Seed Money

Coming up with a brilliant business idea and sharing it with the world.

Raising money and getting investors to fund said brilliant idea.

Getting your first customers and crossing the profitability line.

These are all stops along the entrepreneurial journey. Each of them can be hard enough to make you want to throw in the towel and go back to corporate life.

Not to mention the imposter syndrome that can come with trying to start your own business. Ultimately, what will keep us going is our mindset and the relationship we have with money.

Once we get our mindset dialed in, we can push through the fear and challenges and discover what makes entrepreneurship so amazing.

What struggles do entrepreneurs face in those early stages? How do we allow ourselves to believe in a bigger money goal?

I recently sat down with leading Transformational Money Expert, Shannah Game, on her podcast, Everyone's Talkin Money.

We talk about my entrepreneurial journey, lessons I learned along the way and how to beef up your mindset for the journey of starting your own business.

Topics Covered;

-Where entrepreneurs often get stuck

-Some juicy details from my own entrepreneurial journey

-How your relationship with money impacts your entrepreneurial journey

-The importance of taking action

Guest Bio

Shannah Game is a leading Transformational Money Expert, Mindful Money Expert, Certified Financial Planner, Trauma of Money Expert, public speaker and author. Her podcast Everyone's Talkin' Money is dedicated to helping women (& the partners who love them) heal their relationship with money and build sustainable wealth! For more information, head to https://everyonestalkinmoney.com/.

About Your Host

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

Please rate, follow and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! Hearing your comments and questions helps me come up with the best topics for the show!

In order to get funding for our businesses, we have to find and pitch to investors. Sounds easier said than done, right? This is one of the most nerve wracking and challenging steps you'll take, but it is worth it.

If you put yourself there and talk to enough people, you will get the funding you need. Even if you're an introvert. Even if you hate networking. Even if you don't have a large list of contacts in your industry.

As scary as talking to hundreds of people is, this is ultimately a test of your belief in your business. If you let your passion and belief fuel you, you can push past the discomfort that comes with this process.

Pitching to an investor sounds like a tall order, so I'm going to break it down into small steps and show how easy it is to get it done.

How do you start networking and build a list of invaluable contacts? What do you need to have buttoned up before the pitch? What are the most important things you need to include in your pitch? In this episode - part 3 of my stages of funding series, I share how to present the opportunity to an investor.

Topics Covered;

-Networking tips for introverts

-The kinds of events you should be attending to build your network

-Mistakes entrepreneurs make during the actual pitch

-How to maximize conversations and leverage rejections

-Prep, pitch, delivery and follow up

About Your Host

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

Before we can go out and raise money for our businesses, there are things we need to have dialed in. The idea, the numbers, our pitch and the investors we're going after. This stuff is critical, but THE most important thing is the relationship we have with money.

Trying to raise money without dialing in our money mindset is a recipe for burnout, disappointment and regret. Being successful at fundraising and building a sustainable business and wealth starts with doing the inner work.

If we're not valuing ourselves, we can't expect other people to. As busy entrepreneurs, we tend to put off doing the inner work, but the truth is, we'll get to our goals faster if we do it first.

How do we find the seat of our own value before we go out to raise money? Why do we need to pair deep inner work with outer preparation? In this video, Money Therapist and Entrepreneur, Jennifer Love talks about what we need to get dialed in before we raise capital.

Topics Covered;

-The challenges of raising money as a female entrepreneur

-Overcoming money blocks at any stage in business

-How to figure out your Wealthy Why

-How to get to the root of your money mindset

-Why your money mindset will always control you

Guest Bio

Jennifer Love is a Money Therapist and Wealth Alchemist specializing in supporting impact-focused professionals and business owners (their teams and loved ones) to live their wealthy lives. She educates on wealth as it relates wholistically to personal well-being, business, and relationships. Qualified in Organizational & Human Behavior, Economics, Communication and Conflict Resolution, Jennifer is a career long entrepreneur who has built 5 businesses from the ground up. Over the past 20+ years she has helped hundreds of leaders do the same. Jennifer knows what it takes to build a sustainable business and what it takes to build a sustainable human. Rooted in all she has seen and experienced in her life, she feels a deep calling to offer safe experiential learning environments for wholistic financial, business, and inner growth. Jennifer believes that Financial Freedom, Business Success, and Personal Fulfillment can truly co-exist. To learn more, go to https://jenniferlove.com/ and follow @thejenniferlove on Instagram.

About Your Host

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

When you know that you're an entrepreneur at heart but you're still working your W2 job, when do you jump ship? It's the age old question all aspiring business owners ask themselves.

On one hand, we can burn the boats and go all in on the business. You'll have way more time to dedicate to it and you can scale faster. Or you can get the business off the ground, build it up on the side and then quit when you've got some momentum going.

Most aspiring business owners have taken the latter approach - it's an easy way to start without pressure and test out the concept to see if it's viable. That's the approach Matt Floyd and Craig Gerulski took. For the first 3 years of their business, they worked full-time in their W2s but put a date to leave in place.

What steps did they take to prepare to leave their W2? How did they build the business with strong operations from the ground up? How can our W2 experience actually help us in business? In this episode, the founders of Stay Classy Homes talk about their journey, and how they went about walking away from their W2 jobs and going all in on their business.

Topics Covered;

-The power of getting around people doing what you want to do

-The mental challenge that comes with leaving a W2

-How to prepare to leave your W2

-How to find the opportunity in boring businesses and industries

-The best things about being an entrepreneur

Guest Bio

Matt Floyd and Craig Gerulski are entrepreneurs and the founders of Stay Classy Homes. After staying at their first AirBnB's as guests in 2018 in Nashville and Breckenridge they quickly fell in love with this new concept of traveling like locals all around the world and creating genuine relationships along the way. Those experiences inspired them to begin investing in Vacation Rentals while working W-2 jobs for large corporations. Matt and Craig were both passionate about reaching financial freedom through real estate investing and felt that Vacation Rentals provided the best combination of cash flow, appreciation, and tax benefits while also allowing them to visit their investments with family and friends and create lifelong memories. For more information, head to https://www.stayclassyhomes.com/.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

If you're anything like me, being an entrepreneur appeals to you because you can design the life you want and enjoy a level of freedom you can't get from a 9-5. The problem is: a lot of us build businesses that end up creating more stress and eat away at the freedom we got into it for.

Finding a business that meets your lifestyle goals is ideal. For me, right now, real estate investing and short-term rentals does that. It gives you more control over your time and a chance to build a business that fits seamlessly into your life. In fact: it has given me so much freedom, I run a business 3000 miles away from where I live (and have time to do things on the side like the Seed Money Podcast).

How did I go from the business I initially started, to a short-term rental business? How do I run a successful business from the other side of the country?

In this special episode, I was featured as a guest on Avery Carl's podcast, The Short Term Show. We talk about my entrepreneurship journey and how to run a thriving short-term rental business.

Guest Bio

Avery Carl is the Founder of The Short Term Shop. The Short Term Shop is the country's first and largest short term rental-specific real estate firm. They have offices and agents in over 20 popular vacation rental markets. The Short Term Shop (brokered by eXp), has helped over 5,000 investors buy and sell short term rentals (airbnbs) since 2017 for a total of over $3 billion in transactions, which makes it safe to say they are the most experienced Airbnb and vacation rental real estate agents in the country. The shop has been featured as a top 15 real estate sales team by Real Trends/The Wall Street Journal annually since 2020, and has been the top producing team at eXp Realty 3 years running. They have also been featured in Newsweek, The New York Times, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

For entrepreneurs, running fast and charging hard comes with the territory. But that could be doing nothing but running us into the ground.

A lot of the things we think are "normal" parts of building and running businesses are actually signs of burnout. So many of us are stuck in that "wired and tired" mode and we don't even know that we're well over the limits of our health.

We can only live in a state of chronic stress for so long before it turns into trauma and whirlpool of health issues. You can't create something magnificent from a place of anxiety, stress and hurriedness. If we want to build sustainable business and come up with great ideas, we have to protect our flow state.

That means putting balance at the forefront of every decision we make. What are those early indicators of burnout and what small steps can we take to make things better?

In this episode, I'm joined by clinical and holistic nutritionist, entrepreneur and TV host, Christa Orecchio. She talks about steps we can take to run ourselves like fine-tuned machines.

Topics Covered

-How to prevent burnout

-A few easy actions to offset your body's stress response

-What burnout does to your body

-Christa's experience selling 30% of her company to a private equity firm

Guest Bio

Christa Orecchio is a clinical and holistic nutritionist, entrepreneur and TV host. She is dedicated to helping individuals use food, soil and self-awareness as medicine so that they can heal from the root cause. Since 2005, Christa's passion has been helping people live optimally, with a focus on the role nutrition plays in overall wellbeing. In the last five years she's truly understood how childhood trauma, limiting beliefs, unhealthy mental emotional patterning and societal conditioning can be a primary root cause for myriad of health issues (because safety starts in the nervous system) and she is grateful to have been on that path myself so that she can now support others on theirs.

Christa founded and ran The Whole Journey for 18 years which started as a private practice working with over 1000 clients, then evolved into a digital online program and supplement company for the last decade, serving over 16,000 customers to heal their gut microbiome and rejuvenate their immune system, overcome systemic candida, mold, and metals, replenish their thyroid and recode their adrenals and nervous system while creating emotional mastery.

Go to https://www.christaorecchio.com/ to learn more. Take the 3-minute TAG Disorder Assessment to find out your customized protocol here.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

The playbook of raising money that people used to rely on has changed a lot over the last few years. Now that the market is more competitive and the pace of innovation is so much faster, what worked a decade ago won't produce the same results today.

Some of the best practices we were taught aren't as entrepreneur-friendly as we think. A lot of founders are taught to build something massive, aim for a high valuation and raise as much money as possible, but that just might endanger the success of our exit. A lot of founders are taking an entirely different approach - choosing to stay cash flow positive, raise less capital and intentionally work within a shoestring budget.

Can a high valuation end up working against you? How do we create a great founder fit and use familiarity to get better results? Do you need to be in Silicon Valley to set your business up for success?

In this episode, I'm joined by the founder of Dataplant, Samuel Cummings. He reveals how the rules of raising money have changed, and what we should be doing right now if we want to have success.

Topics Covered;

-The truth about getting that first investment

-Pitching and winning a startup competition

-Creating your value proposition and telling your story

-The future of AI

Guest Bio

Samuel Cummings is an author, data scientist and customer success professional with a passion for driving outcomes. He is the founder of Dataplant, an automated customer management platform providing post-sales teams with the insights needed to proactively engage with each of their customers like never before. As former Head of Data Science at Gainsight, he led a global team responsible for implementing predictive analytics use-cases for Customer Success Management. Samuel uses his vast experience leveraging data to help customers make better decisions and build successful hiring programs. He is passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, data science and enterprise software. For more information, head to https://www.thedataplant.com/, watch episodes of The Scope here or connect with Samuel on LinkedIn.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

When you build a business, you aren't just creating a product, you're also setting up a legal entity. The legal side of things can be daunting (and expensive), especially when you intend to raise capital in the near or far future.

Before you can even think of approaching investors, first-time founders have to make sure they have the legal ducks in the row, and that can be a costly exercise if done through traditional attorneys.

You could easily spend tens of thousands of dollars setting up the legal side of the business, and still get something wrong. That's where Clerky comes in. They leverage tech to bring costs down and make the process of getting your paperwork together more efficient. You could have everything set up in as little as a week and for a fraction of the cost.

How can entrepreneurs set things up right the first time and not create issues down the line? What do you have to be thinking about if you're planning on raising money?

How do you set up stock options that won't disadvantage your early employees later on? In this episode, I'm joined by co-founder of Clerky, Darby Wong. He shares how their company helps early-stage entrepreneurs get the legal side of things done, common pitfalls and startup trends.

Topics Covered

-The pitfalls many first-time founders and entrepreneurs end up in

-How to set yourself up to raise future rounds

-How to get your stock option paperwork set-up correctly

-Startup trends (including one surprising one)

Guest Bio

Darby Wong is the co-founder of Clerky, a platform that streamlines legal paperwork for startups through automated document generation and electronic signatures. With a background in computer science and a law degree from Harvard, Darby combined his expertise to address inefficiencies in early-stage startup legal processes. After practicing law at Orrick in Silicon Valley, he co-created Clerky to provide cost-effective legal solutions for early-stage entrepreneurs. Go to http://clerky.com/ to get started.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

Fear is something everyone struggles with - whether you're trying to raise seed money or (believe it or not) a billionaire who has already had success. No wonder they call fear the final frontier!

We often focus on the tangible aspects of entrepreneurship, but the mental and emotional stuff play a huge role in our success. In fact, if we don't work on the intangibles, we reduce the effectiveness of the external tactics and strategies.

We talk about things like manifesting, trusting intuition, and increasing focus, but all of that is really hard to do when we're afraid. How do we overcome fear and go after what we want? How do we manifest our goals? Why is joy so critical to our success as entrepreneurs? In this episode, I'm joined by "Hollywood's Healer," Aiden Chase.

The internationally acclaimed healer, intuitive and meditation expert talks about the invisible barriers that get in the way of our success and how to clear them from our path.

Topics Covered

-How to move past fear

-Techniques for increasing your focus and manifesting

-Why finding joy as an entrepreneur is critical to your success

-What billionaires fear

Guest Bio

Known as "Hollywood's Healer," Aiden Chase is an internationally acclaimed, third generation, healer, intuitive and meditation expert. For over a decade, he has been the secret asset of Heads of State, Royalty, Titans of Commerce, World Spiritual Leaders, Entertainment Moguls and Academy Award Winners. Embodying his unparalleled skills of energy alchemy, with multi-disciplined expertise in business, Aiden uses ancient and futuristic techniques to boost success, creating powerful results. His intuitive strategic guidance and healing has advanced his clients in the co-creation of a combined culmination of hundreds of millions of dollars, the achievement of monumental resolutions and an impassioned intention for the manifestation of an enlightened and peaceful world. Aiden lives by the knowing that love heals, protects and transforms everything. His goal is to help you to clear the way and illuminate your path for you to fulfill your wishes and dreams. You can change your life now and find the love, success and happiness you desire! Aiden has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Inc. Magazine, People Magazine, on Access Hollywood and named "Hollywood's A-list Psychic" by the Hollywood Reporter. For more information, go to aidenchase.com and follow @‌theaidenchase on Instagram.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast

In the journey of starting a company, realizing that you need to raise money is par for the course. Maybe you need to test your product's viability, increase your stock, or grow your team…these steps require funding.

Venture capital is the path many entrepreneurs take, but there are actually 7 other ways to get the funding you need.

Each method has its pros and cons and suits different types of companies. Ultimately (and this is important), the filter for your decision should be your personal goals.

Depending on what you want to achieve, you might be able to get the capital you need without working with VCs. What are the different funding methods, and the pros and cons of each? How do you pick the right one for you?

In this episode, I continue my special series on The 5 Stages of Funding. This time, I'm talking about all the different funding methods that you can use.

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Topics Covered;

-The benefits of raising money through family and friends

-Using loans and credit cards to fund your company

-Crowdfunding: why it's not as easy as it looks

-The great thing about angel investor groups and incubators

-What you must do before choosing Venture Capital

I created a guide on the 5 Stages to Funding guide, just for you! It's a completely free download and the perfect overview if you're ready to go after the funding you need for your business. Learn about Mindset, Types of funding, How to find and pitch to investors, deal structure, and closing the deal. Download your free guide over at seedmoneypodcast.com.

Host Bio

Jayla Siciliano, Shark Tank entrepreneur turned real estate investor, excels in building brands, teams, and products. CEO of a bi-coastal luxury short-term rental company, she also hosts the Seed Money Podcast where she's on a mission to help early-stage entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality!

Connect:

Website: seedmoneypodcast.com

Instagram: @jaylasiciliano

Subscribe and watch on YouTube @seedmoneypodcast