This is a question that it’s constantly on our minds as we embark on the journey of starting our businesses. 

Here are three steps that will help you determine if your business has the potential to make money.

1.  Determine if your business has good market

You need to identify if your product or service has a good market.  Here are some characteristics to keep in mind when identifying a good market for your businesses

• Can your target market be grouped together? They share enough of the same problems and desires that they can be grouped together.
• Is your target market group large enough? Your market must be large enough for it to be worth the resources you’ll spend.  It should give you the opportunity to generate sales in a consistent way.
• Do they share the same perspective? For example, you shouldn’t create a product or service that address the whole population – male and female.  Choose one group with shared prospective such as – Active female vegans
• Will your business be in demand? Look at current and future trends to see if your business is sustainable.  Have other companies done it and are successful at it?  Competition is good in this case! It tells you that it’s been tested and proven to make money before you.  Consider using Google Trends to learn about the frequency and volume of a particular topic to assess current trends.

2. Talk to your ideal customers

Think about who’s your target market, What do they like to do? Where can you find them?

You want to get in touch with your potential customers and talk to them.  Join their social media groups to learn more about them.

Take part in conversations, ask questions, conduct polls, and conduct informational interviews.

You want to establish the motivating factors for your target market to buy your products/services. What would be a barrier to buying your product/service? What challenges does your target have? What are their goals, desires and aspirations? 

This will give you valuable insight and information that will help you develop your product/service for your target market.  This will also help you with your marketing strategy. 

3. Create an MVP

An MVP, a minimum viable product, was introduces by Eric Ries the author of the Lean Start-up.  He explains that the most effective way to develop a product is to create a simple yet viable product that can deliver value for your customers.  

Creating an advanced product with many features is not effective at this stage.  You want your customers to give you feedback before you perfect your product as you are working with only assumptions. As you get feedback from your customers using your product, you can then further develop and enhance. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Has the fear of not making money stopped you from creating your business?

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As an entrepreneur your mindset is your biggest asset.  It can either make you or break you.  Here are 8 essential mindsets for entrepreneurs.

1. Flexibility and adaptability
2. Ability to find opportunities
3. Critical thinking
4. Effective communication 
5. Being comfortable with risk
6. Creativity and innovation
7. Initiative and self reliance
8. Optimistic view of the future

This episode will go through these mindset shifts that are crucial to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Love to hear from you! Which one of the discussed mindsets do you feel comes natural to you and which ones do you need to work on?

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In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Patrice Lindo, the creator and CEO Career Nomad,  Patrice has over a decade of diverse experience to empower women of color. Through focused and purposeful coaching, she fast-tracks their career progress by helping them learn to effectively navigate and leverage the dynamics of White corporate spaces. 

Patrice is driven by a need to fill a professional void that has often made meaningful career progress inaccessible for women of color.  She here to provide ambitious women with the strategic resources and social capital they need to create substantial progress in their career.
Having triumphed over these obstacles and institutional barriers myself, 

We talked about her journey from a university drop-out to becoming a successful coach  guiding the next generation of aspiring women of color towards influential management and leadership roles. She shared her self-care tips to stay centred in today's post Covid -19 era where the lines of work and life and increasingly blurred.

Patrice's infectious energy comes through...she's a whole mood!

Here's how you can get in touch with her:

• LinkedIn: @thecareernomad
• Instagram: @thecareernomad

I'd love to hear your insight! what are your takeaways from this episode?

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Deqa Abukar for this episode.
Deqa is an social entreprenuer and the founder of the swedish initiatives BLING and Womenisa which have hundreds of members and created several leaders. Deqa is passionate about creating change and improving conditions in the suburbs and especially for women.

In this episode Deqa shares her journey of integrating to Sweden as a child, her inspiration for becoming an entrepreneurs and what she's doing to normalize POC being leaders and successful entrepreneurs.

Here's how you can connect with Deqa:

• www.blingstartup.se
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/deqaabukar/
• https://www.instagram.com/deqaabukar/ 

Love to hear from you! what inspires you from Deqa's story?

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In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paula Whitelocke, the owner of the Curly Hair designs.

Paula shares her entrepreneurial journey starting from the age of 13.  in the basement of her parent's home.  She officially started working at a hair solon at the age of 15.  In 2010, Paula opened her own salon, and in 2014 she began to rebrand Curly Hair Designs.  

Paula open's up about the inspiration behind her brand and the transitions it's gone through to grow and evolve. Curly Hair Designs fills a gap and provides clients with a comfortable and safe salon that celebrates their hair textures. Today, Paula’s clientele are diverse with their endless varieties of curls, waves, kinks and coils. 

Paula is a local icon.  In addition to owning the most sought-after salon for curly hair in the City, she expresses her passion for music and singing as Paula C.   She is also involved in activism and uplifting our community.

She’s someone that chooses to show up authentically.  Being true to herself and expressing herself and all that she does.  I am honoured to have the chance to sit down with Paula and have a get to know her a bit more.  I love what Paula stands for and all that she represents.  She’s such an inspiration!

Here's how you can get in touch with Paula:

• Website: Curly Hair Designs 
• Instagram: @curlyhairdesigns
• https: @CurlyHairDesigns 

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This's a Q & A episode, I answer the top five questions that I get often.  

1. How do I find what i'm passionate about?
2. How do I choose the best business for me?
3. How can I get rid of my fears?
4. How  do I to stay motivated?
5. What can I do to have positive and abundance thoughts

Other episode that relate to these questions that you should explore:

• How to Choose your Best Business Idea
• When Feeling Scarred is a Good Thing
• Is your Mindset Helping you or Holding you Back?
• Starting with your WHY
• You Got This! Tapping into your Unique Gifts

Please share with me if you have more questions that I can include in the next Q & A episode.

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How do we become aware of opportunities around us?

There're always opportunities that you can take advantage of.  But first you have to become aware of them.

Before you can identify an opportunity, you need to identify a GOAL.  Once you know what you're trying to accomplish, then you're able to become aware of opportunities around you that you can leverage to help you achieve your goal.

In this episode, I give examples of opportunities that you can take advantage of to support you in achieving your goals in different areas in your life.

You always want to know what you can offer that you can use to fill the gaps that exist in particular space.  Knowing this will give the advantage you need to leverage opportunities.

We are living in the golden age of self-marketing.  You can create exposure and position yourself however you choose to using the internet and social media.

As black entrepreneur, using your background and story can add value for your business.  As a result of the awareness created by the Black Lives Matter movement, organizations and companies are using black people as their marketing and promotional strategy.  You can see this by observing the print material and pictures being used by big corporations.

You also want to take advantage of this and market your business as black owned and use your black experience as part of your marketing strategy.  You can create opportunities for yourself and business using your story and black identity.

Here are Three simple steps that you can take to help you leverage your next opportunity:
Step 1: Identify a goal
Step 2: Identify that will help your with your goals
Step 3: Take your first action to move you towards that opportunity

If you find yourself hesitating and worrying about the results, shift your focus on the DOING not the results. 

The magic is in the doing!

This's how you'll continue to progress and advance.  Every step will lead you to your next step.

Just do it! like Nike :)

Let's work together! Tell me a bit about you.

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I  want to check in with you today - How are you?  

 When we are asked the question: How are you?  We often respond without even giving it a second thought.  This's because we know that it's only customary, and we're not really expect to give a real answer that reflects how we really feel.  

 But what if we tried to actually respond with a real and genuine answer when people ask us how we are doing -  What do you think will happen?

 One of two things can happen; You might have the chance to connect with someone in a real and genuine way.  Giving both parties the opportunity to engage and share a meaningful moment.  OR You might get the side stare and the conversation will not go far.

 Either way, you will benefit.  If the person engages with you, there's the potential to  benefit from connecting with another human being. AND If not, you still pushed yourself to seek more out of your daily interactions -  There’s tremendous growth in that. 

 Regardless of accepting the challenge to engage with strangers in this way, It's important to do regular check-ins with yourself and inquire – How you are doing? How you are feeling? And How you are being?

Throughout the day, certain things may happen that cause certain types of emotions and response from your part.  These emotions and responses could be positive or negative.  They can make us feel great or terrible.  If we don’t take the time to examine them without judgement, we run the risk of letting them run our lives.

You might find yourself feeling a certain way and behaving a certain way and have no clue why that’s happening. 

When you create the time and space for this kind of reflection, you will be able to revisit some of the things that took place throughout the day and how you felt about them.  Giving yourself the opportunity to build awareness and deeper understanding of yourself.

As an entrepreneur, it's key to increase yourself awareness so that your feelings and emotions are not getting in the way of your results.  Allowing yourself to self-reflect and increase your self-understanding will help you to be consistently moving forward, and showing up ready to do what it takes to succeed.  

Make a decision to create time and space to have regular reflections in your life.  This will help you to  increase your self-awareness, your self-acceptance and become in-tune with how you are Doing, Feeling and Being.

How are you creating time and space for self-reflection in your life?

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Idil Farah.  Idil is a food nutritionist based in Toronto, Canada.  She has been in the health and nutrition field for 10 years.  Idil takes a wholistic approach to eating and food.  

Her own heath struggles have inspired her to empower others to take an active role in their health and use food as everyday medicine to enhance health and overall wellness.  Idil believes that when you use food as medicine and the kitchen as our pharmacy, we’re able to lead an active, healthy, energetic and soulful life.

In this episode, Idil was very open in sharing her own personal health struggles, some of the challenges she faced starting out and her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.  I really enjoyed our chat, I felt our energy was in in sink and the vibe was so AMAZING! Hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.

Connect with Idil here:

• www.idilsworld.com
• IG:  @Idilsworld
• Facebook: @idilsworldeats
• Pintrest: @idilsworld
• Twitter: @idilsworld

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 In Episode 22,  I started the conversation of Knowing Your Worth by starting to become aware and identify the things in your life that you are tolerating.  

 In this episode, I want to get a deeper look  more about this topic,  because self-worth effects so much about how we exist and show-up in the world.  

 Let’s  start with the definition of self-worth.  

Self-worth is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

“a feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect”.

You might come across many different terms related such as; self-esteem, self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-respect, self-confidence, self-love, self-care, and so on.  Although these all relate, but self-worth is the foundation or the core of our self-thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are intimately tied into how we view our worthiness and value as human beings.

How do we then find what Self-Worth Means to us?
IAt an early age we observe that people around us show value us when we accomplish certain things.   Our parents may us appreciation and affection when we do well in school.  And the opposite may happen when we get Fs in the report card.  Because of this experience we learn to measure our self worth based on performance.   

It’s really important to remind children that they are loved unconditionally.  That wether they achieve things or not, that’s not going to add or take away from their worthiness. 

How do we develop our self-worth as adults?

Increase  your self-understanding
Ask yourself:
- What if everything I have was suddenly taken away from me? How would that make me feel?
- Who am I? What's important to me? How am I showing up in the world? What brings me the most passion, fulfillment, and joy?
 - Where do I need to improve? What fears are holding me back? What mistakes do I  tend to make?
- What abilities do I have? What am I really good at?

Boost your self-acceptance
Forgive yourself for your mistakes, your fears, your short-comings, your doubts...etc. Commit to forgiving yourself and accepting yourself without judgment or excuses.

 Recognize your self-worth
Practice being responsible for yourself, your circumstances, and your problems.  You no longer need to please other people; No matter what people do or say, you alone control how you feel about yourself;

As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to tie our self-worth to our businesses. Knowing your true self worth as an entrepreneur will give your the confidence and conviction to know why you do what you do.  You won’t be caught up about what people think or say about you.  Instead, you will be centred, confidently working to build your business,  learning from experience and knowing that nothing can take away yourself worth.

I'd love to hear from you! What are your takeaways from this episode?

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