Episode #44 - Business Reflections Season One Finale

Episode Transcript

Finale

[00:00:00] Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business.

Meredith Matics: Welcome to the season one recap of Business Reflections podcast. It's crazy that it's already been a year of podcasting. Thank you to all of our listeners and our fantastic guests who have joined us on our first season. We've had so many wonderful, smart, funny guests on the show, and we've had a great time discussing the important topics for small businesses and small business owners. 

As we wrap up season one of Business Reflections and prepare for season two, we wanted to share with you some highlights from our top three episodes of season one. So let's get started. Marina Tran-Vu, CEO and founder of EQUO joined us as a guest to discuss creating sustainable products. Marianna shared with us, her expertise and her experience in building an international eco-friendly company with [00:01:00] sustainable products.

Here are some highlights from that episode. 

 What were some of the challenges you experienced with creating a sustainable approach?

Marina Tran-Vu: Yeah, I would say the biggest one. And this is probably what most people will say. Being the category in the industry is just costs right now, if you take a look at plastic straws, they're really, really inexpensive, a 10th of a cent or less. So you can get them next to nothing for a thousand or 10,000 straws.

And then you have paper straws, which are kind of the secondary wave and the second generation of straws, which are averaging anywhere from two and a half cents or so then the sustainable option. They're actually around twice as much. And the materials themselves are, are a lot more costly. That was our biggest battle is how do we create a product that was again, accessible to a large audience and available to them in a number of different countries and in different channels as well. But how do we make it cost-effective enough for them to adopt it? 

Meredith Matics: Do you have resources or tips or [00:02:00] even recommendations for small businesses that are trying to become more sustainable or at least trying to create products that are sustainable. 

Marina Tran-Vu: Yeah, well, I would say first off, my biggest tip for any business, just in general, starting out is take a look online at all these different Facebook groups.

Oddly enough, Reddit is a great place to search different groups because there's so much support out there. If you're looking to start a sustainable business, same sort of thing, there's a lot of sustainable groups out there, newsletters that you can subscribe to.

And that tell you a little bit about people's journeys around the sustainable space. The biggest tip I would have is when you're looking at the sustainable space, make sure that you keep in mind that you should be able to do what you can. Not do everything completely perfectly. One example is I seen a lot of sustainable companies, they're really, really worried about how their product is packaged or shipped out or working with Amazon. You know, for us, that's a huge concern too. We don't want to go against what we stand [00:03:00] for with providing a hundred percent plastic free items. And then having them shipped in like an Amazon mailer that's plastic, but it's definitely not something that we want, but what we can do is make progress on that and made little steps,advocate Amazon to try to go and move towards plastic free packaging and mailers. I would say, make sure that you don't be too hard on yourself for not doing everything perfectly and perfectly sustainable at the beginning. Just do your best.

Meredith Matics: I think that's a huge point. You've brought it up twice. Now the concept that it's a lot of people think it's all or nothing. It's making small differences every day is whats going to be imporatnt in the long run.

Marina Tran-Vu: A hundred percent. There's a saying out there that's very popular in the sustainability community, but it's better that we all do sustainability imperfectly, rather than a small number of people doing it perfectly.

Meredith Matics: I want to know what is one piece of advice you have received from someone that you want to share with a small business owner?

Marina Tran-Vu: I think the best piece of advice that I've gotten [00:04:00] from pretty much everyone around me, is that entrepreneurship, it is tough, but one of the things you have to do and you have to make sure you do is not burn yourself out and to take a break. It's probably one of the things that's counterintuitive to what people say you have to work the 24 hours or 19 hours per day with three hours, which is to be honest, what I had experienced as well.

That's not sustainable. That's not sustainable in any sort of way for your body and for your business. Especially if you're a person who's employing a bunch of different people and a team who's trying to support you. Take a break whenever you need to. Don't work yourself to the bone because if your health is not there, then there's no point in continuing on with your business.

Meredith Matics: Another one of the most loved episodes from the season was when we had special guest Adrian Contreras, owner of Brot coffee, we discussed the effects of changing regulations, the importance of communicating with your community [00:05:00] and staying connected with your customers. Also side note. Definitely. I'm still getting my coffee fix from them.

Here's some of the highlights.

 Yes. So tell me a little bit about you know, how has your company been affected by the changing regulations and how has that effected you as a business owner?

Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, as, as a business owner, it, it's, it's difficult because there are your responsibilities as somebody that's working directly with the community to make the right choices based on your customer's needs. And that, that always takes precedence over anything that you do. And right now, because we're dealing with such a strained environment, whether it's, you know, dealing with, you know, the COVID itself or the political involvement of COVID, it gets really tricky, but at the end of the day, you, you just have to be responsible with what you're doing and say, regardless of where I stand or my employee stand, or, you know, or when my manager stand or whatever, we [00:06:00] have to take care of each other. And so that's, that's sort of been our approach from the beginning is that, you know lets just listento what our customers need, listen to what our employees need, because that for us was a big, I wouldn't call it a hurdle, but it was something that we had to hit head on to make sure that everybody was comfortable.

And admittedly, there was some straining moments of trying to figure out exactly who is comfortable. Who's not comfortable.How do we make this right for everybody, eventually everybody gets on the same page, but we, since day one, even before COVID, we've always, we've always operated with this idea of, you know, we want to know how you guys were feeling so never feel afraid to come to us and, you know, open the conversation to say, this is what I need right now. This is what, how I feel comfortable right now. How do we make sure everybody is taken care of in a way that's during this time with COVID and right during the time on the other side of COVID is that we still need connection and we still need, you know, some way to feel like as though we're [00:07:00] still a part of something and, and that's sort of been the biggest hurdle right there.

Meredith Matics: How have you taken to communicating with the community and then communicating with your customers? So it's kind of a two-part question. I mean, start with the community, I guess, is what's the best way that you've found to communicate what the community's needs are besides the obvious human need of connection?

How do you know what, like basically, how are you taking the temperature of the, of your community? 

Adrian Contreras: Well, you know, and, and for us, we have a unique situation here because we have, I was having this conversation with another coffee shop owner, and they were asking us how will we've been sort of interacting with the nurses and doctors since we're right next door to, to two hospitals and a major medical center next to us.

Meredith Matics: Yeah. 

Adrian Contreras: Yeah. Sort of assume you're going toget a good, you know, temperature read as to what's going on. But even with having direct one-on-ones, it's split down the middle. I mean, some, some are concerned and some couldn't care less. Some say it's a bigger deal. Some say it's not. So, so at the end of the day, we're kind of [00:08:00] like, well, we can't really rely on that piece of it.

Let's just see how our customers feel. Just letting my customers know this is where we're at. This is where we stand, you know, let us know how you feel. And then it's, you know, sort of getting, getting a gauge on the one-on-ones when people come in the store and because, well, I mean, if we go back to when there was, you know, mask or no mask. and it was so conflicting and I think that's where it got really difficult for businesses is that, you know, where do you go for accurate information as it's changing so rapidly? You know, sometimes I found myself relying on my employees to be like, no, this just changed recently to say, "okay, well, if that's, if that's the new thing, then let's, let's figure out a way to adapt" 

Meredith Matics: What do you think has like, that has made your business so resilient in the time of change?

Adrian Contreras: A lot of the shops that we, that we work side by side with made little adjustments and they made changes to their business operations. And some of the shops we're sort of adapting [00:09:00] this idea of like a pantry and environment of, you know, selling off the milk and selling off eggs and selling off, you know, whatever they could really to sort of maintain some level of cashflow.

But it's, it's difficult because you, you have to decide. From the get-go. If this is what we're going to do, then we're going to go all in. 

Meredith Matics: Last but not least. One of our favorite episodes of season one was when we had special guest Bina Jhaveri founder of A to Zen Coaching to discuss conscious leadership on the podcast. She shared with us the four cornerstones of conscious leadership, how to implement it as a small business owner and the positive long-term impacts of conscious leadership in your business.

Here are some of the highlights from that conversation.

 So can you actually start us off by telling us what is conscious leadership? 

Bina Jhaveri: Absolutely. What I truly believe today is that leadership is the big buzzword and we're always [00:10:00] talking about leadershipand I honestly believe to break this word up into just leading. When we talk about leading, it really starts with leading ourselves and our entire life and our way of being.

Sometimes we look at leadership as a role, but when I talk about conscious leadership, it's really about connecting how you show up every single day, how alive and awake you feel. Towards your own life, as well as your value system and where you're taking that and how that supports you in every single compartment of your life, whether that's how you show up as a leader in your career, how you show up as a leader, as a parent, as a partner or a friend or anything else that you do in your life.

When you're really conscious about this, what you're doing is you're moving forward with your entire being, your mind, your body and your spirit. Force. And when you do that, [00:11:00] you become absolutely unstoppable.

Meredith Matics: So can you guide us through how being a good conscious leader of like, let's say a small business would play out in the day? 

Bina Jhaveri: Yeah, it's a great question. Because most of the time, when you think about a leader, a small business leader, what they're really going through is like stress.

They're going through overwhelmed. They're fragmented, they're burnt out. They're like thinking about what is the next thing I can focus on or do, how do I get that next client? How do I put out that fire? The vision, if you notice is very, very in the moment and shortsighted. When we talk about setting a conscious vision, You're really, really mindful of the bigger picture.

You're actually able to bring your head up when you're in an emotional state, for example, of, you know, overwhelm fatigue or exhaustion or heightened emotion, your behaviors start to play out. You know [00:12:00] exactly based on those emotions, conscious leadership really allows you to become the intentional entrepreneur.

When you're intentional. You're actually very conscious about that. What you're doing when you're doing it, how you're doing it and the effects of what you're doing. So you're either in a very powerful state of mind or you're in a fight or flight state of mind. It's completely dead. 

Meredith Matics: So it's like moving your mindset from coming into work and opening up and being like, oh my God, 300 emails.

This one employee didn't show up and being like, okay, even though I am internally freaking out, you know, what I want to present is all right, I'm going to set aside, I'm going to present an essence of understanding, okay, this person's out. Why are they out? Is it critical? I'm going to be empathetic towards it. And then I'm going to do things with a calm, taking that second to take a step back. Is that what I'm hearing? 

Bina Jhaveri: Yeah. Part of it is that, and it's also about letting go of things [00:13:00] you can't control. It's a shift in how we look at things, right? So if something happens, like you said, I love this example of somebody didn't come in and here we go again, I've got like 300 emails and it's like, I have to get through.

First of all, I have this thriving business and therefore I get this opportunity to come into a full email box. People want to work with me and do business with me and things are moving and flowing. I get the opportunity to pace myself. I'm the one who's either putting the pressure on myself or I'm the one who's saying, you know what? I've got this, I'm going to figure out a system or a way or a strategy of what I can handle, what I need to offset, what somebody else can take on and I can delegate.

Meredith Matics: So Bina, what is one piece of advice that you've received personally, that you want to share with another business owner? 

Bina Jhaveri: The piece of advice that I would really love to share, and I again say this with all my heart, is is that don't think you [00:14:00] have to do every single thing by yourself. Don't think that you have to put everything on your own two shoulders because that heaviness.

Is heavy. Ask for support, invest in yourself, invest in others around you. Help empower other people to create wealth as well. Everyone gets to grow and enjoy a great life when everything is divided on equal shoulders, people who. Expertise get to demonstrate that and help you move closer to where you want to go faster.

This has been a huge, huge, huge thing in my business. Once I started understanding this, it changed everything for me, because a lot of people are small businesses or solo preneurs, and it just gets to be a lot of pressure. 

Meredith Matics: Thank you guys for making season one so much fun. And I cannot wait to bring you season two. So stay tuned.

Please note that [00:15:00] these are thoughts and opinions alone. For tax advice, please see your CPA or tax advisor, tax professional. For business advice and legal entities. Please see your local business, lawyer, or attorney for advice. And if you'd like to reach out to us for any topics or questions about any subject, any episode, you can reach us at podcast@maticsbilling.com that's podcast.

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