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Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You.
I am your host, Melanie Young, and I am glad you're joining me today. It's a beautiful summer day where I am as you know, I enjoy interviewing dynamic people who inspire you to live the best life you can and I like doing it to help you as well. And today we're going to be talking to my guest who is fearless and helping small business owners and entrepreneurs get a boost in their business and in their outlook
to take them to the next level. But before we go into that topic and my guests, I do want to give a shout out to where I am now because they have graciously offered me an office and it was as spur of the moment as a morning phone call today at nine am, I am in the beautiful town of Abington, Virginia, in southern Virginia, near the Appalachian Mountains, near the border of my home state now of Tennessee. Let's just say it is beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains.
It has been called one of the coolest places in southern Virginia and one of the best small town food scenes in the country by USA Today ten Bests. And I'm going to be checking out some restaurants after this show.
Little fun facts.
There's a lot of arts here in theater and the Martha Washington Inn and Spa, which was built in eighteen thirty two.
We're going to go visit that. It is charming.
And if you are doing road trips like many of you know I've been doing with my husband David now for three years, put Abington, Virginia on your map if you're going down I eighty one south, and frankly, put the whole state of Virginia on your map, because we've been touring and visiting wineries on the Monticello side Ava and the Shenandoah Valley side, and we have some gems which we'll be sharing on our other show, The Connected
Table Lives, so check that out. But I want to thank the Abington Convention of Visitors Bureau who literally two hours ago said come on in because that's what Southern hospitality is all about. So thank you to the City of Abington, Virginia. So now let's go on to my guest, who is an amazing woman.
Like me, lived in New York, now live South. She is an award Jackie P.
Taylor is an award winning businesswoman host of the podcast The Real Juggle, which takes an unvarnished look at what it means to be successful. She is a business consultant and has worked with everything from top Fortune five hundreds to independent entrepreneurs and she helps them get a boost in their outlook on what they're doing and their vision and their strategies to take their business to the next level.
She really helps a lot of people from many diverse backgrounds realize their potential engage in more rewarding lives and careers.
She has a book out called Give Me a Boost.
It's an easy, slim read with a lot of interesting insights and tips to help underresource business owners like yourself and sometimes like me, who are onto person heart but sometimes just feel they need a little extra help and insights and motivation to get to that next level, as they say, get that boost. So we're gonna be talking about everything you may want to know. If you were starting out as an entrepreneur, maybe you have a business, but you just got to take it to that next level.
And you're saying, now what, Jackie P. Taylor, Welcome to Fearless Fabulous You.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to be on with you.
Well, I'm curious and I always start this way, Jackie. Tell me a little bit about your personal and professional background, starting with where you raised, your raised and your education and your early career because most people, let's face it, don't start out as young youngs. You're saying, I want to help businesses build business build their businesses.
So give me a sense of your career journey.
Sure, So just to tell you who I am, I am a diversity enthusiast. I am guided by my passion and I'm energized by helping other people. That's at my core. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. And it's funny that you say that people don't start out saying they want to own businesses. One of the first things that I remember, one of my young memories in Brooklyn, there was a store that sold these car radios. This is back in the days when you had to like bring
your car radio in and out of your car. So I'm dating myself, and they were selling these car radios, and so in the trash just outside of the store they had the plastic containers that the car radios came in. Well, I was about eleven years old, maybe ten, and I
thought that this was like a huge find. I got my best friend and I we took all of these car radio you know, compartments, and we went door to door in Brooklyn Schenectady Avenue and I was basically selling these you know bags, you know, as anything you can use it for, as type of things. And I just remember this one neighbor thing. You know, you can keep it, but I'm going to give you five dollars. So I don't know, I've been I've been entrepreneuring for a while.
I'm impressed by that. And you were doordered or salesman which you know I did.
I did that in Atlanta when I was first starting out and desperately needed money because I hadn't gotten my break in writing, and I had to sell door to door cable TV subscriptions on Beauford Highway, which, if you know, a thing of Atlanta is just like wall the wall apartment come back.
Wow.
And my parents dissed me so bad.
But I made some money and I learned how to be fearless in selling.
It built a lot of fearlessness in me about sales. And that's important, right.
Because you've got to be able to sell yourself and your product, your service, right, Jackie.
Yeah, you learn grit, right, you learn grit. You learn how to make something out of nothing, and you know from what your situation and mine, you definitely learn to deal with rejection. Because I'm sure we both got a few notes.
Oh yeah, I got a lot of a lot of nose and a lot of dogs trying to stiff my crotch.
I was like dodging big dogs all the time. It was like good away from me. It was crazy.
So what was your what was your first career break when you well, where'd you go to school? And tell me about your education and then your career break.
Sure.
So just since we're on this Virginia theme, I actually attended boarding school for high school in Richmond, Virginia. Who I did have my days in Virginia. So I agree the great state of Virginia it should be on the visit list. I actually got a full scholarship to Adelphi University. And I have always been the person that wants to work. I have had no patients. I've learned patients over the years. I had no patients, and so I did a lot of interning. I ended up getting my first job with
ABC News Radio, and I interned. You know, I was competing against the other desk assistance. If you if you were in media, you understand that you kind of work your way up from coffee to getting b roll and sound on tape. And I did that. But because I had self taught technology backgrounds, I was helping ABC News Radio and the team there with their station calls. Right, we would do those morning show prep calls, and so
I helped them with their Microsoft Access database. And so at the end of the internship, we were all buying for jobs. I was not ready to graduate yet, mind you, but we'll get to that. We were buying for jobs, and I ended up getting the job. They actually created a role in talk show prep Morning show talk Prep, and they said, well, wait a minute, when do you get your degree. I was like, Oh, I'll get it
next semester. I'll get it next semester. So, with my full scholarship to my parents dismay, I left Adelphi.
Oh Go, joined the workforce.
And so ultimately I got my bachelor's degree from Mercy College, Dobbsbury, New York. But my path was not a traditional path, to say the least.
You know a lot of people sorry, and you know it's an important message to everybody out there. You don't have to follow the traditional path. There will be people along the way, hiring managers and HR other HR people who look for that traditional path. But some of the people I most admire and business did not follow it. They followed their gut and their instinct and their why right.
And more and more organizations today, I know Big four consulting firms, a lot of the tech firms have gotten a rid of the requirement that you have a bachelor's degree.
I think I saw an article just today that Kellogg.
Actually is now hiring and not requiring a bachelor's degree. So I think, you know, I was ahead of my time with that.
It wasn't as easy, but you're right.
Time have changed, you know, Jackie.
That's encouraging because I was with a good friend up in the Hudson Valley who was lamenting.
She neats coaching.
I can't get a job because I don't have a college degree. And I look straight he and I said, you know, Bill Gates, Mark.
Zuckerberg, that is that is not your barrier? Did you tell her that that?
Yeah, I just said that is not your barrier. I said, your barrier is up in between your ears. I said, you know, you got to you gotta, like, you know, change what's inside your head.
And a lot of it is that when you're coaching, don't you.
Think I think that on one, it's a mindset. I am big on I mean people use the term manifestation. Back before people were using that term. I was always big on visioning, right, and so I set a vision. I set a goal, and I had this fearlessness you know that it was going to happen. And even to this day, I had vision boards from Melanie from years ago, and so it may not have occurred in that year, but maybe like a couple of years later, or it
happens in its own time. But I'm really big on making sure that you vision and you get your mind in the right place.
Well, I completely agree, and I rely on vision boards a lot, and I've changed my vision over the years quite frequently. And then I also will sometimes lie in the morning and while I visualize my day, I also visualize any mental barriers they're standing in my way in the long term and how to break through them. And it's actually been a great mental exercise to kind of rethink many many things in your.
Book give me a boost.
A lot of it I knew because I've had businesses and you know, I come from like the entrepreneuri background.
But you said something in there that really resonated.
With me because I closed my business after going through breast cancer treatment, my main business, which was a fairly successful marketing and culinary events agency in New York City. I was like the person that you wanted to be when you grew up, I have to say, and then you know, I get the breast cancer diagnosis, I go through chemo so fearful. Remember that word that I'm going to lose all my business that I hid it from everybody for two years, soldier through and then at the
end of it said I am so done. And for a while I was freelancing, And man, that's really different, you say, and give me a boost. There's a big diss being a freelancer and an entrepreneur because they're both in many cases self employee.
But they're very different. So I want you to define that.
Yeah, very different.
So I always say entrepreneurs are absolutely business owners, but a business owner is not necessarily an entrepreneur or a business owner. And both an entrepreneur and a business owner are independent, autonomous.
Have a vision, risky.
But for an entrepreneur it's different. You are building something bigger than yourself. You want to work yourself and build yourself out of the day to day operations and administryvia and focus on the bringing someone in and a succession plan under you.
You want more than one location.
You want to diversify your products and your services. You want to you have aspirations of significant growth.
So although you are a business.
Owner, you are an entrepreneur because you're building something bigger. When you are self employed or a business owner, you still have many of those same attributes, but it doesn't need to grow you. It doesn't need to grow to some you know, scaled level. You're fine working in your business every day. I use the example of a plumber who's self employed and doing really well. You're like Atrician,
a salon owner, and they're happy. They don't necessarily want to get to the point where they have like multiple locations and multiple teammates. They're happy doing a day to day and I think that's the biggest differentiator.
Very good explanation, and I completely and entrepreneurs are builders. They like to build. They're restless. I mean, there's that entrepreneurial itch.
Because most right it's like an itch.
Like you said, you love to work. I can't stop working.
You know, people even this morning, I was writing a post about our show today and you know we're with relatives.
They're like, you're always working. It's like, I I like it.
I it's an itch to build and create. And if you got that itch, do scratch it because you may be doing some amazing things. What are some essential tools and tactics. This is a good one because I know, I know when I hung my shingle, I just said I'm in business. I had no plan other than I didn't want to work for anybody else. So when I started my business, I did not want want to work for anyone else. So that was my drive, not I want to build something. I just wanted to do it my way and better.
That was my drive. My way.
Yeah, and I.
Think that that is a lot of the motivation for a lot of self employed people and business owners. You know, you want to do it your way. You have a vision on how things to get done need to get done. I think essentially in order to do that, there's some bras packs and we're going to just talk Melanie around just launching and not necessarily growing and scaling to launch, having that vision, understanding that it's something that could be profitable.
So basically people will pay you for the product or service that you bring into market. Essential is a business plan, and I know that's debatable to some people.
I started my business, I didn't have the business plan.
If you want to do it right, it is essential to have a business plan, and so I think that plan is important. And then having an execution STRATG is important. So unlike the lottery where you just need a dollar and a dream. If you are looking to start a business, you need a proposal for what you're going to get going and a plan for getting it done.
And if you're looking to get funding for your business, if you need funding, you need that plan and you need that. You need that plan, You need a proposal, and you need a timeline.
Right.
Yeah, you not only need the plan to formally apply for funding sources, whether that's a bank loan or a grant, et cetera, but that plan is going to help you codify the idea in your head. So I have online through my social Jackie P. Taylor, I'm on a mission to talk to ten thousand business owners about what they
need to grow and scale their business. And I cannot tell you how many business owners I talk to who cannot cleanly articulate within less than a minute let's say what their business is, what's going to help them grow, and what their vision is for where they can see their business going. I get a lot of that's a really good questionquestion, And so I know also that that those are the individuals who delay in answering those questions, are the ones who haven't formally put a business plan together.
Because if you had then you would be able to articulate that a lot, a lot more easily.
It's so interesting, Jackie, because that's the people I want to help, because I come from the communications background. My company was started out in public relations, a good old fashioned way pitching media. But it grew because I grew and I had a plan to become the best events culinary events company in the United States, and to be the best at what I did in every aspect and diversify. And I diversified and I grew because you got to
expand you've got to add people and teams. But I want to help people who cannot articulate because I find that the communication skills of most people, much less most business people, most less most business owners is weak flat out week.
I think you're spot on.
I think you're spot on, And working with someone like yourself also helps them make the decisions that I compel many of them to make, which is, you know, it may be a matter of honing your communication skills one percent, but then it also may be working with someone like yourself may help you determine that maybe I am not the face of the business, maybe I am not the voice of the business, and maybe it makes more sense for me to hire or bring someone else on board
to be that front facing person while I work on the vision and tightening up the operation exactly.
And if you're a numbers person or a tech geek, you may not be the best communicator of what your mission is and more importantly, identifying who your audience is and communicating to them.
We've all seen major.
Gaffs in businesses large and small where they've miscommunicated with their audiences and it's been backfired on them.
Yeah, it's been it's been horrible. And so to me that the risk is so high and the consequences that you've described are so great that it just makes sense to as a leader, make the decision early.
And don't you agree that understanding and you talk about the SWAT analysis, So.
We're going to I want you to explain it.
But in that you can understand what your weaknesses are and where you need to beef up and get the best people. So for those who don't understand a SWAT analysis, I'm going to have Jackie explain it.
Sure.
So, a SWAT analysis is a method that you can leverage. And you talked about the book being very easy to read in the book, I have a description of a squad analysis, and I actually allow you to treat it as a workbook where you can actually fill this information in where you talk about your strengths that's the s W your weaknesses, your opportunities, and your threats. And you
look at this both internally and externally. So what are your strengths and weaknesses internally as an organization, as a leader, what are you lacking? What this differentiates you from other people in the market. And then what are your opportunities and your threats externally? And that can be anything depending upon when you're doing it. Like a pandemic, right, that's a threat and needing to pivot to going online versus in person.
Could be financial threats.
It could be competition that has you know, spawned and sparked up in an area where you are tapping into the market and recognizing that you need to be prepared to go up against competition. And so the SWAT analysis gives you a comprehensive view of where you stand and then from that information you can put an action plan together, because once you identify a risk, you got to mitigate the risk, right, You got to have a plan for doing something doing something about it.
It's so important and every business needs it and the other one again getting back to communication is the essential why. You need to be able to answer why are you doing this? Why is there a need? Why will it make a difference? And then how how will it make a difference, and how will be implemented and how will make an impact and how will you measure results? Right?
Absolutely that that is such a great point, and you know in the book I kind of guide people on that journey to your point. Am I really an entrepreneur? Is this right for me?
You know?
What are my strengths and weaknesses? And then what's my why? What's my wis them? Am I doing this to build a legacy for myself my family? Am I doing this because I just need to make ends meet? You know, depending upon what your motivational why is will determine how far you get and how far you want to take your business and kind of what your next steps are. And I know that this seems like for some of your listeners, you know, nice to have great. When I
have some time, I will do it. I cannot emphasize enough how mandatory this is, how important it is to ask yourself these questions and go do this if you are truly looking to be a successful entrepreneur.
Well, my thought is, if you say I don't have the time to do the things we just discussed, you don't have the time to run a business because it is you know what it's consuming, it's life.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And one of the things that's interesting is I had another conversation with someone and we were talking about the same thing, about the difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner, and he said, oh, my gosh, it just makes me courage of hearing you say all those things.
He was like, I guess I'm not an entrepreneur.
And I laugh because to your point, if you're an if you're not an entrepreneur, it will exhaust you. But if you are, it's gonna make your You'll have that itch, right, You'll have that that inspatiable itch where it's.
Like, yeah, that's me, and then you'll kind of pile on.
So so you know, if you sit and ask yourselves the right question, you will know kind of where you stand and what your next ups are.
I couldn't agree more. And I've I've waffled a little bit.
After I closed my business, I waffled on starting a new business or just being a freelancer, and it's been a real coming to terms of what really makes that the me and me happy.
It's definitely being.
An entrepreneur, but anyway, and helping people and helping other people be better at communicating their why, because so many people are lost.
They can't find their way.
First they can't find their why, and then when they find it, they can't explain it to anybody.
And if you can't explain it, how are you going to sell it? You know, whether it's a product, serve us or whatever.
One hundred percent you talked about access to capital, and you know, one of the things that you know is really important in order to be able to access capital is to be able to succinctly articulate your value proposition.
Perfect your pitch. What's your pitch?
And so when you talk about being able to effectively communicate who you are, what you need, and why somebody should take a bet on you or take a risk on you, you're not going to be able to access capital if that's not something that you can do.
Right.
So, if there's a need for you.
Melanie, we need you out there, and there's always a need for people like you know, we compliment on each other. So I want to talk about access to capital and access to capital as a woman and a woman of color. How hard is it now for women out there or is it getting better?
Yeah, thank you for asking that question.
It's it's definitely it's not easy. You know.
Although you know minorities represent twenty percent of the overall population, less than two percent of activist capital is actual with going to these entrepreneurs from an investment standpoint, and post pandemic, with the anticipated recession, you know, the capital is going to be even more restricted. Right, people are not making the same level of PE investments that they have private equity investments that they have in the past.
So unfortunately, I don't have.
A very beautiful picture to paint. However, from bad comes good, right, and in hard times there are always those who kind of can rise up through the ashes. I talk to my mentees and entrepreneurs about diversifying the different sources of funding. So, yes, you can bootstrap and talk to family and friends if you are so privileged, But most minority entrepreneurs do not have that benefit of a rich junkle right that they
can tap into. There are grants available. Many of the entrepreneurs who I speak to do not tap into contract with government, and there are tens of millions of dollars every year that go unused that are set aside for minority entrepreneurs. That's another source. And then the other piece,
it's pitch competitions. There are a number of corporations and private orgs who are offering pitch competitions to entrepreneurs where within sixty seconds, right, you can tap into hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
You know, I want to center on this because I thought the whole section on diversifying income streams much as diversifying your approach to access to capital, we're both significant. While we're talking about capital, you brought up some really great points. Another one is finding organizations that do micro loans, which you're not going to.
Be the big VC money, but micro loans.
You know, you've got to understand how much you need and how much you want and don't undervalue.
I mean it's easier to you know, go down and go up.
Is there are there sources where one can find this information easily or do you have to like really spend a lot of time looking online for this type of information, particularly when you talk about pitch competitions and grants and as I said, micro loans and companies that will fund the smaller business owner versus the big VC companies.
Right, So there are sources, you know, obviously by leveraging Google and a lot of AI technologies that we have now to search for pitch competitions and things of the like. But I work hard to consolidate that information through my website at Jackiettaylor dot com.
I often share it through my.
Social whether that's through LinkedIn or through Instagram for entrepreneurs, So consider me a hub for being able to share this information. If you are looking at VC funding, you know, looking at those organizations who have funded businesses like yours in the past. It's always suggested so economics development authorities
in the different states. So depending upon where you live, there is a local economic development authority that looks at incentives and grants and programs to support emerging businesses in the area. So with some modest legwork, those resources are out there. But part of my mission in my ministry is also to provide that information to emerging entrepreneurs as.
Well, and I think that's a great value proposition for anyone who wants to work with you, because.
That's that's hard. You know, the research takes a lot of time. That's when you really need to get in.
That's when, you know, I call it the divide and conquer theory of business. Save your time for what you need to do to oversee and grow your business, and hire the people that can do all that research so that they're doing that research.
And bringing it to it's money well spent.
You know. That reminds me of a section of my
book where I actually speak directly to that. So for founders who are looking to spend more time working on their business instead of in their business, I have a method that I present to them called the three d's, Do, delegate, dedicate And so literally you will sit in this, you know, in give me a boost and work on that spreadsheet where you say, what are the things as an owner that I absolutely have to do as the visionary of the business, what are the things that I can delegate
to people who work for me, contractors or otherwise or outside of myself? And then what are the things that I should one hundred percent dedicate externally to an outsource provider? And that can be everything from your payroll to your accounts receivable and so on. And I think being deliberate and creating a taxonomy and a list of all your tasks and then putting it into those categories, it's absolutely what you need to do to free yourself up.
Yeah, because time is money, and sometimes you'll save both by delegating, dividing and conquering higher outsourcing. I mean, there's a lot of ways to do it, and I think it's really don't try to do it all, because you will end up in the weeds, as they say in the restaurant business, and you can't see the forest for the trees. And really an entrepreneur has to lead, build and have vision.
You know, not only will you end up in the weeds, but I have a whole section of the book then generally right, not leting. When people write books like this for business owners, they focus on the business and the operations. But I thought it was important in one of my chapters to talk about energy boosts. And so if you don't do these things, what's the risk of doing nothing?
The risk of doing nothing is that you put yourself in the category of those entrepreneurs who are at risk of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, and a ton of other mental health challenges because the life of an entrepreneur is not easy, and so if you're not intentional about making sure that you allow yourself self care, that you allow yourself free time, and that you're setting up your business in a way that affords you those things, then you're going to put
yourself personally right your personal health at risk. So I always thought it was important to take that time to pause and focus on that.
Well, I'm a perfect example of the person who didn't because I basically worked myself to the bone building the business, but never took time for myself, and I got cancer.
I got breast cancer, which I truly believe, even though stress is not cause cancer or the stress wore down my body to the point where it opened itself up to getting sick, which is why I ended up, you know, walking and closing my business and saying I need to rethink the business because at that point I can only associate my former company with getting sick at that point, being stressed. But you have to say it's okay to do that. It's not a sign of it's not a
sign of weakness or giving up. It's saying I want to take better care of myself and build a better life.
And a lot of it is your mindset, right.
Yes, yes, yeah, and you've got to do that. To your point, yeah, affect your immune system and so it'll it'll weaken your ability to even fight off. You know, everything is from the common cold to more complex issues, like you said, from cancer and everything else. I'm a believer. I personally believe that stress causes a lot of things that we can't necessarily, like figure out the cause of. But so often as entrepreneurs, we put ourselves in this martyr syndrome.
Right.
We equate busyness with productivity, and that's not necessarily the same thing. So I love that you're being vulnerable and sharing your personal circumstances. But there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are listening to your show who hopefully will take heed.
I think the pandemic is taught a lot of people to take better care of themselves. We all weathered through it, and no one is the same. Everyone is different and hopefully taking better care of themselves and rethinking what their values and goals and what's important are. And if you're not healthy, you can't run a business. You can't take care of anybody. You can't take care of yourself, your family, your business, anything.
I want to talk about another part of give.
Me a Boost that I think is important and really spoke to me about diversifying income streams to mitigate risk and why it was.
Important to me.
As I think about the business I've I've had in the business I much smaller business I have, there's just income streams that die out. A perfect example is artificial and AI and chat GBT is taking over the world of writers and media, and media is struggling right now. All media is struggling to get revenue. It's a broken system.
And I'll be the first to say that you've got to have other ways to diversify your income stream if you want to stay in it, or you've got to go get another business or job to support You're what becomes sometimes for some people an expensive passionate hobby. Talk about different ways to diversify income streams because I thought this was really helpful and wise.
Yeah. When I when I mentor emerging business owners, I challenge them to look across the landscape of what they can offer the market. So if you're offering products, challenge them to look at services that compliment what they do, what they have that they can offer to them market. If you offer services, I challenge them to look at technology or how to productize what they do so that
they can diversify. So one area is in you know, have I exhausted the universe of what the market needs or wants from me from a product and services standpoint.
So if you are in a salon, you know, in addition to doing hair and providing that service, you know, can you create a product or rebrand a product or hair moisturizer or a hair growth theorem and things are the like, can you create additional services we're in addition to doing hair and styling, you're providing I don't know, advisory around hair growth and with the health of your hair and measuring that.
Can you educate others?
I have a mentee that I work with who's amazing at what she does, and she has a couple of salons, but she also trains other stylists to do what she does, and it requires an entrepreneurial mindset and confidence to be able to see that as a potential diversification. I think Melanie. The other area of diversifying is where I talk about diversifying who your customer base is.
And I think that's a that's a big piece as well.
It's a huge piece.
I mean you have to look at it all very three sixty and you've get some very good examples. I mean, I am on a couple of sites, media sites and also public relations sites because it's everybody integrates, and I mean everybody's complaining. Okay, it's kind of sad. Everybody's complaining because nobody's making money. The fees are smaller, the clients are crabbier, the demands are higher.
Yeah, it is, So what are you going to do about it? You know? My thing is don't complain?
Create See what the I'm a big believer everybody has the same problem, which everybody seems to have.
There's like three big problems, and.
What can you do to help people solve those problems in a way that everybody's feeling better about themselves, their business, their life, and making money.
And it's focusing on that clarity can really do some amazing thing.
I thought the hair the hair care is an interesting example because I've seen that with people, you know, I've seen it in salons but it's any business.
Any business can do this.
Yeah, regardless of the industry or the discipline. You're absolutely right, any business can do it. But you realize that this conversation, this ideation, you have to have the capacity and the time to do it. And this is the job of the founder. And so this is why I when I talk tough the you know, the businesses that I mentor, I go through what they're doing in a day and I'm like, are you spending your time doing the right things.
So another example that I'll give you in the book is I have the four sees right, Yes, you know the the entrepreneur that I work with is generally an entrepreneur who is looking to grow and scale, meaning they've already set up their business. There are a ton of resources melanies that are out there that can help people figure out how to do a startup, from trembers of commerce to you know startup. Ideally, the ideal reader is someone who's already a couple of years into their business
and they truly want to grow at scale. So I have a methodology that I have called the four Seeds. If you want to grow your business, you got to increase your revenue right, So in order to you got to increase your revenue. If you want to scale your business, then even if your revenue stays the same, you've got to do more with less. Meaning as you grow, your expenses can't grow to the same proportion. You've got to keep your expenses down. And so I challenge them to
look at the four seeds. The first one is look at your consumers.
That's individual consumers. Do you have them?
Is your business model such that you have individual consumers, whether that's people that walk into your brick and mortar or go on your website to purchase your products or services. The second seed is around corporates. You can't tell you how many emerging business owners don't have corporate clients, and if you're not sure how the widgets that you sell would translate into corporate clients. I work with mentees all the time on how to pivot their brand and their
capability to make it attractive to corporations. Court spend a lot of money and they look for supplier diversity and to add minority businesses to their supplier base. Third c is contract government contracts. Nine times out of the set, ninety five percent of the time whatever you do and whatever business you're in, somebody in government will buy it.
Government contracts are great because I say this with the somewhat recession proof right, because the government will fund itself right even in hard times, and they'll continue to make purposes and.
They have set aside contracts. And then that.
Last see is around collaborations or alliances. Have you created a relationship with what could be an alliance or a channel partner to help you grow? So, if you're a salon owner or you're a stylist, what would a good channel partner or alliance be with an event planner? Right who does weddings who will tell you every time they plan an event or have a wedding when they need
a makeup artist or a stylist. So I challenge my founders to be thoughtful and be creative around how to change their portfolio mix of customers.
I think these are so important. You had me at government.
I mean my eyes widened at the government contract part because a lot of people don't even think about that. It made me think because a lot of the income that the Connected Table, my main business derives is through government funded contracts out of Europe.
And what's neat about them.
And that's my business strategy right now, because once you identify when the funding needs, when the funding deadlines are, and who gets the funding, and you follow follow the income trail and the paper trail and how to apply.
That's money that it's user or lose. It's spent and they have to spend it.
So it's like, wow, that's money people must spend within a certain fiscal date year and you want to help them spend it and do it right. And it's the same with I have a couple of friends who do work with the government and the food sector and in economic development, and a lot of people don't even think about that be Does there soups to looking just around their local you know what's around them versus the beyond?
And amazing.
Absolutely And one of my mentees does I love that you mentioned food service because government buy food service. One of my mentees create sustainable wallpaper. She's a designer and she has wallpaper.
Well, guess what.
Corporations are still fitting out their office space, as do government agencies, many of which are actually in physically in offices even post COVID, more so than the corporations, and so it just requires you as a founder to tweak your business model a bit to target the customers who are going to be And these government contracts are large contracts.
Yeah, and multi year yeah, yes, multi year contracts.
So when I sit with a mentee and I say, well, let's look at your revenue and then you create that little pie chart about where the red and he's coming from and what type of customers. As you're planning for a recession or disruption or those potential threats, having a diverse customer base is what's going to help get you through, and so you just got to be thoughtful around getting
that done. There's also certifications that are required, right, You've got to be certified as a small business enterprise, minority business enterprise depending upon your income assets, eight day certification with the federal government.
Well, you know, and there's a lot of resources online to help with this. You just got to you know, again, Google has been very helpful to getting information. Just verify it because Google doesn't always WHATICH comes up isn't always the most evidence space. You've got to do your homework on that. Collaborations are another good one because you've got to think about what I get approached about doing collaborations
all the time. You've got to be very careful there that you don't over commit and over collaborate.
It's got to be very strategic and streamlined.
Otherwise, if it's taking more time to do the collaboration, may not be the best.
Partnership.
And you've got to make sure that it's an equal partnership and one's not taking from you more than you're getting from them. So you've got to weigh those very carefully, because again, time is money, and you are trying to streamline your business to grow and scale it and not wear yourself down, which is super super important. So I'm curious you work, you said, with a lot of businesses who are scaling.
Do you want to share a success tory?
Sure?
I mean, I think there are so many out there businesses that have done done well growing and scaling and
using some of the tips. I actually lead an accelerated program with a large, big for consulting firm where we work with black and Latino entrepreneurs who are looking to grow and scale, and there are a number of examples of those founders getting educated on how to streamline their internal operations, how to leverage technology, and they're able to capitalize on the insights that they learned to one reduce their expenses. There are great examples of business owners who
have created distributor partnerships. And so that mentee that I told you about Fit by Row is one of her lines, but she's Rochelle Border Designs, and she's got great distributor relationships now with Wayfair and Nacy's and others. And so I think those are examples of how to take it out of your you know, your normal day to day realm.
You're you know, pounding the pavement approach, and how to leverage strategic, large scale corporate relationships to kind of get your brand out there and expand your customer base.
And you know, I think it's again it's leveraging your relationships and getting outside what is the normal.
And it's the same again with your customer base.
You know, maybe what you're selling can be re messaged to another audience. I mean, you know, I have the Connected Tables primary audience is the wine, wine and hospitality industry, but we have a large number of followers and fans who are consumers who just love to know where we're going and want tips somewhere to go when they go into this in that wine country or here, they just hang on everywhere what to eat or drink. So you know,
it's two different audiences right there. And then you look at the age groups of all of them and you go, h. Then you're talking to different people with different income brackets. Let's see what the different messages are to them. And then maybe you're talking to the business the corporations where they need you know, the young executive recruits to come in need to be trained on certain things to be able to entertain clients when they go out to you know,
business meetings and lunches. So that's a way to think through how to sell the services in different ways and what we're doing to reach different audiences with different you know, the why why you need us, And it's really sitting down and thinking about getting inside the head of you know, what, what does the value you can provide different audiences and why they would.
Need you, whether it's a service.
I love that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And as you were talking, the more idea ideas you come up with, the more ideas you generate, right, because you're like and and and then.
I could also do this.
You know, you know, when you start looking at your customer experience. I talk in give me a boost about how to focus on and improve your customer experience because the psycho time that it takes to find a customer is a lot longer than it could be to retain a customer. And so so many entrepreneurs, Yeah, don't spend
time keeping a customer. If you're going to go through everything you're going to go through from your marketing dollars to the time, and you finally close that cost client, you can't then divert your attention to the next without making sure that you're retaining your customers and your clients. And so what is that experience like? And so I think a lot of what you share around you know how to grow and expand your business based on your industry.
It grows tentacles, right, it definitely expands from there.
I love it. I love the energy people have.
You know, your clients have great experiences and recommend you. I mean most of our business, most of my business when I had my agency, was all recommendation, all word of mouth. I never had to go and sell my services.
There was a need.
People didn't know how to do it.
I had a great why you know, nobody knew how to do what we did. Nobody wanted to do what we did, but they wanted it done for them, and we did it, and we did it great. And you know, once you get that, you get lots of referrals and then you know, then leverage those referrals and get testimonials and get more testimonials.
For your site. It's always a build.
But always remember, and this is important as we get, you know, to give back as well. So don't always take offer to give and say what can I do for You've been such a great person you company or business or individual to worry what can I do for you? How can I you know, what can I do to make your life better? Because people sometimes never say that, and it sometimes takes people off guard, like, well you really do care, right.
Thank you for talking about giving because there is large corporate a lot of what I've done. You talked about the time I spend with Fortune five hundred or government executives, a lot of those same strategies and principles I wrote give me a boost because those same strategies and principles are applicable to emerging business owners, just at a different
level and different scale. And I wrote a book in such an easy to understand, direct, simple way, because having that information should not be difficult to obtain, and so often we throw acronyms, we use these really big terms that folks don't understand.
It should not.
Be that difficult, and so I created the books to kind of bridge bridge that particular gap. But you talk about giving, and one of the strategies for large scale organizations, and you know, helping to embed their brand and market is around their CSR initiatives, which is corporate social responsibility.
And so I compel you know, the mentees, the emerging founders that I mentor to think about what their corporate social responsibility strategy is, What is your philanthropic and you know, effort, what should your customers align you with when it comes to how you're giving back to the communities that you're selling in. And I think that I love that you brought that up because I think it's an important part of business in today's world.
It is and it should be part of everybody's business model.
I actually.
I feel very strongly about that when I decide who I put on my show as casts, to be honest, because I get a lot of people approached me but I don't accept everyone because I look at very specifically what they're doing, not to promote themselves, but to help others in their business model and the message. And you know, otherwise they can pay to be on my show and promote themselves. But you know I have a model for that too. But you know I look for that giving
back because that's how I was brought up. I mean it was, it was built into my DNA to be a giving person.
It's not about writing a check.
It's just making leaving an impact and helping make the community person.
It could be anything better.
What can I do every day to do something better for somebody, some organization somehow, And it's that giving back. And too often you're so busy selling and trying to get nail the sale.
Did you forget the.
Giving back and the appreciation and saying you've been good to me, I appreciate your business. What can we do that it's not about business? How can we take this? And it's not a friendship, but just I think of you as more than just a check being sent to me, right, Yeah.
It's not a transactional relationship.
Yeah, I mean, really, a transactional relationship only goes so far.
That's exactly right.
I actually have on my check cultivating responsible Leadership, so I have my name all my actual checks. And I do that for many of the reasons that you just listed out, Because I think it's important as leaders for us to embrace gratitude as part of our core, you know profile. So as leaders, if you are truly a leader, then you lead with gratitude.
I love that exactly and and and I take a lot of people forget that in the mix to the the scramble, as they say, the scramble up the ladder. You get to make sure you don't kick out the wrungs and stop too hard. So we're any at the end of the show, I'd love for you to share with me a fearless, fabulous quote that motivates you every day.
Jackie.
Sure, So, I guess.
I guess there's one part of the optimist creed that that I love that I live by, and it's the part where where it says, you know, give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble, and so I often I have that the entire creed up. But that part always resonates with me because you know, we're all going to have challenges.
You're going to have you know, monkey wrenches thrown, you know, in our days, and I have to be deliberate. That helps me to be super intentional and deliberate about making sure that the space in my head, in my heart, that I reserve for positivity, for progress and for my best self.
So I love it.
That's a great way to end again. I really appreciate that we've been talking to Jackie P. Taylor JACKIEP. Taylor dot com. Her book is Give Me a Boost, The Underresourced Entrepreneur's Handbag for growing and Scaling your business.
I hope this has been helpful for all of you listening.
You can, of course hear my shows They're Evergreen on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and about thirty five other channels, and you can follow me at Melanie Fabulous on Instagram, the Connected Table dot com to learn about our other show, The Connected Table and Melanie on dot com. I love helping people feel better about themselves and think big and be fearless and think about focusing on fabulous in every aspect to the life. And I know you do too, Jackie,
So thank you for joining me. I appreciate it, I really do, and to always you have the choice, underscore choice in your life to make the best ones for you. Choose fabulous, choose fearless, and share what you have as a gift with others to improve their lives as well. Thank you for joining me. I'm fearless, fabulous.
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