More Money Podcast - 193 Startup Money Made Easy - Maria Aspan, Editor-at-Large at Inc. Magazine

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

For anyone interested in startups or starting their own business (no matter how big or small), I’ve got an episode for you! For this episode of the Mo’ Money Podcast, I’m joined by Maria Aspan, the editor-at-large of Inc. Magazine and the author of the new book Startup Money Made Easy. Maria has a unique perspective on entrepreneurship because she isn’t sharing her own entrepreneurial journey. She’s sharing what she’s learned by interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs about their journeys. And what’s really interesting is they all have very different journeys. Sure, they are some similarities and patterns, but in general no story is alike. That’s why there can never be a one-size-fits-all guide to entrepreneurial success. What may skyrocket one person’s business may be the downfall for someone else. In her book, she dives deep about the financial aspects of starting a business, and here are some key things she shared in this episode. Never Invest More Than You’re Willing to Lose You hear stories all the time about how someone racked up a bunch of debt to get their business started…and it paid off big time and they’re now a millionaire! You don’t often hear the stories of all the people who racked up a bunch of debt and had a business that flopped. We hear a lot of success stories, and maybe not enough failure stories. When it comes to starting a business and finding that initial financing, use the same logic as investing your money for a big goal like retirement – never invest more than you’re willing to lose. Make Mistakes Is Inevitable, Make Sure to Learn from Them Maria mentioned that Serena Williams, famous tennis player and entrepreneur, once said that in business everyone makes mistakes. What you need to be prepared for is being open to learning from those mistakes. Usually when we make mistakes, we want to brush them under the rug, not talk about them, just move forward and forget about it. But mistakes are amazing learning tools! I’ve learned amazing things from my mistakes and failures! It’s not easy. It will definitely bruise your ego a bit. But you need to remember that success is a long-game. If you want to eventually reach your goals, you need to learn from each one of your mistakes and change your behaviours and actions accordingly. Don’t Jump In, Make a Business Plan I see so many people out there get caught up in the idea that they can start a blog, start posting on Instagram, sell an online course, make a fashion line, etc… and start making money right away. That’s no reality. The people who are telling you that you can make money blogging, Instagramming, selling courses, or selling your own clothing designs, they may have neglected to tell you that there’s no such thing as an overnight success. It takes time, hard work, and most importantly a solid plan! Don’t ever think you can just quit your day job and figure it out. Figure it out while still working your day job. Start learning what you don’t know about running a business, and make a business plan you feel good about. For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/193 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 193 of the MoMoney podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode. And for this episode, I am interviewing Maria Aspen. She is an award-winning business journalist and editor-at-large of Inc. Magazine, where she oversees money coverage and writes about startups and technology, finance, and gender. And she's also covered business and finance for the New York Times, Thomson Reuters, or Reuters, Thomson Reuters, and American Banker. And at the latter, she also served as the national editor and covered the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath. And she's on the show because she has a new book out

called startup money made easy the ink guide to every financial question about starting running and growing your business, which is out now. And I will be sharing details about how you can win a free copy at the end of this episode. So I'm so excited to chat with her for this episode to talk all things earning money, startups, entrepreneurship, because she has talked to some, like just all the major, major, you know, successful people that you can think of when you think of like, who's a successful entrepreneur or business owner. She's talked to them and she's so many great tips and just like pieces of advice in her book. So I love this episode. You're going to love it too. But before I get to that episode with Maria, here's just a few words about this episode's

sponsor. This episode of the Momany podcast is sponsored by the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card. What kind of cash back are you getting with your credit cards? Not sure? Let's review and see if you could be earning more. The Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card is offering new cardholders 10% cash back on everyday purchases for the first three months, up to $2,000 in total purchases, plus the annual fee waived for the first year. That's a value of up to $299 in your first year. After the first three months, you'll earn 4% cash back on gas and groceries, 2% cash back on drugstore purchases and recurring bill payments, and 1%

cash back on everything else you spend on your card. This is why this card received MoneySense's Best Cash Back card with fees award for two years in a row. Want to learn more about the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite Card and this limited time offer? This offer expires April 30th, 2019. Just visit jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or visit the show notes for this episode. Once again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or check out the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Maria, for joining me on the Momente podcast. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Jessica, thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. So you are the editor at large at Inc. Magazine. That's a pretty prestigious title.

It sounds so fancy. It does sound fancy. And we have a very interesting bio. You, you know, basically write or have been involved with like creation of content in terms of, you know, business and finance. And which is my, I love it. Besides personal finance, I love learning about kind of business and finance and stuff. And now you've come out with the book startup money made easy the ink guide to every financial question about starting running and growing your business. Before we kind of get more into the book, would love to learn a little bit more about you and kind of what's your kind of background? How did you kind of come to this place now where, you know, you can be this authority, this voice on the subject matter? Well, more than a little bit of luck and timing. I started off as a journalist,

you know, 15 years ago, and I was writing, I was writing about business and what I, you know, some of the softer business topics like advertising and media and things that I found super interesting but hadn't studied necessarily. And I wound up taking a full-time reporter's job at a newspaper called American Banker, which is a pretty great trade newspaper that covers the financial services industry. In March 2008, I started like a couple of days before Bear Stearns went down. I knew absolutely nothing about banking or finance. And my first year of covering banking was covering the financial crisis

and watching the world implode without really knowing what the world was. So I'm trying to get my bearings as a reporter on a new beat while the beat was changing, while things were blowing up. And I wound up focusing on consumer finance, the business side of credit cards and consumer loans, and seeing all of the things that went wrong, all of the bad products that were out there, all of the things that happened when people lost their jobs and stopped being able to pay. And that really launched me on a career of writing about business and finance from maybe covering the financial side or the company side, but with an awareness of how company decisions affected real people and consumers. And that's kind of been a through line of what I've tried

to do as a journalist ever since. Five years ago, I joined Inc. to run our money section, which is basically financial coverage for and about entrepreneurs and people who start private companies. So this book is a bit of a culmination of a lot of the articles I've written and a lot of the articles that I've read, that I've edited. And it's, it came directly out of a story that I assigned a couple of years ago, a big package that we did for a 2017 issue called The Smartest Money Advice I Ever Got. And my reporter and several of my colleagues and I, we all reached out to a lot of successful entrepreneurs, people like Sally Krawcheck and Bobby Brown and Damon John and Mark Cuban and Ben Chestnut of MailChimp. And we asked

them, you know, what, what was the smartest piece of money advice you ever received? Who gave it to you? Or what was the biggest financial mistake you ever made? And how did you recover from it? So we put that together and we, we heard all sorts of things from Mark Cuban saying just what he usually gives as advice in this situation, just don't use credit cards. That's a good piece of advice for anyone in life. Is it though? Yeah. I feel like there are way fewer people that know how to use them responsibly than people that are using them responsibly. So that's, that's my kind of point of view. I feel like they can do a lot of damage. I completely agree. I, but I would add that a lot of the entrepreneurs we talked to do use them, whether or not it's always responsibly is,

is a question, but it's, they're one of the only pieces're one of the only ways to get easy money to start a business. And we can talk about whether or not that's a good idea. But they're less paperwork than getting a bank loan. And in some cases, they have lower interest rates than a lot of the online loans that you can get now. So they fill this interesting niche in the startup world of not necessarily always a good idea, but a practical one. Yeah. Well, you hear a lot too of these successful business people that have done some kind of extreme things in order to kind of make their project work. And now it's like, well, you know, that paid off, but I'm sure, you know, in your line of work, you've also come across a lot of people that they tried that it didn't work. And they kind of had these consequences to kind of

deal with. How do you kind of balance, I guess, both sides of that story of like, you know, you can take a big risk using credit cards, and then, you know, you fund the next, you know, super successful startup, or you do the exact same same thing and it just does not pan out. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, you hear about the successes. You don't necessarily hear about the people who fall flat on their faces and wreck their credit. You know, there's, you raise a really good point.

And one of the first things I say in the book is your business will likely fail. Please don't spend any money on it that you can't afford to lose because half of all businesses fail within the first five years and nearly 70% in the first 10. So we very much at Inc. don't want to encourage people to start a business at any cost. And there, you know, there are a couple of stories in the book. There's one woman who had started, I think it was an events, an online events business that she was reading the stories about, you know, the Silicon Valley tech founders who sleep in their, you know, sleep in their cars and start their businesses in the garage. And she wrecked the credits. She wrecked her credit score and her husband's credit score and her marriage fell apart

and the business failed. So there are definitely, there are definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that could happen. I think, I mean, obviously it makes sense why I think a lot of these media outlets focus on the positive and the successes. That's more interesting to read as a reader, obviously, and more positive, something to look forward to. But I feel like, yeah, I have a lot of entrepreneurs on the show and obviously they're on the show because it worked out. But we, as podcast listeners, we need to know that this isn't always the case. And we rarely, like you said, we rarely find out about the failures because these people aren't broadcasting it. They're just like, oh, I'm just, you know, I'm pivoting.

Right, that's such a great euphemism. Yeah. Another story that's in the book and that we profiled in the magazine a couple of years ago is the founders of Halo Top, that low calorie, high tech ice cream. Yeah. One of the founders, he had racked up, he racked up so much credit card debt while trying to get the business off the

ground that at a certain point he couldn't, his credit score was so bad. He could not, he could not get the, the bank loan that he and his partner were applying for so his partner had to had to apply for it and we we profiled the company you know i think it was last year it was at a time when the ice creams in all stores it's selling out of whole foods faster they then they can stock. The business seems like it's a success, but this guy's credit score is still like 600. If he wants to buy a house, I mean, he has to do it all in cash pretty much.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure he can afford that though. Yes, well, that's good. Yeah. So you've mentioned a lot of successful entrepreneurs that you were able to talk with in an interview and Mark Cuban being one of them. Do you find that overall kind of their financial advice for starting a business is relatively similar or do you find sometimes they have very different point of views. I think it's very different point of views. Um, you know, be, which is, I think a good thing because it shows there's no one right way to start a business. Um, there are the people who, who failed several times and who made, who made a lot of mistakes. Well, pretty much everybody makes mistakes. And that's a, that's another, um, thing that's a through line in the book is that, you know, even Venus Williams, who in addition to

her superstar career as a tennis star, has her own clothing company. She says, and she said during a cover story that we did on her a couple of years ago, you know, you know you're going to make mistakes. Ultimately, what's important is that it's how you learn from them and move on. So this book really is saying, you could take out the wrong loan. There's a Sarah Carson, the dressmaker behind Leota. She was a Wall Street investment banker who's decided to start her own dressmaking business. And, you know, you would think someone like that with that background would have money, her business's finances down, no problem. But she misjudged her inventory and ordered more dresses than she could sell and ran into a $300,000 cash crunch and couldn't pay her bills. So if there's a cold comfort in the

book, it's just that everybody makes these mistakes and they're not always going to be the same mistakes. And we can't warn you against all of them, but we can tell you what people, what successful entrepreneurs have run into, whether it's wrecking family relationships by taking money or going into business with a family member and not communicating well enough or taking VC too early or from the wrong people. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who did take outside investor money and it works it works out grand yeah that's a good question actually that just popped into my head i think a lot of people um i'm not sure if this is true actually but i i feel like when i talk to people

they're like i'm thinking of starting a business and they either think they should self-fund it or um yeah just get money from friends and family because they trust those people and they'll definitely pay them back. That sounds like a really bad idea. I don't know. Are there successful businesses that did start with family kind of funds? And I'm not talking about like super rich people that just like they have millions of dollars to spare, just like regular folks borrowing from friends and family. Is that in your point point of view, a good idea, not a good idea? No, honestly, it's kind of like my answer about credit cards. It's not always a good idea. And it's definitely not a good idea if you don't do your research and put your work in,

but it's what happens. And there are several businesses that have started with family money that have worked out really well. One, I don't know what its footprint is outside the New York area where I'm based, but a coffee shop chain called Oren's Coffee Roasters. The founder started it with a lot of loans from his parents. But he goes through in the book and in our coverage of him, he kind of goes through the process he and his parents set up to make sure that he wasn't taking advantage of them, that the addition of money to their relationship wasn't going to ruin their personal relationship. You know, they set up monthly or quarterly check-ins. They wrote down the terms of the deal and clarified that even if, and this is, I think, in general, good advice, even if you're asking your friends or family for money,

you're not necessarily giving them the same control over the business that you might give to professional equity investors. You know, if you're asking your friends and family for loans or just investments, you should all be clear up front what you are and are not giving away in exchange for their support. Absolutely. And I guess beyond finding where's that source of initial funding coming from, I guess another important aspect is figuring out how much do you need? Do you think people in general, and this, I mean, I guess depends on the business, either don't get enough or they get too much because they have big dreams. That's a good question. I would say I think the good news is that you probably don't need as much money as you might think you do to start a business. There's one survey that's cited by the Kauffman Center in 2008 that it took then about an average of $31,000 to start a business. And it's way less than that today. We regularly pull our list of the Inc. 5000 CEOs. Those are the CEOs of the fastest growing private companies in America by three-year revenue growth. And 42% of them in 2018 said that they needed less than $5,000 to start their first business. Oh, wow.

Like that's, I mean, $5,000 is still several thousand dollars, but it's not $31,000. No. It's not a year of college, you know. No, it's like you can save that up on your own in a year and, you know, potentially start working on your business. Absolutely. And it totally depends on what kind of business you're starting. If you need office space, if you need to hire other employees, if you need physical inventory,

where you live and where you want to set up your business. Another thing, another really important question is, is your business going to be self-sustaining from the get-go? And do you need a salary from it? Because a lot of businesses do not turn a profit immediately. And a lot of CEOs do not start paying themselves immediately. So another thing to consider is if you're starting your business, you might not need that much money, but also can you work on it part time until you grow to the point where it's making money and can afford to sustain you? Absolutely. And I've, you know,

had a lot of conversations with people that have started their own companies, a lot of them online companies. And that's kind of what they, they say, it's never necessarily a good idea to just quit and then figure it out. It's, you know, if you can figure it out while working, that's probably your best bet. Cause then, I mean, that's what I did. And I feel like if you're someone who is pretty risk averse, like that is like a good way to see if it's, you know, if you can make money while, you know, not kind of giving up on your, your salary and not depending on, you know, your family or friends to help you pay your rent or something like that. And not forcing yourself to figure out how to get health insurance. Oh, gosh, yeah. Well, that's, I guess that's the other thing, too, that I always kind of forget

being Canadian is like, you know, as a small business owner, or, you know, starting your own business, there's so many little things I think people forget, they really get focused on, you know, this big idea that, oh, you know, this is going to be it. This is going to be my golden ticket. And, you know, I'm going to, you know, be on, you know, Inc or whatever and be featured. And they may think a little bit about the funding. They may think a little bit about how much money they need, but they probably don't think about like the boring stuff like payroll and, you know, HR and health insurance. And what kind of retirement fund do you want? And do you want to go through the difference between, you know, a Roth IRA and a SEP IRA? And, you know, there's a section in the book where, you know, I talk about the taxes and insurance and lawyers and

all the other fun stuff. Like, do you want to you want to, can you afford to buy business insurance? And if you can't, again, maybe, maybe you shouldn't be trying to, to support yourself full time, um, on this business until, until you have that figured out. Absolutely. Um, I don't know if this has come up for you, but I know, uh, you know, in the past couple of weeks, there's been a couple of documentaries about that fire festival, which really kind of, I know, uh, which kind of gives, uh, you know, a the past couple of weeks, there's been a couple of documentaries about that fire festival, which really kind of, I know, which kind of gives a, you know, a bad name to like the whole kind of Silicon Valley thing where I think for years, we always just looked at all these people were like, Oh, wow, they've started these amazing startups online, Airbnb, and you

know, we all use them. They're great. And then this guy is trying to basically mimic what these, you know, people have done, but obviously obviously he was a bit of a con man. I also wonder just from the perspective of someone who maybe wants to invest in one of these startups, how can you protect yourself and your capital and make sure that you're investing in something legit that does have looks? That's not a fire festival. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't want to bash on technology and social media because while I do think it's become easier for certain type of con artists to set up businesses in the age of Instagram and the Instagram influencer, I think that those dangers have always existed. It's just,

it's just easier to, to fall under their sway now. But on the other hand, like you mentioned this earlier, I do think that the online age and the, and the technology age has, has made it a lot easier for people to start legitimate businesses and for people to set up a website, start accepting payments, start marketing their legitimate businesses on Instagram, and do that all on their nights and weekends and keep their regular job until they grow the business. So I'm not sure that I have any magic bullet for how you figure out what's legit and what's a scam, except I guess just trust your gut. I know. Well, I guess the same could kind of be said from, you know, if you watch a lot of,

you know, Shark's Tank or in Canada, Dragon's Den, you kind of, I feel like, honestly, if you just binge watch a couple seasons of that, you get a good feel for what is legitimate and what's not, or what has the potential and what doesn't. You're reminding me. So a couple of years ago, I did this story on legal cannabis. So all of these businesses that are springing up in Colorado and California, now that the laws around marijuana are changing in states. And I talked to so many legitimate businesses and wound up profiling one, a woman and her ex-husband who had started

the fastest growing or I'm sorry, the biggest legal edibles business in, uh, in Colorado. So they were selling gummies and, um, you know, I went and I toured their factory and spent a lot of time talking about like boring regulatory stuff and all of the, all of the packaging laws that they had to deal with to make sure that they were being above board and creating this very legitimate business in what's still a gray market. But I also talked to some people who just pinged my radar and had all of these big claims about how miraculous legal marijuana was and how it had cured their cancer and stopped their brain aneurysms and healed their dogs. And you just, you know, even in an area, even in a totally new industry where there's not necessarily a lot of, there hasn't necessarily been enough time to figure out which are the

true legitimate businesses and which aren't, you know, if you, if you just spend some time talking to people and paying attention to what the founders say, I think it's, it's, it becomes obvious pretty quickly who has a real business idea and who doesn't. Exactly. And if anyone's saying this is the, you know, magical miracle drug, you should just, there's no such thing as a miracle, you know, like a miracle drug or a miracle product in my point of view. You must be running into some of this in Canada as well, seeing the same sort of growth of new businesses. Well, it's interesting in Canada because obviously it's legalized now, but it's all centralized through the government. There's no, and every province is different.

So it's kind of hard to follow. But even in Ontario, there's still a lot of private companies that are slowly getting shut down. And it's, yeah, I'm very curious to see what will happen in the next year or so. But surprisingly, I think the perspective, just like talking about cannabis for a bit, this perspective in the States was like, oh, wow, Canada's the whole country is getting legalized same. Nothing changed. The day it became legalized, it was like any other day. Yeah, very boring. Yeah, sadly, but yeah. I think you're destroying a little bit the myth of Canada. It's like, oh, it's so amazing here. It's like, yeah, it is amazing here, but nothing's really changed since it's become legalized. I forgot about it well your health insurance system still wins hands down yeah that's I can't yeah I can't knock that it's pretty great um so talking a little bit more about just how people can be prepared if this is something that they want to pursue I do have a lot of people

listening that either have you know dreams to you, start a side hustle or turn a side hustle into a full-time job. Um, which is interesting because honestly, when I started this podcast, it was mainly just going to be about personal finance, but I have myself, you know, started kind of my own business as a company of one, but still it's, it's something that I never thought I'd start. And so it's an interesting person, you know, just the whole idea of entrepreneurship is really fascinating to me because growing up, I didn't think that was I didn't know that was an option. I just thought, you know, you go to school, you get a company job, you work at that company until you retire. And things have shifted so much because of the Internet and social media is actually a really exciting time. to start to realistically start their business and not just wait, Oh, well, you know, I'm not rich enough, or I'm not, you know, connected enough, or I'll wait until retirement where I'm,

you know, have a little bit more time on my hands, anyone can kind of start something. But I think that a big issue is, a lot of people want to start a company, but they don't have a traditional business background, myself included, I went to film school. So I ended up just like, learn reading books like yours. What are some things like in terms of I think, you know, creating that business plan? Lots of people have no idea what that means. Like, what does a business plan look like? And just kind of small terms? Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a really good question. And, and to your point, I think it's, I think it's easier to find answers, thanks to the fact that I could now Google business plan and I'd probably be inundated by how many results are out there. Inc. has a pretty good extensive guide to how to write one.

You can also find models on SBA.gov, which is the U.S.'s Small Business Administration's website and a site called Bplans. But big picture, a business plan is just, it's a way to wrestle with the practicalities of your business and especially with the numbers. While there are other parts of it, I think a lot of people will tell you, and I believe that probably the most important part of it is to sit down and figure out what will your cash flow be? How regularly will you be getting paid? And when will you have to pay bills? Realistically, how long will it take you to turn a profit and to break even? And how long can you afford to fund the business before then?

And when you're first starting out, a lot of these numbers will be theoretical. You don't know how long it'll take you to get paid until you actually start selling something. But as a financial and intellectual exercise, I think it's extremely smart to sit down and at least ask yourselves those questions. And then long term, if your business does grow to a point where you're going to apply for a bank loan, or you're going to ask friends and family for money, or, you know, if you're even going to be part of the relatively small group of people who go to outside investors, all of those entities are going to want to see a business plan, except maybe your friends and family, but you should probably still have one. So, you know, I think we do, there are, to your point, so many entrepreneurs who are not financial,

who didn't go to business school, and that's fine. That's, you know, there are so many success stories from people who did not come from business backgrounds. But, but if you're not able to at least ask yourselves those questions, maybe, maybe that's a sign that, that this is not perhaps the right business for you, or that you need to spend some more time researching and thinking about it before you, before you put money into it, at least. And one other thing, too, I wonder is some people are really good on the business side of things. I've met a lot of entrepreneurs that they're great, and then they secretly tell me,

but my personal finances are a mess. Oh, so true. Yeah. Is that true? Is that kind of the sense that you get, too? Absolutely. I mean, I think there's think there's a, um, I think if you're entrepreneurial, you, you have a certain willingness to take risks perhaps. And, um, and that can be great in business and not so great in your personal life. Or there's also the question, and I am thinking right now of, um, of the documents at home that I have yet to prepare to do my own taxes. It's so easy, especially when you're getting a big project off the ground. It is so easy to prioritize the thing that you're excited about and not spend time on the personal financial chores that are really tedious and time consuming.

Totally. But you know, as I know, it's like, if you just focus on the business side of things, and not yourself, it's the same thing. Like what's, you know, you need to take care of yourself first. Because it's like, if you're not okay, you know, if you can't put like food on your table, or you know, creditors are coming after you in your personal life, your business will suffer too. You need to take care of both things. Oh, absolutely. I wrote about this for USA Today last week, but I was at a conference, an Inc. conference a couple of years ago and moderating a session on how to get money for your business. It was a debt financing session. And at the end of it, one of the attendees approached me. She had been quiet during the session, but she came up to me and she said,

I have a lot of credit card debt from putting my son through school. I'm trying to pay it off. And I was wondering, should I open up a new card or go into more debt to start a business so that I can pay my debt off faster? It's just like, oh, no, no, please, please, please. Please don't go into more debt to start a business because it's not going to be a quick way to get out of debt at all. You're just going to get into more debt. I think a lot of people think once they have an idea or this passion to start a business, there's a sense of urgency, but it's just self, you know, you just made that up. You made up that deadline. I'm always just like, if there's, can you wait six months? So you pay off

that credit card or a year and pay off that credit card. And maybe you need that year to also become a little bit more prepared financially. But a lot of people are just excited about this idea and they just want to get it off the ground. It's boring to kind of take, to be responsible and just start making a debt repayment plan for your credit card. But I mean, you know, it's kind of what you should do. Yeah. You'll be so much happier long-term because no matter how great your business is or how great your business idea is, the odds of it, you know, taking off immediately are, are not great. No. And I'm sure you know this from talking to so many entrepreneurs, it's none of their businesses just like were a hit right away.

They, you know, felt, you know, they tried a lot of things until eventually something. And for me, as someone who's getting older, that is really nice to see that all these people like, oh, no, I didn't make it big until my 30s, 40s, 50s. Like, oh, good, because you always hear about these frickin stories about these young Silicon Valley kids who are 22 and they're just like on yachts. And you're like, how is this possible? Right, right. I mean, and it's so the myth rather than the reality for so many founders. You know, again, most of the people who are on our Inc. 5000 CEO list, almost half of them held a job in the same field where they started their business before they started their business. Some of them are in their 20s or younger,

but a lot of them are in their 30s and 40s, if not older. I think experience kind of gets, experience which comes with age, kind of gets ignored a lot in the stories about Silicon Valley founders and, you know, the Airbnb guys, not to pick on them, but all of these, the Mark Zuckerbergs and like all of the tech bros who started their business in college and it just took off. But that is not the reality for 99% of the... Like, they're the exception, not the rule, you know? Exactly.

Oh, good. It just makes me feel better when I read stories like that. I'm like, okay, good. Because I think we always look to like, yeah, the people that started Airbnb and Mark Zuckerberg to be like, well, I'm a failure because I didn't have a genius idea.

And, you know, it skyrocket to where it is today. But I think that shouldn't be the goal is to start something really fast. It's like you want something sustainable, don't you? And something that has legs that will be around for a long time. So take your time. Absolutely. One of my favorite stories that I've done for Inc. was a profile of a woman named Therese Tucker. I think she's in her early 50s now, but she was a software engineer by training. She worked at software companies for decades. And in the early 2000s, she decided to go into business for herself. She cashed out her 401k. not again, not something I recommend, but she had savings. She had options from, from a job at a, at a company that had gone public and she had,

and she just said, take a gamble with her retirement savings. She started a very boring sounding accounting software company. And, um, and eventually in 2016, she took it public. Um, it's called Blackline. It was one of the only tech companies run by a female founder and CEO. Um, it's got a market cap of something like two and a half billion, the last two and a half billion us last time i checked um therese is amazing she's got pink hair and she's extremely blunt and refreshing and direct and she knows what she's doing and she's brilliant and like and she got there after decades of working for other people and of becoming an expert in her own field and eventually seeing a need in

the market that she was an expert in. And that kind of gave her the ability to overcome all of the stereotypes about older women starting tech companies. I mean, how many other older women who are tech founders of public companies do you know? Not many. Yeah. Wow. Well, that I think that is such a inspiring story. And I'm sure there's a ton more in your book with a great amount of advice for people that are just starting out and want to know, you know, the really important stuff, not just the exciting, inspirational stuff. Let's get some inspiration, but also let's get some hard, hard information that will help us run our companies more successfully. That is the goal. So thank you. You're welcome. It was a pleasure having you on the show. Where can

more people find more information about you and grab a copy of Startup Money Made Easy? Oh, thank you so much. It's been so much fun. The book is, you can find Startup Money Made Easy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or IndieBound. And in fact, if you go to StartupMoneyMadeEasy.com, there's a list of the different retailers where you can find it. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. And that was episode 193 with Maria Aspin. Make sure to check out her new book, grab a copy, Startup Money Made Easy, The Guide to Every Financial Question About Starting, Running and Growing Your Business is what it's called. It is out now. And make sure to check out the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 193. I will be putting some important links and just info about what we talked about in this episode. Got a couple important things to share with you. So as always, stick around for a hot sec and I'll

share all that good stuff with you. But first, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is sponsored by the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card. Looking for your award-winning cashback card? The Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card might be just what you're looking for. For a limited time, you'll earn 10% cashback on everyday purchases in the first three months, up to $2,000 in total purchases. Plus, the annual fee will be waived for the first year. That's a value of up to $299. This offer expires April 30th. But wait, there is more, with great benefits like access to hotel

room upgrades, best available rates, VIP guest status, and late checkout at over 900 luxury hotels around the world. Or gain access to the exclusive Visa Infinite Dining Series, which includes dining events with once-in-a-lifetime chef collaborations at the country's most highly anticipated new restaurants. You can even call up the Visa Infinite Complimentary Concierge to help make your life easier by taking care of almost any request, like dining reservations or building vacation itineraries. To learn more about the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card and see if it's right for you, visit jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or visit the show notes for this

episode. Once again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or check out the show notes for this episode. Once again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia, or check out the show notes for this episode. Okay, let's start with the important stuff. I'm giving away free copies of books. So many books. If you've been, you know, listening to this season, you already know this. But if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest or check out the show notes for this episode or every episode, there will be details on how you can enter to win a copy of any of the books that I have featured on the show, including this episode, Maria Aspen's book, Startup Money Made Easy. I'm giving away a copy, so make sure to check those out. Show notes, jessicamorales.com slash 193 or jessicamorales.com slash contests is where you can find details on how to enter for winning a book. And I'll

probably honestly wait till the end of the season to draw winners just because it's easier for me, quite honestly. Other exciting things and also book related. My pal, Erin Lowry, who's been on the show will be on the show again very soon this season. So, you know, subscribe. She, you know, a couple years back, she launched her first book called Broke Millennial. She is out launched her first book called broke millennial she is out with her second book called broke millennial takes on investing just came out last week and she's doing a huge book tour and she's teaming up with me in toronto canada to do a one-of-a-kind event called level up your money uh it is happening may 7th today tuesday may 7th in downtown Toronto. We're still selling tickets. Not too many left. I think

there's about 30 left. And it's going to be amazing. I mean, it's probably the biggest event that I've ever organized. So if you've ever been to any of my events, this is going to be one for the books. Tickets still available. I will have more info in the show notes. But I think if you just go jessicamariles.com slash level up or even check my Twitter account, I'm always posting about how many tickets are left. That's where you can find more details, but I hope to see you. It's going to be so much fun. You made us, there's going to be a panel discussion all about investing, including Aaron, myself, Barry Choi, money expert, Barry Choi, who's also been on the show. And then we're

also going to have an expert from TD Direct Investing, who is the sponsor. Thank you so much, TD Direct Investing. And not only that, there's drinks, there's going to be food, you're going to get a goodie bag, including a copy of Aaron's new book. There's gonna be a fun photo booth. And also you get to hang out with me and Aaron and it'll be super fun. So hope to see you there. And last but not least, I got a couple really lovely iTunes reviews that I want to just give a little shout out to right now. All right. The first shout out is to FF2127 from Canada. I listen to a lot of finance investing podcasts. My co-workers often ask me about what I'm listening to and they have a lot of money questions. I send them some episodes of this

podcast and tell them to have a listen and go through the past podcasts. Thanks for the great work. Thank you for the lovely iTunes review. This next one is from Meg's Cascade from Canada. I've been listening to the Momentum podcast for about a year and a half now. In that time, I've gone from nearly financially illiterate to confident. Jessica is a true finance guru. Thanks for being a great example educator and leader for all of us, especially us millennial women. You are so welcome. Thank you for listening. And one, I'm going to give a shout out to this Adam YVR. I know where you live, Adam, Vancouver. I mean, I don't know. Actually, Adam, I don't know who this guy is um give me three star fine i'll give you you know whatever everyone has their opinion uh presenter has come on leaps and bounds

she manages to still snake some fantastic bit guests uh thanks that was like a little backdoor compliment a little shady uh find uh her presenting style a bit too casual at times but the continuous use of i know know, right? All and all a decent podcast with great info and great guests. Well, I'm going to take those compliments, but I'm going to, you know, yeah. It's called the Mo Money Podcast. I'm not doing hard-hitting, you know, really bland, boring news. And I say, I right all the time of my life. What can I do, Adam, to change your mind? What can I do? I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to keep on living my life. Thank you, Adam, for sharing your thoughts. And that shade, you're a bit shady, but I'll take

what I can get. So thanks for listening anyway, I suppose. Maybe I can change your mind, right? Okay. I know, right? Right? I can't help it. I can't help it, Adam. This is just how I talk. Okay. Anyways, thank you all for listening. If you want to get a shout out on a future episode, please leave me a review. And I'll give you, you know, shout out on a future episode. I also really hope that I see you at my event. If you live in Toronto, if you don't, I'm sorry, but I will be recording the panel discussion video and audio. So it will be, you know, I'll be uploading it to YouTube and on the podcast if you don't live in town, but I want to hear what we talk about. Thanks again for listening, y'all. And I will be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode. As always, see you next week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network.

Find out more at womeninmedia.network.