Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: Self-Made - How To Start, Run and Grow Your Business with Brit Morin | Uncut Version

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

Join Hala for a live recorded episode of Young and Profiting podcast featuring Brit Morin, CEO and Founder of Brit + Co. Selfmade brings together the world's top female entrepreneurs to teach you how to create a new business or grow your existing one in a 10-week highly interactive virtual course.   ***Meet the Moderators***   Brit Morin: Brit grew up loving to create but as she began to learn coding, she traded her love of art for a career in technology and marketing by working with big names like Apple and Google. In 2011, Brit started the progressive, girl centric brand Brit & Co which provides similar projects that she fell in love with all those years ago in a host of categories including business and illustrating! Brit has been featured as a contributor for the likes of CNN, the Today Show, and Katie Couric, just to name a few and her latest book Homemakers: A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation is a guide to creative living in and out of your home. Brit is also the founder of Selfmade which is the title of this room. Selfmade is an education and community platform for female entrepreneurs (more about that later). And finally, as if this wasn't enough, Brit is the host of the Teach Me Something New podcast.   Social Media:   Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on ClubHouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. This episode of YAP is sponsored by Ole Body. Why do you shower? The most obvious answer is cleanliness, but there's way more to it. If you listen to YAP, you know that cold showers can improve your energy

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They completely changed how I thought about my body care routine and my shower. You can find ole body care products in the store or online. Ole body, fearless in my skin. shower. You can find Olay Body Care products in the store or online, Olay Body, Fearless and My Skin. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show! I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world.

My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhanced and productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because

you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Hey everyone, you are tuning into a live episode of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast. I'm your host, Halataha, and today we're joined by Britmarin. She is the founder of Briton Co, which is an Uber popular website and lifestyle brand. She's also the founder of Offline Ventures, which is a VC group and self-made, which is a 10 week virtual startup school for women. Britt is a serial entrepreneur

and is going to be teaching us everything about how to start, run, and grow a business. So this session is gonna be a little bit unique and it's gonna be super interactive. So this session is going to be a little bit unique and it's going to be super interactive. So get ready to raise your hand, be a part of this conversation, bring you get super tactical and practical in this episode. And so I hope to see a lot of you guys in here contribute.

And if you guys want to hear more about Brit's amazing come-up story and her journey, I did interview her on Young and Profiting Podcast for a proper episode. That was episode number 103, self-made entrepreneurship with Britt Moran. People love that episode, so make sure you go check it out. And for everybody tuning in here, I think we all know that becoming an entrepreneur is scary, especially when we hear stats like 20% of businesses fail in their first year, and 70% of businesses will be gone in a decade.

So it's easy to get discouraged and feel intimidated. But people like Britt took the leap into entrepreneurship. And now a decade later, she's hustled her way to $75 million in revenue. She's had nearly 400 million website users, 1.2 billion page views, dozens of products, she's a bestselling book, she's a top-podcaster. Her accolades go on and on and it all started with her taking a leap.

So it might sound like it's near impossible to have these types of accomplishments, but we know here on YAP that nothing is an overnight success. And so Brits made her fair share of failures, mistakes. But you know what, when the going got tough for Brits as a young entrepreneur, she had a community of entrepreneurs, of mentors, of advisors that helped her along the way. And that's why her passion today is to give back and help other women and people create successful businesses.

So you can manifest your own best self, turn your passion into a business and truly be self-made. So like I mentioned today, it's gonna be super interactive, all about how to start, run, and grow your business. We're gonna format the session in that way. I'm gonna talk about those three topics. So if during the conversation you guys have a question,

raise your hand, okay? Raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. You can put your question in your bio so that we can screen it first. And with that, we'll get started. So, Britt, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for that lovely introduction. Of course.

So, let's start with starting a business. When it comes to starting a business, let's talk about self-made. You started it during the pandemic. And you did not need to start a business at all. I mean, you've got Britt and Co. It's super successful. Like, there was no reason for you to start a new business. But the pandemic actually inspired you to do so. So why did you start self-made and how did the pandemic inspire you to do that?

Well, I mean, if you know me, you know that I've actually wanted to like, be an inventor my whole life, even when I was, I remember being like eight or nine years old. And just I would find like problems in the world. Like for instance, I loved cereal, but I hated cereal because it requires two hands to eat if you're moving around. You have to hold the bowl, you have to hold the spoon. And I was like, why doesn't someone make a cereal cup

that you can easily drink from and that you can take with you on the go and it would create the right amount of milk and cereal every sip. And I've always just wanted to solve problems. And on a typical day, I'm coming up with like five to 10 of those ideas in my head, most of which I do not start businesses around.

But last year, during the pandemic, I was watching as millions of women were getting displaced from the workforce, either because they got furloughed laid off or literally had to leave in order to care for their families. And it made me very angry because frankly, we've worked for decades to try to get to female equality in the workforce. And now women were the first ones to raise their hand to say, I'll stay home, you know, I'll handle the family.

I don't need my own income stream. And yet, you know, I think what it meant was that, yes, they did have to take on more roles, or maybe they were unemployed, and they actually needed to create income for themselves, but they didn't know how. And so I was like, you know, I've had the great fortune of being an entrepreneur for a decade.

I've worked at places like Google and Apple. I've, you know, helped hundreds of startups get off the ground. I have an incredible network of amazing badass business owners, founders, marketers, investors, et cetera. Like I can help these women learn how to start and grow their business. And so I started self-made. And at first, you know, what's interesting is, I had the idea and I was doing what most people do, which is trying to over-complicate it, trying to make it perfect. And I thought I would launch it in October.

I was like, I'll get to it this fall. Like in the next six months, this is like in May. And I remember my husband turned to me and was like, no, you need to do this now. Like the problem is happening now. And so I my husband turned to me and was like, no, you need to do this now. Like the problem is happening now. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to launch this in two weeks. And so I did. Oh my gosh. And speaking of launching that in two weeks, I remember you were, oh, my

podcast. And you mentioned that you built a square space website in two weeks to just put it out messy. And so I'm wondering like, what is your philosophy when it comes to testing a new business idea? Like how did you know that self-made was a good idea and can people replicate that methodology to test their own business ideas? Yeah, I mean, the first thing you need to know is it only takes one person to say

that you have a customer base. So it takes one buyer to start collecting data. After that person experiences your product or service, if they have a positive experience, the likelihood is they will tell someone about it. And guess what, you guys? Word of mouth is your best possible marketing asset that you can have. And if you have one person that tells two people about your product or service and those two people join, and they tell two people, you have created now a viral coefficient of growth.

COVID has taught everybody what this means, right? If the RT rate is greater than one, that means something is growing exponentially. And so if you can get every one person that tries your thing to tell one to two people about it, and they try your thing, then you're gonna have the business that's on fire. And so for me, I knew, literally I had no expectation.

I was like, all right, literally 10 people might join this. I don't know, but I know that my passion is to make this happen. It almost feels like it should be like a nonprofit because it's just full, it's so much from my heart, but it's a lot of work and it does have costs, so it's not a nonprofit, but I just was on a mission to help women. And I think that that sense of just like purpose and

authenticity shined through and we had, you know, at first hundreds that joined. And then, you know, we did it again and had hundreds more and so on and so forth. So, you know, literally the first expectation you should have is that one person tries your product or service because it will grow from there. And if anything, use that to get data.

I don't think enough people realize that, like, you can put up a Squarespace website. And you can see, like, what are people like? What are they clicking on? Oh, they're generally more interested in the fact that you have like celebrity a list guest teachers, like, when a palcho and the founder of minted and the founder of Rent the Runway,

helping to teacher course, then they care about, you know, this wag that they get or whatever. And so, you know, I think that it's really important to at least get started, even when it's messy, because otherwise you'll be waiting forever to launch.

I totally agree. I actually just interviewed the first CEO and co-founder of Netflix's name is Mark Randolph and he had a really cool quote. He said you'll learn more in an hour of trying something than in six months of thinking about it or building a business plan. So I wanted to ask you about that in your self-made course. So for you guys out there who don't know, Brit has this 10 week course where basically it takes people on a journey to think of their business idea, launch it and get a foundation to start a successful business that can scale to, you know, multi-six figures.

And so do you have like a framework that you give people in terms of like a business plan? Do you believe in business plans? What are your thoughts on that? Oh my gosh. I mean, it is structured with a lot of thought. So the 10 weeks take you through. Basically, everything I wish I would have known

before I started my first business. And the first part of it is really just about getting in the right mindset because that is the foundation of entrepreneurship, especially, I think it impacts men and women the same way. There's a lot of self-doubt. Can I do this? Am I good enough, experienced enough, smart enough?

Is my product good enough? Is it perfect enough? Is it ready to launch? Is my idea even big enough? And so, so much of the first phase is mindset. Then, it's actually the next level of the pyramid of what makes for a great company is the actual idea, like what is the product or service or thing you're offering. And how are you differentiating it?

Are you sure that this is in line with your actual passion and what you're good at? What is your total audience for this potential product? What is the competitive set like? Like how are you gonna build a moat around this to make it like really impactful and big? What about the business model? Should it be like a director, consumer, like a straight up e-commerce type of business?

Is it better as a subscription? Are you gonna have licensing or advertising? So we walk through all of that stuff in the first half of the course. And the second half is really about the go-to-market strategy. How do I build a customer base? How do I market to them? How do I make sure they're engaged? How do I make sure they're coming back? How do I do a pitch? How do I raise money? How do I get PR? Should I work with influencers? Like all of these things are covered in a matter of 10 weeks. And we actually end the whole thing with a pitch day,

which is like literally shark tank, where we give away like many tens of thousands of dollars of grants. And it's incredible to see that so many people have literally concepted and launched their product or service within two and a half months. And it's actually amazing. And many times, I'm already bringing in legitimate revenue.

So I think like what we all tell ourselves when we're thinking about doing entrepreneurship is that you know one day I'll do that one day I'll get the hustle or the sort of like confidence to do that and one day becomes no day because you actually never do it or you think of it like a side hustle, like maybe I'll spend my weekends working on it. But the truth of the matter is, if you actually want to make a change in your life, like, you know, you have to commit to something and you have to really like, almost manifest that this is going to happen. And to do it in such a concentrated amount of time is often the biggest leap of courage that you need to ensure that it sticks. So there's so many ways I can dive into this. I can ask you about your perspective on side hustles.

So, Brett, I want to touch on a point that you just made. And you mentioned that you are a VC investor. You invest in early stage companies before they've launched or right after they've launched. And so you look at entrepreneurs and decide who you're gonna invest your money with based on personality traits from my understanding. And maybe their past experiences.

So I'm wondering, should everybody be an entrepreneur? Like is that real? Like everybody can be an entrepreneur? Or are there certain personality traits or characteristics that make a good entrepreneur? I do think there are certain people in this world that feel it within them to be the type of risk-taker, change maker, leader that is definitely required

of entrepreneurship. However, I also think there are people who might maybe feel that but are kind of on the rocks aren't really sure because they have a lot of self doubt and they haven't really experienced this before and they haven't learned how to be an entrepreneur and I do think that a lot of it can be learned. I mean, I was, I had just turned 25

when I started this company, Britain Co, sorry, I've now started multiple, but like Britain Co, I started when I started this company, Britain Co, sorry, I've now started multiple, but like Britain Co, I started when I was 25, I had managed three people ever, and I never raised money, I had never hired a whole team of engineers and directed them, and I had no idea what I was doing. There was an element of faking it until I made it.

There was an element of just googling a lot of things and talking to a lot of people and getting advice. And there is this element of just learning through experience. And frankly, for that, you need this attitude that I will run through every wall that gets put in front of me. I'm not gonna stop. I'm just gonna keep going.

I'm gonna show up every day. I'm gonna wake up and like, bulldoze my way through whatever the problem is that comes up. And I'm gonna be the one that's ordering the toilet paper, but also like hiring engineers and also raising money and also being the face of this brand. And like, that's gonna be okay with me and exciting for me. And so, yeah, there's this quality of entrepreneurship

that might err on the side of like insanity maybe. But there's also sort of this like ability to just be decisive, confident, nimble. So much of entrepreneurship in the early days is just about like making decisions and changing decisions when the data proved you wrong. And you know, the first two years of any startup is just finding product market fit.

Figuring out what is it that your customer actually wants from you. And the first two years of any startup is just finding product market fit, figuring out what is it that your customer actually wants from you. And the only way you can do that is to put something in front of your customer and collect data and change the way you're doing that every time you get more data. So, yeah, those are the core traits of an entrepreneur. And I do think there are some people that are destined for it, there are others that are kind of on the fence that I think are trainable. And there are others that want to be the number two.

They don't want to be the number one. And those make for amazing teammates. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. So we're going to get with the Q&A. We're going to roll with the Q&A. Catherine, you are first up on stage. What is your question and how can we help you?

Hi. Thank you so much for hosting this space. I'm definitely excited to be here. So my question is in terms of just like getting started, because I just launched my business back in March of this year. And so it's super exciting, but it's also really overwhelming. And so my question is like, what best practices or advice do you have for someone just getting started, but also how to stay in it and not get to burnt out

or overwhelmed at the beginning or for the long haul. Thank you. Well, Catherine, congrats. That's amazing, especially, I mean, everyone that launched a business during the pandemic, I think she get like a double party celebration because that should is hard, you guys. And I know it's been lonely and all of the things.

However, yeah, speaking of loneliness, I think it is really lonely in the beginning and this doesn't get talked about enough. And by the way, on the mental health spectrum of entrepreneurship, most entrepreneurs are, you know, two to six X as likely to have symptoms of depression by polar ADHD and a spectrum of mental health disorders.

And I think that part of that is because they're geniuses and part of that is because yeah, it could be a very taxing job. And so core to starting your company is to make sure you are taking care of yourself. So I think if you want your three months in, you want to start March. So right now, what I would be doing is a, data, data, data.

How much data can you collect? What's working? What's not? Why is it not working? Can you talk to your customers about that? Can you, again, be agile, nimble? Like lean into what's working, stop doing what's not. The biggest thing that I see a lot of new entrepreneurs do,

that's a big flag or mistake, is that they're trying to do too much without dropping the things that aren't working. I got into the same rut myself with Britain Co. in the early days, like, I would keep iterating on new ideas and new things that were working, and I would launch new things in hopes that they would work even better, but I wouldn't cut the stuff that wasn't working. We would sort of maintain it, and that does not become sustainable, especially when you have a small team. And I think that we as humans get so caught up in the preciousness of our work. And so we really don't want

to kill our babies. Our babies can be things like, you know, the products that we made or this one service that we really love and believe in, but no one's buying it. And you have to get to a point of apathy in entrepreneurship, where like it's literally just a data decision. And so you cut that thing out of your business, you just double down on the thing that's working and you zero in on your focus. And when you can do that, you can actually structure your days

such that you aren't working, you know, 6am to midnight every day. There might be one or two days a week you have to do something like that, especially if you have a big launch or something, but like I think building and personal time, self-care, quote unquote, buzzword of the moment time is really important, especially in the Zoom life that many of us are living right now, like get off the screen, go outside, if you're vaccinated, be around people and take care of yourself, work out, eat well. Because at the end of the day, you know, we're not in the physical workforce anymore, like we don't work in fact, and some people do, like factories and things like that. We're in the knowledge workforce, like we tax our brains more than ever these

days. And so if we aren't relaxing our brains, then we're not able to recover. And so we need to build those phases of the day and especially as entrepreneurs because we're taxing ourselves more than most. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it?

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Shopify.com-profiting, all lowercase. This is Possibility powered by Shopify. That was aiting all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. That was a great response, Catherine. Did you have any follow ups for Britt? Did she help you today? No, no follow ups, but thank you so much. That was definitely super duper helpful. I appreciate it.

Awesome. Britt, I have a quick question before we continue on with the Q&A and it's related to starting your business and specifically how to name your business because you've had some really great names. I mean, Brit and Co really took off it. It includes your actual first name. What is your, you know, process in terms of coming up with a name for your business and what are some of the things or like do's and do's when it comes to naming your business? Oh, I love this question so much.

And we'd cover this and there's a whole branding section of self-main, where we bring in the experts to teach a lot of this stuff, because I know a lot of it. But it's so much better to hear from the founder and CEO of one of the biggest marketing and creative agencies ever when it comes to things like branding than me, because they've literally invented some of the biggest brands in the world.

So that's what we do. From what I've gleamed from Emily, who's our branding coach for self-made, and what I've experienced in my own career, there are a few pieces of advice. One, don't get so hung up on your brand name that you aren't going to launch your business. And this happens a lot. This is part of the perfectionist tendency, where you're like, oh't going to launch your business. And this happens a lot. This is part of the perfectionist tendency where you're like, oh, I just don't know. Should it be like this name or this name? And I haven't decided yet. So I haven't bought the domain.

So I haven't launched my website. And I haven't built my Instagram channel. It's like just pick a name. It really doesn't matter. You can always change your name. Like you literally redirect your URLs. It's totally fine. Britain co, when it first started,

this is a true story, was called Hello Brit. It sounds so dumb, saying that maybe it's fine. I don't know, like, hello, Kitty. I don't know what I was thinking, really. Again, I was 25 and knew nothing. And I was like, this sounds kind of dumb. I think I've been change it. And I was like, this is really about, I know,

I wanted to be part of it because I wanted people to know there was a real human on the other side of the coin and the website, and I wanted to bring back almost like small town America, like back in the day, you knew Disney because there was a guy named Walt Disney and there's this dude named Hershey,

who made Hershey's chocolate. That's where you'd get your chocolate. And it was almost this maker, small business, main street vibe. But it was also about bridging the community into what I was doing. And so I came up with Britt and Coe because it was Britt and the community.

Britt will be the one teacher, one like face, but there's a whole community of amazing women that are experts at all the things that they love to do, whether it's cooking or decorating or coding or investing, and they're gonna teach you their craft. And so that was how I did that name. I made that change like two years into the business, and all you have to do to make a name chain,

you have to trademark it, sure. So you can go USPTO website, do a search, and see like is Britann co-taken. And if not in your category, by the way, this is a legal thing. We also cover in self-made. We have a trademark attorney that comes to coach this part of it. Delta is a popular airline.

Delta is also a popular faucet company. You can have the Delta trademark in your distinct category. If I wanted to launch Delta, I don't know, drywall, and I searched for it in that category in the USPTO website, I would guess that that's available, you guys can tell me. So I think that that's really important to make sure the trademark is available,

but that's a quick search, right? And it shouldn't prohibit you from getting started with at least a first name. And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, typically names are short and sweet. So sometimes people have really long names at first. Those just aren't as catchy. I mean, think of it tagging that name on Instagram, right? That's not going to be really fun.

Whereas Clubhouse is a great name, right? It's two syllables. It's easy to spell when I say it, you know what I mean? Self-made is another one. Facebook is another one. Whole Foods is another one. Amazon is another one. Like, these are two to three syllable names. Easy to spell.

Roll off the tongue. If I'm in the back of an Uber and the Uber driver asked me what I do and I say I'm the founder of Self-Made, you can't, you just understand that out the gate. You know, these weird companies, not weird, but they're flicker, for instance. The other thing I was like, F-L-I-C-K-R, you can sort of understand it, but that trend

is a little bit over, I think, at this point. I would recommend using real words, full words. And if you can't get the domain, this is the other thing that we see a lot of entrepreneurs mess up on. They're like, oh, I want to be delta drywall, but that delta drywall.com is taken. And so that can't be my business name.

And it's like, why does your URL have to match your business name? That's not a thing. You can actually be like get delta drywall.com. For us, we're triselfmade.com is our URL because self-made.com is taken by a different brand and that's fine. So anyways, those are some of the key colors of thinking about branding and naming that I think are important for every new entrepreneur. I love that. I think you gave some really good tips. And for me, like, the big takeaway

from that is like, don't let anything become an obstacle that's unnecessary. For example, not having the domain name that's actually just a perceived obstacle. It's not real. You can do something else, not knowing exactly what the name is. You can start with a name and then over time evolve your brand, evolve your name. It's all about just getting started, just like you just built a website in two weeks and tested your idea for self-made. It's all about getting started, doing it you just built a website in two weeks and tested your idea for self-made. It's all about getting started doing it messy and not being afraid, so I love those tips.

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Self Made brings together the world's top female entrepreneurs to teach you how to create a new business or grow your existing one in a 10 week, highly interactive virtual course, and it's all at the fraction, and I mean a very small fraction of the cost of an MBA. And in my opinion, MBAs are so overrated. First of all, you need to qualify. You need to take a test, write an essay, and not to mention it costs tens of thousands of dollars, and you may not even leave the program understanding how to start, run, or grow business.

It's quite risky to invest in an MBA in my opinion. And in fact, half the classes in my MBA were taught by people who spent their whole careers in academia, and getting that real, business, knowledge, and experience is everything when it comes to starting your own company. I wish that I was able to take a course like self-made before I launched YAP Media. I feel like I would have started out with such an advantage, learned from other people's mistakes, rather than making so many of my own. And if YAP wasn't thriving right now, I would be taking self-made to put it right back

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She's the guest on today's podcast, and she is the founder of Brit Enco. It's supported by dozens of the world's most well-known female founders, like Gweneth Paltrow from Goop, the founder of Class Pass, Minted, Netflix, and so many more. And the course has one goal. By the end of 10 weeks, you will have started your own company that's actively bringing in revenue. And 90% of the students rate self-made as life-changing for their bank accounts and their minds.

It sounds like a sweet deal to me, So are you ready to be self made for 20% off the self made course had over to try self made calm and use promo code YAP. Again, that's try self made calm with promo code YAP for 20% off. Okay, let's continue on with the Q&A. Ro hit you have been on stage for a while. What is your question? How can we help you today? Hi,, thank you so much for having me and you guys are doing a really crazy job. So my question is basically like I'm a choreographer and a filmmaker and I have three separate brands. Okay, and due to pandemic, you know, like everything went for a toss. All right, so until now, although

things that we have done were completely word of mouth, all right, and one of the things that we do is like one is a healing therapy, which is through dance, be healed, especially for entrepreneurs and, you know, all the corporates. So that is going on, but my rest two businesses, like, you know, one one is related to filmmaking and creating stuff for brands that got completely shut and another one was bedding. So we choreograph and shoot beddings. We film make bedding clothes. So now my question is, what should we do?

Should I market all the products separately or should I put my, you know, like best put forward first because everything was running together and all of a sudden it's like, you know, completely everything came to a standstill. So what will be your thoughts about, you know, how should I start off with it? So I think I got most of that. So you have three companies. There's like a healing company, and then there's a wedding film company and I forgot the last one. But they're all fairly different, is that right? Yeah, perfect.

So here are the questions I had asked. One, are these companies profitable or are they burning money? Second is, are they growing? Sounds like a couple of them are not. They're at a standstill. Or do they have the potential to grow? And third is, do you have a big enough team to support three companies at this phase? Or is it a pretty small team?

All right, so I had a team. And due to this entire COVID scene, we had to scrap off many people, You know, like this entire COVID scene, you know, we had to scrap off many people, you know, like, but still the, you know, the image of the company and everything, you know, people know that we do some really, like, you know, really crazy work. And touch what we have done, 100 plus weddings. And all of them have been just a word of mouth. So we have, like, you know, nothing has been, you know, like, we had branded it or something. But since two years, there have not been any weddings, there have not been any shoots.

So everything is on a standstill. So yeah, that is the insight. So I mean, my, my, yeah, my instinct back to you is to, like I said, cut what's not working and double down on what is. You can bring things back as you feel like you have sort of stabilization and security of the thing that's working. Like for me, Britain Co is a ten-year-old brand. It's profitable.

I have a team that knows how to run a lot of the day to day of Britain Co, which is one of the main reasons I felt like it was okay to launch a new brand, self-made. Self-made is a new company within Britain Co. But it's still effectively a new company. It has its own set of team. I needed to hire. It's still in the like, infancy stage. It's just like a year old at this point, which I consider an infant in the startup world.

And so I needed to put more attention to that this past year than I could my other business. And I was only able to do that because the other one was mature enough, profitable enough, and had enough of a team running the day-to-day that I could oversee the new thing. So that would be my advice for you, is if you are not able to work on these three things, if like two of the three of them are out of standstill because of COVID and all the impact of COVID, it sounds like your best opportunity right now is to at least cut or pause for real those companies, let go of the staff while you double down on what is working, accrue more profitability and revenue, and then if you want to bring them back. But I always

think that, you know that entrepreneurship is hard enough to do one company, right? Like focusing on that company is probably your best bet. All right, perfect. So yeah, that's the major confusion right now because all of them are going, it's just a very 1920s difference between all of them getting it.

And in terms of my personal, like I'm getting few work, which is, you know, like outside for the industry, for the films, for the ads. So should I focus more on that product or should I focus more on my work? So that is the major confusion that I'm having. Focus on what's growing the most. And where you, and I think this is also a lesson

for entrepreneurs, especially as you do start hiring a team, hire people to do the thing that you can do but aren't uniquely specialized in, right? And so like for me, I can do all the financial accounting and I can do all the financial accounting, and I can do sales, but I don't necessarily think that's my special sauce, like my special sauce is in sort of ideation vision, strategy, being the face of the brand, marketing and design. And so I'm gonna lean into that more and double down on that part of my work and my business.

Because ultimately that's gonna give us the biggest ROI in the long run. And I ultimately that's going to give us the biggest ROI in the long run. And I think that's what any investor would say to you as well. Awesome. Thank you so much, Rohit. Thank you so much. Yeah, great question.

Really important. Great question. Thank you so much. And we're going to continue on with the Q&A. Before we get to Shadline, I'm going to ask you a question about challenges. Because as Rohit was just on here, there's lots of challenges, I'm going to ask you a question about challenges because as Rohit was just on here, there's lots of challenges that I'm sure you see, especially now that you're

running this course and seeing all these different business ideas that are, that people are trying to put out to the world. What are some of the common challenges that you see founders run up against when they're running their business? Or alternatively, what challenges have you faced as an entrepreneur? Well, I think it goes without saying that funding is the biggest challenge, but I think most people see.

You could have the best ideas in the world, but how do you make them possible without money, right? And so what a lot of people don't know going into entrepreneurship is all the different ways to go and get that capital to get your business started. And sometimes people just have to bootstrap and I think that's kind of the closed-minded way of thinking about it because there are so many ways beyond bootstrapping to actually start to aggregate money. We have a whole fundraising section of self-made. I'm a venture capitalist myself,

but we bring in the CEO of I fund women, Karen Khan, who literally has 110,000 entrepreneurs that have applied for their grants. They've given away, I think tens of millions of dollars of grants and loans. They have a crowdfunding platform where you can, you know, there's two types of crowdfunding. You guys, there's crowdfunding for rewards. So think Kickstarter, right?

Like if you fund my thing and we reach the goal, you will get a free product before it ships to everyone else. Cool. Or there's now a really popularized concept called crowdfunding for equity, meaning if I go out and raise $500,000, and that means I can raise from regular everyday people that might want to put in $500 or $1,000 into my idea, my company, they are going to get a small piece of ownership of my company. So, you know, when I go public for $5 billion one day or I sell it or whatever, they're

sharing in that reward. And I'm really energized by what's happening in this space in particular because it's really opening up the funding doors for people who might not be on the venture capital track, but have like a high growth opportunity in front of them. And I think it's also cool to see that like everyday people are getting more and more accustomed to the risks of investing in private companies, not just the public stock market.

So that's a really cool thing too. And then of course, there's venture capital, there's loans, grants, there's all kinds of cool things you can do with banks, lines of credit, factoring, there's a new company called Pipe, which gives you actual cash advances based on recurring revenue that you're generating. So even if you're doing like $10,000 a month,

but it's somewhat recurring, predictable month over month, you can get a bunch of cash advance to somewhat recurring, predictable month over month. You can get a bunch of cash advance to you at the beginning of those months. Anyways, there's so many options for funding. So that's a big challenge for sure. And I think after funding comes hiring because every founder starts as a team of one, unless you're lucky enough to really, truly start a company with a co-founder, which maybe you're two.

But every new hire then comes out of big expense, right? Do you pay yourself or do you pay this new person? And you have enough money to pay this new person. How are you getting them on the team? Because otherwise, you're pulling your hair out because your life is insane, right? You are doing all the jobs. So hiring is number two. And again, we cover this in self-made,

but it's also a thing that I think we can get really creative about as entrepreneurs, right? A lot of people don't understand there's a barter economy out there that does exist. A people that will do jobs for you and exchange for you doing things for them. There are people that will do things in exchange for product.

There are people that will become your advisors and that might want a small equity piece of ownership instead of a compensation package. So there are a lot of ways to get creative there as well. And that's truly what entrepreneurship is about. It's creative problem solving every single day. Love that. I have a follow up question about the funding piece.

I have a company called YAP Media, which you know about, and I've completely bootstrapped it. I haven't taken a dollar from anyone, no loans. I've funded it all myself. And now, you know, we are profitable very fast, and that's just kind of keeping the business afloat. But I guess I always wonder like, is there some like telltale signs that show you that if you need to get an investor or you need to get outside funding? Also, like, what are the advantages and disadvantages of getting an investor versus just bootstrapping your company? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think, you know, we've really glorified venture capital, thanks to things like shark tank and and others which is awesome I mean I am a venture capitalist so but I also think that sometimes the wrong kinds of companies take

venture capital dollars and end up hating their lives for doing so because you know you should only really take venture capital if you believe in the concept of jet fuel and what I mean by that is if you think you are on a jet right now your company company is a jet, it's not an airplane, it's a jet. And if you just have the right jet fuel, aka lots of money, you could fly to Mars and an hour, then go get the jet fuel, right? But you've really got to believe that you've got a jet and not an airplane. And what that means is, like, is your concept, is your business, an idea that can be a multi-billion dollar business that can really stand out from everyone else in the market, because you have some sort of competitive advantage, a new way of doing something, a technological

innovation, a patented innovation, what is your moat as we like to say that really distinguishes you from the rest. And are you cool with like trying to grow this thing really, really big in the next five to ten years? Because that is the expectation of a venture capitalist is that they will get a return on their investment within a five to ten year period. You know, for companies like Facebook, you know, where it's like we are gonna connect

billions of people around the world. That's a really big jet, right? That's a big idea. And it's also a very sort of aspirational idea if you're like in the first three months of start. Like Mark Zuckerberg probably, you know, had a lot of people that were like, oh, whatever, this is like a college play thing that Mark's doing in his dorm room, right?

The people that said no. But a lot of people were like, whoa, this is the future of where the internet's going. This guy is really smart. I already see traction even in this Harvard network of, you know, what he's built. I can see the data around the fact that like, this is already growing, right? Like people at Harvard are already engaging with this thing daily, like, you know, 50% of its users are daily users, not even weekly or monthly users. And every time they add a new school onto the network, the same thing happens, meaning this is really engaging,

really sticky, really viral. And so when this thing spreads beyond colleges, this is going to blow up the world. You know, that's how a venture capitalist would look at it and be like, all right, I'm, I'm, like, let me write the check. So it's also really good, you know, to approach a venture capitalist once you do have some data, because that's, it's typically really important, even as a seed stage investor, which I add, you know, I typically like to see some sort of traction. Even if you like have a wait list of 10,000 people

that want your thing and you haven't launched it yet, that's some traction, right? That's some data, like give me something to work off of rather than just an idea. We sometimes fund just ideas, but it's really rare. So just be careful there. Oh my gosh, such good tips. I can't wait to listen back to this

because I'm like vigorously taking notes because it's helpful for my own business. So I have one question based off, you mentioned the word moat. And then we're gonna get to a shadow line, by the way. I know you've been patiently waiting. So just hang tight. And if you guys have a question in the audience,

just raise your hand, we'll bring you up on stage. So I wanna ask you about the word moat because you've said it twice now. I was gonna ask you about it before and then it slipped my mind, but I would love to hear that because it sounds like it's your differentiators, but I'd love to hear that in your own words

because it's something I've never heard before. Yeah, I mean, it's literally like a moat. Like you think I think I learned about this in like third grade when I was learning about like different types of land structures, right? And like, you know, the moat is like the on ramp to like us island or, or something like that. Like it's that you've carved out your own space

in this world that is like, imagine being surrounded by water, right? Like people can't compete with you because you're so far away from them that, you know, your competitive advantage is that you have done something that is so radically different or technologically hard to copy that it becomes a moat. Sometimes your brand can be a moat.

For instance, actually a lot of investors told me that calling it Brit and Co was a moat for me because no one can literally copy Brit, like me the person, I mean, maybe that would be really weird if someone did that. has no one can literally copy Brit, like me the person, right? I mean, maybe that would be really weird if someone did that. In fact, this is a side story, but someone used my face on their retail packaging of their product line, and it was really awkward.

Anyway, so that's, you know, it's a competitive moat. Like, you know, I think I'm an investor in a company called Bobby, which has reinvented baby formula, which doesn't include all the crap that all other American formula creators having it like soy and corn syrup and terrible stuff for your child and actually spent four years getting FDA approval for their, you know,

secret ingredients and, you know, chemistry of their formula. That is a moat. That is really hard to compete with. In fact, they also have a manufacturing agreement that is a specialized manufacturing process. That is a moat. It's going to take these other giant corporations many years to figure out what this recipe is, how they're manufacturing it, how they're producing it, which gives Bobby the ability to really leapfrog ahead of some of these competitors. Oh my gosh, I love that concept. Like I said, I've heard of the word moat, but I've never heard of it in business.

I think that's really cool. I love uncovering new concepts from my listeners. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the six or seven figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her

knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework. It was like mind blowing to me.

I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in nine to five. And at the same time, she built her eight figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made her full-time hustle. And her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire she's earned a life-changing wealth.

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Hey, ya fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate. And I recently had best selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has

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Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-profiting. Thank you. Okay, Shadline, I see you're on stage. You've been patiently waiting. I'd love to hear your question and how we can help you today. First and foremost, Hi, Brett and everyone. Thank you so much for holding this space. A lot of the questions that I had were actually answered, but I'm pretty launched and I was just wondering if there were any

tips for market research? Oh, interesting question. I think market research is like so under-talked about by the way. I mean maybe it's because I'm just like, I mean I have a podcast called Teach Me Something New. I'm insatiably curious. Like, we just had a mold issue in our house, and now I could tell you about like 10 species of fungus and what they all do to your body and the air, because I just like go deep into this stuff, which by the way, I think is both a sign of a great entrepreneur and an investor, because you're just like,

really being able to figure out your market. So market research, I mean, honestly, for me, it's Google. I just, okay, let's say that I want to start, you know, an infant formula company. Like I was just talking about, I would go straight to Google and I would search, like, who are all the best infant formula companies in the US globally? If they are public, I go and look at their financial reports and actually pull data. And I did this for Britain Co-2. So when I was fundraising for Britain Co, at the very beginning, our strategy was to actually

go after some of the big craft retailers in the US, like Michaels stores and Joanne's fabrics and all of those. And it was all about like creativity and helping women learn to be creative. Anyway, all these companies were like, public, I was able to go get their data, like figure out exactly how much they were spending on things. Anyway, all these companies were like, public, I was able to go get their data, figure out exactly how much they were spending on things, what the revenue was like, what categories were most popular for them of the sales they were making, and I was able to then help that reinforced my strategy, which I definitely put in my pitch deck to investors as to like

why my strategy was going to be successful, you know, for instance, these two stores combined make up 90% of the market of U.S. craft retailers. This is a $33 billion market with two legacy brands owning the space. They do 98% of their revenue in brick and mortar stores and only 2% of their revenue in e-commerce or digital transactions. Britain Co is going to take market share by going after the 98% of digital transactions that they are not making right now in this $33 billion market.

If we can even penetrate 10% of that, that's a $3 billion business right there. You know, so that would be an example of how I would use market research to make a case, both to like prove my business strategy, but also again, to go pitch that to investors. That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Shabbline. All right, so we're going to continue on with the Q&A. We just have a couple of minutes left here. Payow, how can we help you today? Hi, thank you so much for every video we have for hosting this space. So I just started new, and I just post-graduated in social media marketing from from Kursk, Canada, and then I started, like, just after my graduation, I started my own business, and apart from that as well, I am also looking for a full-time opportunity. So my major challenge for business,

and I would love to ask a bit about this. Like, I have a few clients with me, like in the very first month, I got a few clients, but the thing is that even to attain a few more clients for me, I think the most challenging part is that how do you like show themselves that you are very confident? Because I think social media marketing is something that you have like so many competitors out there and how do you actually like sell yourself so good that

because I think I want to sell myself so well that people are actually attracted by the fact that okay there are so many competitors but then no she's the best or something like that. Yeah, well, okay, this all comes down to testimonials. So here's another thing that a lot of people make the mistake of, and I would, I would, sorry, women, but I would generalize this to you, all you out there. But we give away our products for free, or our services for free as we're getting started, instead of charging people for it, because we're just like, oh, you should have this.

They're like, I'll do this free coaching session with you or I'll come decorate your house for free. We're very like giving nurturing human beings, which is awesome, except for that makes us terrible business owners. However, the one time I tell people it's okay to give away something for free or for a discount, like a steep discount, is if they will give you something back in return. And in many times when you're just starting, that thing is like a legit testimonial before and after photos, you know, before and after transformation, like all of this stuff which

should be used and all of your marketing on your website, have them share it out to their networks. used in all of your marketing on your website, have them share it out to their networks, because frankly, this word of mouth is going to be so powerful for you. And oftentimes letting other people speak for you makes wonders beyond what you can do for yourself. If you go to the triselfmade.com website, there's a whole category of hundreds of testimonials,

of five-star reviews, of stories, of transformation, of how these women launched their businesses, started creating real revenue, changed their lives even just personally. And I would first and foremost go out and do that, because that is gonna make you stand apart from the rest of the crowd. It's why Amazon does so well.

Reviews are the heart of Amazon and Yelp and like every e-commerce site So, so please go out collect reviews and make that part of your story Also, I have a one more quick question to how do you guys go about like pricing like initially when I started I thought that you know, maybe I'm just underselling it But then when I actually heard the prices then I was like, okay, I am somewhere in the between But then now when I'm trying to attract clients, even from different countries, I want to know, understand the pricing. So how do you guys go about that? Yes, we have a whole section on this too in the self-made course. Pricing is an art. Pricing is marketing at the end of the day. And pricing is part of a business model. You want to make sure,

you know, you're thinking about pricing so that you have profitable margins, right? And so it depends on the product, the category, and where you want to fit into it. For instance, I was actually earlier today, mentoring a woman who's a fashion designer, and she sells dresses that are like $500, and they're going to be, they sell in like sacks

and Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf. And the other day, like Target approached her and was like, hey, I think you should put your dresses in Target. And that would cheapen the quality of her brand. That's not the brand that she is creating right now. That said, as it relates to like really minute changes in pricing, like should this be like 1999

or 39, 99, you know, you're reaching a mass market at those price points, that all comes down to a lot of testing. And sort of like, what will the market bear? And there are a lot of like, I can go on, this is a long, this could be an hour long lesson about pricing in general, because at the end of the day, there's a lot of ways to do it. If you remember, Netflix started at $7 a month. I don't know about you guys, long lesson about pricing in general because at the end of the day, there's a lot of ways to do it.

If you remember, Netflix started at $7 a month. I don't know about you guys, but my Netflix bill right now is $15 a month. Like they started low, accrued as many people onto the platform as possible at a really low price, got them hooked on it, and then slowly started raising the price of a time because they weren't churning their subscribers, right? It's always easier to do something like that. If you have a product that's really low cost to start, right? Otherwise, it's actually usually a bad idea to start at a low price and then start raising it. It's always better to start a high price and offer here in their discounts when

you can. Anyways, pricing is an art, pricing is marketing, and pricing should be a definitive part of your business model that should be tested as much as possible. Awesome question, Payout. You are such a wealth of information. Thank you so much for this awesome conversation. We're going to have the last question because I know that you have to run. We're going to get to the last question here, Hasham. How can we help you? What is your question for Brit?

Hi, Ella. Thank you so much. Hybrid. I work in tech and I've always found this topic so fascinating, but I want to know what the elements of a scalable business model are. Oh, I like this one. A scalable business model at the end of the day for me comes down to a scalable business model at the end of the day for me comes down to profitable unit economics. And so what I mean by that at the simplest form of it is can you acquire a customer for less than they will pay you, and when you do that at scale, does that still work? A lot of companies have gotten into trouble

by not focusing on profitable unit economics. There are some that have been more public. So for instance, the mattress brand Casper, or a lot of these direct to consumer businesses that were really popular over the last 10 years, raised a lot of intercapital money. So they thought they had a lot of money to spend and they were acquiring users.

Let's say they acquired a customer $100 through Facebook ads or Google searcher, whatever marketing they employed. Cost for customer was $100. And if that customer only spends $50 with you, you're in the whole $50 for every new customer you have, right? That is not awesome. And you might get a lot of customers.

If you have a billion dollars to spend on marketing, you're gonna get a lot of customers for a hundred dollars of customer, but you're gonna be in the red, right? Sometimes companies will be okay with that. Like Uber, for instance, or Amazon. I don't think Amazon wasn't profitable until just recently. And Uber still is not profitable. Some of these huge public companies still

are not profitable because they're okay, growing unprofitably because they're taking over entire industries, right? Like, Uber's trying to take over the transportation industry and they think that over time, again, as people are hooked and engaged on their core service, they will over time spend more. So that $50 is actually going to be $500

at the end of their lifetime of customer membership with Uber. However, that's where you get in a lot of trouble if that's not true. And if that doesn't prove to be true, you're going to be burning a lot of money. So nowadays, what a lot of investors look for are really profitable unit economics. For instance, for one company I'm an investor in, they spend $100 acquiring customer, but their lifetime value, the customer's lifetime value,

like their lifetime average spend with the company is $1,000. And I'm just like, how much more money can I give you to just go dump on growing your customer base? Because that is a $900 profit margin. There's a huge profit margin. And if you can do that at scale, if you can do that with many millions of customers, you're going to have a huge company. So that is what scalability means to me in terms of the business model. Awesome. Hashem, did we help you today? Is your question answered? Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right, Brett. So closing thoughts to leave everybody off on a high notes. My last question to you and kind of the closing thought for the night is there's lots of people listening to this conversation, either on Younger, Profiting Podcast or in this room here on Clubhouse, who are in corporate careers, they have a day job. They really want to become an entrepreneur, but they're so scared of taking that risk. They're so scared of taking that leap and feeling like very tied to that consistent paycheck. So what would you say to anybody out there who really

wants to start a business who feels passionate but is just scared to take the leap? Honestly, there's a one liner that I've always loved and it's sort of cheesy, but it's true, and it's one day or day one, you decide. And what I believe is true is that so many of us have dreams and aspirations for one day, and we wait for life to be perfect, and we wait for the perfect opportunity to happen, or as to have enough money in our bank account, or enough time in our day, or we're living in the exact right spot or we know the right people or we feel smart enough to take the big leap, to do the big thing that we've always wanted to do. But the problem is if this year hasn't been a testament to this, like please wake up because you do not have that much time.

Pandemics can happen, the world can change, your health can change. This is the time. And if you feel this inside of you, please don't dismiss it. This is something that you should know about life. Like, Oprah calls it the whispers. When you hear these voices inside of you asking, should I do this thing?

You know, I wish I could do this thing. One day I'll do this thing. That is your gut instinct telling you that maybe it's time to do this big thing. And if we listen to that gut instinct, more often than not, we end up as happier people. Even if the work is hard and the days are long, trust me, I've seen this happen to thousands of people.

They quit their job that they hate, and that's really boring for them. And they do the thing that's scary and courageous and totally out of their league, they are happier people. They come home so exhausted, but so excited and proud of themselves. And they are smiling and they're meeting new people and they're challenging themselves in ways

they never thought possible. And so please trust me and trust yourself to make one day day one and to consider what your world would be like if you finally took that leap and listened to that voice inside of you. Oh my God, that was so good. I love that make today day one.

That's so good, guys. Thank you so much, Britt, for all of your time, you know, make today day one. That's so good. Guys, thank you so much, Britt, for all of your time, all of your wisdom today. We really appreciate it. And, guys, if you're interested in self-made, if you haven't heard about it during this conversation, it's a new virtual course that Britt has. It brings together the world's top female entrepreneurs to teach you how to create a new business or grow your existing one. It's a 10-week course. If you want 20% off, I have a special promo code that Brick gave me for this room. So just DM me. We'll send you the code. And with that Brit, I'll let you go. I know you have to run. Thank you so much. And we'll close the room now.

And thanks again for everybody joining and contributing to this conversation. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig

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