November 24, 2021 • 14 mins
An app developer, an entrepreneur, an infopreneur, and the founder of the first black virtual mall.
Empowering the black community, sharing knowledge, the process of building a brand: domain name availability, social media availability, verifying it through the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office.), the importance of the brands you associate with and customer discovery.
Host: IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @akanundrum
Check out The Black Virual Mall: https://www.theblackvirtualmall.com/
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up, money movers, Welcome back. We've been on the
topic of entrepreneurship in your community, but I think more
than anything, you guys are ready to start scaling the
businesses you have. Today's seep dive into entrepreneurship and our
community is brought to you by our partners at MasterCard
bridging the Wealth Gap together with Freewood. I'll quincy, So
(00:27):
I want to go back to this viral meeting because
I feel like so many people resonated with what you
were sending out to the world. Can you kind of
run us through what your top tips are for the
early stage entrepreneur who wants to launch and start a business.
While I was going through the process, there were a
lot of steps that were out of sync. So for example,
(00:48):
you would apply for maybe UM say you're E, I, N,
and then they actually for your business phone number and
You're like, how would I have that when I'm not
even in business. So so many steps were out of
sequence that I needed that the seven steps, and I
showed them why logically this is the or should go
because this person is going to ask you for this,
you don't have that. So that went like a little
(01:11):
mini viral and I was so shocked because I guess
people like the simplicity of it and so and I
did an explanation for it. So I started sharing the journey,
sharing everything that I was learning from U C. L A,
from the horses, um, Shark Tank advocate right. One of
the things that I did was I would watch Shark
(01:31):
Tank and when they asked questions, if I couldn't answer it,
I would pause, write that question down and that be
able to go back and answer it for your own business. Yes, yes,
So when they said what's your customer acquisation costs? I
was like, I don't even know what that is. That
became my homework that you know, and filling it into
(01:52):
organically there. You know, every business is different, but there
is sort of a core formula to success in entrepreneurship.
And the more and more entrepreneurs that we have on
the show, and more and more we talk to them,
we begin to see those patterns and so being able
to share those and your story really helps, you know,
take out some of the stumbling box and pitfalls that
so many people have in entrepreneurship or just even in
(02:14):
starting a business. And I think it just motivates people
to know that they can do it. Yes, and I
think it's I think it's really imperative for us as
black people, the majority of us. You know, we of
course have a delay in entering commerce in the market,
and we all know why historically that is. And so
when you think about the fact that there are people
(02:35):
raised in families that have there from Legacy companies, Harrison companies,
and the language spoken in their home is completely different.
You know, we are just coming out of the concept
of get a good job, and many of them are
raised to literally own a business. And so I understand
the catch up work that we have to do, and
(02:58):
I said, if we could start of practice. We always
talk about group infonomics mean economics. I came up with
a concept of infonomics that if we could share this information,
you could, like you said, prevent the stumbling blocks. You
could save someone so much more time and they don't
have to do the guess work. So that became a
(03:18):
huge passion for me to just share it. And then
when I was able to see in real time that
it was effective, that it was working, and people will
come to me and say thank you so much. Oh
my god, I didn't know that I didn't know, the
difference between trademarks and copy rights. I didn't know, uh,
you know, a patent, and so that really kept me going,
(03:40):
you know, And I think this is one of the
things that the beauty again of the Internet and this
sort of the globalization of the world, that being able
to spread this in this education and knowledge to people
not just here in the United States. I mean, you
are touching people across the world. You know. It really
helps us uplift our communities, uplift brown and black and
Latin people all of the world because now they're able
(04:01):
to create businesses and generate wealth for themselves. Um. But
you know what's really interesting to me too, is you're
also a businesswoman, and you could have easily monetized this
platform and the knowledge that you were sharing and make
money selling classes. Why was it so important to you
to give this information for free. I understand that our
(04:22):
people have trust issues, um will warranted, you know, from
exterior to insterior um. We've been largely exploited very often,
especially when you have these sort of insecurities, you're vulnerable
to exploitation. And so as I saw that, I knew
(04:44):
it was more important for me to meet my goal
was for the information to land, and so I knew
that if you charge, if you come into a situation
and you're charging, people would kind of look at my
information sideways, you know, to say, well, is that just
because you're trying to sell me something or that? Because
right and so early on, a lot of I took
(05:06):
a lot of flak for that. A lot of people
told me, you know, you're stupid. You can be making
money and I'm gonna be very transparent. I was very broke. Um,
I was very very started from the bottom bags and
everything was going on. But for whatever reason, although it
was my personal page, always understood my integrity had to
(05:27):
remain in chact. I didn't ever know what I wanted
to do, but I said, if I don't have the
people's trust, I have nothing, and so um, it was
a huge honor for me and a confirmation for Forbes
to reach out or the one of the writers to
reach out and say, you know, I want to do
an article on you. And I was shocked. I'm I
(05:50):
was like, wait, you know, I'm I don't have money,
I'm I'm broke, right, So I was like, I don't
know what rumors going around and she says, No, it's
it's not about that. It's not that kind of an article.
It's because of what you have given for free. And
I think that's it. You know, oftentimes we look at
success as having a monetary number. You know, you're successful
(06:11):
if you've got bling or this, that and the other.
And what people have to understand is it's a it's
a marathon, it's not a sprint, and you were building
a brand. You were building all these things and it's
part of the process. It's not an overnight thing, and
it's not signified strictly by like your watch. Um So
I like that's that. I think that's an important lesson
that people have to learn. And you have to build
(06:32):
a brand, build trust definitely. So the first thing that
I would tell everyone that's absolutely critical is you have
to search for whatever name you're wanting to have at
the U. S. T PO website, trademark and Patent office. First,
you want to do a domain serve so you have
(06:52):
an idea see if it's the domain is taken so important. Yeah,
you want to search it of course in the trademark
office to make sure that it's not already in use.
You also want to search for it on every single
social media platform, and I'm stopping right there. There is
a great website for it because it kind of gets
a little overwhelming and complicated. So you can actually search
(07:14):
for like a name checker and it will search all
the social media tools. But what I love this because
once you get your name, you just need to make
sure that nobody else is in your pathway and then
there's so much confusion. So you'll have a brand that
they'll be UM hot tummy t underscore hot tummy T
(07:36):
forward slat you know, and so you and and um
you know dash hyphen that's very confusing for the current
So you really want continuity and consistency all the way
across UM. I also encourage people that even if you're
not going to participate on all of the social media
platforms squat on your name, just hold it because as
(07:57):
you grow in popularity, some one can definitely extort you
for that. So that's once when you come up with
that name, you want to just do your due diligence
and make sure that you, like you said, name checked
it and then secure it in all of those locations
on your social media real estate. The second one and
so also UM One of the factors that I tell
(08:20):
people as well is when you're solving, you have to
make sure that one you understand the customer's problem, and
that's your solution is something that they actually do need.
It's not something that's just in your head. And I
I love the term for this. We call it customer discovery.
So when um Quincy talks about getting education, google customer discovery.
(08:42):
Make sure that people actually want to buy your baby,
and this is you will. You will save yourself tons
of time by doing the work to understand that people
actually think your problem is valid, they will pay money
for it. This is like you, guys, listen to what
this woman is saying. Yes, that that part because we
get in love with our ideas. So my advice is
(09:04):
always don't fall in love with your product, your your
your product, fall in love with your customer's problem. Yes,
that's definitely one. And then also one of the things
that I teach people is there is a major destructor.
And there's a bold statement to say, but I can
(09:25):
guarantee you in the past, in the present, and in
the future this is the most major destructor to any
industry and it is convenience. Convenience will literally kill an
entire industry and birth a new one. Acts the taxi
industry about uber. So simply taking away a few steps
(09:46):
will make your business differentiate in a way that leans
people into you more and that goes into um the
other aspects. Make sure you take your customer's journey. So
many people don't do this. They will create a website
or a system or a product and a service, and
(10:08):
they'll check for certain things, but they never walk through
the journey themselves. So when you are creating these things,
go onto the website just like you're a regular customer
and go through the entire process. See if it's hard
to locate what you're asking them to locate, what is
the payout like? What is it? And then what is
(10:30):
the follow up like for the customers. And that will
help you too when you're going through a lot of
your frequently asked questions, because you will realize, please pay attention.
If someone asked you something three times, you need to
look into it and someone says where is it? You
can't just say, oh my god, they're not looking it's
on the site. They're lazy. Another person asks you you
(10:51):
need to go and check that feedback is everything. There's
so much knowledge to be gained from that. And on
top of that, I'd say, also have a twelve year
old and a seventy two year old do the process
you just yet at someone else who has not had
any experience with your site, hand them the phone and
say go do this and see if they're able to
do that. And another resource for that is hot Jar
(11:16):
will actually basically screen record your customers interfacing with your
website and you can see their movement and see you know, yes,
so you can see where they're struggling, you canus their exiting.
So that one is absolutely awesome, um, I think and
imperative for it. Um. Also, I would say instead of assuming, well,
(11:39):
social media is where most of us aren't, right, Okay,
so social media we come to social media for three things, information, education,
and to connect with people. And as business owners, we
forget that business owners sent to ruin social media. Let's
just be honest the ads and everything. So instead of
(11:59):
do is trying to sell me a product, create a
conversation first is and this builds community. This is what
drives people back. I love that. And this is you know,
I think that's the real key. That's the that's the
gold standard to how you can really leverage social media
and creating a brand on social media that people want
(12:20):
to come back to you because at the end of
the day, word of mouth is everything, and so you
want people to go out and spread your gospel organically. M.
So if you're entertaining me, um, you've already given me value. Right,
that's the value of being entertained, And and you're helping
me mentally and emotionally, right. Um, if you're educating me,
(12:41):
you're giving me value. So when you've given me value,
you've earned the right to sell to me. A lot
of people just assume that you can just come out
and sell. You need to earn that right. So if
your customers are your your your audience has now gotten
to know you and they like you because of what
you're giving them, and you keep your integrity intact, it's
(13:02):
a much easier conversion. It's not really even selling at
that point. You're just carefully placing a product or something
there that they need. Um. Speaking of integrity, I would
also say be very cautious about the brands that you
associate with. Don't go for the low hanging fruit. This
is you want to make sure that your customers and
(13:23):
your audience knows that if you do take an affiliation
or you're sponsoring a product, it's something that you know
they like or yes, and it's something and that integrity
and that fit. You know, it goes a long time,
and you know sadly, the Internet is a repository of
information that dates pack forever and ever, so you have
to be careful about who you align yourself with. Grincia,
(13:44):
thank you so much for joining us once again. It
has been a delight in a pleasure. You guys know
where to find her a Conundrum dot com or on
social media. Thank you so much, and Money Movers stay tuned.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the Bank Greenwood dot com and check
out the Money Moves podcast blog. Funny Moves is an
(14:10):
I heart radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by
Sunwise Media, Inc. For more podcasts on I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts from.
What's up, money movers, Welcome back. We've been on the
topic of entrepreneurship in your community, but I think more
than anything, you guys are ready to start scaling the
businesses you have. Today's seep dive into entrepreneurship and our
community is brought to you by our partners at MasterCard
bridging the Wealth Gap together with Freewood. I'll quincy, So
(00:27):
I want to go back to this viral meeting because
I feel like so many people resonated with what you
were sending out to the world. Can you kind of
run us through what your top tips are for the
early stage entrepreneur who wants to launch and start a business.
While I was going through the process, there were a
lot of steps that were out of sync. So for example,
(00:48):
you would apply for maybe UM say you're E, I, N,
and then they actually for your business phone number and
You're like, how would I have that when I'm not
even in business. So so many steps were out of
sequence that I needed that the seven steps, and I
showed them why logically this is the or should go
because this person is going to ask you for this,
you don't have that. So that went like a little
(01:11):
mini viral and I was so shocked because I guess
people like the simplicity of it and so and I
did an explanation for it. So I started sharing the journey,
sharing everything that I was learning from U C. L A,
from the horses, um, Shark Tank advocate right. One of
the things that I did was I would watch Shark
(01:31):
Tank and when they asked questions, if I couldn't answer it,
I would pause, write that question down and that be
able to go back and answer it for your own business. Yes, yes,
So when they said what's your customer acquisation costs? I
was like, I don't even know what that is. That
became my homework that you know, and filling it into
(01:52):
organically there. You know, every business is different, but there
is sort of a core formula to success in entrepreneurship.
And the more and more entrepreneurs that we have on
the show, and more and more we talk to them,
we begin to see those patterns and so being able
to share those and your story really helps, you know,
take out some of the stumbling box and pitfalls that
so many people have in entrepreneurship or just even in
(02:14):
starting a business. And I think it just motivates people
to know that they can do it. Yes, and I
think it's I think it's really imperative for us as
black people, the majority of us. You know, we of
course have a delay in entering commerce in the market,
and we all know why historically that is. And so
when you think about the fact that there are people
(02:35):
raised in families that have there from Legacy companies, Harrison companies,
and the language spoken in their home is completely different.
You know, we are just coming out of the concept
of get a good job, and many of them are
raised to literally own a business. And so I understand
the catch up work that we have to do, and
(02:58):
I said, if we could start of practice. We always
talk about group infonomics mean economics. I came up with
a concept of infonomics that if we could share this information,
you could, like you said, prevent the stumbling blocks. You
could save someone so much more time and they don't
have to do the guess work. So that became a
(03:18):
huge passion for me to just share it. And then
when I was able to see in real time that
it was effective, that it was working, and people will
come to me and say thank you so much. Oh
my god, I didn't know that I didn't know, the
difference between trademarks and copy rights. I didn't know, uh,
you know, a patent, and so that really kept me going,
(03:40):
you know, And I think this is one of the
things that the beauty again of the Internet and this
sort of the globalization of the world, that being able
to spread this in this education and knowledge to people
not just here in the United States. I mean, you
are touching people across the world. You know. It really
helps us uplift our communities, uplift brown and black and
Latin people all of the world because now they're able
(04:01):
to create businesses and generate wealth for themselves. Um. But
you know what's really interesting to me too, is you're
also a businesswoman, and you could have easily monetized this
platform and the knowledge that you were sharing and make
money selling classes. Why was it so important to you
to give this information for free. I understand that our
(04:22):
people have trust issues, um will warranted, you know, from
exterior to insterior um. We've been largely exploited very often,
especially when you have these sort of insecurities, you're vulnerable
to exploitation. And so as I saw that, I knew
(04:44):
it was more important for me to meet my goal
was for the information to land, and so I knew
that if you charge, if you come into a situation
and you're charging, people would kind of look at my
information sideways, you know, to say, well, is that just
because you're trying to sell me something or that? Because
right and so early on, a lot of I took
(05:06):
a lot of flak for that. A lot of people
told me, you know, you're stupid. You can be making
money and I'm gonna be very transparent. I was very broke. Um,
I was very very started from the bottom bags and
everything was going on. But for whatever reason, although it
was my personal page, always understood my integrity had to
(05:27):
remain in chact. I didn't ever know what I wanted
to do, but I said, if I don't have the
people's trust, I have nothing, and so um, it was
a huge honor for me and a confirmation for Forbes
to reach out or the one of the writers to
reach out and say, you know, I want to do
an article on you. And I was shocked. I'm I
(05:50):
was like, wait, you know, I'm I don't have money,
I'm I'm broke, right, So I was like, I don't
know what rumors going around and she says, No, it's
it's not about that. It's not that kind of an article.
It's because of what you have given for free. And
I think that's it. You know, oftentimes we look at
success as having a monetary number. You know, you're successful
(06:11):
if you've got bling or this, that and the other.
And what people have to understand is it's a it's
a marathon, it's not a sprint, and you were building
a brand. You were building all these things and it's
part of the process. It's not an overnight thing, and
it's not signified strictly by like your watch. Um So
I like that's that. I think that's an important lesson
that people have to learn. And you have to build
(06:32):
a brand, build trust definitely. So the first thing that
I would tell everyone that's absolutely critical is you have
to search for whatever name you're wanting to have at
the U. S. T PO website, trademark and Patent office. First,
you want to do a domain serve so you have
(06:52):
an idea see if it's the domain is taken so important. Yeah,
you want to search it of course in the trademark
office to make sure that it's not already in use.
You also want to search for it on every single
social media platform, and I'm stopping right there. There is
a great website for it because it kind of gets
a little overwhelming and complicated. So you can actually search
(07:14):
for like a name checker and it will search all
the social media tools. But what I love this because
once you get your name, you just need to make
sure that nobody else is in your pathway and then
there's so much confusion. So you'll have a brand that
they'll be UM hot tummy t underscore hot tummy T
(07:36):
forward slat you know, and so you and and um
you know dash hyphen that's very confusing for the current
So you really want continuity and consistency all the way
across UM. I also encourage people that even if you're
not going to participate on all of the social media
platforms squat on your name, just hold it because as
(07:57):
you grow in popularity, some one can definitely extort you
for that. So that's once when you come up with
that name, you want to just do your due diligence
and make sure that you, like you said, name checked
it and then secure it in all of those locations
on your social media real estate. The second one and
so also UM One of the factors that I tell
(08:20):
people as well is when you're solving, you have to
make sure that one you understand the customer's problem, and
that's your solution is something that they actually do need.
It's not something that's just in your head. And I
I love the term for this. We call it customer discovery.
So when um Quincy talks about getting education, google customer discovery.
(08:42):
Make sure that people actually want to buy your baby,
and this is you will. You will save yourself tons
of time by doing the work to understand that people
actually think your problem is valid, they will pay money
for it. This is like you, guys, listen to what
this woman is saying. Yes, that that part because we
get in love with our ideas. So my advice is
(09:04):
always don't fall in love with your product, your your
your product, fall in love with your customer's problem. Yes,
that's definitely one. And then also one of the things
that I teach people is there is a major destructor.
And there's a bold statement to say, but I can
(09:25):
guarantee you in the past, in the present, and in
the future this is the most major destructor to any
industry and it is convenience. Convenience will literally kill an
entire industry and birth a new one. Acts the taxi
industry about uber. So simply taking away a few steps
(09:46):
will make your business differentiate in a way that leans
people into you more and that goes into um the
other aspects. Make sure you take your customer's journey. So
many people don't do this. They will create a website
or a system or a product and a service, and
(10:08):
they'll check for certain things, but they never walk through
the journey themselves. So when you are creating these things,
go onto the website just like you're a regular customer
and go through the entire process. See if it's hard
to locate what you're asking them to locate, what is
the payout like? What is it? And then what is
(10:30):
the follow up like for the customers. And that will
help you too when you're going through a lot of
your frequently asked questions, because you will realize, please pay attention.
If someone asked you something three times, you need to
look into it and someone says where is it? You
can't just say, oh my god, they're not looking it's
on the site. They're lazy. Another person asks you you
(10:51):
need to go and check that feedback is everything. There's
so much knowledge to be gained from that. And on
top of that, I'd say, also have a twelve year
old and a seventy two year old do the process
you just yet at someone else who has not had
any experience with your site, hand them the phone and
say go do this and see if they're able to
do that. And another resource for that is hot Jar
(11:16):
will actually basically screen record your customers interfacing with your
website and you can see their movement and see you know, yes,
so you can see where they're struggling, you canus their exiting.
So that one is absolutely awesome, um, I think and
imperative for it. Um. Also, I would say instead of assuming, well,
(11:39):
social media is where most of us aren't, right, Okay,
so social media we come to social media for three things, information, education,
and to connect with people. And as business owners, we
forget that business owners sent to ruin social media. Let's
just be honest the ads and everything. So instead of
(11:59):
do is trying to sell me a product, create a
conversation first is and this builds community. This is what
drives people back. I love that. And this is you know,
I think that's the real key. That's the that's the
gold standard to how you can really leverage social media
and creating a brand on social media that people want
(12:20):
to come back to you because at the end of
the day, word of mouth is everything, and so you
want people to go out and spread your gospel organically. M.
So if you're entertaining me, um, you've already given me value. Right,
that's the value of being entertained, And and you're helping
me mentally and emotionally, right. Um, if you're educating me,
(12:41):
you're giving me value. So when you've given me value,
you've earned the right to sell to me. A lot
of people just assume that you can just come out
and sell. You need to earn that right. So if
your customers are your your your audience has now gotten
to know you and they like you because of what
you're giving them, and you keep your integrity intact, it's
(13:02):
a much easier conversion. It's not really even selling at
that point. You're just carefully placing a product or something
there that they need. Um. Speaking of integrity, I would
also say be very cautious about the brands that you
associate with. Don't go for the low hanging fruit. This
is you want to make sure that your customers and
(13:23):
your audience knows that if you do take an affiliation
or you're sponsoring a product, it's something that you know
they like or yes, and it's something and that integrity
and that fit. You know, it goes a long time,
and you know sadly, the Internet is a repository of
information that dates pack forever and ever, so you have
to be careful about who you align yourself with. Grincia,
(13:44):
thank you so much for joining us once again. It
has been a delight in a pleasure. You guys know
where to find her a Conundrum dot com or on
social media. Thank you so much, and Money Movers stay tuned.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the Bank Greenwood dot com and check
out the Money Moves podcast blog. Funny Moves is an
(14:10):
I heart radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by
Sunwise Media, Inc. For more podcasts on I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts from.
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