The Savvy Entrepreneur

Why are jar and bottle lids sometimes so darned hard to get open?  Brandon Bach is on a mission to make jars easier to open, especially for the elderly and disable.

He's the CEO of Consumer Convenience Technologies, a company founded by his father and a friend of his father's, and they have developed and are marketing the EEASY Lid which makes opening jars much easier.  Brandon says it's the first real innovation in jar lids in over 75 years.

Not only does the EEASY Lid make jars of all kids much easier to open, it's made from aluminum -- not steel -- and so is lighter and easily recyclable, and will help many elderly and people with disabilities who struggle to open certain food & beverage containers.

So why isn't the food & beverage industry pounding down the door to get the EEASY Lid on their containers?  It turns out there are several reasons.  First, the food & beverage industry is complicated because there are several players in the production and supply chain, and the decision-maker differs, depending on the product.  Second, it's hard for the industry to change -- the food & beverage industry is hardly the only market segment highly resistant to change, something many entrepreneurs struggle with.

Brandon shares how the company has successfully worked through numerous challenges in design, manufacturing, and sales & marketing, and offers some advice to other entrepreneurs.

Click on the arrow to listen, and be on the lookout for an EEASY Lid on items in stores near you!

Denise Brown took her caregiving experience and turned it into a business -- one that trains other caregivers to turn their own experiences into a business.  Graduates of The Caregiving Years Training Academy have turned the business of caregiving into careers in speaking, coaching mentoring, leading support groups, and many other things.

The business of caregiving is set to increase, because the need for caregivers is increasing.  This is due to our aging population, growing health risks and healthcare disparity, as well as the ongoing shortage of healthcare workers of all types.

And those caregivers will need help and support as well, leading to lots of business opportunities.  There are and will continue to be plenty of opportunities to create valuable businesses, but also provide meaningful help and support to others.

Denise shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur some of the many challenges of being a caregiver, as well as the challenges of being an entrepreneur.  Hers is a meaningful and heartfelt startup journey.

Click on the arrow to listen, or go here if you'd prefer to read a transcript of the interview.

Huan Xia is on a quest to provide better plant-based foods.

Her company, LusOasis, makes and sells a variety of gluten-free, keto-friendly pancake mixes. And her latest venture, Alchemeat, produces a plant-based meat substitute that -- unlike what's currently on the market -- mimics the texture of real meat.

Her journey hasn't been easy. She came to the U.S. as an immigrant with only two suitcases and a smattering of English. But her drive and focus helped her succeed in big corporate America first, and now is helping her in her journey as an entrepreneur.  And it turns out that being an immigrant has some advantages when it comes to entrepreneurship.

How did she do all this? You need to "unleash yourself," she says.

We talk about what this means, and ways you, too, can "unleash yourself!'

Listen to her inspiring story on The Savvy Entrepreneur Show! Click on the arrow to listen to the interview, or go here if you'd rather read a transcript!

Professor Mukila Maitha from Harper College in Palatine, Illinois talks with The Savvy Entrepreneur about the many business opportunities that drones will offer.  Harper is one of a small number of colleges & universities with a drone certificate program.

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, have been around for a few decades and were used mostly in military operations.  Today's drones come in a huge range of sizes, and their uses in commercial applications are limited only by people's imaginations.

The most popular uses for drones today are in photography, real estate, and monitoring.  Soon, however, they will be used commonly for deliveries of all sorts.  In Singapore, they are even being tested to carry people -- look out, Uber & Lyft!

Mukila & I chat about some of the many, many current and future business opportunities that drones present.  And many of these are suited to small businesses.  Drone business opportunities including building and repairing drones, as well as programming them.  And most needed of all are people to create the concepts for using drones, and people to translate the data from the drones into useful graphics or other presentations.

The people, Mukila says, who can straddle 2 different areas of expertise, such as environmental monitoring and drone programming, or photography and real estate, will have many drone business opportunities.

But as you listen to Mukila start to envision our drone future, you will start to realize drone business opportunities are everywhere, and present lots of opportunities to people with interest and skills (or willingness to learn those skills).

Click on the arrow to get a glimpse of our drone-filled future, or go here if you'd rather read a transcript of our interview.

Did you know there are astrologists who focus exclusively on money matters?  I didn't, until I re-connected with Susan Abbott Gidel, an old high school mate.

Susan, a Financial Astrologer, joins The Savvy Entrepreneur to share her journey from commodities trading and journalism to a self-employed astrologer.  You'll hear how to become an astrologer, and what financial astrologers do.

You'll also hear how one entrepreneur methodically and internationally pivoted her career into something entirely new, and some tips for coping when your planned side hustle becomes suddenly becomes your full-time business.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview, or if you'd prefer to read a transcript, go here.

Laura Barnard, CEO of BREAKTHRU Brands, joins The Savvy Entrepreneur show to talk about personal branding.  She shares what personal branding is, how to tell if your brand is strong or weak, why a strong personal brand is so powerful, and tips for helping build a stronger brand.

Laura works with women to help them find their voice -- their passion, their purpose.  Then she helps them craft that into a powerful story and then shows them how to amplify that voice.  And she helps them uncover hidden obstacles that stand in the way and how to power through them.

We chat about some of the things that hold women entrepreneurs back, including self-confidence and the imposter syndrome.  And talk about some of the ways to overcome those fears and voices inside our heads.

Laura's passion for what she does is clear from the first few minutes of our interview.  She offers tons of tips and suggestions to help women entrepreneurs -- all entrepreneurs, really -- improve their personal branding.  And to find and amplify their voice and make a bigger impact in whatever they're doing.

Don't miss this episode!

Click on the arrow to hear the interview, or go here if you'd prefer to read a transcript.

Popular YouTuber ProfessorBlackOps joins The Savvy Entrepreneur to share his top cysecurity tips for startups and small businesses.

He talks about passwords, routers, and printers, and how to avoid the increasingly-sophisticated phishing and vishing schemes. He also shares tips for what you should do WHEN you get hacked. Because as he stresses, it's a question of WHEN, not IF.

Finally, he shares his predications for future cybersecurity risks, as well as some of the job & business opportunities arising from cybersecurity.

Listen in -- the interview is full of lots of practical tips that will help individuals as well as small businesses stay safer.  Or go here if you'd prefer to read a transcript of our interview.

Kavnia Coffee Company was established by Olivia vonNieda as part of her quest for perfect cup of cold drip coffee.  For non-coffee afficionados, cold-drip coffee is the next evolution beyond cold brew coffee.  Cold brew is made by soaking the coffee grounds in cold water.  Cold drip passes a mist of water over the beans, creating coffee one drop at a time, creating a more intense flavor and picking up more of the subtle flavors of the coffee.

Cold drip coffee is beloved by coffee buffs, but to date, it's difficult and expensive to produce at home.  It's really only available at high-end coffee houses.  vonNieda set out to find a way to make it more accessible, applying her formidable engineering and business skills.

Along the way, she needed to find money and resources to help her.  She found resources at mHub and The Hatchery, both incubators based in Chicago.  And she was eventually successful at pitching for funding, although it required a major pivot in Kavnia Coffee's business model.

vonNieda shares the story of Kavnia Coffee with The Savvy Entrepreneur, along with plenty of advice and tips on pitching for funding and how and when to successfully pivot.  Not to mention it will whet your appetite for cold drip coffee!

Click on the arrow to listen, or go here if you'd prefer to read a transcript of our chat.

Rieke Office Interiors, owned & managed by Melissa Kehl, is no startup business.  It's been in business for 27 years.  But Melissa explains why small businesses today need to think and act like startups, and why you need plenty of entrepreneurial skills to meet customer needs, keep ahead of the competition, and stay in business.

She explains to The Savvy Entrepreneur some of those entrepreneurial skills.  She stressed the need to delegate early on, even when cash is tight, and offers some creative ways to do that.  Doing that, she says, allows you to work ON your business, not necessarily IN it.  She also articulates why it's so important to take time to step back from the urgent, day-to-day crises, and always stay focused on the strategic.

Both startups and established small businesses today also need leaders who are willing and able to take big risks, she says.  If you're not comfortable with that, you're probably in the wrong spot.

The interview is full of candid, no-nonsense advice from a CEO that has regularly pivoted her company in a market space full of competition and highly susceptible to economic downtowns.  And yet, under Melissa's guidance, the company continues to grow.  Her advice is relevant to both startups and small businesses.

Click on the arrow to listen, or go here to read a transcript of the interview.