Broughtupsy

Building a small business in the Bahamas is harder than many may think. Join our guest Kentisha Ward of the popular PopStop company in discussing doing business in the Bahamas, how she got started, the ups and downs she has experienced and how she has overcome them and continue to make waves as a young entrepreneur.

Kentisha is a long time friend of mine, she had taken the time to educate herself to the point of acquiring 3 college degrees. However after coming home from school and accepting a job she was met with adversity as many Bahamians did with the issues of Bahamar at the time. This cool cat didn't sit in a corner waiting for a hand out instead she pulled herself up and with a little help from a family member began her gourmet Popsicle business pop stop.

Kentisha Ward is not just a one trick pony nor is she a selfish lady. She started a side hustle called Preparing our People POP.. Kentisha wanted to help Bahamians realize that they do not need to depend on the government but instead learn skills that will take them into a future that they will be proud of. She has taken on young Bahamians and taught them how to bring out their entrepreneurial spirit.

We discussed her background growing up and going off to school with multiple degrees to coming back home and being jobless because of her being overqualified. Kentisha discusses how she overcame this obstacle that many Bahamians face.

You really are selling Popsicle's???

What does it take to be innovative in the Popsicle business or with any business. How to find inspiration for new products and how to ensure that your business can grow beyond just yourself.

Pop Stop has grown tremendously since its humble beginnings and there are some amazing things on the horizon for the Bahamian small company. Join us as we discuss her journey in doing business in the Bahamas, Kentisha Ward... Pop Stop.

• Phone - 1- 242-814-0416
• Facebook - PopStop242
• Instagram - PopStop242

• Soldier Road
• Pompey Square
• Incudesk - Chesapeak Road
• The Candy Shop - The Marina Village
• Ardastra Gardens
• NRG

Chelsea Johnson is an Entrepreneur in the Bahamas who has developed multiple businesses including Autumn Crop, Island Elements and The Creative Business Strategist. I have know Chelsea for a number of years and I must say she is the postage stamp for an Entrepreneur.

Chelsea Johnson has seen it and done it all. Not only in the Bahamas but internationally. Her work has been sold practically world wide. What I like however is her ability to effectively manage her business while helping others do the same thing as a business coach

Chelsea Johnson has developed a company called The Creative Business Strategist of which its sole purpose is to help Bahamians realize the full potential of their business.

Lets face it we all can use the help in starting and running a business in the Bahamas. There are many pitfalls and hurdles you have to overcome. Wouldn't it be great if there was someone willing to take the time to help you avoid those costly mistakes... Ahh luckily there is.

Join us and listen in as we sit down and shoot the breeze talking about a number business issues and strategies.  We touched on many topics including;

• Listening to your customer
• Social Media Marketing
• Traditional Marketing
• Cutting overall Cost
• Governmental incentives
• Shipping products outside the Bahamas
• and much much more

Our discussions went from one extreme to the other but all ways keeping in mind that we are discussing the concept of how easy or difficult is it to do business in the Bahamas and what small business and large companies can do to improve their bottom line and make their customers happy.

Find her on FACEBOOK

Follow her on INSTAGRAM

Contact her at  242.466.9161Email address: [email protected]

•  Strategy Sessions
• Marketing Plans & Calendars
• Wholesale Coaching
• Creative Marketing Materials
• Branding
• Small E-commerce and Service Websites

Take your business to the next level, avoid the pitfalls and grow your business to something you will be proud of.

There is lots of talk these days about being an entrepreneur. I hear it all the time or maybe its just because im in that space. The thing is, what is the actual difference between being a businessman and being an entrepreneur. Is it just a buzz word that sounds good and this generation wants to hold on to or is it really something very different whereas the make up of an entrepreneur is very different from a business person?

Ive found a few images online that may help with what is accepted online as the differences and I find then interesting but I would not say they are actually truthful. Take a look and you tell me.

Im not exactly excited by the illustrations above but this is what the conversation is all about. A businessman takes a product and sells it to his customers, however an entrepreneur takes the same product and makes something better with the same item.

If you live for the weekend and vacation your shit is broken

What does this mean? Its pretty simple. You are selling your time for a job that you hate. Going to a building or a spot away from what you really want to do. You are so happy for the weekends to go party and enjoy life just to get away from the Monday to Friday 9-5 or shift work that you do for a paycheck.

" A person who brings his unique idea to run a startup company is known as an entrepreneur. A businessman is a person who starts a business on an old concept or idea. ... "

I talked about IDEAS in Episode 2 of this podcast, discussing how easy it is to come up with an idea. However its the execution of that idea through reverse engineering to make it actually work.

• Businessman
• Entrepreneur
• Hustler

Leave you thoughts below on this podcast. What do you think is the difference between an Entrepreneur and a Businessman.

How effective is Social Media Marketing for your business in the Bahamas? Are you using it properly, can you reach your market? What works and what doesn't in the Bahamas? Can Bahamians take advantage of platforms that were developed for an American market?

When do Bahamians use Twitter? There have been some times in history that Bahamian Twitter came out in full support or as in many instances full destruction to tear persons a new one. Hence the Bahamian phrase 'cyc' became so popular worldwide.

Have you or someone you know used facebook in a way to boost their business? It seems as if Bahamians tend to use Facebook as a phone book to find local businesses. The question remains however if you business is found on facebook is it active? does it matter if its active and how well do you maintain your page and how has that converted into sales for you?

Newspaper, radio or television ads. Do they work better than social media? or is it just traditional and hence persons still use these mediums. How do you track how many people use these forms of marketing? Its an interesting concept.

I'm looking for someone who can answer these questions... not just any one but someone who has tried all the available platforms of marketing and have a wealth of information on what works or what doesn't. Lets talk

"Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you're doing, but nobody else does."

Ok lets talk Ideas. Random thoughts on conversations I had this week with locals talking about business in the Bahamas

How much progress are you making in your business? Are your really getting work done? How good are you at actually getting things done? This podcast is more of a rant about persons with bad work ethics and the things we do to sabotage ourselves and our success

"Ideas are a dime a dozen"

Good day, good day to everyone else out there? This is episode two of doing business in The Bahamas and this is a run and gun episode again, unscripted. So if my words get a bit mixed up or something, please don't feel offended. It's just the way it is. Just the way they talk and it's live and direct and there's nothing going on. Plus I'm driving in my car so you're going to get some extra noises as well. So I had to do this video. Sorry, this audio podcast about something interesting. Ideas. Okay, so since you were smarter than we were growing up, you heard people would always talk about, Oh you know, shoot for the stars. You might line them up or shoot for the S yeah, shoot for the stars. My line among the planets or, or the moon or something. There was some weird thing, I don't even know what it is, would be more so ridiculous and, but the whole light there was, you know, aim height and even if you miss, you still gonna line somewhere that's pretty good or pretty awesome or beyond what you or what other people might expect.

And then also with that, because it also comes with all right dreams. Okay. So what are your dreams? What are your aspirations in life and Bahamians I must say, have really good dreams. We love to dream. In fact, we dream so much that we get some really, really, really awesome ideas. The ideas I speak to, I hear and they speak to people and they tell me about, Oh, this is a good idea for this business or you know, it's a good idea. I'll why Someone can't do this or why someone cant do that or here's a good idea. I mean, there's a lot of ideas Ideas floating around everywhere and I mean multimillion, multibillion international businesses. Ideas the problem that we have though is all work ethic is horrible. I mean, seriously Bahamians work ethic. I didn't even know who to compare it with. It's just, it's really, really horrible. And they think it's because a lot of things that we, we've heard over the years, we don't analyze it carefully. to know exactly what we're saying or what it is that we're putting into our subconscious. For example, let me, let me give a simple, simple example right here. Um, I'm sure you've heard this and I'm really bad at these saying sometimes, but there is a saying or a post that goes around and says, um, don't kill yourself working for a job. They may cause they will replace you in a heartbeat.

and I fully understand what people are saying. You know, you work all your life for this job and when you die they replace big replacing really, really quickly or you might get fired or whatever the situation may be. The whole idea there, what they're saying is, you know what, those put all your eggs in this one basket and you know, and don't take it so serious. Like think about that for a second. Really, really think about that for a second. That's a horrible thing to be saying. What you're effectively saying is be lazy. Don't do your work. Why waste? Why waste your time doing this person's work? Why waste your time doing the work that you were hired to do when they can replace you in a heartbeat? That's effectively what this quote is actually saying, it's ridiculous. So this, these are the things that we listened to and we say it so often and we believe it's so often that we we, we've become horrible persons when it comes to working. All right? And then you have some persons again. Okay, so they decided to get slick and I'm going to open my own business. I'll do something on the side. Take one of those really great ideas and put them into action. The problem with that is that you've been slacking for so long that it's nearly impossible for you to get a sensible business off the ground.

Okay? Being busy doesn't mean you're making progress, you're just busy doing stuff, but you're not making any progress in your business. You're not making any progress in your side hustle. You just doing stuff and because you're always here and they're running about the place with this person and that person, you think you're running a business, but you have horrible work ethic. So our ideas, Ideas are a dozen Literally, I could sit down for an hour and come up with at least a hundred different ideas for businesses. thats how easy an idea is. The problem comes is when it's time to execute, when it's time to actually take that idea and put together a plan of action that you're going to take and do and actually create something or make something from nothing. That's when you, you, you become successful because now you have a plan of action.

You know exactly what you do. What's your marketing plan? Who is your, who's your target market, um, what are your projections? What are your pricing? What are your, the costs of doing the business? What, what like everything, when you think about a product or service, it's always a process involved and we seem to like to skip the process, which is another thing. That's another topic for another day, but we like to skip the process of process of doing business. There is no shortcut. Sorry, you can't wake up at 12 o'clock in the morning or mid day.

Do some things, type some stuff online, do some advertising. What you think is advertising and think that, okay, I'm doing good on my business and then two or three months down the road you're crying. Ah, this is not working thats a bad business to get into. Nobody wants my product. Nobody wants this service. It's not that nobody wants your product or service, just that you didn't push it hard enough, you didn't get to the right market or the right targeted market that wants your product or service. That's your problem. So and idea like I say, it's meaningless. It's literally meaningless unless you put thought into it as to how you're going to make that come to life. The Bible says are wright it on the tablet make it plain like seriously. You are going to have to write this down and that process. You can't skip again. You cannot, you cannot skip the whole process of doing business otherwise you're going to make it difficult upon yourself. Like seriously, write down exactly what you want to do. This is a process that people say, Oh yeah, I know that. Yeah, you know it, but you don't know how to do it because you never did it.

So even though this episode is called doing business , this is doing business worldwide, pretty much this is there's a process to doing business and when you systematize your business, this when, you have something that that is efficient, something that could be profitable, but unless you have information on, okay, how are we going to do this? How are we going to, how are we going to display our product? Where are we going to do it? How are we going to open the store? Are we going to do it online? If you do it online, okay, how are we going to accept credit cards? How are we going to deliver the products? If it's a service, okay, how are people going to find me? What is the pricing going to be? What if they ask certain questions. It's so many things that entails or things you have to think about when it comes to starting your business.

So when you take that idea and like i said the first step is usually just writing down what it is that you have as an idea. And when you do that, what happens is you, usually write the end product, and this is why people get confused because they see the end product, they write the end product down and then they're trying to figure out why when I'm working or doing stuff or being busy, is it not lining up to what I wrote down. There's something called reverse engineering. You would take a technology, you would take it apart and you look at it piece by piece and figure out exactly how it works. It's the same thing with a business. You come up with a great idea, you write it down on a piece of paper, now you have to reverse engineer that, okay, what would it take for me to get to this point?

And then you work backwards and this is a longer process that takes a lot of time and you need some effort to push into this because it's not easy. You have to reverse engineer your idea to the point to where you are at that moment. So if you're thinking of an idea that that's lets just go small that spans the Caribbean, not even the Caribbean, it just spans The Bahamas. Okay? We have like 20 20 odd inhabited islands and you come up with an idea that works very well on each of the inhabited islands that the Bahamians want and need. How are you going to do that? How are you going to step back from distribution to just these islands to where you are right now sitting on your couch in your house, that's reverse engineering and you have to figure a way out, okay, how am I going to do this?

What do I need? And you start moving backwards. Okay, in order to get this, I would need this. Or in order to get that, I'm going to need this. I need some training in this. I need to know more about this product. How to, I'm going to get this in the country. Um, how am I going to do shipping? What are the shipping companies I'm going to ship this out with? How am I going to make the product? What's the cost of doing this? Where am I going to find this and make you go all the way back to right where you are with $5 in your pocket. Where are you going to find the next, let's say $5,000? Are you gonna use a grant or are you to go to the bank for a loan? Which I don't particularly recommend, but what are you going to do?

What can you do? What skills do you have right now that can help you build some cash so that you don't have to go to a bank and get yourself in debt just to start a business that you've really embraced? Reverse engineer this thing. So execution of a idea of a business plan is one of the things I find that the Bahamians really lack. We can't execute things. And then when we have a business, we don't like to change. We really don't. So we feel as if we know everything. We did it, we done it for a long time. So you know what, and you find businesses that have been around for a while. I mean they've really been around for awhile and you think they're being successful when you get in there and you started doing the numbers, you realize that no, um, there is a problem here

Yeah. Okay. And the problem is that your numbers are off or your pricing is off or your marketing is off or something is off there. There's a process again, the process of building a business and I think if you are not sure about this process, go and read the book by Robert Kiyosaki. I think it's the BI triangle. It's his, that's what the book name or that's just the PR anyway, one of the books that has to be, I try and get inside of it. And if you could understand that BI triangle, all right. And it has layers in this triangle and helps you. And it really helps if you understand each section of it. And if you could build a business and fill in each one of those gaps, you would have a business a well run business, not as some other things you're going to add onto it.

Yeah. Okay. And the problem is that your numbers are off or your pricing is off or your marketing is off or something is off there. There's a process again, the process of building a business and I think if you are not sure about this process, go and read the book by Robert Kiyosaki. I think it's the BI triangle. It's his, that's what the book name or that's just the PR anyway, one of the books that has to be, I try and get inside of it. And if you could understand that BI triangle, all right. And it has layers in this triangle and helps you. And it really helps if you understand each section of it. And if you could build a business and fill in each one of those gaps, you would have a business a well run business, not as some other things you're going to add onto it.

For the second episode of doing business in The Bahamas, when you're doing business and you have an idea, it's going to take some work, literally is going to take some work, not a little bit of work, a lot of work to put things together in order for you to sit down, come together with a plan, reverse engineer it and then rebuild from scratch and then start doing everything that you said that you're going to do that you wrote down in order to get to the point that you want to get to. And along the way you have to be flexible because things will happen. Sometimes what you see when you sit down and when you get out and you execute are two different things. So you will have to be flexible to say, okay, then I wanted to go this way, but this way is not working.

Let me stop digging this ditch. Get out of this hole and go somewhere else. Okay? And not, Im not talking about giving up on the business, just talking about the direction you do to get to the point that you want to get to. Sometimes there's traffic along your destination, you're driving down the highway, there's an accident, there's some things that's going wrong. You will have to make a stop and then make a decision. What's another route for me to get where I want to go? Sometimes the route is gonna take longer because you have to go through some side corners. We call them some juk juk corners, you know, blow the horn to get a dog out the way or something. It's like a lot of things are going to do just to get to your destination, but you never lose sight of your goal. All right, so when it comes to doing business, when it comes to starting your business, it's just something you wanted to talk about, like executing your business, plan your idea, putting it on paper and actually getting it done. It's not easy. It's definitely not an easy task. So I recommend you start getting busy on it. Even if you were already started your business and you don't have this, these resources, stop. Go back, reverse engineer , write it down, put a plan of action together and get things that,

all right, so this is Rashad here for doing business in Bahamas, sponsored by Bahamas, Camden, and soap. Keep an eye on to our next episode and we're going to bring on some guest as we move along on this journey doing business in The Bahamas.

Ok lets talk Ideas. Random thoughts on conversations I had this week with locals talking about business in the Bahamas

How much progress are you making in your business? Are your really getting work done? How good are you at actually getting things done? This podcast is more of a rant about persons with bad work ethics and the things we do to sabotage ourselves and our success