whether that’s customers or employees. Running a successful business requires identifying your market then meeting people’s needs. Look to fill a gap in the market or even better yet, create a new one.

2 - Think long and hard about your ability to manage risk and then how to work within your parameters. You can start small while still working full-time, and grow incrementally while continually assessing the risk. Your business doesn’t need to be all or nothing.

3 - If you are already feeling maxed out with what’s on your plate, think of ways to build a business around what you’re already doing. Your business can be an extension of the knowledge you have and the work being done.

4 - As an entrepreneur, you’ll need to be a leader. A big part of that is understanding what motives some people may not motivate others. Be flexible and agile in your leadership.

5 - Play to your strengths. Figure out what only you can bring to the table. Once you know what you’re good at, continue to develop those skills by asking for feedback then leverage that in the business you are creating.

6 - You don’t have to have all the answers before you start. Be open to listening and learning along the way. While it’s good to learn from the mistakes of others, you are also free to do things differently.

7 - Having passion and commitment will get you through the tough times. Because there will inevitably be some. Pay attention to the good times in order to keep finessing what you’re doing.

00:00:04

Andrea Marquez: Hi, this is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. I started this podcast because I wanted to learn more about small businesses and how entrepreneurs do it. Through my many conversations, what stands out is the dedication, the drive, the commitment and unwavering conviction it takes to do this, to be an entrepreneur.

But of course, there's more to it than that. Running your small business requires so many hacks. That's why I truly believe this is one of the most important conversations that needs to be had early on in your journey. Do you have what it takes to start and run a business of your own?

For this episode, we're going to explore this question and look at how to prepare yourself for taking the leap and opening your own business. And if you've already done so, you'll hear tips for hanging in there. To dig into this question, I have organizational psychologist and consultant, Laura Morgan Roberts. But first, let's hear from Pamela Wirth Barnhill, who like many entrepreneurs, has seen her share of struggles.

00:01:15

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: I had to sell a car and spend an incredible amount of money getting to where I'm at.

00:01:19

Andrea Marquez: She's the CEO and founder of Hello Health based in Arizona.

00:01:24

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: Hello Health is supplements for brain, gut and immune health, as well as we are very shortly in early 2024, rolling out cost-effective lab testing for brain, gut and immune disorders. We're going to also be introducing more of a community because a safe place to be able to connect with others is really important, and so that's a big priority of ours.

00:01:46

Andrea Marquez: Long before Hello Health, Pamela knew at her core that she was an entrepreneur, but she didn't know where to direct that energy until her son got sick.

00:01:54

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: Around the age of five and a half, six years old, started baby talking, crawling eyes, constantly dilated, devoid of all emotion, would wash his hands 30, 40 times a day, would enter and exit rooms in a certain manner. He had shoulder shrugs and eye tics and head mannerisms.

00:02:10

Andrea Marquez: After multiple trips to different doctors and diagnoses that didn't quite fit, Pam finally found a treatment plan that made sense to her.

00:02:18

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: And the doctor says, “So we need to fix his gut.”

00:02:21

Andrea Marquez: It wasn't easy, but Pamela stuck to it, and her trouble accessing the tests and knowhow in supplements needed to help heal her son is what started her on her path to opening her own business. You are not the first person who has been given a diagnosis for a loved one. You not only went through this whole journey, you took it a step further and decided to do something about this. When did you feel confident to pursue this particular idea?

00:02:48

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: I totally had imposter syndrome for years. I probably had this idea for three or four years before I actually started acting on it, and it just kept eating at me because I kept talking myself out of it and I was like, “Oh, it's going to be too expensive. It can take too much time. How are we going to do this? Am I really good enough? Well, there's already brands out there. Well, they don't exactly do this, so maybe I should.” There was nothing out there that was really talking to me where I was at, and I figured if there's nothing talking to me, there must be a hole talking to others too.

00:03:21

Andrea Marquez: I think this is a golden ticket for starting a business. Life leads you to a gap in the market, which plants an idea that just won't go away. And it's interesting that Pamela is saying nothing was speaking to her where she was at. It's something our next guest finds incredibly important. Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts is scholar, speaker and consultant working within the social sciences. She says the ability to connect is one of the most essential traits of an entrepreneur.

00:03:49

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: For many people, it's the socio emotional skills, to be able to connect with others. We say this phrase all the time, it feels passe at this point, but meet people where they are. I think that practice is paramount for any leader. It's also paramount for any entrepreneur, a small business owner. You have to understand what kinds of needs people have when they're coming as a member of your team, when they're coming as a client or a customer of your business and the unique strengths and skills that you bring that can help to meet whatever need they have in that moment.

00:04:32

Andrea Marquez: Okay, understanding people's needs and then meeting them is foundational in small business ownership. But is there such a thing as the ideal entrepreneur?

00:04:41

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: I don't think that there is an ideal entrepreneur across the board. I do think for every market need, for every human desire, there is an entrepreneur who is inspired and equipped to meet that need and to help for people to connect with that desire. So as long as you know what market you're trying to support, that you're trying to engage, that you're trying to ignite and activate, you can become an entrepreneur who will be best equipped to serve them.

00:05:18

Andrea Marquez: So understanding the market you're entering is essential, but what sort of qualities do we need?

00:05:23

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: Let's start with your capabilities. What is it that you can do very well that would help you to develop the product or service that would be of interest, that would be of need to other people? I'd start there. If you don't have the capability, it's not a deal breaker. In my area of business, which is consulting, coaching, strategic advising, I can invest in developing my skills and my expertise in that domain so that I can then provide high quality services to others. But it's pretty hard to build a business if you don't have some level of expertise and you've not invested some time and effort into cultivating or refining your skill set.

00:06:06

Andrea Marquez: Right. You need to have the skills to be able to offer top service. What else?

00:06:11

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: The secret sauce is finding a way to design or deliver a product or service that is not already available in the marketplace. It's not about replication. It's not about imitation. It's really about embracing what is distinct, authentic and unique about your vision and your approach, and learning how to align that with the market's needs. Even better, creating a new market that doesn't already exist, but aligning that around your ability to differentiate.

00:06:45

Andrea Marquez: Don't be afraid to stand out. Here's what Laura would say to someone that asks, “Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?”

00:06:52

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: I would say, what are your priorities and what is your risk profile? It's less about whether you have what it takes and more about what you're willing to give or give up on the path to entrepreneurship.

00:07:12

Andrea Marquez: So earlier, we heard Pamela talk about having to sell her car in order to raise funds. So Dr. Morgan Roberts, how do we determine this? How would I determine if I'm willing to do what it takes to be an entrepreneur and use me as an example?

00:07:29

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: I would love to. What would it take for you to become an entrepreneur? Is there anything in your life that you would have to change, modify, alter, sacrifice in order to pursue entrepreneurship?

00:07:47

Andrea Marquez: I feel like for myself, I would probably have to quit my current corporate 9-5 job. And I say this because I know that a lot of people have side hustles. However, I am a primary caretaker for a sick relative, my mother, and I also do a lot of extra things for my family. So since I'm not willing to sacrifice helping my family, I would need to sacrifice my 9-5 job, which would then come with, “Well, then how am I going to get paid?” Right?

00:08:17

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: And for most people, that is the trade-off. It's the financial security. It's the need to be able to provide for oneself and to provide for one's family. That feels like a big barrier in pursuing entrepreneurship. The phrase you used was going all in. I would suggest perhaps starting small and letting something grow. That would be the first piece, that it doesn't have to be an all or nothing overnight radical change or shift.

The way that our economy is currently structured, technology provides so many helpful platforms that will allow us to grow and develop in our business ventures in smaller increments. It doesn't have to be the all or nothing venture that it used to be when someone invented something in their garage or their basement and then they were selling it out of the trunk of their car. We have platforms that can help to support in the vendor process. We have technology that can help to manage our communications and PR. We have social media that can help to send out messaging and promotions about the work that we're doing that can provide more efficiency in our entrepreneurship.

So the massive sacrifice of cutting the tether and setting sail is quite large, and it's a privilege for many people to be able to dive all in in that way. Or you have to have a really high risk profile like, “I believe in my idea, this is going to pay off and here goes, it's all or nothing.” That's why we use the phrase, ‘Going for broke.’ That's what it means to go for broke, but I think the vast majority of entrepreneurs and small business owners are growing their businesses and their ventures incrementally and not taking that all or nothing approach.

00:10:18

Andrea Marquez: Right. Start small. But how do you make it work if you already feel maxed out?

00:10:24

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: Synergy. This has been huge for me in my work. As I mentioned, I am someone who still has a full-time job and therefore my business ventures have always been part-time by necessity, because as a full-time professor, I have obligations. I have student needs. I'm also an active researcher and writer. So there are lots of things that I do that help me to be much more impactful and responsive in my business, but it's part of my full-time profession.

So how does the work that I do in my day job as a researcher, as a professor help me as an entrepreneur? For me, it's understanding the needs of the market, finding different ways to speak to people and to help to support and address their needs outside of the proverbial ivory tower, outside of higher education. There's so many other people on the planet who are asking these same questions about leadership, who want resources, who are hungry for this information and knowledge. They don't want to read the textbook version of it, right?

But they want somebody who can translate for them the cutting edge latest insights in a way that is rigorous, relevant and relatable. And that's where synergy comes in. So I will come back to you and say, you don't have to answer this now, but some things to ponder would be what is it that I'm already doing that I focus a lot of time and energy on that I'm able to offer, to provide, to engage in the context of my full-time work or conversely, outside of work, the things that I'm doing as a caregiver, the things that I'm doing in my community and with my friends? Are there ways that I can take the activities that I'm already involved with, I'm already invested in, I've been cultivating my skills and my capabilities? And perhaps use that to help to fuel some of my entrepreneurial ventures and then build out from there.

00:12:42

Andrea Marquez: Great pieces of advice. Thank you. And let's say your small business evolves from a side hustle to something bigger with employees, you're a leadership consultant. What are some key characteristics of a great leader?

00:12:56

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: I think one struggle and challenge is assuming that what works for you, works for everyone else. What lights you up will light up everyone else. What motivates you, motivates everyone else. You may love happy hours after work as a way of bonding with other folks in your organization. I guarantee you there are one or two people who would rather not engage in happy hours, but go along with it because they want to be supportive of the team. And there may be one or two that feel really uncomfortable with that and would much rather connect over a coffee, a tea, or a community service project.

So assumptions about what motivates us, what helps us to feel more connected and engaged. They're often based on our own limited experience. And as we grow older, as we gain more exposure, as we encounter people from diverse backgrounds with diverse life stories and a unique set of needs, we realize that we can't use a one-size-fits-all strategy for leadership. We have to be more flexible, we have to be more agile.

00:14:14

Andrea Marquez: What else do you think people should be thinking about before starting a business of their own?

00:14:18

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: So one of the practices that I encourage on a daily basis involves playing to your strengths. So thinking about how I show up as my best selves in any environment means I'm actively engaging my strengths. I'm doing the things that I do well. I'm trying to learn how I can be even better in those areas and how I can utilize my strengths to connect to other people's needs and to create new marketplace opportunities.

So if one of my strengths is public speaking, then I'm looking for new opportunities to be able to utilize my voice in settings with audiences that would appeal to my message and to the work that I'm bringing. I'm also trying to get more feedback on public speaking, which aspect of the talk, of the speech, of the story, of the message resonates most so that I can continue to grow in that area. All these are different ways to be able to tap into one small strength and leverage that as a signature feature of my own business.

00:15:31

Andrea Marquez: What were some of the hurdles you were up against? What did you not fully realize until you had some experience under your belt?

00:15:39

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: When I first started as an entrepreneur, I had two things that were really holding me back. One, I thought I had to have all the answers. I had to be the authority, I had to be the expert, and who was I at 30 years old to be the authority on much? Right? I hadn't had a lot of lived experiences at that time, and I was advising and supporting people who were older than I was, who were more experienced than I. I had to figure out how I could bring value to that engagement in a way that wasn't predicated on me having to prove that I was the smartest person in the room. I thought I had to be perfect. I wasn't always able to just lean back and enjoy the moment and listen to what everyone else had to teach me that ultimately helped me to build a better business.

The second fallacy or mistaken assumption I had was I had to do it like everybody else. I'm in this business of leadership development and consulting, and I'm very fortunate. I have been mentored by, supported by some of the most brilliant, kind-hearted people in the world who do this work, and it was so intimidating to sit back and watch them leading their businesses. So you try to imitate and borrow a little bit of what this person is doing, a little bit of what that person is doing, but ultimately, you miss out on developing your own brand. It's really about finding your own path to unique value creation that gives you joy and fulfillment in life.

00:17:35

Andrea Marquez: I love that. Don't aim for perfection. Do your homework and believe in your abilities, and then do what you do best. Play to your strengths. And let's bring Pamela back for a minute before we go. We've talked a lot about the skills needed to be an entrepreneur. Pamela, was there ever a moment when you thought about giving up?

00:17:56

Pamela Wirth Barnhill: Yeah, there were a couple of times where I had people saying, “Hey, this next critical step is going to get real expensive. Are you sure you're in?” I was like, “Okay, here we go.” I've been working full-time through this too. I have not taken any outside investment as much as I've wanted to. I had someone offer me $ 250,000 for half of the company, and that was super tempting. But then at the end of the day, half the company is a lot. And then if you ever did want to take outside investment, again, there's practically nothing left. I'm on this current path where I am slowly growing with intention so that it doesn't break.

00:18:30

Andrea Marquez: It's nerve-wracking to put so much money, time and effort into something that isn't a sure thing. So here's what Dr. Morgan Roberts thinks, keeps people going when the going gets tough and there's so much uncertainty.

00:18:44

Dr. Laura Morgan Roberts: Some degree of passion, some commitment, something that's just going to give you the elbow grease to take an idea, take a dream, take a product, a service and keep working with it, keep growing in that area, keep finessing it, bounce back from the feedback that you get. Learn from the rejection along the way. Pay attention to the moments when your business is really booming and the times when things are a little more quiet and try to learn from all of that. If you hold fast to the passion, you remain dedicated to your vision for impact, and that's really important to keep you going as well.

00:19:27

Andrea Marquez: That was an invaluable conversation. I hope this inspires a lot of entrepreneurs who may feel blocked from taking the next step. As we heard, sometimes it's about starting small, being unique, playing to your strengths and really connecting with people. Be authentic in who you are and what you have to offer. Look for the gaps in the market and fill them in a way that only you can.

So do you have what it takes to be a small business owner? There's only one way to find out. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. Reach out to us at thisismallbusiness@ amazon. com to tell us what you're up to, or let me know what you think of this episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier if you do it through your phone. And if you liked what you heard, I hope you'll share us with anyone else who needs to hear this. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe you already have your business up and running and you're ready for the next step, a super valuable resource that can help is the Amazon Small Business Academy. Take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www. smallbusiness. amazon.

That's it for today's episode of This Is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta Luego , and thanks for listening. This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by JAR Audio.

Ep. 48: Business Loans Dos and Don’ts

Learn about business loans.

00:00:01

Andrea Marquez: Money is always top of mind for an entrepreneur. You need it to be able to start, grow, pay yourself, your employees. The list goes on and on and on. And one way to fund your business is through loans. I don't know if you feel like this, but to me, loans are super scary. I've always been told to never spend money I don't have. What will happen if I miss a payment? How can I make sure I'll be able to pay it on time? Where do I even apply for loans? How do I find out if I qualify? If you've never applied for a loan before, it can feel like a daunting process. So let's break it down together. I'm Andrea Marquez and This Is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today we'll be talking about business loans.

00:00:47

Iman Cotton: Each financial institution has credit enhancement products such as loans, government-guaranteed loans, state-guaranteed loans. They even also have lines of credits and possibly more products. Then there's non-traditional lending organizations such as a certified development company or a CDC, and they are created to help business owners access capital. There's also community development financial institution who provides access to affordable financial products and services in underserved communities.

00:01:19

Andrea Marquez: That's Iman Cotton. She's a loan officer with CDC Small Business Finance. And before that she worked in banking with loads of traditional institutions. Iman just listed a bunch of different options that are available to small business owners. But before you start applying for a loan, first you need to figure out who's going to be your lender.

00:01:39

Iman Cotton: Start with your deposit relationship or start with your actual bank that you're working with. So I'm huge on relationships and I love relationships because I love the guidance and I want to work with like-minded individuals and people who believe in me and will champion whatever it is that I'm doing. So who's your deposit relationship with? Also, you want to explore and research the SBA District Office in your area, and then there's other resource partners such as the SBDC and SCORE, and they can help with business plans, with different resources, with different lending partners.

00:02:15

Andrea Marquez: And there's a few red flags to keep in mind while you're trying to find a lender.

00:02:19

Iman Cotton: You want to ensure that they're an actual lender. So for an example, there's a Merchant Cash Advance or MCA. This is not a loan, this is an advance on your receivables that you're able to secure in the event you accept debit and credit card payments. But again, an MCA is not a loan. It's an advance on your future receivables where you pay back a percentage of your daily sales as the repayment.

00:02:46

Andrea Marquez: And you've heard this one before, but...

00:02:49

Iman Cotton: Something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So those loans that you can get approved in days or it's low doc or no doc or quick documents, you want to be leery of those because you may have an extremely high annual percentage rate or APR. And then also, if they can't disclose the APR or the annual percentage rate, be leery.

00:03:14

Andrea Marquez: Honestly, I apply that to all of my life. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So when you've done your research and figured out what loan and lender works best for you, you may be ready to apply. Let's get into what documents you'll need.

00:03:29

Iman Cotton: If you're a startup business, you want to ensure that you have a business plan and financial projections. We want to see that you have your personal tax return completed for the current year. If you're an existing business, you want to ensure that you have your current personal and business tax returns completed and that their current and accurate. We want to see that you also have interim financial statements such as an interim profit and loss statement and an interim balance sheet. Being aware of your current debt load and cash position is extremely important. That way we can have an intelligent conversation and I can help possibly quarterback the situation to make suggestions or recommendations, how to better prepare yourself in the event that I don't have a solution for you today. If the answer is no today, how can we turn that no into a yes or what's the actual game plan?

00:04:22

Andrea Marquez: Now, let's get into what you should avoid doing when you want to apply for a small business loan. The first is, don't spend money until you know can finance the whole cost.

00:04:32

Iman Cotton: So for instance, if you have construction or tenant improvements that you need for a new location that you're looking to lease or to have your business run out of. If the construction is $200,000 and then it happens to increase to $250,000, if you've already started that project and the project increases, you might run the chance where you can't receive financing because some lenders may not go into a project that's started to finance it.

00:05:04

Andrea Marquez: The second mistake is not getting help when you need it.

00:05:07

Iman Cotton: We have a lot of clients that have to get amendments because of their tax returns just being completely erroneous because they tried to do them themselves.

00:05:18

Andrea Marquez: The third mistake is running too many personal expenses to reduce taxable income. Iman says, this is the biggest mistake small business owners tend to make.

00:05:27

Iman Cotton: For instance, if your revenue is $10 million a year and you want to apply for a loan, but you write all of your expenses off to where now your net profit or net income is negative $2 million, we look at the negative $2 million versus the $10 million in revenue. So we more so care about profit and net income versus the revenue amount. So be cautious to not write all of your revenue off to reduce your taxable income.

00:06:00

Andrea Marquez: The fourth mistake is taking more money than you actually need.

00:06:04

Iman Cotton: It can ultimately put you in a tight cash flow situation. But we do our due diligence to ensure that we are not putting our clients in a worse off situation and that they can actually afford what they're actually requesting. And the use of funds is a legitimate use of funds. So within requesting money, what you say you'll use the money for, you have to use the money for that. We're not financing money for you to personally live off of. Keep that in mind. This is strictly for the business and you want to get exactly what you need

00:06:39

Andrea Marquez: And to make sure you can actually pay back the money you're borrowing, Iman says that you need to have a business plan and 24 months of financial projections.

00:06:48

Iman Cotton: You're sitting down, setting the road map of what you anticipate your sales to be, what you anticipate your cost of goods, the expenses, the payroll, just the overall operating expenses, so you can actually arrive at the net profit that you want to. So it's like backing into the numbers and creating that road map so you can have a plan to go off of to generate the amount of revenue that you need to pay back the loan and to cover all of your expenses.

00:07:17

Andrea Marquez: Let's say you finally got the loan, congrats. Now you need to make sure you keep up with those payments because there are consequences to not being able to pay back your loan. But if things don't go the way you planned, Iman says that you need to be transparent with your lender so that they can help you get through it.

00:07:33

Iman Cotton: The goal is not for our borrowers to default on the loan. So it's just about being transparent and communicating and trying to set in place a workout plan and going from there. Assuming they can't pay back because the business is closing, then the lender would come in to liquidate the assets and work with the borrower to work out any remaining balances. And then they may look at any personal collateral if it was held and things of that nature. But ultimately, one can lose their business and not be eligible for any additional federal lending if they aren't able to pay back the loan.

00:08:08

Andrea Marquez: That was a lot of information on how you can secure a loan. Iman did a great job of simplifying the process, but all this information can get a little bit overwhelming. So if you're still unsure about whether a loan is the best option for you.

00:08:22

Iman Cotton: Don't be fearful to at least have the conversations now about what goals you have for your business. I always say, don't call me after you've quit your job. Call me before you leave that place of employment. Get comfortable with no when applying for anything or when you're just trying to get your business off the ground. The more you hear no, the more you can also hear yes.

00:08:53

Andrea Marquez: That was Iman Cotton, a loan officer. Getting comfortable with hearing no is a great piece of advice to end on. As an entrepreneur, you might be hearing it a lot. I hope this episode helped make loans a little less scary. Let me know how you're getting prepared to find or apply for a loan or if there's any advice that stood out to you. We covered a lot in this episode, so if you missed anything, don't worry, we've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon. com/ podcasts.

That's it for this episode of This Is Small Business brought to you by Amazon. If you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe and tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode. And we would love to know what you think, so please, please, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier to do it through your phone or send us an email at thisissmallbusiness@ amazon. com with your thoughts.

Until next time, This Is Small Business. I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta Luego and thanks for listening. This Is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by JAR Audio.

Ep. 47: Strategies for Success as a Woman in Business

Build a successful business.

Being a woman in business can come with its challenges but with the right tools – it can become a journey of empowerment and growth. Just ask Katy Luxem, the CEO and founder of Big Dill Pickleball, who stands out in the sporting goods industry with her products. She’ll share the story behind why she started Big Dill Pickleball, some insights on how to succeed in ecommerce, and how she dealt with being a female founder in a male-dominated industry. You’ll also hear from Deepa Purushothaman, the Founder of re.write, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and the author of The First, The Few, The Only. Deepa has spent most of her time helping women in the corporate world, so she accumulated a ton of advice that she’ll be sharing with us – like the importance of community.Unlearn some ideas about what it means to be a woman in business and learn the benefits that can come from being a female founder.

In this episode you’ll hear:

(01:31) How Katy started Big Dill Pickleball

(03:20) How using branding and differentiation is essential if you want to succeed in ecommerce.

(05:20) The importance of building community and having a supportive network as a female founder.

(07:42) What you need to unlearn about what it means to be a woman in business.

(10:48) How to navigate issues that are out of your control.

(12:33) The benefits of being a woman in business

Takeaways:

1 - To succeed in ecommerce, Katy says you need to focus on two things: Branding and differentiation. This will set you apart from the competition and make your products more memorable.

2 - Community building is key. We’ve heard this a lot on This is Small business, but making sure you have a safe community of entrepreneurs who share similar struggles is important because sometimes all you need to do is talk.

3 - Deepa says that there’s a few things you need to unlearn about what it means to be a woman in business: The first is feeling like you’re not enough which Deepa says is a universal feeling amongst women who are balancing so many things in addition to work. And the second is feeling the need to overperform to keep your job – even when you get to the top.

4 - When you get dismissed or aren’t taken seriously, remember that it doesn’t reflect on you. All you can do is control how you react. Deepa says that we’ve been conditioned to always be “nice” so try to get out of that mind set and stand your ground – which is easier said than done.

5 - The barrier to entrepreneurship is low and you’ll learn along the way, so don’t hold yourself back from starting because you feel like you aren’t prepared.

6 - Remember that power comes from within you. Deepa says that you can’t control how people react, but you can control how you show up – and that’s where true power comes from.

00:00:02

Deepa Purushothaman: How are corporate cultures changing? How do we actually advance women? Because I was finding a lot of the women that were approaching me were in senior levels, but when they took the seat, they weren't in full voice or in full power.

00:00:12

Andrea Marquez: Getting into entrepreneurship as a woman comes with its own set of challenges. You might feel the need to try twice as hard to prove that you're qualified. And even though women are increasingly making their mark in the business world, gender biases still exist. I'm Andrea Marquez and This Is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today we'll be talking about being a woman in business.

00:00:40

Deepa Purushothaman: We conform, we couture, we edit ourselves to fit into spaces, and part of what I want us to realize is if we wait till later, till we show up in the big seats to actually show up as ourselves, it gets harder. We need to show up as ourselves along the way. That's actually how we find power.

00:00:57

Andrea Marquez: That's Deepa Purushothaman, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and the founder of Rewrite.

00:01:03

Deepa Purushothaman: The Rewrite is about advancing that conversation in corporates. It's starting to really think about culture change and ideas of sacrifice and getting ahead very differently, and it's also doing research that is much needed on how we actually make the workplace healthier and happier for people to thrive.

00:01:19

Andrea Marquez: Deepa has done a lot in business, among which she was a senior executive and wrote a book about how women of color can redefine power in corporate America called, The First, The Few, The Only. I can't wait for you to hear her helpful advice throughout the episode. But first, let's hear from Katy Luxem, the founder and CEO of Big Dill Pickleball. Big Dill Pickleball is a pickleball, paddle and gear company that focuses on the fun and inclusive elements of the sport. Before starting Big Dill Pickleball, Katy spent 15 years working in e-commerce.

00:01:52

Katy Luxem: So my business really came about after seeing repeated mistakes and similar issues that a lot of brands had. I wanted to do a better job, so I started having an interest in making my own brand so I could really control it from start to finish.

00:02:06

Andrea Marquez: Katy knew she wanted to start a business, but first she had to come up with an idea.

00:02:11

Katy Luxem: I was injured playing roller derby in 2019 and I couldn't do that anymore, and I started playing a lot of pickleball, which was a great case study and how accessible it was because I was recovering from broken ankle and broken bones.

00:02:24

Andrea Marquez: And you might have noticed this, but pickleball really started to gain popularity during the pandemic. I feel like it was everywhere.

00:02:32

Katy Luxem: It was now or never. E-commerce was really picking up, and when I went online to buy pickleball gear, I didn't really see anything that was fun and different, and so I felt like I was the perfect person to start the business at that time. And then the last piece really was I always thought if I was to start an e-commerce business, it would need to be something that checked a lot of boxes. So I didn't want anything breakable or liquid or anything super regulated like baby products. I didn't want batteries or expiration dates and I just wanted to keep it simple. And pickleball checked all those boxes. So I founded the brand at the end of 2020 and I sold our first paddle on Amazon in around February 2021.

00:03:12

Andrea Marquez: Katy let her experience in e-commerce guide her as she built her business. She says that if you want to succeed in e-commerce, you need to focus on two things, branding and differentiation.

00:03:26

Katy Luxem: So Big Dill Pickleball Company is really specific in that we sell pickleball paddles and sets to a specific segment of the market, which happens to be a beginners, which is a really big growing market. And then we do that on a platform where a lot of shoppers naturally come for their initial purchase. So we're targeting really specific group, and it's not a super high price point to pro-level players in a specific specialty shop. We're keeping it clear and direct about who we are and who we serve, and our brand reflects that.

Alongside that, I think when I created the product, I wanted to have a pickle on it, which was really smart decision because it's funny and it makes people laugh and it's obviously pickleball, but it's also really eye-catching. So that's been really great for PR and such because if someone's writing an article on pickleball, they'll often just use our paddle as the image because it's a literal face of pickleball

00:04:11

Andrea Marquez: And to figure out what gaps you could fill and how her branding could stand out, Katy did a lot of research.

00:04:17

Katy Luxem: I read a lot of reviews and looked at custom questions and product rankings to see what was actually selling and who the competition was, and I tried to check that no one else was really doing what I was doing. There's definitely a lot of pickleball brands springing up and I wanted to make sure we were the only ones doing that specific thing.

00:04:35

Andrea Marquez: Katy's business has been pretty successful ever since, so she clearly knows what she's doing, but as most women in business do, she still faced a few challenges.

00:04:44

Katy Luxem: I know factually, women face a lot more barriers statistically just with access to funding or networks or even just being taken seriously. I've had issues with male-owned businesses stealing intellectual property or copying our paddles, and of course they're always backed by more funding or they're larger businesses that have more resources, so that's been frustrating.

00:05:06

Andrea Marquez: Unfortunately, this can be the reality for a lot of female founders and even though most of the time these problems can be out of our control, there are ways to navigate them. Deepa says that community building is one of them.

00:05:20

Deepa Purushothaman: I just hold space every month and we have different kinds of conversations and a lot of what I find, to be honest with you, yes, there's articles and there's a lot of, for example, great HBR articles out there for advice and tips and tricks, but I think there's a lot of need to just have these conversations in community. So I just hold space. We just did one earlier this week about how do we start to talk about visioning differently?

And we just did a session on let's talk about what you want for the year. I had someone come in who actually has a background that's very different than traditional corporate and we walked through a very different process. And so I think part of what we need to realize is the way to solve for some of this is to talk about it, but to talk about it in safe spaces. And I think there aren't a lot of safe spaces to have these conversations and share, and I was lucky enough to have some of that, and so part of what I try to do is share that forward.

00:06:06

Andrea Marquez: And having a supportive network is something that helped Katy overcome some of the challenges she faced.

00:06:11

Katy Luxem: I think the more the business grew, the more I started to realize the importance of having that network and collaborating with good people, so I really started saying yes to just a lot of opportunities that I felt like might help me. For example, the governor's office reached out to me about promoting women-owned businesses, and next thing I know I got on this little billboard thing on the freeway, so things like that were a great boost.

00:06:32

Andrea Marquez: Katy also ended up getting a master's degree.

00:06:36

Katy Luxem: And that was really invaluable too, because I ended up having advisors and access to a number of resources in the business community and with the university. It was on full scholarship, so that really came from a place I think in my state of the business community putting his money where its mouth is and saying, “Hey, we're going to focus on supporting entrepreneurs and especially those who are underrepresented in the space.” So I think as I grew my business, those sorts of things had a snowball effect and gave me more confidence to tackle some of those barriers and how to pitch to investors or work with lawyers to combat IP infringement, stuff like that. So there are barriers, but I think the longer I've been in the business, it helps to have those connections and those long-term relationships.

00:07:16

Andrea Marquez: So having a supportive community and network is key, but Deepa also says that we have a lot to unlearn about what it means to be a woman in business.

00:07:26

Deepa Purushothaman: I call it shedding and caring. We need to shed all these messages that just don't serve us. Most women feel like they're not enough. They're not enough at work, they're not enough at home, they're not enough as moms because we're balancing so many plates, so the sense of not enoughness is so universal. I cannot tell universal it is, and I get to see patterns because I've interviewed women.

00:07:47

Andrea Marquez: And sometimes this feeling of not being enough can interfere with your goals. For Deepa, it almost interfered with her making partner at Deloitte.

00:07:56

Deepa Purushothaman: When I made partner, I, by the way, don't have an MBA and I still have not taken a finance class, and I ran billion dollar projects. I'm an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. I don't have my MBA. Had I really thought about it, I wouldn't be in the places and the spaces I am either, and my husband had to actually encourage me. He was like, “Why don't you put your name in the hat?” And I remember thinking, well, I'm not an MBA. That's not made for me. And it all happened. I think we self-select. I think we're not enough. Even when you get to the seats, you think that.

And so we just have to get comfortable realizing, yes, sometimes credentials and titles matter, but a lot of the time it's really more important how you show up, how you pivot, how you recover from failures and how you know what your strengths are. Those are the things that really matter. It's fortitude, it's attitude, and it's attention to following your dreams and having the wherewithal to follow them through. That's really what I think makes us successful. But again, back to the messages we get growing up and the messages we get early in our career, there's a big dissonance between that and what I think it really takes to be successful.

00:08:55

Andrea Marquez: So remember that you are enough. And the other thing that Deepa says we need to unlearn is thinking that we need to work harder to get to that seat, and then feeling like you need to perform to stay there.

00:09:09

Deepa Purushothaman: And I see this a little bit more with women of color, but it's true for all women. But if you are overperforming and some women are telling me I've worked twice as hard, some women saying four times as hard, you are working at a level that we're not fully understanding when you're sitting in leadership seats. And you are burnt out before you even get halfway through your career because of that need to overperform and you've been socialized and conditioned that way growing up, we tell people to look like me. You have to work harder just to get there. And so it's partly unlearning and making work for you what makes sense. And so I have learned that productivity is important, but it can't be my only mantra anymore. That used to really guide a lot of my decisions and how I felt good about my day, and that's not really the only thing that guides me, but I had to do the work to unlearn that, coming from immigrant parents especially.

00:09:54

Andrea Marquez: I relate to that because I come from immigrant parents too, and it's very applauded to overwork yourself. And if you're tired because of it, then you're doing something right, so it's taken me a while to unlearn that. So far we've talked about a few things to unlearn and that building a community is important, but how do you deal with the things that are out of your control, like not being taken seriously?

00:10:20

Deepa Purushothaman: I want to say I think that that's universal. I made partner in my early thirties. I am Indian by descent. I look younger than my age. And so I cannot tell you how many times I would be dismissed when I walked in a room because I couldn't possibly be in charge, or my last name is 13 letters long. And people would ask me when I came to this country or how I learned to speak English. And those things used to really bother me and make me feel like, what am I doing that is maybe suggesting I don't have your qualifications or I don't belong? And as I've gotten older, this has taken some time and I realized and meeting so many women who are struggling with the same sorts of things. I'm now in a place where I realize some of that is about them, it has nothing to do with how I'm showing up or what I'm doing or what I'm wearing or how educated I am.

That's about their issues. And all I can do is find a place where I practice my responses now. So when someone says to me, “Oh, your name is so hard to pronounce,” I will now very flatly, without a lot of emotion, say, “But you've learned how to say Arnold Schwarzenegger's name. You can learn how to say mine.” And it doesn't have to be offensive, but I think sometimes we've been taught to be nice. We haven't been taught to stand our ground, and we've also been taught we're doing something to elicit that sort of feedback or that sort of feeling. And honestly, I'm not. That is really about them and I've gotten to that place, but it's taken a long time.

00:11:32

Andrea Marquez: So make sure you stand your ground. That's a very important message. Growing up, I remember I always felt uncomfortable correcting people when they mispronounced my name. I'm still working on it, but hearing Deepa talk about her own experiences makes me feel better about correcting people in the future. Okay, so we've talked about a lot of the challenges that women might face in entrepreneurship and in business. Here are some of the benefits to being a woman in business too.

00:11:59

Deepa Purushothaman: I think a lot of women who are entrepreneurs, some of them start in entrepreneurship, but a lot of them leave corporate. And I will tell you a lot of the women that I work with in the last few years left corporate to go found their own companies to create the cultures and do the work that meant something to them, and they couldn't find ways to do it in corporate. I'm not suggesting that's the only way, but I think a lot of people pivot because they feel like I can create my own dreams and work in a different way, so I think it's really important to understand that.

00:12:23

Andrea Marquez: Hopefully you're feeling inspired. Katy reminded us that the barrier to entry for entrepreneurship, especially e-commerce, can be pretty low. So...

00:12:32

Katy Luxem: Go for it. There's a lot of people doing it that are probably not as intelligent or not as experienced as yourself, and you might as well just take a stab at it. Especially to e-commerce, it's pretty accessible if you want to try something. I started with I think two boxes of 50 paddles each, so it wasn't a huge initial investment or leap. I was just like, I'll try it and see what happens. And obviously it grew really quickly from there, but you can always do that and have an attempt at it.

00:12:58

Andrea Marquez: You don't have to have everything set in place before you start a business. And as we've heard on many episodes of This is Small Business, it's okay to learn as you go and make mistakes.

00:13:07

Katy Luxem: I'm a risk-averse person, so that was definitely hard for me when I first started, but there's obviously no way of knowing what those mistakes are going to be at the outset, and I think that's why they call it a journey or whatever.

00:13:19

Andrea Marquez: And you'll learn everything you need to succeed as you work on your business. That's what Katy did.

00:13:26

Katy Luxem: Suddenly we have this influx of inventory or we need storage for this. That's when I started researching that particular issue or asking other people, “Hey, what are you using for this problem?” Or, “Do you have a specific solution you recommend?” The problems you have on day 30 are not the problems you have on day 600, so you can't plan for those things, but you can think about if this is what our numbers were this year, what is it going to look like one year, two years from now? And you can project that out in all aspects of the business. And even if it's not right on, it's really helpful just to prepare you for some of the challenges you might end up facing.

00:13:59

Andrea Marquez: And here's one last piece of advice from Deepa.

00:14:02

Deepa Purushothaman: I think a lot of women wrongly incorporate, and even in entrepreneurship, think that power comes from outside accolades. And so my final thought would be is to remember that power comes from inside you and that people can only take it if you let them take it from you, and that we need to remind ourselves every day that we're powerful and that you get to decide how you show up in spaces. You can't decide or define how people react to you, but you get to decide how you show up, and that's where real power comes from. The women who really are powerful are comfortable with who they are, and they show up in that way at all times in all spaces. So that would be in my advice. It's not easy to get to, but that's what I want to aspire to, and that's what I try and practice in every day.

00:14:41

Andrea Marquez: I love that we're ending with that. Deepa and Katy both made the journey of being a woman in business seem a little less daunting, and I'll definitely be using the advice I learned in my everyday life as well. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. That's it for this episode of This is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. We love hearing from our listeners. One of the best ways to do this is to leave a review in Apple Podcasts, like this one from Janine who said, “Really loved the show. It's simple and to the point. Andrea asks great questions to get to the answers we need. Add it to your must listen to list.” Thank you, Janine.

If you enjoyed this episode or found any of the tips helpful, please, please, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It helps other people find the show. All you have to do is go to the show page and scroll down until you find the reviews. If you're not sure what to write about, tell us about your favorite episode or guest, or let us know what you'd like to learn about. If you're able to leave a review, thank you. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe you already have your small business up and running and you're ready for the next step, a super valuable resource that can help you is the Amazon Small Business Academy.

Take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www. smallbusiness. amazon. Until next time, I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta luego, and thanks for listening. This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by Jar Audio.

Ep. 46: How Networking Can Help You Build and Grow Your Business

Leverage your network to grow your business.

Having a solid network can help you meet the right people that will help you grow your business. Just ask Robbie Samuels, a networking expert who got his first few clients by tapping into his network. Robbie shares all his networking secrets so you can know how to get the most out of any networking event and break away from the transactional feeling that comes with it. “I believe that our network is an untapped resource,” he says. “And if we're trying to find people for our programs and to pilot new things – 80 percent of the people that we need to sell to or connect with, we already know. It's a matter of reaching out to that network.”Learn what a successful networking event looks like and what you should be doing before and after to ensure that you’re taking advantage of everything that networking has to offer.

In this episode you’ll hear:

(02:00) Why networking can be uncomfortable and how to overcome that by reframing your mindset.

(04:28) Bagel vs Croissant: How body language can make networking easier.

(06:41) How to prepare for a networking event.

(07:55) How committing can help you stand out.

(08:52) How to use your network to grow your business.

Takeaways:

1 - Reframe your mindset. Instead of thinking of networking as something that’s transactional, think of what you bring to the table. Robbie says that if you’re looking for clients, a way to reframe your mindset is to remember that you’re trying to help people and if you avoid telling people about your business, then you’re limiting your impact.

2 - Be prepared. Before going to a networking event, make sure you know what you're trying to achieve and who you're hoping to talk to. And write a draft of your follow up email, it’ll make following up on the intentions you set easier.

3 - Body language is important. When you’re at networking events try to look for the croissants – groups of people that leave an opening for someone else to join in. And make sure you leave room for other people to come into the groups you’re in too.

4 - Commit to an event. If you’re new to entrepreneurship and are trying to build a network of business savvy people, try consistently going to a networking event. This will help you be more memorable to the organizers and you’ll feel less like a newcomer in that space.

5 - Categorize your network. After you’ve connected with a few people, pull up the list of people you’ve networked with and ask yourself two questions: would they remember my name and would I be happy to hear from them out of the blue? If the answer is yes to both questions, then you rank them out of three for these three categories: how they rate their connection to you, their influence on this topic, and their interest in this topic. If someone scores below a 4 out of 9, then they might not be worth reaching out to.

6 - Make sure to keep following up with your network – even when you don’t need them. Robbies says that your network is like an insurance policy – you’re paying for it in the hopes that you don’t end up using it. And don’t forget to give back to your network, too.

00:00:01

Andrea Marquez: Whatever stage you're at in your business journey, whether you're about to start or already have some entrepreneurial experience, you'll want, and probably need, a solid network to rely on. But how do you build that? Networking events can be awkward. Breaking into groups of people who look like age-old friends is hard. No one wants to interrupt a conversation, but hovering in the background feels almost as bad. If you've ever ended a networking event back to the wall, alone, with no new contacts, it's tempting to write the whole process off and never try it again.But don't worry, there's hope.

I am Andrea Marquez, and This Is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today we'll be talking about networking, why it's important, and how to do it well.

00:00:49

Robbie Samuels: I believe that our network is an untapped resource, and if we're trying to find people for our programs and to pilot new things, 80% of the people that we need to sell to or connect with, we already know it's a matter of reaching out to that network.

00:01:05

Andrea Marquez: That's Robbie Samuels. He's recognized as a networking expert by NPR, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review, among others.

00:01:13

Robbie Samuels: So it's about going and discovering who's on your LinkedIn, or maybe your phone contacts, or whatever list you might have near you and figuring out who to prioritize reaching out to, and then actually reaching out to them. They already know you, they trust you. They don't need to see it on your website. My first programs in 2020, I think I sold 30 people into a program with no mention of it on my website. So that's where I think networking is so key, because that trust is already built in.

00:01:38

Andrea Marquez: Going into my career, I've seen how networking correctly can change your life. And even though I still struggled a bit with networking before COVID, I at least felt like I had a grasp on it. But now it's been very difficult for me to get back into it. So before we start talking about how you can network successfully, I think it's important to understand why we find it so uncomfortable and scary.

00:02:01

Robbie Samuels: There was actually a study by Harvard and a few other schools that looked into this. And they really found that people felt that networking makes people feel dirty and icky. And I think it's because most people think of networking as transactional.

So the people in the study who didn't feel that networking was icky, were the more senior executives in a company. Because when they go into a room, they're not going into a room looking for anything. They have things to offer. So they have a budget, they have advice, they have connections, they can make introductions. And so they feel really good about that. And that's the reframe. The reframe is to think about what you bring.

So if you think, “Okay, here's all the experience that I bring, this is the enthusiasm that I have, and if it's a good fit, it's going to be fantastic for this organization as well.” And if you walk into a room with that as opposed to, “All right, I'm looking for a job,” then you make a connection. And as someone who's had to hire people, I can tell you if I you and we hit it off and you submit a qualified resume and you follow through with all the steps that we ask in the hiring process, you've just saved me a huge headache.

And so it is a gift. And so I just think that we have to reframe. It's not that we're looking for clients, it's that we have something of value that would help people. And if we don't tell people, well, then we're limiting our impact in the world. We do this work because we believe we can help people. But if we're not willing to talk about our services, if we're shy about it, then there are people who need us who don't know. They don't even know this is a skill that's out there that can help them. So it's about really reframing what you're walking into the room, and not just that you need something, but that you're there to offer something of real value. Without that, we're all stuck feeling transactional and icky about the experience of networking.

00:03:46

Andrea Marquez: I love the idea of reframing your thought process. Instead of feeling like the interaction is transactional, think about what you offer to the people you want to talk to. As Robbie mentioned, even if you're looking for a job, you still bring something to the table. Don't shy away from talking about your services and yourself. So step one to making networking easier: Reframe your mindset to think about what you have to offer. And another way that can help you get approached by people is body language.

00:04:14

Robbie Samuels: So if you picture walking into a networking event, people are standing in those tight clusters, those shoulder- to- shoulder huddles that are impossible to break into. If you have someone in that group turn their body open a bit and make space for others to join, now it goes from being a closed bagel to being more of a croissant.

And so I teach people how to stand so that they're more approachable. And this is a physical reminder of why you went to the event in the first place. You go to these events to meet people, so don't go there and then stand in the corner with your arms crossed. Because someone like me, who's very outgoing and talks with my hands, is going to stand in front of you and you're going to feel locked there. But also look at the room and see how people are standing and go for the natural openings.

So look for where people are leaving space, and then make sure you do the same. If I train 8 to 10 people out of a room of a hundred, the whole experience of the room will change. Because if you feel welcomed into a room, you're more likely to welcome others. If your first attempts to join a conversation, you feel rebuffed, well, you're probably going to put your walls up and then it's going to be harder for others to approach you as well. So that ripple effect can be really positive if we train folks to do this.

So it's like if you walk into a room and you don't see any openings, the next thing to do is to get in line, get in line for food, and get in line for a drink. It's a natural space where people aren't usually standing with all their besties. Talk about the food and the buffet line. Talk about the drink you're about to order. Ask people's opinion about things.

00:05:41

Andrea Marquez: Body language is really important. At some networking events, I forced myself into those bagels and made some great connections, but doing that isn't always easy. It's intimidating when you can tell that the people talking already know each other. I recently went to a networking event where I decided to stick to being a wallflower. I ended up talking to another wallflower and nothing really came out of it. We just ended up being wallflowers together. But if I knew about the croissants versus bagel strategy, I might've tried looking for the croissants.

So far we've discussed what you can do to make networking a little easier. So now let's take a few steps back and talk about what you can do to prepare yourself for an upcoming networking event.

00:06:23

Robbie Samuels: If you go into the event really being clear about what you're trying to achieve, and who you're hoping to talk to, and you've done some research, and this is where I think being an introvert is better because you'll be more methodical and less haphazard off the cuff. And so if you're going to go well, then why are you going? Why this event? And who are you hoping to meet? Who specifically might be there?

If you have access to a list or maybe you know the sponsors or the speaker or the exhibitors, or who generally, who's the archetype of the person you want to meet? And then my suggestion is that you actually write a draft of your follow-up email. You're not sending it. You're just drafting a message based on the person or the kind of person you're hoping to meet. And if you do that, that really sets your intentions super clear. And now it's a question of following through on your intentions. But you're more likely to have a serendipitous moment if you know what you're looking for.

00:07:15

Andrea Marquez: That sounds like you're manifesting, I've done this for projects, but never for networking. And I think it's such a valuable tip. And now let's get into another tip to make sure your networking experience is successful: Committing.

00:07:29

Robbie Samuels: You just have to put in enough upfront effort to not be a newcomer every time. If you go really sporadically, every four or five months, you're really a newcomer every single time and you have to break in every single time. You want to be memorable and you want to add value. And so that's one way to step into a new space. So it's planting seeds for the future. But that concentrated effort upfront makes the difference versus sort of haphazardly deciding to go to things. For the beginning from January to March, just commit to really being super present in a new space, and do that every quarter and still stay engaged, but you don't have to be as intense the rest of the year.

00:08:08

Andrea Marquez: So now that we have a better understanding of how to prepare and utilize a networking experience, what comes after a successful networking event? How can you utilize the contacts that you've collected to grow your business?

00:08:21

Robbie Samuels: So in my second book, Small List, Big Results, I discuss this in some detail. So I have this process. Let's say you take your LinkedIn, you download your LinkedIn list, and you go through, and the first two questions people have to pass in order to do further consideration is, “Would they remember my name?” And, “Would I be happy to hear from them out of the blue?”

So if the answer is yes to both those questions, I put a little X in that little column. And when I've got a bunch of people in that category, then I say, “Okay, now the question is, I want to know how they rate around their connection to me, their influence on this topic, their interest in this topic.” And for each of those categories, you put a one, a two or a three, three being highest, no half points, no zeros. And the total point value here is nine. If someone scores a four or below, then don't bother reaching out. I mean, don't delete them, but this is not the thing that they're interested in.

Follow-up sounds like something you do after, but if you write that draft follow-up message before you go, you'll be more likely to know what you're looking for. If during the event you track the cards that are higher priority, and you either put them in a separate pocket or you turn down the corner or write a little note on them. And so you have to also plan ahead for how are you keeping track of all these cards. And then if you pre-schedule an hour within a day or two of the event to do follow-up messages, and when you sit down, you've got your draft message, you've identified your priority cards, the likelihood that you're going to follow through with that follow up is very high.

And that's really the success of networking. It isn't the first point of contact. It's when that conversation that you had with one person at one event becomes a relationship because you both schedule time to meet each other again, and then meet each other again, and meet each other again. So this is where I think the virtual and the in-person work so well together.

00:10:08

Andrea Marquez: We used to have to wait up to a year before we'd run into people again at the next conference. But now with video calls part of people's day-to-day, it's easier to reach out and suggest catching up, nurturing new relationships can be simple and unforced. It's also important. Robbie says to think of it as an insurance policy.

00:10:28

Robbie Samuels: I think too often we ignore our network until we need them. When we need a job, or when we suddenly are in a crisis and we need to get another client. And if you pay in every month, in an insurance policy, and you don't really want to need your insurance policy, right, the hope is that you'll never use it, but it's there if you need it. And that's the same thing with our network. You want to give back regularly to your community, whether that's one-on-one conversations, supporting and sharing, making referrals, making introductions. So make sure you're giving back so that if you need something, they're there for you. And if you don't, you're there for a lot of other people and that feels good too.

00:11:05

Andrea Marquez: That was Robbie Samuels, a networking expert and an award-winning author. What a great reminder to end on. I'm sure that'll help reduce the transactional icky feeling you get sometimes when thinking about networking. Let me know if you'll use some of the tips he mentioned in your next networking event. I know I will.

We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. That's it for this episode of This Is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon.

If you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe and tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode. And we would love to know what you think. So please, please, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier to do it through your phone or send us an email at thisismallbusiness@ amazon. com with your thoughts.

Until next time, This Is Small Business. I'm your host, Andrea Marquez.

Hasta Luego, and thanks for listening.This Is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by Jar Audio.

Ep. 45: How to Use Social Media to Reach Your Audience

Connect with customers through social media.

Social media can help you connect with your audience authentically and foster meaningful growth. Just ask Sahra Nguyen, the founder and CEO of Nguyen Coffee Supply, who uses storytelling to keep her audience engaged. Sahra explains how she figured out what content her audience wants and what performs best on each platform. You’ll also hear from Kat Norton, the CEO of Miss Excel, who went viral on social media and used her online presence to successfully start her business. Kat digs deeper into how to keep up with trends and how to plan your content efficiently. Learn how Kat and Sahra used social media to their advantage and discover actionable strategies – like how to follow trends and create content – to elevate your online presence and reach your audience.

In this episode you’ll hear:

(02:16) How Kat used social media to start Miss Excel

(07:06) How Sahra connects with her audience through social media by sharing her story and being authentic

(09:24) Sahra talks about the challenges to centering the founder’s story in your brand’s social media

(10:19) How Sahra uses data to figure out what type of content works for each platform

(12:41) How experimenting with your social media content can make you go viral and how to take advantage of that virality – even if the content doesn’t align with your brand

(15:50) How to keep up with trends

(18:33) How to create social media content efficiently

Takeaways:

1 - Be authentic. No matter what you’re posting, Kat and Sahra both stressed the importance of being authentic to your brand – especially if you’re planning on following trends.

2 - Don’t be afraid to experiment! Kat says that experimentation is what helped her go viral and Sahra experiments with new types of content on her TikTok. Every brand is different and to find what works best for you, you’ll need to change up your content every now and then.

3 - Don’t feel pressured to follow trends. Sometimes following trends just doesn’t align with your brand and you shouldn’t force it to work – your audience can tell when the content you’re producing isn’t authentic.

4 - If you’re planning on following trends, research the trends and find out what aligns best for your brand, and set guidelines that you or your team needs to follow – this will help get content out faster.

5 - Batch your social media content. In order to create content as efficiently as possible, Kat suggests you divide the work into three days: An ideation day, a performance day where you record all your content, and an editing day.

00:00:01

Andrea Marquez: Social media, it can be a powerful tool for your business if you use it correctly. It can help you get more customers, highlight new products and grow your brand. If you're starting a business, you're probably already trying to figure out how to make social media work for you. How do you keep up with all these trends? Should you even try? What content should you be posting and how often?

To answer these questions, I've enlisted the help of Kat Norton, the founder of the incredibly successful Miss Excel, a company that teaches Microsoft Excel to individuals, businesses, and educational institutions. Kat knows her way around a spreadsheet, and she absolutely rocks the social media landscape. We're going to find out how she does it.

00:00:45

Kat Norton: When it comes to taking these different social media concepts and really boiling them down into those different niche audiences, it really comes down to authenticity. So for me, my three favorite things were Excel, dancing and helping people. So melding those together is what really helped our content take off.

00:01:03

Andrea Marquez: Kat manages to make using Excel fun. Those are two words I never thought I'd say in the same sentence. Miss Excel now has over 2 million followers across all her social media platforms. She'll be sharing the secrets to her growth throughout the episode.

Hi, I'm Andrea Marquez, and This is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Welcome to season four. With more than 60 episodes under my belt, I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, and something that keeps coming up is social media. It's such a powerful tool and can reach so many people if you do it right. So today we'll be talking about social media and how to reach your audience.

00:01:50

Kat Norton: It really happens through infusing our social media content with the element of fun. So whether it's dancing, which is really how our content got started, I was dancing to the different Excel functions on TikTok or now we integrate fun talking videos and we're always just experimenting with what is trending.

00:02:09

Andrea Marquez: Before all of the success, Kat was working a corporate job and then the pandemic hit.

00:02:14

Kat Norton: I had found myself with the start of the pandemic back in my childhood bedroom of my parents' house. I was buried in student debt, really trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and I started digging into mindset work. I was like, “Why am I playing it small? What can I do?” So I was really going through and unwiring a bunch of limiting beliefs I had that were keeping me at my corporate job, playing it safe when I knew there was something much bigger I wanted to do.

00:02:42

Andrea Marquez: Kat was already teaching Excel on the side, and she loved doing it. So she gets on a call with a friend to figure out a side hustle she could do with her skills.

00:02:51

Kat Norton: And I'll never forget, she goes, “What if you put the Excel tips on TikTok?” And I was like, “TikTok? I have a corporate job. I can't just post myself on TikTok.” And I had so much resistance, but intuitively I knew. I got this lightning bolt hit where I saw it, and I could not shake this thought.

00:03:09

Andrea Marquez: A few days go by and Kat just can't stop thinking about it.

00:03:13

Kat Norton: And I'm in tears so conflicted about making this TikTok account. So I'm like, “You know what? It's going to be a secret.” So I created this secret TikTok account Miss Excel, and the only people who knew I was doing it was my mother and my boyfriend, and I started silently just posting one video a day of these fun Excel tip videos.

00:03:35

Andrea Marquez: And then the views start rolling in.

00:03:37

Kat Norton: By the fourth video, it reaches a hundred thousand views and gets pushed to all these people I know. And then by the sixth video, the CEO of an IT company reaches out and it's like, “Hey, I love your teaching style. I'm looking to create G Suite training videos,” so the Google version of everything I was doing for students, parents and teachers because this is when the schools were going digital, and clearly I'm a Microsoft gal, but I was like, “Okay, I can learn these different products. I'll just take this side hustle.”

00:04:08

Andrea Marquez: After a couple of weeks of posting daily, her first video goes viral.

00:04:13

Kat Norton: And next thing you know I've had a video hit 3. 7 million views, and I had a hundred thousand TikTok followers. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, what do I do with this?”

00:04:22

Andrea Marquez: Kat creates an Instagram account that keeps going viral. In a few months, she gets a few thousand followers across both platforms.

00:04:30

Kat Norton: I had a business coach reach out just being like, “Knock, knock, what you doing over there? It seems like you have a pretty big following and you don't even have a link in your bio.” And I was like, “Whoa, touche.” So I took two weeks off from my day job, and I built the most fun, cool creative Excel course I possibly could think of because at this point if you've seen my content, your girl cannot have a boring course.

00:04:53

Andrea Marquez: She then designs a video Excel training course, and within a few weeks of releasing it, she's already making more money from the course than she does at her job, so she quits.

00:05:04

Kat Norton: And at that point it was still just me in the business, and I cranked out nine more courses across the entire Microsoft Office suite, started bundling them together, selling on webinars, and that's how I scaled it into a multi seven figure business. I have the most incredible team now who really helps us continue to scale this and grow this because I know we're just at the tip of the iceberg given the majority of companies use Excel.

00:05:28

Andrea Marquez: I love that optimism. But Kat started her business off the back of her social media success. She made content she loves, then developed a product to go with it. I think most small business owners do the opposite, start the business first, then work to make a social media strategy that works for them. Our next guest is one of those people.

00:05:47

Sarah Nguyen: I'm a first generation Vietnamese- American born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Both of my parents are refugees from the Vietnam War. So that context, that historical context for my family is really important because it's a huge foundation for who I am as a person, my connection to culture and my current business, Nguyen Coffee Supply.

00:06:06

Andrea Marquez: That's the founder and CEO Sarah Nguyen. She buys coffee beans from a farmer in Vietnam and then roasts them in Brooklyn, New York.

00:06:14

Sarah Nguyen: And the reason why I started my company was because prior to this I actually couldn't find a fresh- roasted single- origin, Vietnamese coffee bean, let alone a robust bean anywhere in the U. S market.

00:06:25

Andrea Marquez: After doing some research, Sarah also found out that Vietnam is the second- largest producer of coffee in the world.

00:06:31

Sarah Nguyen: Most people don't know this. And for me, that was an issue around lack of transparency, visibility and representation.

00:06:38

Andrea Marquez: And the way Sarah represents Nguyen Coffee Supply on social media reflects that. She makes sure to keep inclusivity in mind when creating content around her brand.

00:06:48

Sarah Nguyen: Because that's what we need as a coffee community to expand and for the change that we want to create on an institutional and systemic level. This change being how do we be more inclusive of coffee origins that have been historically underrepresented? So in order for us to create this systemic institutional shift, we know that we need to create a narrative shift, and that's why storytelling the video is so powerful for us.

00:07:09

Andrea Marquez: Sarah's background is in documentary filmmaking. She's produced documentaries for PBS, NBC and Vice. So video was the way to go. Sarah's primary social media platform is Instagram, then TikTok, YouTube coming in third. She's done a lot of work around telling the company's origin story, but in general, she likes to focus her content around education and storytelling.

00:07:31

Sarah Nguyen: On our YouTube, we have a whole Vietnamese coffee guide. It's a series where you can learn everything about Vietnamese coffee. We also have a general brew guide on Instagram and TikTok as a combination of the coffee education along with the founder's storytelling and also the cultural community storytelling.

00:07:48

Andrea Marquez: I love that Sarah centers her own story in her business social media. Scrolling through Nguyen Coffee Supply's social media pages made me feel like I was part of the brand. Sarah wasn't just selling coffee, she was building a community. But according to Miss Excel, also known as Kat Norton, using a storytelling approach in your social media might not work for everyone.

00:08:09

Kat Norton: Personally, my brand is a different audience than the Excel brand. The Excel brand is definitely more technical, and they want those tangible tips. So I do think it does depend on the brand, but I always encourage you to test it. Another aspect of that though is people buy from people. So you want to come through and make sure that even if they don't know the story of how I started Miss Excel or they don't care about that, they just want their tips, I make sure my personality is coming through in those videos so that we are connecting, and I'm sitting down, and I'm helping you, and I'm coming through the screen versus just a cold screen with no person behind it.

00:08:42

Andrea Marquez: And even though there's a ton of pros that come with being a founder led brand, Sarah noticed a few cons.

00:08:49

Sarah Nguyen: The challenges are the expectation for someone in my position to constantly play that role of creating content telling stories when I'm also a full- time operator. I'm a solo founder. I'm the CEO, and I'm deeply operating. And so it's all about sustainability for me as a human and for the company.

00:09:07

Andrea Marquez: How do you learn to adapt your social media strategy based on what your audience wants? Sarah uses data.

00:09:13

Sarah Nguyen: Each platform is very unique, and what works on one platform, may or may not work on the other platform. I think there are instances where we can use a piece of content as the root and then iterate, cut it up and repurpose for different platforms. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it won't, and sometimes you'll just need a complete different content strategy altogether.

We spent a lot of time just comparing content strategy and performance and data on both Instagram and TikTok. And what we often found was a piece of content that did well on TikTok would not do well on Instagram and vice versa. And then we would dissect the reasons why. Really short form six seconds do really well on TikTok, but that may not be as engaging on Instagram because Instagram, I think, there's a little bit more space and bandwidth for maybe 15 seconds. I know it sounds wild, but 15 seconds, it makes a big difference, 15 to 30 seconds up to 60 seconds for that more extended education of storytelling.

00:10:04

Andrea Marquez: And if you try to post anything longer than that-

00:10:08

Sarah Nguyen: It'll just flop because people don't stare at their phones for three minutes.

00:10:11

Andrea Marquez: Kat has a slightly different approach. She would use the same video but would change up the audio depending on what's trending on each platform.

00:10:19

Kat Norton: So what we do is we film and edit everything off of the app so we don't have to deal with watermarks or anything like that. If we did make a specific piece of content for a certain platform, maybe there is a certain song trending on TikTok that's not available on Instagram, in that case, we would make something more TikTok specific. But overall, it really comes down to creating that content once and then getting it into the right format and underlaying the right music.

00:10:47

Andrea Marquez: We'll dig deeper into trends in a minute, but before that, I wanted to quickly go over how Sarah uses TikTok and Instagram. She says that TikTok is treated like a discovery platform where they test and try new things, but she's not as experimental with her Instagram account.

00:11:02

Sarah Nguyen: Let's say there was someone new who was discovering us for the first time when they go visit our Instagram page, can they understand our brand immediately in the first nine blocks? Whereas TikTok, it's like random content all day, and you can go to a TikTok page and you don't even know anything about it. So then that was a silly funny video.

00:11:18

Andrea Marquez: And according to Kat, the most important thing is trying new things because you never know what'll strike big.

00:11:24

Kat Norton: I feel like that experimenter's mindset is something that really helped me go viral 10- 20 plus times at this point because I'm not really going into it trying to force something and coming from that lack space energetically like, “Oh, I need this to happen. I need this to go viral or my business won't do well.” I go into it as like, “Let's try this. Let's see how it works.” And then it's a matter of, “Okay, now we've just up leveled. We have hundreds of thousands of followers or millions of followers,” which for me, that was a big part of my story. In three days, I went from a thousand followers to over a hundred thousand and I was like, “Oh, what do I do?” And that's really where layering in the business acumen comes into play and structuring something around that that will serve that audience.

00:12:08

Andrea Marquez: Even if the viral video doesn't really align with your brand, you can still make the most of it.

00:12:13

Kat Norton: I hear this all the time where people go viral with the most random video, and they're like, “What the heck? My account is about this, but I went viral on a knitting video,” or something so random that's not core to the brand. And I look at it, I'm like, “It is still a business opportunity.” For example, I had hundreds of thousands of followers, no mailing list, no product, and a business coach just happened to reach out to me being like, “Hey, I noticed you have a lot of followers there and zero product.” And I was like, “Oh, light bulb moment. Maybe I should get that course out there.”

The right steps will find you, so I wouldn't worry as much about that. In due time, it all does work out. But if you do have the extra time to start researching how to grow an online or digital business, if that's the space you're in or whatever space you're in, I do recommend doing that. But don't let it hold you back because a lot of the times you can't even predict what's going to happen. And that has been my entire trajectory of my business is just learning how to pivot and being really adaptable and just being ready when the opportunities come my way to be able to be like, “All right, let's do it and not get overwhelmed.”

00:13:19

Andrea Marquez: And, of course, we can't talk about social media without mentioning trends. I feel like it must be so stressful to stay up to date with all the new trends and figure out which ones to follow. Sarah spent a whole year experimenting with trends on TikTok.

00:13:31

Sarah Nguyen: I think from a team bandwidth perspective, it felt like we were constantly chasing something. At times, it could be decentering in our brand identity, brand voice, brand mission. Now we're at a place in our marketing strategy and juncture where we're not focused on trends. If something comes up and we feel really inspired and we feel like it's aligned with another pillar, we can engage, but we're no longer actively following, actively tracking and quickly creating content to hop onto that trend.

00:13:59

Andrea Marquez: So when Sarah experimented with trends, she realized that it doesn't really work for her brand. She only hops onto a trend if she feels inspired and it aligns, but every business is different. So if you do want to actively follow trends, here's Kat breaking down the process.

00:14:15

Kat Norton: When you see a trend that you like, I always mark it down, and typically when we create content, we batch it. So I'll every week or so go through and look at those different video ideas that I saved down, those different trending songs and music and then go after them in those times.

00:14:31

Andrea Marquez: Okay, so step one is research. Find the trends you want to follow and write them down.

00:14:36

Kat Norton: And depending on the size of your team, you may have certain things in place where the whole team has to go in and approve the content or the script. And I would really recommend in cases like that, taking a step back and looking at where you can optimize that process.

00:14:50

Andrea Marquez: And step two, set guidelines for which trends you want to follow. Maybe you want to avoid songs with curse words or prefer a specific genre of music that aligns with your brand. Having the specifics on hand can speed up the approval process if you or your team wants to get something out quickly.

00:15:06

Kat Norton: If you have an awesome content creator on your team and they see a trend and they know they have that freedom to be able to go and pick up their phone and knock that out and get it in right when the trend is taking off, that's something that I would really want to enable them to do by simply adding in those guidelines of the different pieces and elements that they would need to follow in order to get that content approved.

00:15:27

Andrea Marquez: And if you plan on following trends-

00:15:29

Kat Norton: Do something that does feel authentic and light you up. So there's a big trend around realness on social media and authenticity and honesty and just coming through like we are friends versus coming through as like, “I am reading off my teleprompter.” People can tell, one, that lacks authenticity if someone's just reading off the teleprompter looking really stiff. If you look uncomfortable, they feel uncomfortable.

00:15:52

Andrea Marquez: So be authentic to you and your brand.

00:15:59

Kat Norton: There are constantly tons of trends going on at all times. So for me, if I hear a song or if it sparks a certain idea, if you're going through and making those connections, then I think it's a great piece of content to run with. However, if you are struggling to force something that's a circle into a square hole or whatever that saying is, that is really where I'd be like, “Okay, this doesn't feel as aligned.” Because a big part of content is it is an energy transmission. So when you are going through and creating that content, the user could tell if it's authentic or not. They could tell if you're forcing it or not. So I like to just go after the things that excite me. If the trend feels really good, if it matches with my content style, then I'm like, “Okay, this is something I want to create.”

00:16:41

Andrea Marquez: Even if you know exactly what your content will look like and where you want to put it, you still have to make it. Kat figured out how to create content as efficiently as possible.

00:16:52

Kat Norton: I usually make content maybe two days per month. I'll go through and batch content every couple of weeks. I have a really awesome team now, but before all of that, I was a one woman show from designing the courses, editing the courses, creating the content, customer service. We're now 17,000 students. I was doing it all, and now we have a team of 12. So that definitely helps a lot from the perspective of they can take old dance videos that I have and pair them with different Excel tricks and still be pumping out content every day on the platforms.

00:17:25

Andrea Marquez: That's one way to free up the founder from constantly making content. But if you don't have a team of 12, there are still ways to make the process manageable. Here's how Kat suggests to break it down.

00:17:34

Kat Norton: I'm doing all different activities that are tapping into that right side of the brain. So I'll be going through and taking a walk in nature, meditating and staying out of my more analytical mind. That's where you got your giant to- do list, your iced coffee, you're knocking things out, and I stay more in that flowy seat, and then I find that the ideas more easily just flow right through. I mark them down.

00:17:57

Andrea Marquez: Then there's the performance day.

00:17:59

Kat Norton: You don't have to get all dressed up every day. If you're filming every day, you can just really go through and take that one day, make your setup.

00:18:06

Andrea Marquez: And finally editing days.

00:18:08

Kat Norton: That's when you're in the zone. I always say it's like my messy bun and I'm sitting there just grinding it out and making those videos. So really separating it out by the different energy types helps you capitalize in each of those areas to be at max capacity versus being 50% all flowy and then trying to get on the camera. And then it really helps to separate it out that way for myself.

00:18:29

Andrea Marquez: It sounds so easy when it's broken down like that. So I was wondering what does the next phase of social media look like?

00:18:38

Kat Norton: It can be hard to tell. I've been to lots of conferences and things where they're like, “Long forms coming back.” A lot of people do really want to see that, but I personally still see from an attention span perspective and people and culture, we just want things fast. We want things packaged fast, we want things done right, and I feel like a big part of that still is in that micro learning space and just having those elements there. But I do really see too a big call for authenticity and content, continuing to plow through and just having that content that stands out. So whenever you see different things happening, different things trending, experimenting, trying things, and pivoting because no matter where it goes, if you're adaptable, you will make that work. So it's hard to sit here and prepare this may happen. It's like, “Okay, if long form's trending, let's go.” And really having the team ready, having yourself ready, just getting that content and not being too rigid.

00:19:33

Andrea Marquez: I feel like when you're an entrepreneur, you could get stuck in the analysis paralysis phase, so just get started. Sarah didn't even have a social media strategy when she was first starting Nguyen Coffee Supply.

00:19:44

Sarah Nguyen: There was really no thought behind it. There was no constant calendar, there were no pillars. It was literally what do I feel like posting? I think the only thread if you were to really dissect it was this feeling of building in public. That's something that I felt like could be dissected as a common theme in our early social media is all the BTS of me building the brand. Every stage in building a company, getting our first shipment of greens, learning how to roast, meet at the roastery, us packing coffee, going to USPS, building in public was probably the only theme. And because that was their approach, we were just really organic about it.

00:20:20

Andrea Marquez: So if there's one thing you take away from this episode, it's start and don't force it.

00:20:25

Kat Norton: Not everything has to be perfect, and that takes a lot of inner work, especially on the content creator going inward and being like, “Okay, we're releasing the perfectionism, the people pleasing,” all that kind of stuff because it's really important to take a look at ourselves and figure out what is actually standing in our way when it comes to scaling our business. Is it do we need a bigger team? Is it a time thing? Is it a money thing, an energy thing? Unblocking within yourself, whatever that is. And that's what opens it up. And that paired with taking that messy action and not getting all in our heads, waiting for the perfect day to film. Oh, but I need this camera, but I need that. I started all my things on an iPhone. I had no exterior microphone, I didn't have any crazy quality things. I just put myself out there and did the thing. And a lot of times it's that messy action that you take that will lead you to that next step to help you really scale and grow.

00:21:19

Andrea Marquez: I feel like I just got a crash course on everything social media. I love that we got two different perspectives on what kind and how to make content, but a common thread throughout all the advice was make sure to stay authentic and aligned with your brand's values and, of course, be adaptable. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. Let me know what you think of this episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier if you do it through your phone. If you liked what you heard, I hope you'll share us with anyone else who needs to hear this.

If you're an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe you already have your small business up and running and you're ready for the next step, a super valuable resource that can help you is the Amazon Small Business Academy. Take the free self- assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www. smallbusiness. amazon. That's it for today's episode of This Is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta luego, and thanks for listening. This is Small Businesses brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by JAR Audio.

BONUS: The Benefits of Integrating Culture Into Your Products

Stand out through branding.

Building a brand around your culture and history can help you stand out and create a loyal customer base. Just ask Teri Johnson, the CEO of Harlem Candle Co, whose scented candles are inspired by influential figures in the Harlem Renaissance. Teri opens up about how, in sharing stories from this moment in Black history, she was able to build a brand that people wanted to talk about, share and celebrate. "Storytelling is everything about the candle," she says. "People connect to it and they can feel it."

‍

‍
Learn how Teri started her business, the stories behind some of her favorite scents, and how she integrates Black history into her branding.

In this episode you'll hear:

(01:18) Where Teri's story begins

(04:23) How to find support (and cross promotion) in community

(05:15) Andrea mentions one of our previous episodes, in which former NFL player Justin Forsett talks about finding your "huddle". You can listen to the full episode here: https://www.smallbusiness.amazon/podcast-episodes/ep-13-justin-tackles-the-top-3-steps-to-start-a-business

(07:40) How to work storytelling into product packaging

(08:30) How brand storytelling wins Teri media coverage and high-profile customers

(09:55) How transparency builds customer loyalty

Takeaways:

1 - Have a supportive community of entrepreneurs who know what you’re going through. They’ll be there if you want to collaborate to get better reach or if you need to vent about something only a fellow entrepreneur might understand.

2 - Integrating great storytelling into your products helps customers build a connection with your brand, and it promotes media coverage of your products when editors and journalists want to share your and celebrate your story.

3- Be honest with your customers – especially when things go wrong. This will show your customers that you care about giving them the highest quality product or services and might even turn them into loyal customers.

4 - Ask for permission. If you’ll be incorporating culture into your products and are planning to use someone’s legacy, then make sure you ask for permission. You could get in touch with their families like how Teri did with the illustration of the nightclub map of Harlem on the inside of their Candle boxes.

00:00:01

Teri Johnson: It's wonderful to celebrate history, to celebrate the past, to acknowledge the people who came before us who have done tremendous things. I want to learn more about other places, and other parts of history, and other cultures. I'd love to learn about that through some sort of product.

00:00:18

Andrea Marquez: It's Black History Month, and what better way to celebrate than to talk to a brand that celebrates Black culture all year round? Season 4 is right around the corner. In the past three seasons, I loved featuring as many diverse entrepreneurs as possible. I've noticed that a lot of them incorporate their culture into the brands in different ways. Aside from the fact that it's wonderful to be able to share your culture with other people, it can help your product stand out, and even build a loyal customer base.

I'm Andrea Marquez, and This is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today we have a special episode with Teri Johnson, the CEO of Harlem Candle Company. Teri's business creates candles inspired by people and places from the Harlem Renaissance, an art movement that started in the Harlem neighborhood in New York. We'll be talking about how she incorporates culture into her products, the importance of having community, and of course, the stories behind some of her favorite scents. But first, let's get into Teri's story. Her journey building Harlem Candle Company started in her kitchen.

00:01:23

Teri Johnson: There was one year I had no money to buy gifts, and I was going to be seeing so many different family members and friends all over the country, and I wanted to bring something that was really special.

00:01:33

Andrea Marquez: And because she loved scented candles, she decided to make some and gift them to her friends and family for Christmas.

00:01:39

Teri Johnson: I had gotten some fragrance oils from a friend of mine, who's a chemist, who had created fragrance oils for different candle brands, and I made about 50 candles and I branded it La Maison de Bougies de Teri, Teri's House of Candles. Each candle had a little story, had a different color, had a different scent, depending on who I was gifting it to. The response was overwhelming. My friends and family love them. They wanted to order more. I was like, “Well, it's not a business,” but they said, “You should turn it into a business,” which is what I did. It was really an experiment, and I knew I could not call it La Maison de Bougies de Teri, because that makes no sense to most people. So I decided to name it the Harlem Candle Company, and use the essence of the Harlem Renaissance, and these incredible icons and legendary places as the inspiration for the fragrances.

00:02:31

Andrea Marquez: Even before the idea of Harlem Candle Company came to her, Teri always knew that she wanted to be her own boss.

00:02:38

Teri Johnson: I did corporate America. I definitely tried it. I used to do management consulting. The position that I had, I was responsible for going into these companies, understanding every little part of what a person did. I used to code, and being able to create a process, a system, to replace that person in their job. It was crazy, because it was like, “Oof, this is tough.”

However, I got these people to give me all their information about what they did, which is why I think creating a business, and creating a brand, I understand, from the very minute detail of being able to create something, and every single thing that is necessary in order to make it happen. Creating this brand, honestly, it wasn't hard. I'm not saying it with humility, but I'm saying it because I used to do really, really hard stuff for financial services companies. Building a candle brand? I was like, “Oh, no, that wasn't hard, and I can do it again.”

00:03:36

Andrea Marquez: Teri was ready to build a brand, and even though she makes building a business look easy and fun, it wasn't always so glamorous.

00:03:44

Teri Johnson: There are plenty of things about it that are not fun, that are not easy. Imagine packing up all your candles, a lot of them that you made the night before, or two nights before. Candles are heavy. Lugging them in a big old suitcase, some on a backpack, some on a tote bag, packing all this stuff into an Uber, and going to a pop-up and selling two candles, and not even being able to break even and pay for the Uber back and forth. That has happened. It's happened multiple times, and those are those moments that they're extremely humbling, but you have to fight through it. You can't give up, you can't quit.

00:04:22

Andrea Marquez: One of the things that helped Teri keep going, despite all that, was the supportive community she had around her.

00:04:28

Teri Johnson: I have a lot of friends who are also entrepreneurs or designers, who are makers, and it's important because sometimes it's just we're venting, and you just need to let it out. Then you also can sometimes get ideas, or, “Did you hear about this market,” or, “Did you hear about that?” You share, you collaborate. I'm wearing jewelry by a brand called Lionette. She's one of my best friends. I met her at a pop-up, and I wear her stuff as much as I possibly can, in different photo shoots, when I'm doing Instagram lives, and all that good stuff, and she puts my candles in her product photography. There's all sorts of really cool ways to be able to support each other, direct or indirectly. Having a community of people who believe in you, and just like you a lot, is important.

00:05:15

Andrea Marquez: This reminds me of an episode we had with Justin Forsett, a former NFL player, and the founder of Hustle Clean. He called it Having Your Huddle; a group of people that are close to you, and that you can go to for help.

00:05:31

Teri Johnson: It makes such a difference, because so many of us are self-funded, and we know the struggle. We know the struggle is real. When you know the struggle is real, and you see each other struggling, or doing some stuff, that's kind of cool. Being able to help, and support, and share is just the best.

00:05:50

Andrea Marquez: Another important part of Teri's community are her customers.

00:05:54

Teri Johnson: I call these people angels. There are people who are talking about your brand, doing really nice things, gifting your brand, that you don't really even know, and you don't know the impact and the moves that are actually being made. This really is our customers. These are our customers. They're our friends.

00:06:11

Andrea Marquez: Harlem Candle Company is more than just a candle company. Storytelling is an integral part of the brand.

00:06:18

Teri Johnson: All of the candles are inspired by the Harlem Renaissance. It could be a scent inspired by Josephine Baker, and we've used our interpretation of her boudoir. What did her boudoir smell like? Her boudoir in Paris. We imagine there's some rose, and some jasmine, and some amber. When you think about the time period of the 1920s and '30s, “Okay, what was the perfume that women were wearing?” We'd really just tried to create something that was sensual, and lovely, evocative, but that could transport you into this boudoir.

I would say one of my favorites is the Langston candle, which is inspired by the poet and writer Langston Hughes. What we really tried to do is recreate his creative space. Langston Hughes was a big smoker, so we put tobacco fragrance notes in there. He also used to live in Mexico, at two points in his life, and he loved going into these really small, candlelit, dusky churches, where they're burning incense. So we put incense notes in there. But then we also imagine him sitting on his leather chair, as he's writing very late at night, and so we put elements of leather. We really do try to embody the spirit and the creativity of whoever we are named the candle after. Storytelling is everything about the candle, and people connect to it, and they can feel it.

00:07:39

Andrea Marquez: I see that that storytelling extends to the packaging as well.

00:07:44

Teri Johnson: If you open up the candle box, you'll see a 1932 illustration of the nightclub map of Harlem. You'll also find a card that has a really beautiful picture of the candle in a lifestyle setting. And on the back of that card, it'll tell you the inspiration, and the fragrance notes, and a little romance story about the candle and how it connects to either the person that it's named after or the place it's named after. It's all about storytelling, and we try to make it really easy to gift, because you don't have to remember the story when you give the candle because it's on the inside.

00:08:15

Andrea Marquez: I could listen to Teri talk about these stories all day. She's obviously really passionate about what she does, and that passion and the storytelling behind the candles has brought them loads of success, even though they don't have a PR team.

00:08:29

Teri Johnson: I think because the brand is based on storytelling that people can connect, people understand. They get it. I think it makes it really easy for media outlets to talk about us. I would say those things, when all of these magazines, Elle, WWD, Cosmo, Vanity Fair, all these magazines, it's like, “Okay, this is cool. Thank you.” We don't even know the editors. We don't know the writers. They just know the brand, and they like it, and they write about it.

00:08:58

Andrea Marquez: She's even had a few celebrity customers.

00:09:01

Teri Johnson: I saw an order come through, and the name said Justin Bieber, but it was a large order, so I always noticed the real big orders. That was Justin Bieber. He ordered a candle. I called my fulfillment center. I was like, “Everybody, stop. Justin Bieber ordered candles.” They're like, “What?” We were like, “We got to make it so nice. Let's just like... We're going to write a handwritten note. Thank you, Justin, so much. We're just going to put so much love.” We put love into everything, but I said, “I need this box to have extra love.” Alicia Keys ordered his candles, Misty Copeland.

00:09:35

Andrea Marquez: From getting featured on magazines to celebrity customers. I think it's so cool that Teri has managed to build a brand that resonated with so many people, all through the power of storytelling. But at the end of the day, it still is entrepreneurship, and if you know anything about building a business, it's that there's always a few bumps in the road.

00:09:55

Teri Johnson: One of my manufacturers, a few years back, put the wrong fragrance in, I don't know, about 3, 000 candles, labeled it, everything. All our customers who know this candle, because it is their favorite, are just saying, “Hey, this is not the Speakeasy candle.”

00:10:10

Andrea Marquez: So Teri orders a candle, and realizes that the manufacturer had accidentally used another fragrance instead of Speakeasy.

00:10:18

Teri Johnson: We had to go and figure out the batch, and figure out every single person that had been shipped these candles with the wrong fragrance, because we knew it was wrong. We told them. We had to email all of them, and just say, “We are so sorry. Unfortunately, our manufacturer put the wrong candle fragrance.” We said, “Okay, this fragrance was actually our Brownstone fragrance.” Some people replied saying, “Thank you for letting me know, because I love this Brownstone fragrance.”

00:10:43

Andrea Marquez: I love that some of the customers ended up loving the scent.

00:10:47

Teri Johnson: They were very grateful, because a lot of the customers, if that was their first time ordering speakeasy, they didn't know that that was not the smell. But we were like, “No, we have to be very transparent, and let them know mistakes happen.” A mistake happened, and we fixed it. We've had so much customer loyalty, because we just like to just be upfront and honest, and let them know what's going on as a small business, because things like this can happen.

00:11:11

Andrea Marquez: Teri sent the right fragrance to all customers who had ordered it. Speaking from a customer's perspective, I definitely appreciate seeing that a brand is going above and beyond for me. That would've definitely made me a repeat customer. Let's go back to the storytelling behind Teri's brand. Teri incorporates history and culture in her products in such a beautiful way, and she managed to find a whole community who appreciates that. If you've been thinking about doing something similar...

00:11:37

Teri Johnson: Do it because it's good. It's wonderful to celebrate history, to celebrate the past, to acknowledge the people who came before us who have done tremendous things. I say do it. You can't go wrong. You can't go wrong. I want to learn more about other places, and other parts of history, and other cultures. I'd love to learn about that through some sort of product.

00:12:00

Andrea Marquez: But if you're going to be working with specific people, Teri says it's important to be in touch with their families and get their permission.

00:12:08

Teri Johnson: The packaging that we have on the inside of our boxes, with the nightclub map of Harlem, illustration from 1932, I know the daughter of the artist, and the granddaughter of the artist. We got their permission, and they said, “Oh, absolutely. Thank you for celebrating my father's work in this way.”

00:12:26

Andrea Marquez: That was Teri Johnson, the CEO of Harlem Candle Company. It's so obvious that Teri's passionate about Harlem Candle Company, and I think that passion and the storytelling behind her brand is one of the main reasons why she has such loyal customers, or angels, as she calls them. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts.

That's it for this episode of This is Small Business, brought to You by Amazon. Make sure to subscribe, and tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode. And please, please, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier if you do it through your phone, or send us an email at thisissmallbusiness@ amazon. com.

Until next time, I'm your host, Andrea Marquez. Hasta luego, and thanks for listening. This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by JAR Audio.

Ep. 44: How to Keep a Seasonal Business Profitable Year-Round

Stay profitable all year.

[00:00:00] Charlie: It's a very good way to learn. Seasonal business. Yes, it could be challenging. On the other hand, it also gives you a lot of time to learn functions and actions that you would not be able to learn if you were busy all year long, all the time. So, you take the time to actually reinforce your knowledge and your skills.

[00:00:23] Host: Considering how challenging it must be to stay profitable or to keep your customers coming back during slower seasons, I'm glad we're starting off on a positive note. Let's dive deeper into what it takes to keep a seasonal business profitable and running all year long.

Hi, This is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. I’m your host, Andrea Marquez. On This is Small Business we cover all things small business that will help you start, build, and scale your business. We will hear from guests with diverse backgrounds, point of views, and stories, with the hope of hearing from many types of small business entrepreneurs. By the end of each episode, I'll point out key takeaways that you can use on your business journey.

[00:01:00] We’re at the last episode of the third season of This is Small Business. And for the season finale, we decided to talk about a slightly different type of business: a seasonal one. A seasonal business gets most or all their revenue from one season. We’ll be talking to Charlie Weiss, owner of Jummy, an organic hot cocoa company, about how to manage a seasonal business and ways you can stay profitable all year long. Like most of the businesses we feature on This is Small Business, you can find Jummy in the Amazon store. I thought Jummy was the perfect business for this because hot chocolate is sometimes considered a seasonal drink. If you’re like me, as soon as November starts, it’s hot chocolate season. I like to enjoy it best during colder months. For seasonal business owners, it can be worrying to have a product that tends to sell more during certain months.

I was curious to learn about how seasonal business owners can also stay profitable during low selling seasons so I spoke to Charlie. You’ll also hear from familiar experts and small business owners who showed up on other episodes this season. They’ll be pointing out and expanding on some of the takeaways. [00:02:00] So if you have a seasonal business and are looking for ways to stay profitable or keep your customers coming back during the slower seasons, then this episode is for you.

Also, don't forget that if you want to hear your story on This is Small Business, we have a voicemail line where you can ask questions or share your entrepreneurial story. We want to hear from you! Find the link to the voicemail line in the episode description.

[00:02:20] Charlie: Oh, well, Jummy, came from Frozen Desserts. I had initially started a Frozen Desserts company a while back, which had its, uh, trepidations, adventures, and unfortunately, or fortunately, didn't work out as planned. So I was able to get into a few stores, about a hundred stores in the city at the time, but could not sustain somewhat of the growth. So it decided to pivot eventually. Uh, just by simply one night being in my apartment debating what I was going to do and I know my supplier had sent me some delicious cocoa powder because I used to make a double chocolate sorbet and decided to make a hot cocoa and I was like, wow, this cocoa is fantastic [00:03:00] and I made it with some coconut sugar and I was like, okay, hold on. This whole segment of the cocoa world must have changed in the last few years. And I realized that there weren't that many newish brands. So I decided to look more into it and came up with the idea of adding prebiotic fiber a few years ago, reducing the amount of sugar.

[00:03:20] ANDREA: I love that Jummy came out of a pivot. Your initial idea didn't go as planned but something better came out of it. And it sounds like you didn't just want to be another hot cocoa brand out there, you wanted to find a way to differentiate your product. Before we get into discussing the seasonality behind your business, I wanted to know why call it Jummy?

[00:03:40] Charlie: Jummy is Joy and Yummy. People say, oh Jemi, what is that? Oh, it's just yummy with a J. So then they remember that rather quickly. A very versatile name as well, which allows us to, stay in the hot cocoa, but if eventually we want to do chocolate bars, who knows, whatever, it, it's not going to affect the branding as much as my previous [00:04:00] venture that was called Charlie Sorbet. So, Jummy represents the Spirit of the brand and also the message and the feeling we want to convey to the consumer. I just want to make people happy. I just want to share the fact that you're able to have a healthier cup of hot cocoa.

[00:04:17] ANDREA: That’s a little crash course on the importance of branding when you're coming up with your name. So Charlie, can you tell me what makes Jummy a seasonal business?

[00:04:25] Charlie: It's seasonal because of the product that we manufacture. Uh, it's hot cocoa, no matter how better for you it's going to be. It's always going to be a hot cocoa and the consumer will always associate hot cocoa with a warm, comfy, cozy evenings, or, uh, after a long day out in the snow, that's what you think of hot cocoa. So for us, that is mainly, consumer driven seasonality. So our business really starts to pick up towards, let's say beginning of November, and really starts to you know rocket [00:05:00] around Thanksgiving. Now it's a not difficult but a little bit tricky to plan for the start of our season and having said that it is definitely the consumer that drives the seasonality of the business.

[00:05:12] Host: That brings an important topic to mind: because the customer drives the seasonality of the business, it's important to know what the customer journey looks like. We actually went over this topic in the first episode of this season. Here's Amber Murray, founder of Fidget Stickers, with a quick refresher on what the five steps of a customer journey look like:

[00:05:30] AMBER: There's awareness, consideration, then the decision purchase, retention, and advocacy.

[00:05:36] ANDREA: So, Charlie, considering that you're a seasonal business can you tell me a bit about what your customer journey looks like in both on and off seasons?

[00:05:45] Charlie: The consumer starts around the month of October to think about the winter. So all these nice warm feelings driven by some search online. And that's when we come in [00:06:00] and we really start to gear up our advertising campaigns. The imagery that we use of a little something a little bit more cozy, a little bit more comfy, on our social media. To drive that consumer to our listings, and finally to, to purchase, the goal is to get that consumer to repurchase at least a few times during the season, and that journey kind of switches around March, April, where we obviously see sales to slow down a little bit and we see the consumers on this particular journey during the summer using our products more into their smoothies or adding to their coffee. So we've had videos and advertising where people added to their coffee, their yogurts. Actually, the yogurt one is thanks to my nephew. So you end up with a chocolate, yogurt, caramel flavor item and he loved it. I tried it and I was like, yeah, we need to, we need to push this because this will allow us to get out of that seasonality mindset for a cocoa mix or a hot cocoa mix. [00:07:00] And that's really the goal of a seasonal business is to be able and actually any business, obviously, but more so in the seasonal business is to attract the consumer and to keep that customer across the seasons, no matter how hard it is.

[00:07:10] ANDREA: Okay so you get your customers during the high season and then you try to keep them during the low seasons by advertising the use of the powder in other ways that could work during a warmer season -- like putting it in yogurt. What research went into figuring out that your customers can even use your product in the low season in that way?

[00:07:30] Charlie: Competitive analysis basically and this is what a lot of the business do so we look at what other business are doing how they're advertising their products, and we start to notice that people are much more versatile in the use of the hot cocoas of the world. So some other brands may focus more on their hot cocoa and say, oh, you can also use this for baking. We want to see it more as something that you can add to other items such as your coffee or your tea, for example, [00:08:00] or the yogurts. The smoothie is a huge thing. We have people that order quite a bit and that's all they do all year long. They love their smoothies. They want to add a little bit of sweetness with a little bit of cocoa flavor behind or a little bit of hazelnut or caramel flavor, and it's a perfect way to get yourself in the routine of the consumer.

So we did a lot of research on that. We actually tested also the product because nobody wants to put like two scoops of hot, of cocoa mix and not able to, uh, dissolve it correctly. You know reviews are a huge part of the business, whether it's positive reviews or more constructive reviews as we may call them. So those are things we take into account a lot when we review what consumers are doing. So when we look at some of these reviews, and we try to understand where we may have missed the mark, we are able to adjust. Much more efficiently, I believe, and easily than a company or brand that is much larger. That allows us to be much more nimble. [00:09:00] We can, you know, if we want to change the packaging, if we see that, okay, this, this season for a reason, Caramel is not selling, why isn't it sell why is it not selling correctly? It's a great flavor, obviously, but why isn't it not selling? Have we not advertised correctly, for example? Maybe it's a trend, you know.

[00:09:15] Host: And making sure you're constantly staying up to date with your customer is an essential part of your business. Here's what Roshni, Founder & CEO of Prosh Marketing, had to say about it in Episode 12 of this season:

[00:09:25] Roshni: This type of information changes all the time, so you can't just do this and then set it and forget it, because customers are changing. So if you sit on your data and your customer research, and you just build, and now you think that this is the way customers are, you're forgetting that customers and markets evolve over time. So it's something that's always changing, and something that you should, even as a business owner, as a marketer, as anyone in an organization, just have your pulse on the customer.

[00:09:50] ANDREA: But it could get a little tricky when you're trying to stay ahead of trends, so Charlie, what type of research are you conducting to be able to know that something is going to be trendy soon?

[00:10:00] Charlie: We usually look at, again, what the competition is doing. And we do know that these larger firms are the trendsetters. Regardless if their product comes out and it's a cherry rose flavor hot cocoa, you can be sure that the next year or two, cherry rose cocoa flavor is going to be a big hit. And it's not, the consumer usually does not dictate that, but these larger brands actually do dictate these, these trends somehow, because of such a niche and seasonal business. And it's quite interesting to see that. Now the other one is also, we try to think a little bit outside the box. So the mocha flavor that we have, a lot of other people are making mocha flavors that we all know, but I personally didn't even know it was going to be that successful. So there's also the fact that, okay, yeah, we want to try to see what has worked for others, you may think it's not going to work for you, but it actually works way better than you expected. And others that you think is, are going to work great, don't necessarily work [00:11:00] on the market. For us you know, for a while Caramel was doing great, and you know, sometimes there's a little bit of slowdown of, of the sales, and then it picks back up. It's, that's the nature also of the business and consumer demand.

[00:11:12] Host: It sounds like there's a lot of testing and learning which reminds me of something Trinity, co-founder and CEO of Golde, said in the second episode of this season:

[00:11:21] Trinity: When you are in this entrepreneurial journey, you have to look at yourself as you're sort of a scientist, you're a great experimenter, and so you're gonna try a lot of different things as you try to understand what works, what catches your audience's attention, what drives sales, what creates more brand love?

[00:11:42] ANDREA: Speaking of trying different things and learning as you go, something else I’m wondering is, because of the seasonality of your product, does the price change with it considering how demand fluctuates?

[00:11:54] Charlie: We see myself not only as the owner of the business or the brand manufacturer but also as a consumer. [00:12:00] I'm going to go in the store and I'm going to like something and buy it for 10, I go three months later and it's at 14, unlikely going to buy it. Because my first question is, why have you increased the price by so much? Our strategy is to offer discounts and coupons once we hit more of the summerish seasons. And like I mentioned previously, this is a time where we want to try to also show consumers that they can do more with our cocoa as opposed to just buying it between November and March. So we want to try to keep them. Also, we just want to make people happy and show them they can enjoy a cup of hot cocoa that has a little bit less sugar, has some prebiotic fiber, that's really our goal. We have customers that came back over 50 times and purchased our products. We don't want to lose them just because we're going to hike the price by a couple points. It's not going to work in our favor.

[00:12:50] ANDREA: So, you’re prioritizing customer loyalty through consistency, essentially. So, Charlie, I want to switch gears a bit and talk about cash flow. [00:13:00] Especially since that is one of the more intimidating topics for business owners.

[00:13:05] Charlie: Let me get my accountant with me right now. He will explain everything to you. And the mild heart attacks that we may have.

[00:13:13] ANDREA: I bet it's overwhelming sometimes. So tell me a little bit about what cashflow looks like for a seasonal business like yours.

[00:13:20] Charlie: In order to predict, um, proper cash flow and having enough reserve along the year, if you have too many movements of price with your product, it may be a little bit harder to forecast what your cash flow will be next season. Now what usually happens for us is we're Our year doesn't typically end December 31st It ends around March 30th, April Because that's when really our high season slows down. Once we're done with this high season, we're able to look at what happened During the month of November to March and have a proper forecast [00:14:00] or a proper estimation of what's going to happen in the following year.

[00:14:03] Host: So Charlie is doing something that Ambro Blackwell, a best-selling author and VP and senior business banking relationship manager at JP Morgan Chase said is essential when trying to figure out your cashflow: Forecasting. Here’s Ambro.

[00:14:16] Ambro: You should be forecasting your business. You should know where your business is heading. So you want to be able to anticipate, understand how your cash flow is looking. And yes, there's always going to be some days, some months where businesses, you know, may not be as steady as the month before. But you want to be able to, as much as possible, make sure that you're planning for that. And the only way you can do that to make sure that you're optimizing your cash is to do it strategically.

[00:14:40] Host: And doing this helps Charlie prepare himself for the slower seasons.

[00:14:44] Charlie: Now, we usually start to have cut some expenses and try to be a little bit more cautious and conservative around the month of April to September October. Once we start the October, November, we start implementing a little bit more of [00:15:00] what we would consider profit maximization. So that means going over the ads that worked very well the previous year that had a very good ROAS and that performed quite well. See how we can adjust them and increase actually those budgets in order to get more customers and more people in the door.

So it is a necessity and it could be a little bit difficult at times because as you know the weather is can't really forecast that, no pun intended, but that's why I say around Thanksgiving is usually the time of the year where we see our spike in sale and that continually increases and then decreases slowly into March and so that's how we're able to forecast more or less our cash flows.

[00:15:46] ANDREA: Charlie and what do you work on in the low seasons to prepare?

[00:15:50] Charlie: We try and we test new flavors. We see what works, what doesn't work. Like, could we add maybe some, some more cocoa? Or what's going on with this, you know, element in the formula? [00:16:00] So the seasonal aspect of the business also allows you to optimize yourself and optimize the business during the slower month of the year. Including learning a little bit more about accounting. Accounting is, is, is a necessary evil. But once you know and you understand some of these casual concepts, you're able to be like, okay, hold on, my ad campaigns are not performing well. I can see this becoming an issue in six months. As opposed to saying, Oh, okay, it's not going well. Let's see what happens in a week or two. And then, you end up in six months having a very big cash flow issue. So understanding the cash flow, these cash flow concepts, the ad spend, your inventory, how much you're being charged at, for your warehouse and the fulfillment, allows you to really plan a little bit better your profit maximization during the high season and to cut expenses during the lower seasons.

[00:16:52] ANDREA: So it sounds like you can't really know how you're going to perform unless you have a year before to learn from. So I'm curious to know, [00:17:00] what was your first year like?

[00:17:02] Charlie: I started actually selling, I believe it was mid-December. So basically missed the entire season. So I did not have really a lot of data to look at. If you don't have any reviews, if you are not ranked correctly, nobody's going to find you. And this is what I tell people like, yeah, you have a great product. How are you going to tell people that you have a great product or you, or at least that you have a product?

Well to do that, you need to find creative ways. And one of them is, To advertise. The other one is Amazon has a great program called the Vine programs. So you're able to, they select customers or consumers. They're going to send some of your product to them and they will review. So that allows you to build up the review. So we were able to build up from like one or two reviews to 30, then those 30 become 40, and then you start to see your ads converting and then you're like, okay, hold on. I'm now, instead of spending a hundred dollars and getting. 30 in sales, I'm spending a 100 [00:18:00] and getting 250 in sales. So what's going on? Like, what's converting well? And you're starting to look at things like, okay, keywords. What are people searching for? Oh, we're ranking very well for vegan hot chocolate. Okay, let's, let's push that. Coming back to the cash flow. Let's put more money in those keywords and reduce the spending on keywords like hot cocoa, which is so vague that You can spend thousands of dollars and get maybe five sales.

So those are the little tricks at the beginning that takes a lot of time and money to learn. Then comes back to being persevering and pushing and trying to understand the systems. It's like a new language. You need to understand the advertising platform, the tools that are offered, like, you know, um, on the brands aspect, you're able to see the demographics of people purchasing. These are very important, data that you need to look at or someone has to look at. And, yeah, it ties all back to [00:19:00] the questions you had previously regarding the cash flows. Because this allows us to really trim, um, the spending.

[00:19:08] Host: What a great way to end this season by giving us a look into what it’s like to be a seasonal business. That was Charlie Weiss, owner of Jummy, an organic hot cocoa company. And as always, here are some of the key takeaways.

One. This isn’t specific to a seasonal business but as we learned from Jummy, product differentiation is key. We’ve spoken about this in past episodes. Standing out means thinking about who your competitors are and how your product compares, what are you providing for customers that they can’t really get the same somewhere else?
Two. When it comes to a seasonal business with low and high seasons that are very clear, it’s important to look at retention. Prioritizing your customer’s loyalty like Charlie does. Once you’ve got a customer during the high season, try to figure out how to make them come back during the slower seasons. It’ll be way easier than trying to get new customers. Charlie suggested giving loyal customers some discounts during lower seasons.
[00:20:00] Three. If you’re seasonal… leverage that. Use the slow seasons as a way to learn more about how to improve your business during the high seasons. And maybe even try cutting down on marketing and ads that you might be running that aren’t getting the engagement you expected.
And four. Cash Flow is super important to stay open during the slow season. Make sure you try to forecast any upcoming payments that you’ll have during the slower seasons and set money aside for that. And maybe even try cutting down on marketing and ads that you may be running that won’t work during that season.

I'm curious – Is your business seasonal? How do you get your customers coming back during the low seasons? I'd love to hear about your journey! Reach out to us at thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com to tell us what you're up to. Or let me know what you think of the episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts – it’s easier if you do it through your phone. And if you liked what you heard -- I hope you'll share us with anyone else who needs to hear this!

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, and I hope you are if you’re listening to This is Small Business. Or maybe you already have your small business up and running and you’re ready for the next step. A super valuable resource that can help you is the Amazon Small Business Academy where you can find the help you need [00:21:00] to take your small business from concept to launch and beyond. Take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www.smallbusiness.amazon.

That's it for today’s episode of This is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. Until later – This is Small Business, I'm your host Andrea Marquez -- Hasta luego -- and thanks for listening!

CREDITS: This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by JAR Audio. [00:21:27]

Amazon Small Business Academy (ASBA) offers FREE educational resources to help early-stage entrepreneurs start, build, and launch their businesses online.

Content

The Academy Events Podcast Our Partners About Us

Resources

Help Contact Us Give Us Feedback

Terms of Service Privacy Policy

© 2024, Amazon.com Services LLC.