In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Daniel Feiman, a long-time entrepreneur, an expert when it comes to commercial banking shares his knowledge and the highlights of his experience in the business. His entrepreneurial journey began as a twelve-year-old manufacturer of handmade skateboards. Daniel also spent almost 19 years in commercial banking and left it twenty years ago to start his own consulting business, ‘Build It Backwards.’

Key Questions Asked:

What is Daniel’s background and how did he get started in business and in commercial banking? What are some of the learning points he’s experienced with helping business owners with strategic consulting as well as getting started in business? What helped him to stay the course and develop his business for the last twenty years? How can they get started with mastermind group? Looking back if he were to do things all over again, knowing what he knows today, what would be the number one thing that he would focus on? What sort of mindset do start up bus owners need to have for them to withstand the rigor of the journey? How did Daniel get his first client? What are the key areas that start-up business owners need to understand and how can they go about it? For business owners in the audience who hasn’t had a good history but has a very good proposal, what can they do to make their history better so that the bank can look at them more fervently?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Implementing Strategies

Daniel and his team have developed a model (APICMAIR) working with clients and being challenged in different situations over the years which he truly finds to be the foundation of much their our work. A challenge that most of us have in planning is not knowing how to begin; assessment tools give you an opportunity to figure out where you are from a staffing standpoint, from a logistic standpoint, from a future standpoint, and once you’ve assessed, you will be able to create a plan and then go from there. One of the first things David had learned and implemented years ago was the idea of the mastermind group. Start-up business owners should focus on putting together either a formal or informal advisory board, which is separate from a mastermind group. Being a lifelong learner is something that business owners have to commit ourselves to. 5Ps: “Proper planning prevents poor performance.” Even a growing company needs to remember to plan so that we get the result that we’re looking for.

Commercial Banking

If you understand what the bank is focusing on and you understand the signs of the loans they want to make, and if it happens to match what you’re looking for, go ahead and plan to make it happen. 5 Cs of Credit

Cash flow: Does business have the cash flow to repay the loan they’re requesting?

Credit: Does the business have a credit history of paying their obligations on time? Do the principals behind the company have a good credit history?

Collateral: Tangible physical collateral, a piece of equipment, building, vehicles. What tangible collateral (if any) can you pledge to the lender as a secondary source of repayment to make them more comfortable lending you the money?

Character: Live up to your own obligation

Capacity: If things don’t go according to plan, what’s your backup plan?

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Cordelia Blake, an international business owner, shares thoughts and ideas on how to avoid the three major mistakes start-up business owners usually commit early on. Cordelia focuses on how to improve the key areas of business such as finance, process, as well as people. By improving these three areas, she believes that anyone can be successful in their chosen industry.

Key Questions Asked:

What is Cordelia’s background and how did she get started with her business? Would she consider herself to have had a set entrepreneurial background or did she have to learn a lot of things when first getting started on her business? What are the common mistakes business owners make when they are first getting started? Suppose somebody has already made the mistake of putting in a lot of money, how can they reverse the effect? What is the second mistake that she sees a lot of business owners make especially within the first two years of operation? How can business owners get started in putting a good process in place? What other mistakes do business owners need to avoid or look out for when getting started?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Thoughts and Insights

A lifestyle of a business owner is where you’re creating a job for yourself. The most important thing a business owner needs to do when first starting out is understanding the process of building a business. Business owners need to go into networking with an attitude of giving instead of taking, and with a desire to just meet people. Make sure before you invest a lot of time and money that you take the time to talk to potential customers. It is important to go out once in a while and get to know your customers.

Major Mistakes

The first major mistake business owner often commit is putting in too much money on something they are not sure about. As a business owner, you will need to come up with a list of things to try for your business to be successful, try them out and if they don’t work, cut your losses and move on. Second mistake start-up business owners commit is failing to build good processes for their business. The third major mistake is business owners tend to spend all their time talking to people in the same industry as theirs. Cordelia believes that networking with different kind of business owners and business people, in general, is an incredibly valuable way to get new ideas and just have freshness and vitality in your business.

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Mark Aardsma, an author and business owner, shares a few important factors to consider when choosing your business. Mark also talks about the critical skills every start-up entrepreneur needs to have and develop in order to succeed in financial management and in business in general.

Key Questions Asked: 

What is Mark’s background and how did he get started with his business? How did he choose which business to go after? Is he a natural born entrepreneur or did he have to work hard to have the necessary skills? Talking to people who are looking to get into business but were not privileged as Mark was when it comes to entrepreneurial background, what advice would he give to them? How important is personality development when it comes to succeeding as a business owner? What is the best way to start peer groups and mentorship? Talking to business owners who are looking to increase their financial management skills, what should they focus on? Knowing what he knows now if he were to go back and build his business from scratch, what would he do differently?

Highlights of Lessons Learned: 

What to Look For

In choosing a business, look for one that people want to buy and that they are willing to pay for, it brings the customer orientation to the business right from the very beginning. The second thing you have to consider when choosing a business is determining whether or not you can deliver a better product than the rest of your competitors. Your business has to be able to answer the question: how can we do this better in a way that matters to our customers and not just in a way that matters to us? The third is as yourself: Can we spread the word about it? How do we market this and sell it? The fourth question to ask yourself is: Can we finance the start-up of it? When deciding what business idea to go into, look for businesses that score well in those questions.

Expert’s Advice

It’s important for people to understand that trial and error is okay and that engaging, seeing what happens, and figuring out what you need to adjust is how you learn especially if you’re doing something innovative. The key is to take small steps, evaluate and adjust. The most important thing a new business owner can do is to start. It doesn’t really matter if they start with a correct plan, it doesn’t matter that much how they start, as long as they keep moving forward. Every day that goes by that you stay in the same routine and you don’t begin to attempt something is an opportunity lost. The second most important thing a start-up business owner can do is to learn. Today, we have more resources that allow access to learning and expertise. The third important thing to remember is to prefer taking small steps over giant leaps. Start-up business owners must also be very conscious and intentional about allocating their resources. If he were to go back, Mark said he would take more risk and move much faster than he did.

In this Episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Wendie Trubow comes back for the second time to talk about the critical skills every business owner needs to have and develop in order to succeed in running a business. Dr. Wendie, a licensed medical practitioner and owner of a functional medicine and wellness center for many years now, has graciously shared her key experiences that led to her success as a medical professional and as an entrepreneur.

Key Questions Asked:

What is the first critical skill that an entrepreneur will need? Why is it so important? What advice would Wendie give to owners who are running a business that they are not passionate about? What is the best way for business owners to revitalize their energy and passion just as they had in the beginning? How did Dr. Wendie pick the right people to join her organization and how does she get everyone on the same page as her? What type of mindset do business owners need to have in order to succeed? What other big challenges did Dr. Wendie face? How does Dr. Wendie keep herself engaged and moving forward? How does Dr. Wendie manage her time? What mindset do entrepreneurs need to have that will propel them towards success? What other huge challenges did she face throughout her journey as an entrepreneur? Is she were to give a roadmap for start-up business owners to follow, what would it be?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Core Skills

The first skill business owners need to learn is the capability of being driven by the passion of bringing something of value into the world. Business owners need to understand that having the passion and bringing it to the table is different than having the passion for what your business is all about. The second core skill that business owners must learn is delegating tasks and being OK with letting other people manage your business. Once you’ve launched your business, let someone else run it. The third skill, once you’ve created a product or service around what you’re passionate about, look for what you have to do next.

Expert’s Advice

Marketing, having a great team behind you, and building a product are three basic factors to having success with a start-up business. The culture you build within your company is the key to getting everyone on the same page as you. When thinking about hiring an employee, the first thing to do is to trust your gut. Be slow to hire and make sure that the person you’re hiring actually fits with the people you have and fits with the goals of the organization.

Christopher Mills is back on the show to talk about powerful digital marketing strategies and how they work. In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Chris shares compelling insights on the digital world as well as the first steps business owners must take in order to successfully build their online presence.

Key Questions Asked: 

What is Chris’ background and how did he get to where you are today? What insights can he share about digital marketing? What advice would Chris give to someone who is feeling stuck? What is the best way to figure out which digital platform to go with, especially when getting started with a business? Why is digital marketing important? What steps do business owners need to take in order to move forward towards digital marketing?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Strategies

Inbound marketing and the online world, in general, is such a fast-paced industry that it makes a lot of business owners feel like they have to move so quickly. However, Chris says it pays to slow it down a little or find a middle ground to it. Having clarity as to who you are targeting is the first step to getting massive success since knowing who you’re targeting will also help you to know where they can be found. When it comes to getting unstuck, Chris does not think taking to Google is the best first step to recovery. Instead, he recommends reading a book about the subject or talking to a digital marketing expert yourself. When getting in contact with the potential client for the first time, Chris likes having an initial chat just to understand what the business owner is trying to achieve.

Tips and Tricks

Business owners need to realize that their online audience is about 70% similar (if not completely the same) as their offline audience. They also need to understand their core audience offline before jumping online. When it comes to writing a blog post, Chris saw the value of placing quality over quantity. In addition, it helps if you could share some of information and insight about a topic that you truly understand without having to sound like you’re trying to sell all the time. After you’ve written your first blog post, Chris recommends Facebook as a place to dip your toes in and then see what your reception is like. Later on, you may build a Facebook page to further broaden your reach.

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, founder and CEO of an online fashion and crafts business, Eve Neria, shares her knowledge and experience on how to market online. Having had quite an extensive background in both fashion designing and business, Eve emphasizes a few important steps she had to take in order to redesign her company and build what is known today as the Military Apparel Company.

Key Questions Asked:

What is Eve’s background and how did she get started with online marketing? Has she always been an entrepreneur? What major roadblocks did Eve face during the early days of her entrepreneurial journey and how did she manage to overcome them? What steps did Eve take in order to get back up after losing business for a time? Did she have any mentors? If she were to start all over again, what would Eve do differently? What did Eve do to speed up the process of hitting her goals as an entrepreneur? What are the necessary steps to take when building an online marketing business? How does she manage her time? Where does Eve see the online marketing going and why is it important for business owners to focus on this?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Expert’s Advice

The life of an entrepreneur is very rewarding, you’re calling all the good shots; but at the same time, you’re calling all the bad ones as well. One of Eve’s major mistakes during the early stages of her business was putting all her eggs in one basket. The first step to getting yourself back into the game is to understand what is actually happening and how you can solve the problem. Eve runs a debt-free company and has never taken out a business loan. She has always done it by reinvesting profit. Eve’s first advice to people wanting to succeed in online marketing is to really get good root marketing going. You have to keep a balanced life, knowing that you are the extension of your brand. If you’re not able to handle things properly, have someone else that can help. There’s a very great value in evaluating and surveying your current customers.

Steps to Take

The first step to take in building an online company is to focus on the quality of photos, communicate a story, and with that, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and know what they like and what they stand for and present them content that they will love. Step two is being consistent in your effort once you have established who your customers are, what they stand for and what they love and that you’re offering quality content. It’s also very important to post daily. If you’re gonna go on social media, you really have to be there on a daily basis as well as set yourself up as an expert.

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Wendie Trubow, President at Five Journeys, talks about three major start-up mistakes every business owner needs to avoid. Wendie shares important insights about starting your own business, particularly the key things that you need to bear in mind and how to avoid certain mistakes.

Key questions asked:

What is Wendie’s background? What sort of changes did she have to make before actually jumping into the business world? What advice would Wendie give to start-up business owners who are currently in the initial transition period? According to Wendie’s observation, what is the number one mistake that business owners make early on in their career? As a direct result of the first mistake, Wendie ended up having to start her business all over again, how did she manage all that? If Wendie is going to start her business from scratch today, how would she ensure that it’s not undercapitalized? In Wendie’s new venture, how is Wendie doing with establishing the right culture for her business? Given the experience she’d had, what would Wendie say to business owners about the controls they need to put in place? What other things business owners need to pay attention to if they’re going to be in the business for a long time? Suppose people have already made mistakes, how can they fix it? What sort of mindset carried Wendie through this period of relaunching her business? Why is forgiveness necessary in the life of an entrepreneur? Where does Wendie see this journey of wellness going especially for an entrepreneur? What is something important that many business owners typically blow off because they think they’re too busy for it?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Transition Period

The biggest shift for Wendie was going from being an employee where she had set hours and a salary, to an owner where she needs to take ownership of every component of the business. For business owners in the initial transition period, Wendie recommends getting great coaches and mentors since there’s no way that you can know everything by yourself. Identify early on what you rock at and what you need assistance with.

Mistakes and Solutions

The first mistake new entrepreneurs usually make is under-capitalizing their business. The second mistake new entrepreneurs make is growing their business too fast without having adequate controls and support that would allow the business to stay running for long. The third mistake business owner make is allowing the business culture to be created in a way that doesn’t deeply inspire them. Undercapitalizing your business is probably the most deadly of the behaviors because it doesn’t give you the freedom to fix your culture and to put the systems in place that you need.

Behaviors and Systems

There are three questions business owners need to ask themselves: Do we have a product that we believe in? Are we the ones to bring them to the world? How are we going to move forward? Communication is the basis for culture and business owners need to look into available training programs that allow them to speak the same language. Financial control is important, and the best way to do it is by building systems that are twenty times bigger than what you need because if you build a system for what you need, by the time you get there it’s actually too small. Financial systems with great controls and accountability and regular follow-up are probably the most valuable systems to have to be put in place. One critical thing to consider before even having the cash is knowing why you need the cash, what is it that’s so important to bring into the world that is so important to bring into the world. As an entrepreneur, forgiveness, and gratitude go hand in hand because anger is not conducive to having a successful business.

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Tracee Sioux, a spiritual business and life coach, and author of ‘The Year of Yes!,’ talks about her journey as an entrepreneur and what led to her success as well as the myths and misconceptions about life and business coaching industry.

Key Questions asked:

What is Tracee’s background? What is her coaching program all about and how does it help people from all walks of life? How did Tracee get her first client in her coaching business? How does she market her business today? What sort of challenges did Tracee face during those first few months in her business?

Highlights of Lessons Learned: 

Entrepreneurial Journey

Tracee led a fascinating journey from working for a business newspaper as a journalist until the time she started a website called GirlRevolution which she did out of pure passion for empowering other parents like her. There was a level of recognition success, but Tracee made absolutely no money with the blog which eventually became unsustainable for her. And after five years, she finally realized that a blog is not a business. Tracee started on a spiritual path to save herself from postpartum depression and really severe anxiety disorder after witnessing 9/11 when she was 8 months pregnant. Tracee takes online marketing very seriously, making sure her website looks professional and that she has a social media campaign ongoing. She also does a lot of podcasts, radio shows and is very active in her own community. The main roadblock she faced was being terrified and scared.

Insights on Business and Coaching

Your soul knows where she’s going, she knows the fastest, easy way to get there and she will never ever steer you wrong. Tracee defined ‘soul’ to be the deepest, innermost part of you. It’s a piece of you that is eternal and it has this wisdom, sometimes referred to as the Holy Spirit or your conscience or intuition. The goal is not to be six-figure business, the goal is to be a really happy business owner who helps a lot of people. Most entrepreneurs think that what they need is another business class or the newest funnel, that’s not really it, what they need to work on is their own internal self, their fear, the messages their ego is sending and making choices from a deeper place. Your website isn’t necessarily the thing that’s going to drive business to you, but when you meet someone, they will look at your website as a sign of credibility. Truly, business is about getting up every day and doing it over and over and over again. For those who are paving the way and inventing their product as they go along, “give yourself permission to fail and experiment.”

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Yeukai interviews Steven Burton, founder, and CEO of PerfectTux. Steven talks about the online retail business roadmap. Having had an early start in the industry, Steven is packed full of wisdom and advice for other business owners, especially those who want to go into e-commerce.

Key questions asked:

What is Steven’s Background? What is the role of a mentor in his entrepreneurial journey? What was the main thing that triggered Steven to decide to start his own business? Would he consider himself to have grown up having entrepreneurial influence around him? What sort of mind change did Steven have to experience to start running his own business? What are the necessary business steps business owners need to take if they’re going to take their business online? What is the perfect mindset that business owners should have when they’re going online to market their business or do e-commerce? What resources or tools can help business owners get unstuck? What do you see most business owners waste a lot of time on when it comes to the online business? Where do you see most of the opportunities coming up with retail online?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Expert’s Advice

Having a mentor is like running a business with training wheels, it definitely helps you grow and try to make minimal mistakes as you can when starting out. Associate yourself with positive people because when you’re about to take the biggest risk of your life you just have to have positivity around you. Have a tunnel vision, focus on your goal, know where you want to go and attack it. Be in control of your destiny. In the end, your hard work is going to put you where you always wanted to be.

Steps to Success

When starting a business, begin with an idea and make sure that there is a market for it. The next step is to build your website. When you’ve set it up and it’s ready to launch, the biggest hurdle would be to get your website out to the masses. Next is marketing and knowing where your customer is, social media, build your brand and expose your product/service to the masses. After you start gaining the customers, the data will tell you where to go. The most important thing to do once the ball started rolling is to keep an eye on the data and the conversion rate.

Mobile and E-commerce

For e-commerce, you have to be patient. In general, most websites take about three to six months to rank onto Google depending on how competitive your market is. org is a great free business resource to help you in your firm. Everything is being driven towards mobile nowadays, and mobile shopping is growing and growing.

In this episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Raquel Stuart, a Doctor of Philosophy and author of The Audacity of Self, talks to Yeukai about how to get started with business, including techniques and strategies for starting out with a limited budget.

Key Questions Asked:

How did Raquel transition from being in academics to actually go into running her own business? What major roadblocks did she face? When it comes to bartering, what necessary steps do business owners need to take and what should they consider before approaching somebody? In her journey as an entrepreneur, which area does she see start-up business owners making huge mistakes? If Raquel were to start all over again, what would she do more of? How does she manage her time? Where does she find the motivation to keep going with running her own business and adding value to other women?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Roadblocks and Challenges

The first roadblock that Raquel struggled with during the early stages of her business was the fear of the unknown. Raquel says that if you are struggling with fear, it’s best to have a conversation with yourself and know what you’re afraid of then decide what to do about it. The next roadblock she faced was having limited finances. Having realized that supporting a business can be very expensive, Raquel turned to the good old barter system to get through the birthing stage and set up her business.

Strategies and Techniques

It’s always best to start your business based on something that you’re passionate about. Speaking of bartering system, Raquel encourages business owners to consider getting into joint ventures with people who may or may not be in the same business as you are. Score and WIBO (Workshops in Business Organization) are great resources to consider for start-up business owners. Raquel says it’s important to take the time during the day for yourself and make sure you have the discipline to get back to work. The key thing that makes the difference when you are starting up with your own business is you always want to be in action.

Mistakes and Misconceptions

Business owners tend to feel like doing everything themselves and it’s really important to understand that a business will not grow in isolation, it grows in community. The biggest mistake Raquel had made as an entrepreneur was leaving her 9-5 job without having a plan. Another mistake she mentioned was thinking she could do it all on her own. Given the chance to start all over again, Raquel would have focused on identifying her target audience and having a set game plan. Another problem that Raquel sees is business owners think everything is a priority and everything has to be done today, otherwise, they will feel like an underachiever.