A Heartfelt Q&A with My Daughter: Insights on Entrepreneurship and Starting a Business

Today, I have a special treat for you: a heartfelt and insightful Q&A interview that my daughter conducted with me for her school project. The students were given the freedom to choose their topics, and my daughter, with her entrepreneurial spirit, decided to focus on starting a business. 

A couple of years ago, she started her own jewelry business. Her goal was to inspire other kids to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams, just like she did. For her project, she asked if she could interview me to gain more insights into the world of business.

I have to admit that she was my favorite interviewer ever (I might be a bit biased), and her questions were both thoughtful and thorough. It was a wonderful experience to see her curiosity and passion come to life through this interview. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed being a part of it!

If you want to check out her business, you can visit Best Buds Bracelets on Etsy. She also does custom orders and has a line of Taylor Swift bracelets with each of her albums for those Swifty fans that she hasn’t put on Etsy yet (message me for those options).

Question: Why did you start your business? 

I started my business because I had worked for someone else for over 20 years in a corporate environment. And I got a bit burnt out by corporate politics and someone else's agenda and wanted to be able to help more people. So, I decided to become a coach so that I could be able to help more people figure out what they want to do with their lives and be more successful at what they do. 

Question: How old were you when you started your business?

I was 42 when I first started my coaching business. 

Question: What job did you have before starting your business? 

The job I was in when I started my business was as a Vice President and Head of Real Estate Technology for the 3rd largest real estate investment management company in the world. Before going into technology I was in finance and accounting for many years. 

Question: Did you have any inspiration? 

Oh, that's a great question.

I think some of my inspiration came from people that I saw around me who were doing big things.

I started working with a coach and an energy healer when things weren't going so well in my corporate life and it was kind of through the combination of those two things that I decided that I wanted to do those 2 things together. So that was kind of my inspiration for working with another coach. I saw how they were making an impact. And then I went through a certification program with someone named Gina DeVee. She was an inspiration to me to show me how it was possible to start a business

Question: How did you decide to become a business coach? 

I started off as a career and leadership coach because I had spent so many years helping my employees as a manager, figure out their career paths.

I'm passionate about helping other people become better leaders.

It wasn't until a couple of years into coaching when I started having people come to me and start asking me, how did you go from being a vice president, in a large company to starting your own business? 

And it was my business coach, that kind of knocked me over the head and was like, would you just go teach these people how to do it? And so that's when I started working with people trying to transition from being an employee to starting their own business. And that's what got me into business coaching. 

Question: What are 3 things that you would recommend for someone just starting a business? 

First get clear on who you want to serve and why you want to serve them because when you are marketing if you're marketing to everyone, your message can get lost.

And so, being clear on who you're marketing to and who that person is that you want to help. And that way you end up working with people that you enjoy working with and not people that aren't your favorite type of clients. 

The second thing I would say is to get clear on what strategies you should be using.

And so for somebody just starting out, networking is huge. You've got to start letting people know what you do. No one knows yet that you started this business. So why would they buy from you? So getting out and networking, going to events, and doing different types of speaking can help in ways to promote your business. 

the third thing I would say is to get a coach because if you haven't had a business before, then you don't know what to do and what not to do and the right business coach can save you a ton of time and money 

Question: What are the challenges new business owners have?

There are a lot of challenges people incur when starting a business. I think that one challenge that I see quite often is people just don't know what to do.

If you've never done it before, how would you know where to start?

A lot of people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. What you should do is based on where you're at in your business. 

Another challenge that I find is when you start a business, you are now a salesperson and you are selling your services or your product. And a lot of people are not comfortable with sales. This is something that I was challenged with. I used to always say “I'm not a salesperson”. When I started my business that kept me from getting out and selling myself because I had this mentality of what a salesperson looked like. And so I had to reframe that to understand that selling is a service.

If I can help somebody with something that is going to save them time or money or help them get what they want in life, I'm doing them a disservice if I'm not selling them my products and services.

And so I think that's another challenge that I see with so many of the people I work with is just overcoming this fear of failure. 

I would say the third challenge that I see often is trying to do too many things at one time. So trying to figure out every social media platform and all these different places to sell your products. But you just have to start with one and master the one for a while before you then add on something else.

So be focused on the one thing that you're going to do to get your business started.

Question: How did you know that you were ready to expand?

I think knowing I'm ready to expand came when I felt like I had mastered something and was ready to take it to the next level. I think there are a few different ways businesses expand. You can expand what you're offering, or you can expand in how much of something you're selling. And I think for me, part of it was feeling like I had mastered the one thing and was ready to add on something else.

Question: Is it easier to run a business with another person?

I have not personally had another business partner so it's hard to say. Although Dad and I do work in the same business, but that’s a whole other story. It’s always easier when you are the one making the decisions and there's no one else challenging you because you can do what you want. In other ways, it makes it harder because you don't have somebody to collaborate with. 

Typically if you're going to bring in a business partner, you want it to be somebody who has different skill sets than you.

So for example, if you're good with sales you bring in somebody who's good at the processes and procedures and other things that are not your primary skillset. So that way as you develop the organization, you both have really strong skill sets that serve the business in different ways. If you bring in a business partner who is very similar to you in everything, you almost duplicate each other so there may not be a need for one or the other. So those are the things I've seen with business partners. I've had collaboration partners in some of my businesses and I think communication is the key. Always make sure you communicate everything and both parties know what they are responsible for so it makes everything clear from the beginning.

Question: What marketing strategies do you recommend?

The marketing strategies partly depend on where you're at in your business. Starting out 99% of all businesses get their first clients from people they know. So you need to be telling everyone that you know what you're doing, what your business is, and getting your message out that way. There are ways that you can reach out to people to let them know what you're doing, you can post it on social media to let people know and start attending local events. It also depends on the type of business. You have a product-based business whereas I have a service business. So you may do some things differently like starting your Etsy store or putting things on Amazon because it is product-based.

Question: how do you avoid copyright issues? 

If you are writing your own stuff, you shouldn't run into that issue because it's your words and your language. But looking at other people's copy can be a great way to get inspiration and get our brain flowing to come up with more ideas.  Don’t just take what they have but modify it to use your language and speak to your people. 

Question: How do you know what people to hire? 

I love talking about hiring people. The first thing that I have my clients do is make a list of everything they are spending their time on. So when you can see how much time you're spending on different tasks, you can see where you're spending more time on administrative things versus what's making you money. So as the business owner, you should be the person who is the face of the business and doing more sales-type things initially, and the things that you can't hire somebody else to do right away because it is your unique skill set. So when you're looking at who you hired, think of where are you spending time so that you could easily go find somebody else to pay them a lot less than what your time is worth. You can find somebody else to do things like graphic design or to take photos or do some social media posts and things like that are time-consuming tasks that you might have to do but they're not directly your skillset.

You should always hire people for things that you do not know how to do when they aren’t worth your time to figure out how to do. 

Question: How did you decide the name and logo of your business?

I started off with my name and then put coaching after it. So for a lot of service-based businesses, coaches, and consultants, it is easy to start with your name. So many people spend so much time trying to figure out a name that they don't go out and get clients and delay their start. 

One thing I tell my clients to do when trying to come up with a name is to ask people close to you for 10-20 words they would use to describe you and your business.

Once you have this list of words you can start playing with different ideas for names with these words that describe you. You want to make sure it is also clear on what your business does by the name so people aren’t confused when they see it. 

For my business logo I was actually inspired by a stained glass window from a cathedral in Barcelona. I took a picture and then asked a designer to come up with something with a similar design. Your logo is part of your brand and should represent your style and business design.

Question: What is the number one priority when starting your business? 

The number one priority when starting your business is to get clients because you won't have a business if you're not making income. 

Question: How do you know what is the right price? 

I love that question. So pricing varies depending on the type of business. So for your type of business with jewelry, researching and doing some competitor analysis is always a really good way to figure out pricing because if you overprice yourself, then people aren't going to buy and if you underprice yourself people think your products might be too cheaply made and they don't buy. You also have to keep in mind what your costs because you want to make a profit so if you are underpricing something and not making a profit or just breaking even then you won't be in business very long

Question:  How do you handle when someone else is judging you and your success in business or saying mean things? 

Oh, that's such a good question. Yeah, that is a really hard thing to deal with. You will always have people who judge you or tell you to do things differently.

One of my coaches said to me one time that when you start getting people who are making bad comments and saying negative things, that's when you know you've actually made it.

The reason for that is that's when you know you're actually making an impact and stirring things up with people because they have different opinions. And it's okay for other people to have different opinions. I always remind myself when I see those comments that just it means that I'm doing good. I'm doing the right thing. And so I've had to change that mindset. This isn't always them attacking me but them sharing their view of something. Unfortunately, there are always going to be people who say negative things. And it's okay it doesn't necessarily reflect on you. So when you can let those comments go and look at them as this is their opinion and it's okay for them to have an opinion. 

And then I always ask, is there any truth to it? If there is any truth to it, then it might be something that I need to improve on. For example, if they say, I'm going to use your bracelets as an example, but it fell apart, it doesn't look good or something like that. Then ask, is there a truth to that? If yes, what can I do to improve it? 

Remember that you don't have to respond to that person. You don’t have to try to defend yourself. Because when you go into defense mode, it becomes worse for you. A lot of times you may think, well, let me just delete that comment so it's not there, or let me remove that and there are times where that's appropriate to do. But I also have had it go the other way where somebody may have said something negative, and then all the people who love you and support you are going to jump in and be the ones to be like, No, you're wrong. And, so sometimes can be a good thing because other people who love your business, sometimes will jump in and be the ones to defend you and you don't need to defend yourself. 

Question: Going back to when I asked you about what people to hire. And you said it's based on your skill sets and what you need other people to do. How do you know what are your skill sets? 

There are a few ways you can find out your skillsets. There are some different assessments that I like to have people do when we're looking at what would be their skills. You should ask yourself what you do easily that other people think is hard. Those are some of your skill sets. So what's something that you love doing? What's something that comes easy for you? Those are your skill sets. And if you're not sure what they are, go ask those around you, what do you think I'm really good at? Or what do you think is something that I make look easy? What do you think I'm natural at? Those are all good questions to ask other people to help you see those things. Sometimes we don't see our own skill sets. Sometimes we brush them off because you are so good at it. And you think everyone's good at it. But they're not. It's unique to you. 

Question: What do you do when other people might feel threatened by their accomplishments?

I had a client of mine recently tell me that she was intimidated by my success. She liked working with me and was learning but there's this perception a lot of times that you are doing bigger things because you put things out there and other people may be intimidated by that. So one thing I would look at myself and ask is, How am I showing up? Am I making them feel like, I'm better than them because I have something they don’t? I never want to make somebody feel less than me. And so I’d look at your actions to make sure you're not rubbing it in someone else's face.

The other thing that I look at is, whether it is something they want to do and how could I help them with that. So if it's somebody else who wants to have a business, are there some things that I could help them with because they're trying to figure this out, and it's hard to start a business? So maybe I just need to give them some tips and some tools to help them without being pushy. But people are going to be people and going to be jealous of things without you even doing something wrong sometimes. And so don't always feel like it's on you. Sometimes it's just a reflection of them. They're judging you. So make sure you don't judge them in return. And the biggest thing is to let it go. 

Question: Would you recommend being a sponsor for sports teams?

As a way to promote Yeah, absolutely. That sounds like so much fun. I would find a sports team that represents what you have and that shares some of the same values.

So when we sponsor different types of organizations or events or people remember they are representing your brand so make sure that they are good people that also have some of the same values that you have.

But absolutely, because that can help promote what you're doing and get your word out much, much faster when you sponsor teams or even different events.