Rethinking Business Meet the Founders Ep.72221

good afternoon good afternoon everybody it's your boy leroy mckenzie jr and the impact builder and it's a another session of our meet the founders um live stream um i'm coming to you today with uh one of one of the founders of the um of the rethinking uh business rethinking business accelerator program that we have going on that's coming up that we have coming up and that we're going to be here talking with you a little bit about today um with one of our co-founders brother um shadeed eliza and then hopefully we'll be soon we'll be joined soon by our other co-founder lakeisha womack but we are just thrilled to be here to talk with you about this accelerated program we're excited about it we actually want to be able to let you know the the great things uh that the great possibilities and the great things that are coming up with the asset with this accelerated program it's going to impact the uh community it's going to impact those of us um that are looking to do great things with uh aspiring entrepreneurs and uh startup uh set up businesses as well as those seasoned uh entrepreneurs that have businesses but we want to kind of fine-tune what they do uh or maybe even um kind of uh reinvent themselves of what i call the ship what they do is shift themselves into uh other aspects and and as everyone knows with the pandemic that we've been dealing with many many businesses entrepreneurs have had to shift or have had to start over or have actually taken this opportunity to actually start a business so that's what we're here for that's what we're here to do to be able to assist you in being able to bring your vision to reality so i'm gonna uh pass the mic over to my my good friend and my good my uh co-partner co-founder uh shadeed elisa to let him introduce himself again to you all and then we'll get into our conversation about what we're gonna talk about today talking about the accelerator program great afternoon those of you who are tuning in on the impact builders facebook live channel so i'm shady laser and i am a us navy veteran i'm an entrepreneur and in what i do in terms of helping businesses it centers around the idea that you have knowledge you have skills you have abilities whether from your job or from your self-employment and so the time for money trap is one riddle that we must all solve meaning if you don't find a way to earn money when you're not working or while you're asleep you will work until your body breaks down or until you expire or die and so that's the riddle we all must solve and how i help entrepreneurs experts coaches authors speakers solve that problem is through packaging your knowledge into digital assets which can be courses webinars checklists that live online you apply a price tag to it and what begins to happen is you separate your time spent from your money earned and it allows you to have the freedom to live the life that you deserve absolutely absolutely so um thanks for being here taking time out just to give you all a little bit of background information on me um i am leroy mckenzie jr again but i'm also the president and ceo of jnf enterprises and what we do is we actually um we are a distribution publishing and business consulting firm located here in baltimore and we assist um authors uh aspiring authors entrepreneurs aspiring entrepreneurs uh in bringing their visions to reality and we do that through through books through um our what's up baltimore magazine uh as well as through our business consulting uh assisting uh those aspiring entrepreneurs to put a uh plan together on becoming an entrepreneur and looking at their particular business or industry that they can come into um to be able to uh figure out how to be able to bring that to reality uh as well as those uh aren't those startup entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that are already in business but uh looking to grow their business or their brand uh and so we work with them from a branding and marketing capacity uh to be able to fulfill that dream that dream and that that vision that they have for them so we want to thank y'all for uh for tuning in today within being with us so uh shadee let let's start off by just talking about the um the rethinking um business accelerator what it is what is it um and then we can start to talk a little bit about um what it encompasses um give them a little bit of an overview of it we're not going to talk about the whole thing because we want folks to be able to go uh where they can go and they can actually um uh find out more information about it uh but this will give them some you know just some background on it some overview of it and then how they can actually become a part of the program well the interesting thing is that if we were to sit here and talk about all the details of the accelerator we'd be here for about two days simply because it's a curriculum that spans several weeks and so what you need to know as far as the accelerator itself is that we sat down meaning uh lakeisha uh leroy myself sat down and defined a curriculum of how to build a uh effective and compliant business within our community so we took all the the the heartaches and heartbreaks and let's say partnerships that may have fallen short or the examples of the the the business owners who have talent but when the big opportunity came they didn't have the systems to stay afloat and also those individuals who have breakthrough success but because they weren't unable to build a team they were unable to navigate the legal world and the tax world they ultimately fell short so we looked and said not how is my business perfect but what would be the uh perfect uh business in 2021 and beyond and we put together a curriculum so it's not just let's say um bright ideas it's actual documented curriculum that we're going to guide each cohort of businesses through so what you receive is uh dedicated instruction from lakeisha leroy and myself uh every week and uh with various assignments and uh strategy live q a hot seats that will allow you to grow your business with dedicated support and in today's world you can sit on facebook for an hour and receive up to 12 advertisements on tools and templates and techniques to grow your business but what is often missing is that uh support and so we we looked at the gaps that we see in many other programs and we decided to provide a uh solution to it now what would you say leroy is the the part of the accelerator that excites you the most that excites me the most um to be honest with you um i i i'm i'm passionate about and i hate to do because it is about branding because i i like to be able to figure out how how you create yourself as a business how do you get people to know who you are one of the things that that i've noticed about um and i don't know if you've watched this at all but on the history channel they've had these documentaries series um titans that built america food that's built america um machines that have built america it's just been these cities docu-series on businesses that have that were started you know these fortune 500 companies that we know i'm talking boeing um nabisco pepsi um chrysler um rolls royce all of these businesses that we know the names of uh but we didn't know the background so and how they got their start and how they were able to create um themselves how they were able to create the brands how they were able to go from these small businesses into the conglomerates that they are now you know these fortune 500 companies so that excites me so what i'm i'm watching the city series and i'm just i'm i'm in heaven because i love it because i love to be able to see wow how did they how did how did chrysler go from doing this to doing this how did ford go from you know having you know the creating the model t to what we see now how did that cut and then the overall car industry how did it go from um uh forward creating the the the what we call now i guess the manufacturing of cars because important i think individual cars have been created prior to him but he was the ford was the first to create the the manufacturing of multiple um you know the the manufacturing where he could where you could pull out you know hundreds of cars a day whatever or whatever the amount was that they put out in the day so um it's just it that interests me that fascinates that fascinated me uh and then one other thing chrysler and and i can't i cannot for the life of me i haven't had a chance to look it back up but whoever it was that um that built the empire state building them and you know the empire state building i think at the time back in the 1920s 30s when it was being built the chrysler building was being built at the same time so there was this competition between the chrysler building being built and the empire state building being built so of course everything is public record so they knew how tall they wanted to be the tallest building in the you know in the in the country at the time so they're having this competition who can get done first so um they they build both of them are built just almost about the same height they didn't want that they wanted to be one a little bit big taller than the other so if you notice the empire state building has that little staple on the top of it well that steeple was built so that it would be something like 12 to i think 12 to 20 feet taller than the chrysler building so i'm learning about these things watching this documentary and you wouldn't know that you know other than watching that the documentary that they were in this competition for that so that was fascinating to me and what made me actually it took me back to that was the other day as you know or last week um the the um which is the the billionaire that owns virgin um airlines went into space last last week right he went in or he went up a week earlier than who jefferson's just the other day same concept that same competition type thing and and both of them are you know their their businesses and companies are well known and everything like that but what does that do that creates even more attention to the brand that they are japa's the amazon brand and um i can't think of his name off the top of my head right now but the gentleman i think it's branson richard branson yes yeah rich branson that owns virgin virgin airlines and a whole bunch of other businesses and stuff too but to see that competition reminded me of the chrysler and empire state building competition so i get excited about things like that where the just the beginnings of of people having this vision you know and wanting to be able to see it come to reality everything can you imagine having uh uh you know i i mean i'm sure of you to ask jeff bezos if he thought about being in space you know 10 years ago that what might have been a thought of his ten years ago maybe let's say 20 years ago because i'm sure it took some time to remember to be able to do what they did that just didn't happen overnight so um but those kinds of those kinds of things kind of get me you know excited so i see the same kind of you know vision and ingenuity in the session in the sessions that we're going to be doing and more specifically branding how do you create that brand how do you get people to know who you are and the products and services that you that you offer excellent excellent yes it it the curriculum itself just to give an overview of the curriculum which you can find at rethinkingbusiness.thinkgiffic.com it will be in the description or the first comment on the uh live video feed here that is rethinkingbusiness.thinkific.com what leroy was describing is session seven known as building your brand now this curriculum again you you will not find many curriculums any at all really that go into certain details such as insurance or let's say uh contingency planning what happens if you run your business and you die what happens then yeah where does where does all the the the rights the intellectual property go and so building out your your team and these are some some details that it excite me about the curriculum because again in going through the curriculum this is not to say that uh our businesses are the the the gold standard this is raising the standard and we all go through it together and of course we're going to focus on our strengths but in looking at certain areas we often teaching the curriculum we must often ask well how can we do this better or if we were to start fresh then how we approach it and that's the the beauty of when you teach you learn and so it's it the the applicants and students of our first cohort which by the way will be kicking off uh on september 11th and we'll be going through uh each week until december 18th so kicks off september 11th and we'll be wrapping up graduation december 18th and so there's a lot to cover in the eight week uh process but if you're the type of person who wants to uh let's say go to the next level then uh this opportunity is one that you should definitely take advantage of absolutely absolutely now you asked me what which session am i looking for that bit that i'm most excited about which one excites you the most well if we go into uh session number three which is know your numbers that is the uh topic that is everything as far as um got to add a little extra to to that week because when you think about your business when you think about your life your numbers are when we talk about our health for example the numbers dictate how you might be on your way out versus someone who will live a long healthy life the lack of awareness of our numbers is ultimately what stops us from operating at the highest level and so in business it's no different if you don't know what how much it costs to make your product how much you need to pay your team members and from your your profits what is what is to be allocated to run your business you will not stay in business so for those who are especially uh starting out let's say within the first three years this is going to be rewiring the brain so that you think about how you're doing business on an entirely different wavelength and for those in the cohort who may be more experienced or established it allows you to start from the the basics because many of us run businesses based on talent based on let's say being a good speaker or many other uh skill sets but when you're actually running a business that's where the numbers come into play so that particular module or session is i believe is going to deliver a high value for all who are accepted into the cohort yeah and see that that's the thing and that's probably to to to your point i actually think that's probably the most important one understanding the numbers because i've always been fascinated with um with business but how money works a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs don't have that skill of understanding how money works when it comes to their business doing because everything that you're looking at from an aspiring entrepreneur to a startup to even being a seasoned entrepreneur has to do with like you said understanding those numbers what do those numbers mean you can have all the numbers in the world in front of you but do you understand what they mean and what they tell you because your numbers are going to tell you a lot of different things they'll tell you a lot of different things so being able to understand them and what they mean to you as a business as an industry um and that's one of the things that i had to learn i i had to learn that about what what what are my numbers telling me or do do these numbers matter reading you know understanding that p l statement understanding uh the power saving the forecasting and budgeting how do i do that what what does all of that mean and i wrote this down shadee because i wanted i knew we're going to be talking about all of this today and i looked this up in 2020 do you know that there were 804 thousand 398 businesses that were started last year in 2020 uh uh over a hundred k of them shut down in 20 businesses shut down in 2020 over 100 000 businesses shut down in 2020 and i was like man that's interesting you know about how many people started the business and then how many people close and and we we know the majority of those businesses that were closed what was due to covet 19 that had to do with that but the question is even with kovid did those that had to close their business down did they understand their numbers and what needed to happen in order for that shift that they would need to have made you know in order to be able to for them to be able to even sustain themselves you know to be able to make it into 2021 but even to make it as far as we are now halfway through 2021 you know what what do those numbers mean to you you know and and how are you able to use what you were learning during that pandemic hey how do i you know how do i keep these doors open how do i you know how do i keep customers you know clients going there were some people that did very well including jeff bezos did very well during the pending but then on the flip side of that you had some some others i think they would i would think the article that i was reading i think one of the hardest industries that would take of course with restaurants restaurants hotels that travel industry the travel industry was hit the most because that's where a lot of people you know people weren't just weren't going with but you know airlines they were hit um or anything that kind of had to do with the travel industry i think was was pretty much hit hit um deeply with that and everything like that so understanding your numbers you know even before you start your business or going you know if you're a startup is very important um the those when you're doing the business plan which is one of the things that we take to take you through is is doing those initial projections how do you even forecast grabbing numbers out of thin air what does that look like you know i'm starting this new business but do i know how much you know it's gonna cost for me to be able to do business on a day-to-day basis if i'm like you said because you mentioned a couple of products like if i'm if i'm just a speaker how do i even gauge that what do my numbers even look like how do i even formulate that number if i'm an author how do i formulate that if i sell widgets you know how much is it costing me to do those to do those widgets so understanding the numbers man that's i think that's the the foundation of you know of a lot of things and i think that's taking people through that in this in this accelerator program um we know we knew how important that was and how important that is so um for us to be able to talk about i think is where we want it to go exactly that's so much to uh uncover and for those of you who let's say are looking to grow your business and or get serious about your business during this time there's many of you who are still working from home maybe you were on a contract maybe you were let's say working uh during the day and building your business during the evening and you are looking to get serious about what you're doing uh the world hasn't opened up 100 yet and so with the accelerator program it is 100 virtual uh also the uh benefits and perks of being in the accelerator program is once you get accepted you receive a one-year subscription to uh canva and so canva pro the regular version of canva is free so you'll receive canva pro which will allow you to build out teams uh different sizes of editing camera pro is excellent excellent tool that i also have a license to and so you also receive uh annual license to quickbooks and so once you if you make it to the end of the accelerator and you attend a certain amount of required sessions you will also be eligible to enter our pitch competition where you pitch your business and you can receive uh funding in or scholarship to grow your business further so there's a number of incentives that will be available if you uh apply and are accepted and you put into work and show up during this accelerator once again uh rethinkingbusiness.thinkific.com and uh you can go and uh begin to apply we're currently uh rolling out the uh the early bird special and so as we are celebrating the the introduction of the accelerator to the community and so again business is not a solo sport and if you think that you're going to build it alone on your own island then have some sobering news uh for you the wake-up call is that uh join a team that will help you to grow your business and take part in a small community that has a similar goal you can partner up with other businesses within the cohort and get to know other business leaders while going through a curriculum that you have access to during the training and also after it's over so i highly encourage you to uh take advantage of that any uh final thoughts uh on the accelerator leeroy well my final thoughts would be this one um [Music] i hope that that those that are listening and understanding one of the things i know that i went through and i don't know if you if you had if you encountered this when you started your your business but i found plenty of books and and um and all of those things that taught you about how to start your business but what i didn't find was those books and those things that i listened to that showed you or gave you a way to be able to keep the doors open keep your doors open and and to be able to what are those foundational things that you need in order to be able to sustain beyond that one to five year period that's the most important that's when most businesses fail within that first that first of five years and when we talked about doing this you know this accelerator program that was my vision hey how do we keep businesses open beyond those five years well we give you the foundation and the structure to be able to do it in order to be able to sustain yourself beyond the five years but then also we don't just say okay when you go through the program all right you on your own like you mentioned you get a whole year beyond that that we actually will work with you so that you're able to make sure that you have all of those um those tools those programs those systems in place in order for you to be able to be successful because that's what we want we want you to be successful beyond coming up the program so that's my my my you know my kind of ending thoughts on it but one thing i did want you to touch on really quickly is just the criteria for being a part of the program um i know we we talked a little bit about some things but um i got a couple things written down here so i don't know if you want to go with those what you know kind of what we what folk what folks we're looking for the company because this isn't for everybody but we want you to be able to do certain things if you're going to come into the program too oh for starters uh at a bare basic level you must uh commit to attending the session so this isn't a uh hey i'm i'm excited about it and then your commitment is uh a hole in the boat which allows you to sync so you must commit to attending the required sessions um your business must be in good taste in good ethical standards so if you are running a business that is causing uh destruction um chaos mayhem in exchange for a quick dollar this is not the program for you so if you have questions about uh if your business is in good taste then you can uh go to the website and um send a message and uh be uh decide upon that you can be a product or a service based business and um also it's you're applying as a business owner for um yourself so if you have let's say someone else you part of this partnership where there's a business over here and business over there is for uh individual business only so uh so consider it to be a license being applied to uh your specific business are there any uh details that you have let's say um that are mr neat that the people need to know um no i think i think um excuse me the last thing i will bring up is um them getting access i guess it was one of the benefits they get access to the video vault that we're gonna be having uh that's gonna be coming along i think that that is just super so not only will you be able to um have the uh the sessions or that you'll be going through but you will also even be beyond when you will have access to um not just uh uh not just lakeisha not just uh not too shady not just myself but there will be other experts that will be um that will be having in the videos and through the sessions that they'll be doing as well that you will have access to so if this is this is something that this is a tool a toolkit that you will be able to use um beyond going through the program you'll be able to come back to it again and again and again and that's you know that that's something that we we wanted to make sure that people had uh access to so that that's the last thing i'll mention about that too perfect so again september 11th it kicks off you can apply uh through august and we look forward for those of you who have an interest to uh seeing you within the cohort and growing your business alongside of us and the curriculum that we've laid forward if you are an organization that has a uh audience that needs entrepreneurial support then uh please reach out and also if you are a business expert who uh has a background in business in accounting in social media in marketing in public relations and or uh legal as well and you'd like to deliver a submit content to our video vault and which is an excellent lead generator for your business or to uh serve as a facilitator for this upcoming cohort or be on the list for future cohorts then please uh reach out and uh contact us so at this point you can go to rethinkingbusiness.thinkific.com or

use facebook messenger and uh in this case contact uh leroy uh myself or lakeisha womack who is our uh the the third uh piece of this uh wealth triangle absolutely absolutely so we want to thank y'all for taking uh this time out in your in your afternoon to be able to learn about the rethinking business program accelerator and we're excited about it we're looking forward to those that will be a part of the program um we can't wait to get started it's always um it's always uh heartwarming to me uh to be able to see us as a community and and those aspiring entrepreneurs and those even those startup entrepreneurs and even those seasoned entrepreneurs to perceive them bring their vision to reality so that's what we're here for we want to thank you all for tuning in uh we're looking forward to it you all will see us again uh next week where we will have another meet the founders um session and where we'll be talking about i think we'll do the hot seat again and next week maybe we'll take some questions for uh for those that are uh looking to start their business for their business or uh build their business so uh we wanna thank y'all um my name is leroy mckenzie jr the impact builder this is mr shadeed and lisa uh the great um business business uh guru and we want to thank y'all and we will talk to you all soon

2021-07-24 22:25

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