On this episode we are so excited to welcome Mona Patel, a dynamic and engaging entrepreneur with 17 years experience convincing leaders of some of the world’s biggest brands to understand value and optimize their customer’s experiences.

• Mona didn’t have a business plan when she jumped, she just followed her gut. She didn’t believe in herself and then one day she did. She used that momentum and started sprinting and has been doing that since.
• The benefit of not having a plan is you’re almost constantly listening for clues to create one.  That early stage for Mona was about figuring out what she wanted to do.
• Listening helped Mona land her first and second projects. She wasn’t pitching what she could do; she was listening for what they needed.
• UX stands for User Experience. The field is based around understanding what a user or customer wants and needs from a brand and then designing solutions to meet that need.
• At Motivate Design their version of UX has always been around using design to motivate people to change their behavior.
• Mona’s undergrad is in psychology and engineering. It was understanding how people think, memory cognition, behavior and then the application of that to physical product design.

Entrepreneurs, sit down with your team. If you don’t have a team it can be friends and family. Ask them to write down as many what if questions as they can in a three minute period that answers a problem statement that you propose to them.  The first set is not always the best answer so I’m going to ask you to do it three times. Nine minutes total and share in between.  The result will be:

• You will come up with an answer.
• You will get unstuck.

If you think about it the number of what if questions you ask are often negative. What if I fail? What if I can’t? What if I lose? What if people make fun of me? What if I have to go back to a job? That’s what holds you back. Use that opening what if for positive.

Shift from what if I can’t to what if I don’t? Working with a coach is really important. But it’s also important to list what you want to get done in your life.

Write down your life goals.  You aren’t going to get there if you don’t know

1. What your goal is
2. Why it’s important to you.

If a Ted Talk is one of your goals, when are you going to start? It’s not going to be easier by avoiding it. You can commit to watch one every week and get the rhythm of how it works. You can also get yourself on stages and get a public speaking coach so you’re refining yourself. Maybe it’s journaling everyday so you start to identify your story.

Three things to invest in when starting a new business

1. Get a coach
2. Don’t create a company around yourself
3. Networking

You can find Mona Patel at:

Website: www.motivatedesign.com

Email:  mona@motivatedesign.com

In this episode we are talking to a talk show host, wellness and beauty expert and one of my good dear friends Nitikia Chopra.

Nitika Chopra is a certified life coach, wellness entrepreneur, go to resource for young women around the world and motivational lifestyle guru. Nitika’s on a mission to inspire radical self-love.

We all want to get to the place of ease where you are going on vacations or having more time with your kids at night. It’s easy to look at people around you and think “I’m so far from that. What am I doing wrong that I’m not there yet?” But a lot of times people don’t really get honest about what’s happening before they get to those points in their life where there is ease.

Advice for growing in relationships and connections:

• Nitka came to a place in her career where she was connecting with people out of fear, to realizing the connection had nothing to do with her. What if I came at it from a place of service, where I had no expectations? What can come from that place?
• They will either like you or they won’t. Come at it from a place of confidence and grace and see how you can provide something for them versus wondering if they are going to like you or not. Then at least you’re showing up as your best self.
• Act and do your work with the right mentality
• Instead of creating the niche let it come to you organically over time. There kind of an epidemic of constantly trying to figure things out. Give yourself grace and let things evolve naturally. It’s better to be authentic and real then try to force yourself into something.
• If you’re side hustling you should have a tremendous amount of pride in that phase of your life.
• Be grateful for your job, it’s the reason you’re able to hustle for your dreams. Because you don’t have to worry about your dream creating money for you at this moment.  Don’t complain about your job, even if you don’t love it. Have an attitude of gratitude.
• For the person who has just transitioned, congratulations. It’s okay to be excited but It’s a brick in the house, so don’t stop hustling. Don’t think that’s it because the downfall of that will be harder to come back from.

Contacting Nikita

Website: nitikachopra.com

Instagram: @nitikachopra

Snapchat: @nitikac

In this episode we have Sybil Amuti. Sybil is an executive brand strategist, podcast producer and cohost,

philanthropist, coach, wife, and mother.

Sybil is also a cohost of the Great Girlfriends show, a podcast conversation series created to connect

women with daily tips and solutions for living a passionate every-day life and building thriving business.

In this podcast, you will hear Sybil discuss:

 How her parents impacted her chartered course from kid-preneurship to corporate

career stability.

 The way she graduated with a master’s degree and moved from New York to New

Orleans only to move back to New York again a year later.

 The impact of taking a break to pursue fashion had on her idea of who she was.

 How she was consistently able to find fantastic positions that paid exceptionally well,

yet always seemed to have something else going on the side.

 The way she built a partnership with her husband and other friends from the ground up.

 How she began to feel that she was being dishonest with herself and others about who

she was, and how that turned her direction toward building up her own legacy.

 What she believes about establishing a clear perception around the mission you seek to

accomplish and how you see yourself doing that in order to focus your brand.

 How she always has a destination in mind, so everything she does has a map that routes

back to the starting point.

 How she used her mission to start her focus on making her services available on the

branding side.

 How she helped to influence small businesses, especially women entrepreneurs who

have passion but really need help with strategy.

 How she used workshops to reach more people at one time.

 The way she made the inspirational connection to women without spending a ton of her

own money while also being able to give it away for free.

 Adding the most value possible from her specific perspective.

 How her friend journeyed with her through her transition into co-creating the Great

Girlfriends podcast.

 The way her powerful friendships with other women has impacted the way she works.

 How she leveraged honesty and vulnerability into creating a community.

 What she has learned about compartmentalizing her hours and keeping strict cut-offs

for work and family in order to optimize her time with clients and make sure everyone is

getting what they need.

 The fact that there is no safety net when working outside of corporate and how that

means it’s time to don your cape and be your own superhero.

 What it means to be where you are now and not discount the present while looking

forward to the future.

 How you deserve the fulfillment that comes with the honesty of being who you are.

 The best tips on partnering with others to grow your business, including deciding that

you are being someone that is worth partnering with.

 How important it is to have a quality character and to choose partners with quality

characters.

 The importance of having partnership agreements drawn up legally to keep each other

in check and to have something to fall back on in times of difficulty.

 How she overcame complete fear to help Tony Robbins re-build his brand and how that

translates to everyone she helps.

 What she has to say to all of us that find ourselves second-guessing and questioning our

competence and abilities.

If you are interested in connecting with Sybil or if you have any questions for her, you can find her in the

following places:

Website: www.legacyrow.co

Website: www.thegreatgirlfriends.com

Twitter: @sybil_amuti

Instagram: sybil_amuti

 Email: sybil@legacyrow.com

To niche or not to niche is a major question. People think they have to niche and niche and get sales in the door but it’s a process. Entrepreneurship is a journey and we learn as we go.

When you start a business and you may know exactly what you want to do you still need to validate your business idea and you still need to talk to your ideal client avatar. When you go broad it’s good in a way because it allows you the space to test and validate what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. You change as a person along the way so your business might eventually change or get tweaked. It’s good to be okay with where you are at right now wherever you are at because it’s going to evolve and change.

Five steps to understanding how to get your ideal client

1. Discover yourself and discover who you want to serve: Learn about yourself in the process. It’s a self discovery process of who you are right now and who you want to serve that will give you the best results. Connect the dots with your life to your own niche. Clarity is key and maybe right now you aren’t clear but if you give yourself time and space you might come up with an “aha” moment.
2. Identify your ideal client. Learn everything there is about them, the usual demographics such as age and gender etc. but also their characteristics. Where do they hang out offline and online? What’s their value system? Know their desires (What do they want? What’s missing for them?) Why have they not gotten there yet?
3. Create services and products that solve their biggest pain point: Pain points, frustrations or their desires and dreams. This is important but it’s also important to just lead with one. Focus on one pain point and the desired outcome and that will make them really pay attention.
4. Validate your product: The first year of entrepreneurship is exciting but also humbling because there is a lot you don’t know. Until you realize there is a lot you don’t know this won’t resonate with you. You probably have market research departments in your company and you don’t have that as an entrepreneur. You can do mini focus groups or (once you have identified your ideal client) maybe bring them over to your house, pop open a bottle of wine and ask them questions. Talk to them about their pain point and start to validate.

When you are thinking of your product or service make sure it’s not a niche to have, but a need to have.

Lead with the most relevant service your client needs right now, then as you become more successful you can open it up to the other multi faceted opportunities you are thinking about in your head right now.

5. Keep learning from them: You are going to keep testing and asking but sometimes your audience changes. People with the most successful businesses say that you need to have products or services that have a lifetime value of what they can keep learning from you. It’s easier to keep a client and “upsell” them or offer them something else that would help them than it is to get a new client.