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Hey everyone, I'm Austin.
Hankwitz and I'm Jennis Torres.
Welcome to another episode of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, a podcast by iHeartRadio and Into It QuickBooks. In each episode, Jennie and I chat with small business owners as they share their stories about the ups and downs of owning a small business. Plus we'll learn from their experience about how you can help fortify and strengthen your own business.
That's exactly right. And today we have two incredibly special guests. But before we meet them, Austin, I want to know your thoughts on how your business has adapted to the unexpected changes in the economy. We're currently still dealing with high inflation rates in the country, and many businesses are still recovering from COVID challenges. So how have you been able to adapt to these changes that the economy has thrown at you?
Yeah?
So, I think macroeconomic uncertainty impacts every business differently. Right for those who sell hard goods, inflation and supply chain are certainly a big deal. For those service based businesses like myself, tighter monetary policy by the Federal Reserve is
likely causing some turbulence. Personally, I run a sponsor supported business, I think advertisers, and when I've realized the macroeconomic conditions are beginning to tighten up and folks weren't spending ad dollars like they used to, I was forced to pivot my business and adapt or realize that it might die. So in my experience, that meant two things. Specifically, one was to monetize my audience directly, not just having to rely on these brand sponsors. And I did this through
a subscription newsletter. But for small business owners listening right now, that might instead me and meeting customers closer to where they're spending their money right, so that might be at church, outside of grocery stores or other central meeting places and gatherings. Now the second thing here for me was controlling the controllables. So as a small business owner, you can only control the controllables, which also means if life throws you a curve ball, it's up to you to do everything you
can to take control and turn things around. A few months ago, we had two huge clients cut their monthly spend with us in a big way and this definitely impacted our bottom lines in the short term. But back to that idea of controlling the controllables, I went back and thought what am I especially good at as an entrepreneur,
and to me, that's marketing. So in response to these cuts, over the last three weeks, my team and I have begun ramping up our marketing efforts, which we think will completely make up for the drop and spend by those two clients by at the end of the summer. So it's all about having the self awareness to know what you're good at as a small business owner and then doubling down on that during times of uncertainty.
Yeah, for me, I have always been the type of business owner that's believed in the idea of multiple income streams, and so I've diversified the way that I earn money throughout my ten year career now as a content creator.
So instead of just relying on things like sponsored content or affiliate marketing, I take advantage of all those different streams of income and have about ten at this point that I can kind of use as you know, levers, if you will, that I can turn on and off just depending on what's going on and also depending on what kind of energy I have to invest in the business.
At some point, you're going to want to be able to take a step back, and creating income streams that aren't relying one hundred percent on your active effort are something that I really focus on. So looking at opportunities for passive income streams is a big thing for me. And also I had to realize that as a business coach and someone who sells higher ticket offers in times of inflation, folks are going to have to decide when
and where they can spend money. And so how can I, as business owner offer them access to my products but not making them fork out, you know, multiple thousand dollars at one time. So For me, that's looked like offering payment plans for my different services and offerings so that people can invest in my services but can do it in a way that's more sustainable and allows them to spread those payments over time.
That makes a lot of sense. And I really want to unpack what you said there about like managing the sort of cash flows and understanding these different sort of income streams. How are you I mean, is there a dashboard you have? What are you doing to specifically see Okay, this income stream is going up, this one's coming down. How do I double down on what's going up and what's working versus how do I pull back time energy away from what's not working? Walk me through that process.
Yeah, so that's where you need a very robust accounting system like QuickBooks.
Okay, you know, you got.
To know where this money is coming from, and so being able to isolate where those different income streams are coming from and also the cost associated with those income streams is great because then you know how much is
this costing me to earn? And where are some areas where I think I'm making money, but it's actually costing me more than the effort that I'm putting behind it and so quickbook's ability to have your chart of accounts and your cost of goods and all that stuff is really helpful for me to know exactly where I should be focusing my effort as a business owner and what income streams make the most sense for me to double down on.
If you will, that makes a lot of sense. Well, today on the show, we have two people who absolutely know what it's like to deal with tough economic changes. Innisips is your one stop shop for premium organic coffee and tea. Created by Marine Corps veteran Gulaid is mailing his wife Divina, Innisips is proud to be amongst the growing population of community centered, family operated businesses in Connecticut
and North Carolina. Gulaid and Divina started Indisips in the fall of twenty nineteen after finding themselves wanting to start a business that involved their love of coffee and tea. In January of twenty twenty, they opened their first coffee and tea shop in New Britain, Connecticut, and two months later the world shut down due to a global pandemic. They changed Innisips in every possible way and expanded their organic coffee and loosely ta options to better serve their
customer's requests. Indeesips put the community at their forefront and has a goal of giving back to community heroes, first responders, essential health workers, and nonprofits. So far, any SIPs has already given away over four hundred pounds of coffee and donates a portion of sales to numerous organizations within the communities they serve. Ghulaid Divina, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode.
Thank you, thank you for having us really excited.
So the name ANYSIPS. I love it. It's unique. I gotta know how did you come up with it? And does it have any significance?
Absolutely so.
When we were trying to find a name, of course there's a lot of coffee and tea companies out there. We wanted something that meant something to us. So any that I and I are the first letters of our three children's names.
Got it okay? Very cool? Was that a quick realization?
No, Actually, Gulay came up with it.
We played around with a few names and we would just try to figure out how can we incorporate the children. It just rang and then we went from there with it.
So was any SIPs. Y'all's first business venture it was.
Not the one that we've done mostly together, was a children's clothing company. It was Culturable Babies, and we started that when the kids were three and about one years old.
The kids have been the center of a lot of the ideas we've come up with.
I love the fact that this is a super family oriented business and that you guys are using real life inspiration and real life problems to figure out what that next solution is that you're going to offer as a business owner. So kudos to you guys for taking inspiration from real life.
Thank you, thank you.
So you start this business and just two months later the pandemic happens, what's your initial reaction?
Panic? For sure.
We had started the business with the idea of opening a coffee shop and making it more community centered. We had two long tables in there so that people could sit together, talk with each other, communicate. It was bright, it was small and cozy. Yeah, so everything we thought we were going to be kind of just changed. Luckily, we both had the foresight to have three packaged items of coffee and three packaged items of tea, and we
had a website. We had learned how to do that from our previous business, But after we dealt with the panic, we realized, like, we have to do something to kind of stay relevant and keep going, and luckily internet allows people to do that. With Gulaid work and at the VA hospital at the time, we knew that there was difficulties and stress with the people that were still working.
So we wanted to find a way that we could continue business, give back to the community in a different way, but also grow the business as well, and keep going in that time of uncertainty.
Yeah.
I think that's the nature of business, right It's just being able to adapt to anything. And that's really the theme of today's conversation. So how did you make that determination of what you needed to do to keep the business alive? Like, take me behind the scenes of what you guys were brainstorming.
First, we had to kind of talk ourselves through the process of not being too attached to what we thought we were going to be. I think that's one of the things that we did right early on. As I said, the community part of it was just coming into fruition. We were having our regulars come in and order their regular drinks and things, so detaching from what we thought we were going to be and pretty quickly coming up with what we could be and how that would look.
And then gulaid, maybe you could talk about what you saw at the hospital that made us want to give back to the community in a different way.
Like Davina said, the beginning part was panic because we had invested quite a bit construction in the side of the building. We've had the table setup, We've had customers that we were starting to get to know. But at the Via Hospital when I was working, I was screening people for the coronavirus. There were just a lot of stress, a lot of tired individuals, especially the healthcare work because like the nurses, the nurses and assistants, you know, we
haven't lived through anything like this in our generation. So just seeing the fair the unknown. It kind of reminded me of being in a military. When you're going through a city that you've never been through a combat zone. You get nervous, but with that nervousness, you tend to draw closer to those who are left and right of you. And so I started to see the healthcare workers really start to rely on each other and things just change. It was like you know, we got to find a way.
We don't want to feel like we're not doing our part as far as like coming together. So we figured what better way to do that than a cup of coffee, and what better way to do that than to donate.
Yeah, it weaves into the story that you mentioned in the beginning, wanting to foster community, right, and so it's just finding a different way to create that. So we know that supply chain issues were and probably still are to some extent, affecting a lot of business owners. And I'm curious how your business was affected by the supply chain and what did you do to keep your product moving at a time when maybe the access that you would expect is limited because of what's going on.
I mean, it all ties together really as glid mentions. We donated, so we did buy two bags of coffee, we would donate one and that allowed us to grow online and thanks to social media, now we had people all over the country and in a few other countries that were sharing about us and spreading the word, which was awesome.
We grew in a way that we wouldn't.
Have expected or had ever thought about happening so quickly as far as supply chain. We definitely experienced supply chain issues and still currently if I'm being honest, as we started to grow where we started off with three coffees in three t's, by the end of twenty twenty, we had about ten different coffee options and then about thirty or forty different tea options. More recent in the last couple of years, I think the trickle down effect from
the pandemic has affected a number of companies. Some place is n't able to get the same ingredients and therefore we can't make the same teas, so we've had to adjust what we offer, but we've also had to adjust our pricing, and on top of that, we've had to adjust our customers expectations on what we can and can offer and when things are going to be available. So that's been an ongoing struggle. Most of the companies we work with are other small businesses and they're dealing with
the same things. They might not have a bunch of staff members, so it's not just the supply chain parts of the business, but COVID has affected people medically and then just normal family issues that happen.
So we just created a really loyal.
Customer base that have hung on there with us through the ups and downs.
I love all that perspective to Vienna, and I really want to double click actually into the e commerce side. Right when businesses go from just brick and mortar to now offering e commerce products, there is a massive influx of demand, and I'm sure the supply chain also gets kind of reworked a little bit. Can you walk us through the specific things that you all adjusted or changed to make sure that this e commerce side of the business was successful.
So one of the biggest things that we wanted to do as we transition to e commerce was keep our pricing at a fair rate. Our customer base is generally between the dunkin Donuts customer maybe as Starbucks, where people are interested in coffee and tea, but they want something that's just a little bit more of an experience. So what we've done is we've got high quality products. All of our ingredients are direct trade and organic where we can, and we keep the packaging simple, clean so that we
can spend more attention to quality products. And that's also how during this time when we haven't been able to get certain things in stock, because we're really focused on sourcing quality ingredients and keeping true to that mantra for any SIPs.
Just to add too, Divina does a great job keeping a communication with the customers. We let them know it, you know, please continue to work with us as we go through these growing pains. And I think because you're continually communicating, because communication is key, that's also what helps with the brand loyalty and people actually want to continue to stay with us.
One thing that we started when we were doing the online was we wrote handwritten notes on the invoices for people, and when we had a few customers that was easy to do, but we decided to continue doing that for every single customer. By mid June, we should have reached ten thousand orders on Why, which for us is huge, and we even get Christmas cars. We get handwritten letters from customers, which is really great, and we try to
remember things. If we have a conversation with someone online, then we might write a note about it or send them an email or something that's really personal to try to keep connecting with them.
How were you able to successfully build that sense of community while everyone was not exactly meeting in person, Especially.
In twenty twenty, the buy too Donate one really got people on board. I think that helped people feel connected because what we would do is we would ask them for their social media handle, and we showed pictures of us dropping it at the hospital or the fire station or the police station, and then we would tag those individuals online, so we would say this purchase is because of so and so, and if we didn't have this social media handle, we would just write the first name
and last initial. That way people could definitely see that it was real, right.
And then also you we were to ask customers they put and try to come up with names, fa tease like little things like that to get the social media presence and engagement because a lot of people are missing engagement.
Yeah, so those are one of the things. And then working with various nonprofits as well, that's been another way that we've helped people to feel connected. One of them is coming up on three years since we've been working with them, and that's Kids to Heart. What they do is provide cancer care kits to patients for free. So if you know someone who has cancer or has just been diagnosed, you can send them a care kit. And those care kits have a number of items.
They have.
Two of our popularities in them. That's been really exciting for us to be a part of that. And then another one is Bromley Enterprises and we just collaborated with them to create an actual coffee it's called the Neighborhood. It's a Sumatra blend and a portion of sales from
that coffee goes to them. And what they do is they help small businesses in the community in a various number of ways, whether it's training, consulting, there's a number of different things that they do to help other small businesses in the area as well.
Coming up on Mind the Business Small Business success Stories.
There's to of the gourgules out there, but the reality is you're going to be your old bank. How would that they look?
We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back to Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories brought to you by iHeartRadio and Into It Quick Books. Okay, so we know that there's a lot of money that goes into opening a store and when you have to close, there's potentially a lot of losses. So how are you able to pivot from a storefront into an e commerce business with the least amount of cash flow loss?
Definitely was cash flow loss, but Ghulaid had the idea before we started into SIPs and during the time that we had Dribble Babies, was to buy real estate. If you want to talk a little bit about that.
We bought a commercial unit back in twenty sixteen, right when the market was still kind of going through us ups and down. So we got it at a great price, and we realized that we needed to rent from ourselves instead of going somewhere else. We were getting ready to rent when we first started an entrepreneur adventure and we met with the landlord and it was going to be twelve hundred dollars a month for a year, and then it would go up consecutively for the first three years.
You're locked in no matter if your business is doing well or not. And so we realized we was like, h you know, that doesn't necessarily sound too great when you're starting out a venture. So luckily we were able to get up small commercial unit, which we still have today, and then I was still working my full time job. I always tell people, you know, it's always good to start something with passion, but you need capital to keep
it going. We were blessed because d Vena was able and I don't want to minimize this at all, but was able to stay home with our three children and run the business while I worked at the VA hospital did the nine to five thing. Why she was able to stay with the children, incorporate them with the business, making sure they were doing it online schooling, and also making sure that the business was staying up and running.
So because we were renting out the space from ourselves, there was no impact financially if we couldn't pay it because I was still working. So it was kind of that ecosystem that we kind of figured out that A, if we have to stop paying rent, it's okay because we'll figure it out from there. But that's how we minimize the laws and I continue to work. That was essential.
Yeah, those multiple income streams are super important.
Yeah, yeah, I think that with a lot of small businesses. Goyd said it right, it's fueled by passion, But the reality is passion can only put you through for so long. It's not lost on us that we've been lucky in some of the decisions we made early on and been able to continue.
You moving forward, I'd challenge you and say it's not luck, it's strategy.
It's very strategic. So give yourself the credit that you deserve. Absolutely so.
Did you see any difference in your overhead and operational costs with that shift to e commerce versus the physical in person business.
Yeah, I think it was less about the shift from in the store to e commerce and more about the increased product offerings. Twenty twenty, we kind of had the discussion that this isn't a typical year. It's our first year in business, full year in business, but there was a lot of things that happened for us that wouldn't have normally happened. So we were a bit cautious rolling with the idea that every year was going to be as fruitful as twenty twenty was for us.
Specifically.
We got shared a lot, we got a lot of press, but we knew that may be twenty one, twenty two and onwards would be very different, and so trying to keep up with all the product offerings that we had became quite challenging, and we're just now this year really scaling back significantly in terms of what we offer, really digging down kind of doing what we had to do in twenty twenty and narrowing down our product offerings in terms of detaching our emotional connection with some of the
blends that we have and that we love, and maybe we're really big in the past, but the numbers aren't there. We're scaling back in terms of making sure that we can offer what we can offer consistently without having to do as much up and down that we've had to do in the last few years.
And just the chime in too also, So the overhead changed in a sense when we had customers. The two months that we had customers, they were sitting in and they were stayed pretty much all day, so you will be losing electricity. Internet. Those type of things would change though after twenty twenty and only twenty one twenty two, as more people started to create businesses online, you start to see duplicates of what you were doing online. So then we had to compete as far as our finances
went up in different ways. How do we shift with our social media, how do we increase our presence. So we saw an overhead costs that way, So it just switched from being a brick and mortar now to being online.
And what we realize is that people have a very short attention span, right, so you have to continue with the creativity and even now going into twenty three, now that the country's open more again and people are feel the more comfortable, you're seeing more people going back into the stores than they were in twenty two and twenty one. So there's always a constant pivot. So to says, how do you continue to keep your business in people's minds? And so it's just the cost change to do that.
Yeah, you know, when you are making that transition from a storefront to an online business, maybe your goals have to change, right, So how did you transition those sales goals and your overall metris of success? Because you can think about, Okay, if I have a coffee shop, I want to line out the door. That's how I know I'm successful. But what does that look like when you're transitioning to online.
We went by how many people were getting referred back to us, So we looked at new customers, we looked at messages that we were getting on all the data analytics side, we looked at returning customers because we really wanted to create a loyal customer base. So we started focusing a little less on obtaining new customers and focusing on keeping the customers that we had we have a pretty high I think it's above seventy percent returning customer rate.
That's one thing that we've tried to maintain. How do we keep customers coming back? And that's been our focus as opposed to trying to grow our online social media base. It's more about how do we cater to those customers that have come our way and how do we keep them here.
Yeah, I think that's a gem, right, because I think some people can think that followers equals dollars. But at the end of the day, you know, those customers that have already made that investment in you are the ones that you really should be focusing on because they've already proven that. You know, you've made that connection and you've built that trust. Okay, So I would consider y'all to
be experts of the pivot at this point. So tell us a little bit about how this experience has taught you to prepare for the nature of business, which is ever volatile, ever changing. You know, you don't have control over a lot of things, but how can you prepare for the volatility that comes with entrepreneurship.
I'm not sure that you can prepare. I think it's just a mindset that you have to have that things are going to change. We're currently in a place of change right now, making some big decisions on the direction of the business and knowing that you want the business to be successful should be the premise, but what that looks like should be continuously flexible, and how you're going to get this should also be continuously flexible from a
business standpoint. This new technology all the time, different apps that you can use on your website, there's so much. I know, the hot topic right now is AI and how you can help that to leverage your business. So it's just using the technology that's available out there and not being tied to any one idea of what your business looks like, because it's okay if it changes.
Like Devina said too, you have to be mindful not to fall in love with your the way you think things will go, because customers ultimately dictate the direction that things should go. I think we've kind of lived our lives in a sense of, you know, always be prepared for the next because you just don't know what's coming.
You don't want to be that company that continue to go down the same way and thought it would work and then eventually they end up going out of business, so you constantly got to In the military, we always say you have to learn your enemy, right, not necessarily anyway, you got to learn your competitor and make sure that you're keeping up and seeing what they're doing that may be different or finding out new ways. You have to
stay innovative or you will disappear. Like we've seen some great companies, but I think the key thing is not to fall in love, which you think might work, because they you'll end up becoming a dinosaur and everyone else will move on while you're stuck with all this product.
Don't want to be stuck with a bunch of product. I will say, though, t Rex is, those are some pretty cool dinosaurs. I feel like if I could be any dinosaur, i'd be a t Rex. Hey, so here's here's something I got for you. You've mentioned supply chain a few times, but I haven't yet heard the word inflation. Has inflation impacted your business at all?
Oh? Definitely, Oh god, it definitely has. We're trying to keep our costs at a place where our customers are used to but also we can continue the business. It's a very delicate balance in scale on being able to pay for the things we need to pay for while also making money. We're a for profit business, so we
have to have a balance between the two. So that's one of the things that we've been continuously working on the biggest place where we see the inflation issues is just with the vendors that we work with, and they're increased pricing and making sure that we're covering that and absorbing that with our margins.
Do you have any maybe words of advice for small business owners listening right now who might be struggling with inflation or supply chain challenges.
Small businesses should be looking at what the last few years has looked like, even if they're in a startup phase. Speaking to business other small businesses and finding out what they did, it can kind of give you a pretext on how to run your business. Pricing needs to be at a point that it can absorb surprise price hikes. Have multiple vendors that offer the same thing, so I think if you can keep an eye on who you're working with, what their values are, and talking to them
about that. Being transparent with customers is also important if you are dealing with issues, letting them know, like, look, we didn't get this in on time. Our apologies. Do you want a refund or do you want to wait? Are you willing to wait? A lot of times people await and it's fine if they ask for a refund. We don't take it personal and we understand. Sometimes you want your coffee and you want it now, so we get that and we totally understand.
And just to add to that too, always make sure that you have enough capital. There's always these things where you can start off with one hundred dollars and five hundred dollars and that's it. But if it works, kudos steel. But the reality is you need capital to run a business. There's different platforms that will allow you to get loans. Sometimes you won't get them from the banks. But always have a social income. If you're working. I always say, do not give up that job just yet. Passion doesn't
feed the capital needed for a business. Do a projection, See what happens if you have a loan on do studies find out? Okay, if I want to go into I don't know, furniture business, find out one are the times that they're not making money. You have to study the market because again, capital is one of the huge issues that could come up with the company, especially a small business. Lucky for us, we started off small at
the farmer's market. We tested our products. We were all a small quantity, figure out how we're going to do things, and then people say, hey, this is great, Okay, how can we scale from there? There's tons of gurules out there, But the reality is you're going to be your.
Own bank out of that day.
Look, I'm gonna just be honest with you, especially when you're starting out small.
I mean we've all watched Shark Tank, right, Mister Wonderful always says cash gotta get that cash flow exactly.
Yeah, And I'd just like to add gooad. You made me think about something like, as a small business, it's really hard to work with some vendors because they might want a minimum order quantity of I don't know, for the ginger in your tea, you need to spend one thousand dollars on just ginger. If you can't afford it, don't go with that company because then you're stuck with
things that you might not be able to use. Just go small and work with smaller companies until your capital is increased and you can maybe expand and get those larger quantity.
Orders and relationships are everything you have to build not only relationships with your customers but also with your vendors because when you build those relationships, you lay out the expectation, this is what we're able to do. Are you able to meet that? Because again, it's the business that you're trying to create. To me, that's everything.
I appreciate all that added color, and you know I couldn't agree more so.
Tell us what is next for any SIPs.
Well, that's a great question right now. Right now we are seeing what any SIPs will look like for the next few years. We're at a pivotal point. We've got a lot of data to kind of comb through and figure out what our next move is and how we
can do that sustainably. One of the biggest things that we're kind of focused on right now is e commerce will kind of be for our direct consumer customer relationships, but then working with bigger organizations like the grocery stores and that kind of a thing is something that we're definitely looking at. It's worked really well for us so far, and it's brought customers to our website after they found us in grocery stores.
As well. I love it.
I think this last question is kind of like the equivalent of asking which of your children is your favorite child?
But I'm gonna risk it.
What is your favorite flavor that you sell at any SIPs?
Oh? So for coffee flavored coffee? I love our salted caramel Coffee's that sounds cool.
Chris right, It's so good.
It started off as just being offered during the Christmas time, and then our customers immediately told us that they want to year around, so we have salted caramel all the time. That's my favorite coffee, and turmeric ginger is my favorite tea.
I love the Moto. That's one of those things you used to say, the Marine Corp and the Moto just because it has a it's a nice bowl taste, but it gives you that charge that you need. So you know, if I'm being given my honey to do list, I'll drink a cup of Moto first to make sure I get everything shacked off and as far as the t goes. Like the Earl gray lavender, which is one of my favorites.
I'm definitely a fan of Earl gray lavender. I make lemonade with it all the time. Oh yeah, so I'm gonna have to pick up some of that.
Okay, awesome, Oh yeah, I cannot wait to try that salted caramel.
Yes.
Thank you all so much for joining us on this episode of Mind the Business Small Business success Stories. We'll see you soon.
Thank you.
Gosh, that was such an awesome conversation with Tavina and Gulaid Genius. I gotta know what's stuck out from that conversation to you the most well.
Ghulaid's quote around you're going to be your own bank was definitely something that I can relate to. I think I was a little naive in the idea that because I had great personal credit that it was just going to automatically translate to my business. And so when I got rejected from my first business credit card, I was like, wait a minute, what's going on. I have excellent credit.
Why are they not able to see that? And so I had to understand that like your business builds its own credit, and you have to basically prove to the banks that your business is going to be successful for the long term before they decide to give you lines of credit. And so my paycheck was my first angel investor, if you will, into my business, and I always tell my own students that that paycheck is going to be usually where you're going to get your first capital to
invest in your business. So that was definitely number one for me. And I really love their risk mitigation strategies where they purchased real estate a commercial property and kind of use that as sort of a protection, a risk mitigation process in order to deal with, you know, the fluctuations that come with the economy. So I really love to see kind of that. Trying to predict the future.
Obviously we never know what's going to happen, but trying to put those things in place that can give you a little bit of that runway that we need as new business owners. I think it's really important. How about you, Austin, Yeah.
Well, shout out to Gooley for buying real estate in twenty sixteen. I'm sure that has appreciated a lot, so that is very cool for him. I think two things stuck out to me. The first one is when Divina was talking about how she also had some experience building websites for her previous venture that her and her husband had together. She kind of took those experiences and that skill set and moved it over and leaned into it when they started doing this e commerce kind of pivot.
Right.
So I think just like learning from past experiences and bringing that skill set into your new venture and adapting and making sure that you're doing all these cool things in a new way is just super super important. So I having that self awareness, I think, is that first step. And then back to what you were saying before. You know, passion fuels the small business in the beginning, but capital is what keeps it going, right, And so in my personal experience, I was working my nine to five job
out of college while simultaneously building my business on the side. Right, So some nine to five hours working, I'd have some dinner, and then from like eight to midnight, that was the time I'd use to build the business. Right. That was that passion. But to your point too about that paycheck, the paycheck is what fueled the business. After the passion was like, dang, I'm getting real tired working till midnight every night, right, So I think, you know, this conversation
was absolutely incredible. Well, I learned a lot. The gems that both Gulaid and Divina shared with us were absolutely incredible, And I'm really really excited to buy some salted caramel coffee.
Me too, Me too.
Well, thanks everyone, that's it for today's episode. You can find me on social media at Austin Hankwitz and you.
Can find me at jochierro dinetto podcast.
You can follow Into It QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks, and to get the tools you need to start, run and grow your business, head to QuickBooks dot com today.
Catch the season finale episode of Mind the Business Small Business success Stories on Thursday, July sixth, where we speak to Chris Treebis about how he scaled his event venue and concert booking business in the Greater Chicago area.
You won't want to miss that one, so don't forget to follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts so you can stay updated on our future episodes, and.
Check out our episode show notes for more information from this episode about adjusting to an economic shock, and a huge thank you to our guests Gulaid and Divina. You can order their premium coffee and tea at any SIPs dot com. That's I N I S I p s dot com.
This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio and Into It QuickBooks.
Our executive producer is Molly Soosha, our supervising producer is Nikia Swinton, and our writer is Tyree Rush.
Our Head of post production is James Foster. And we will see you next time.