Archives for March 2021

March
8, 2021

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Mariangel Coghlan is a woman who is expertly and successfully serving many fronts simultaneously. He runs his design firm, edits books, studies, and mentors youth at the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) .

He studied architecture at the University of the Americas in Puebla with the dream of transforming spaces. After finishing his studies, he started working in a furniture store, but he soon realized that this was not what he wanted.

“What I did was follow a dream. I have the hypothesis and belief that the space you inhabit improves your productive and creative capacity, and of course your happiness ”, begins Mariangel.

The architect says that when she decided to undertake she had no idea what she had to do, but she was clear about the reason that still makes her get up every morning. With more than 20 years of experience, he reveals some secrets that have allowed him to grow.

^{Image: Courtesy Mariangel Coghlan}

1. Seek support and learn from other experiences

The first business he started was a furniture store that remained in force and grew to open three branches in Mexico City: San Ángel, Prado Norte and Prado Sur.

“After 14 years I wanted to do something different. However, the first thing I did was define what I wanted to do as an entrepreneur, ”she says.

Then a watershed came to her life and with the support of her husband, and a friend of his, they invited her to be part of EO, and although she already had many years of experience running a business, she was nervous that he would not. accept.

“It has been one of the best things that have happened because people share their experiences and help you grow,” he says about the experience. “What they have experienced helps you grow and I started there to learn.”

2. Fulfill your mission and be true to your philosophy

The mission of the design firm Mariangel Coghlan is simple: to help people live better, improving the environment they inhabit.

“When beauty is present it predisposes to good; when people are predisposed to good there is goodness, and when there is goodness the world improves ”, says the architect.

It may sound utopian, however, the lesson he shares is that to be a good firm of whatever it is, service comes before any business.

In her experience, many clients are not happy with the end result and she would rather sacrifice some profitability than lose a client’s recommendation.

“A satisfied customer will always be the best advertisement you can have. There are many people who write to us to ask for advice on which floor to put on or what color to paint and we answer all the messages we receive even if they cannot pay for our services, because that is my mission: to help them improve their spaces ”, he declares.

Being loyal to her principles has led her to have her firm recognized as the best luxury interior design studio in Mexico by the Luxury Lifestyle Awards.

^{Image: Courtesy Mariangel Coghlan}

3. Know your limits, don’t stop and adapt

For Mariangel, many entrepreneurs have in mind the idea of scaling and growing the business at any price, however, she has discovered that not all businesses have that possibility.

“I made a line of furniture to sell online and also at Casa Palacio. I wanted there to be a Mariangel Coghlan piece of furniture in every house and I became obsessed with scaling the business that ended up costing me millions and it never worked ”, describes the entrepreneur.

After this, the lesson that remained is that if it comes to entrepreneurship, you must be resilient and adapt to the possibilities.

“Not everything is a failure, I see it as an apprenticeship of millions of pesos. In this world of entrepreneurship, you must experiment, analyze and study what you want to do well, ”he says with a laugh.

For the architect, business is simple, it is about understanding how much comes in, how much goes out and how much you have left. If after some time there is no money left, it is not the right business.

“Then you have to turn it around to do what you are passionate about so that you can live well and also the people who work with you,” he says.

During the confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 and 2021, the showroom in which he exhibits his work has been closed, but he had to adapt to the times to maintain his business and the collaborators who make everything work.

“It has been a year of great challenges, having a closed space of two thousand square meters has not been easy, but building a brand that is focused on service has allowed us to remain in force,” he says.

The adaptation process had to be quick. He transformed his page, went digital and has created 12 ebooks that function as catalogs so that his clients and prospects do not lose interest.

4. It’s not all about money, it’s about your dream

“Starting a business based on just making money is not a good starting point. The starting point should be what you like to do and what you are good at ”, he says.
As a passionate about architecture and design, she ensures that when you discover “your element”, that can fill entrepreneurs with adrenaline and energy to make things work.

“You have to do something that fascinates you. In my experience as a mentor, the projects that transcend are those in which the entrepreneur does what fascinates him, ”she says.

As a “shamelessly optimistic” person, Mariangel believes that it’s all about making dreams come true, and always having new goals. That dream is “the element that moves us” and it is what, if you do it with passion, it will bring you profit.

There are three dreams that she has before her today: to finish her second book on interior design… and another two that she asked not to comment on until they come true, but that her server is aware of.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Currently the average age of entrepreneurs in Mexico is 33 years. Of course, there are very young entrepreneurs … and others who already have gray hair start and achieve success. What is certain is that, today, millennials represent more than 80% of new ventures. And if there is one piece of advice that millennials have been given thousands of times, it is this: “follow your passion.”

Entrepreneurship is not the same as being successful. Very few entrepreneurs “hit it” the first time, and most great entrepreneurs know it. Once the CEO of Tajín, today a successful multinational company, told me with complete confidence: “I have bankrupted more companies than I have managed … and there were several moments when I thought about closing Tajín.” But perseverance pays, and each defeat becomes a new stepping stone to the future.

If you have ever thought about starting your business or have you wondered where do I start? Perhaps you have met a friend, your parents, a teacher or a supposed expert who will tell you: follow your passion!

Bad business

“Follow your passion!”

This is perhaps the most common advice… and one that can cause the most damage. The modern world offers us thousands of options, and it sounds tempting to “follow your passion” because, as they say, “that way you will never really have to work.” In truth, who could contradict this logic?

However, the logic falls apart very quickly. You know – and I do too – many people who try to follow their passion, but never get off the ground, or feel satisfied, happy or free. In the end, they end up working on whatever it is and dedicate their weekends – if they are lucky – to their passion. These are the people who hate Mondays, the ones who never found their place in the world.

And, although doing something that you are passionate about is very important , it is not enough to find a path that will lead you to success.

When asked “where do I start?” or “what business do I choose?” It is not enough to say “do what you love!” the correct answer has three steps:

1. Identify your talent.
2. Connect with your passion.
3. Learn the business!

These are just the first three steps. Passion is a powerful feeling that drives us, but like all feelings, it can be changeable; and it is certain that some days you will feel less animated than others. Also – and this is very important – the fact that something “you like” or that you “love it” does not mean that you are good.

Passion is not enough

There are people who “love” to sing or whose “passion” is to play soccer. But that is not enough. If you want to be successful, you have to be talented. Talents are different for everyone, and discovering yours can be the most defining moment of your existence. Talents are natural to us, we were born with them, and it is our duty to develop them.

The ideal place to start a business or career is within what Ken Robinson calls “the element,” which is the point where your passions and talents connect:

In the environment of success, your talent is the first step . You have to do something that you are good at and, furthermore, you can improve with training, practice and study. I’m going to tell you something that may sound cruel, but someone has to tell you: If you have two left feet, it doesn’t matter that you feel passionate about playing soccer: you can never be a professional. If you are 1.45 tall, it doesn’t matter that you have a passion for basketball; most likely we won’t see you at the Olympics.

So start by looking in the mirror and asking yourself what is your talent? If you don’t know, ask those who know you. Now advance it even further; make yourself the best doing what you do. Author Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling book “Out of Series” (Outliers) states that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to develop talent to a level of excellence. It is not enough to have talent; you have to develop it. But spending time doing something that you have no talent or love for, will be a purgatory and a waste of time.

The third step: make money on your element

There are those who choose their career because they believe that money can be made in it. But beware! There are successful people (and money) in all activities. There are millionaire athletes, accountants and lawyers, but also poets, dancers, teachers and writers. That which you do well and that you love can turn into a very brilliant career! Money is everywhere. The difference is in the way we apply our element to the business format.

So, no, talent and passion are not enough either. There are excellent actors that nobody hires, or great singers who do not reach a fortnight. If you’ve found your item, the next step is to learn and understand the business. You have to understand how to make money with that talent. Learn to operate, to sell, to do the accounts, to carry out projects, to collect, to delegate and to grow. That is your business, and no one can do it better than you.

Although there are people who do not agree with what I am going to say, I am sure it is absolutely true: it is worth looking for people and places where you can learn, even if they do not pay you at first , or they pay you very little. Sure, working for free doing something you don’t like is simple exploitation. But if you’re in your element, learning will be the best payoff possible.

Do you have talent and passion for cooking, and do you want to be an entrepreneur? Then you won’t mind spending days and nights working in a restaurant, because you know it’s just one step to keep growing (remember the 10,000 hour rule?). Laws are your thing? So yes, even if you start by making copies, look for a place where you can learn how the business works, how do they find clients, how they carry out the processes, how they hire, how much they charge, what are the risks, crises and headaches ? To be a wealthy lawyer, it is not enough to be a good lawyer, you also have to learn the art of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship has its less fun parts: the numbers, the regulations, the taxes, the annoying customers. Just because you follow your talent and your passion does not mean that everything will be simple and fun. You have to get right into it, learn the machinery and build with vision. This means thousands of hours invested; many errors; many challenges and many sleepless nights.

What I can promise you is this: working within your element will make things four thousand percent easier for you. Finding and knowing your talents and connecting them with your passions will help you go further, faster and with greater pleasure than anything else. Copying deals just because it has worked for others is a career that you will always lose. Instead, discover your own career.

When you are there, at the peak of your own success (no two are alike), others will see you and say: What good luck you are! But you and I know that it is not about luck, but about finding your talent, developing it. and face the challenge of transforming it into a business.

If you are in a career that is not moving forward, ask yourself, am I truly in my element? If the answer is “no,” then stop, open your eyes, and start building. Trust me: it’s never too late to be in the right place.

March
5, 2021

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Jason Falls‘ Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is out Feb. 23 via Entrepreneur Press. Pre-order your copy now via Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop.

They say money is the root of all evil. It’s most certainly the root of heated topics among influencers who depend on brand collaborations for revenue. The influencer pay gap — the difference in pay between white and non-white influencers, and the similar difference in what men are paid versus women — is a powder-keg issue across the board.

Influencer Lindsey Lee’s frustration with being undervalued by brands led to her developing F*** You Pay Me, a platform that allows influencers to publish reviews of brand partnerships. Since launching late last year, the site — which keeps users’ info anonymous and information on brands “locked” until at least 10 reviews of it are posted — has generated more than 500 posts as of this writing, despite still being in its minimum viable product (MVP) phase. 

Lee’s vision for the site is to function as a sort of Glassdoor for the influencer set, allowing users to compare the rates they command from brands and more accurately identify their own value. They can also distinguish brands that typically pay well from those that don’t.

Image credit: F*** You Pay Me

“The pain points of an influencer are the exact same pain points of a freelancer,” Lee says of the parallels with Glassdoor. “You’re presented with an opportunity for a job, and you have no idea how much to charge because every job is different. But you don’t want to lose the job, so you end up accepting less than what you’re worth.”

Lee adds that her site is necessary because, too often, money is left on the table at the expense of the creator.

Related: Where Do You Fall on the Philosophical Spectrum of Influence Marketing?

How the site works

When an influencer registers to use the site, they’re required to file their first review. The site’s membership is limited to what Lee calls true influencers, i.e. anyone who has contracted with a brand to post content online. Each is asked to identify demographic information, like gender and race, to allow the site to produce appropriate filters within reviews. 

Site users can navigate to a brand and see details, including the brand’s average engagement payout, what type of content they look for and what other creators have to say about working with them. And eventually, you’ll have visibility into the aforementioned demographic discrepancies. (Influencer-marketing platform Klear found the average pay for male influencers in 202 was $476 per post, while women earned just $348.)

Lee views F*** You Pay Me as a complement to the forces already driving pay-gap conversations, and specifically credits Instagram account @influencerpaygap — a clearinghouse for influencers to share individual experiences of prejudice or low-balling — with helping close that gap.

“I created F*** You Pay Me because it’s a product I wish I had when I first started influencing,” she elaborates. “Black, brown, womxn and LGTBQ+ creators, advocates and activists have long been driving the conversation and action in this space. F*** You Pay Me is merely a tool available for data and support.” 

Utility born of rage

Lee admitted on her blog post announcing the business that F*** You Pay Me was born out of rage, writing, “I feel it every time a brand asks me to perform this work yet is offended by my desire to be compensated for said work.”

Prior to ideating the site, she spent several years as a freelance model and a social media manager, sandwiched around a stint in finance. It was during the latter that she emerged as an influencer, creating the Instagram account Ms. Young Professional to spoof the daily sexism she experienced. As she amassed followers, brands reached out for collaborations, many of whose offers Lee did not find amusing.

“‘We don’t have a budget’ was one of my favorite lies,” she remembers. “When you hear, ‘We have no budget,’ what that means is they have no budget for you.”

Her inner voice began crying out to respond, “F*** you. Pay me.”

What’s in a Name?

“I named it F*** You Pay Me because I didn’t want there to be any doubt from the creator or freelancer that this is a platform actually built for them,” Lee tells me. “There are dozens of platforms out there that say they’re built for influencers. That’s not true. They’re built for brands’ needs first and creators’ needs second.”

In her experiences as a social media manager, she even used a tool that gave her the option to only search for influencers that will accept free product as payment. “It just drives the value of a creator’s work down,” she says. “And I don’t like it.”

Related: How to Build a Successful Influence Marketing Campaign

The business plan

The roadmap for F*** You Pay Me includes adding influencer-marketing software companies and agencies to the list so creators can share experiences with them, too. Agents and talent managers will eventually be invited to contribute as well.  

Lee says she is currently seeking funding and has applied to at least one accelerator. Her plans for a business model are “still being worked out,” she concedes, but she allowing brands to post opportunities for influencers is something she’s considered.

“My hope is that if I have a huge pool of influencers, it will create a network effect, and the brands will follow,” she explains. “Most platforms go get brands and hope the influencers will follow. I’m just flipping that around.”

Still, she is adamanet that influencers’ reviews will always remain anonymous. “This is about sharing information and helping creators and freelancers,” she says. “But I do want it to be mutually beneficial for brands, too.”

The initial reaction from brands may be to shudder, but Lee says they might be surprised to know that “more than half of our reviews so far are positive.” 

It’s the ones that aren’t that will keep some brand managers up at night, because now they know the market is holding them accountable.

March
4, 2021

9 min read

When Daniel Gómez-Bilbao was a child, he liked to read the Time Life encyclopedias at home. There were three chapters that I used to review over and over again. He was a little boy who wore glasses who had a hard time distinguishing figures, but those volumes had images that caught his attention: fish, insects and the last one, plants.

In those books little Daniel studied the colors, textures and colors of living beings because he could not believe the strange shapes that existed in the world. There was born a love for nature that was driven by his family in an almost predestined way.

His grandparents, of Asian descent, had a house in Cuernavaca and little Daniel saw that every day they got up early to take care of their garden. “There I understood that there is no good or bad hand for plants, simply dedication,” he says.

As a young adult, Daniel put his passion for plants aside and fully dedicated himself to leading a corporate career as a sales consultant for an Asian technology company. His work led him to live in Venezuela and to travel throughout Latin America. However, it was a somewhat lonely life and he often stayed in hotel restaurants to see the plants and flowerpots on the buildings.

“I asked the people who worked in those places the names of the plants that caught my attention and the companies that made pots and I wrote them down in a little black notebook,” he recalls for Entrepreneur en Español .

Unfortunately, conditions in Caracas changed and for safety reasons, the company Daniel worked for took him out of the country. This causes him to start to have a lot of time left over because his clients and his contacts were in the southern cone and on each trip he made to South America he had to connect with several countries at the same time to reduce travel expenses. In the dead times that his schedule allowed, Daniel began to look for pots and plants to build a terrace in his house.

“I did the inauguration of my terrace and people began to ask me about the plants and pots that I had. My mother-in-law asked me to get her a plant, then my sister’s friends, my sister-in-law, etc. My house had become a showroom ”, says Gómez-Bilbao.

^{Daniel Gómez-Bilbao / Image: Courtesy Huatan}

The day “El Chino” left his office in Montes Urales

It was then that Daniel decided to take advantage of the contacts he had made while living and traveling to South America to become a distributor of plants and pots.

“It turned out that the manufacturer of the pots that I had seen in another country was from Guadalajara and all its production was exported because it believed that there was no market for Mexico because at that time, in the 2000s, people only consumed clay pots”, Daniel points out. “Now fiberglass is very common, but back then it didn’t exist.”

His surprise was capitalized when in the first two weeks he managed to place 100 pots. He realized that there was a business opportunity where he could have direct contact with the decision maker.

“I came from the corporate world where you had to climb the CEO and a series of executives to close a software sale. In this world the sale was direct. Curiously, the director to whom I sold programming, bought me pots for his house ”.

Daniel then opened a small urban landscaping company called Huatan , whose name in Chinese means “Terrace with plants” because he wanted to remember it as “El Chino”, a nickname that Daniel had since childhood due to his slightly slanted eyes. He started a business with plants at home.

While his business started up, Daniel continued working for the technology company from its offices in Montes Urales. But as the sale of his products progressed and grew, he realized that sooner or later he would have to cut the umbilical cord.

^{Image: Courtesy Huatan}

In his own words, Daniel was lucky because at the age of 25 he was earning in dollars, he was paid for a department and he was a sales director for several countries. “I was in a privileged position and it took a lot of work to make the decision,” he says.

The inspiration to make the final decision to venture forth came when he understood that for him the tranquility that a salary could offer him, that stability with that umbilical cord is great, but that dependency was only going to get bigger with time.

When he was considering leaving the company he loved to dedicate himself to Huatan, Daniel approached his mentor who was none other than the CEO who had hired him years ago and said “I have this discrepancy in my life. On the one hand I love what I do here and on the other I enjoy selling flowerpots ”. Daniel was looking for him to convince him to stay, but his mentor told him “Daniel, chase the plants. If it catches your eye, go after it. But make up your mind and make up your mind now ”.

“I will never forget what he told me, – for something he is my mentor-, because he made me understand that when you are passionate about something, things are given to you and the more you look for them, the more they come to you.”

The landscape architecture office that now dresses Mexico City

After this process of detachment, Daniel launched Huatan in all forms in 2006 and has been working for 15 years doing landscaping with the creation, setting, care and conservation of more than 500 sustainable green spaces that allow the reunion with nature.

His office is dedicated to dressing corporate buildings, commercial chains and residential spaces with the design, execution and maintenance of green spaces.

“It has been 15 years since I started, but it was very difficult. There were times when I didn’t even have to pay my children’s tuition. The entrepreneur has to understand that the company comes first before the entrepreneur ”, warns Gómez-Bilbao.

Daniel was faced with the reality that he had to learn if he really wanted to succeed in a new but very complicated industry. An industrial engineer by training, he decided to go to work in a nursery to understand the market.

And it is not a small market. According to Statista , the gardening and landscaping industry in the United States is $ 99 billion annually. In other words, a house with a garden spends around $ 500 a year and the market is expected to reach a value of $ 30 trillion by 2030 in the American Union alone.

Huatan is the first Mexican company that hopes to participate in this industry and, why not, – as Gómez-Bilbao says-, partner with Elon Musk and bring Latin plants to Mars.

Among the works that Huatan has done are an intervention by the hand of graffiti artists Orgullo Bravo in the Chapultepec botanical garden during the Flower and Garden Festival of Mexico City, vertical gardens and green interior design for high-end restaurants. range such as Aromas Cotidianos and Blanco Bistro and events such as Millesime.

For the following years, Huatan claims to have a couple of projects on the horizon in the United Arab Emirates and Texas, but Gómez-Bilbao hopes to soon be able to enter California, Florida and Spain.

^{Image: Courtesy Huatan}

Green options for the “new normal”

The work that Huatan does has acquired a new dimension with the sanitary restriction measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, either because more outdoor spaces are needed in cities to cope with confinement or because urban gardening has acquired greater importance among people seeking to produce organic food.

For example, restaurants that could previously ignore the importance of having open spaces have been forced to adapt previously unused areas to have a place to serve diners and comply with sanitation measures.

“The pandemic took us away from other human beings and from nature,” said Gómez-Bilbao, noting that green areas help offer an extra service to diners by giving them the opportunity to be in contact with plants and natural spaces through green dining experiences.

However, it is not just a trend to cope with the pandemic. Biophilic architecture, one that considers green spaces as a central part of its design, is gaining ground. A very clear example is the new Amazon headquarters (in which the brand wants to invest 5 billion dollars) or the Singapore Jewel Changi Airport.

^{Image: Courtesy Huatan}

On the other hand, Huatan’s mission is to help bring green spaces to cities and for that they also offer two pre-assembled urban gardens so that people can install and plant: One type Greenhouse with a shade and plastic mesh cover that generates its Its own microclimate and a Tutor type, with a structure to help the correct growth of plants and vegetables.

“We are all gardeners,” says Gómez-Bilbao, “All our lives we have had plants on the roofs, bamboos on the desks, spices in the kitchens, well, we have even planted beans in cotton wool. We just have to reconnect with the plants. “

Why Choose Griswold?

Griswold Home Care launched an industry and continues to set the standard for care and compassion.

Griswold was one of the first franchise companies in the United States to offer in-home care to seniors and adults with disabilities, illnesses, or injuries, and we are the gold standard when it comes to delivering compassionate care. For our franchisees, franchise ownership is a potentially lucrative business opportunity that allows them to fulfill their calling—to dedicate their lives to serving people in their communities who need their help the most.

Griswold remains true to our guiding principles: provide the best possible home care to seniors and other adults with disabilities, illnesses, or injuries; provide comfort, joy, and peace of mind to our clients; and provide our franchisees with a business model that gives them the opportunity to realize their own dreams. That is the essence of our Griswoldness, and why we’ve been successful for so many years, and why we’ll continue to grow well into the future.

We focus on client care before profit.

Often, companies start up to take advantage of this huge industry and focus on making money, leaving customer care as a secondary goal. This is where we stand out from the rest. Our business model emphasizes compassion for our clients over profits for ourselves. Service should be affordable for customers, and caregivers should be well-compensated. The entire company was built around those important cultural values.

“Griswold is unique in the bustling and crowded home care franchising space,” says COO Mike Magid. “Unlike most brands that were started on a spreadsheet to take advantage of the sheer number of aging baby boomers, our founder, Jean Griswold, started with a heartfelt desire to help people. She is our lodestar and is a model we can point our franchisees to aspire to. This is a calling. Can it be lucrative? Yes. But it’s a calling first and foremost, and you need to remember that if you’re going to be successful.”successful.”

Our franchisees are eager to share what they love about their businesses.

We have some of the longest-tenured and most successful franchisees in the industry, and, most importantly, our franchisees think highly of our brand. We’re proud to say that we work hard to foster great relationships with our franchisees. We work alongside our franchise network to develop new initiatives, listen to their needs, and seek to provide all the tools they need to grow their businesses.

“I looked at 10 brands before I looked at Griswold, and the difference became apparent as soon as I got on the phone with Griswold. Other brands would tell me how great the margins were, but when I got on the phone with Griswold they told me how important the care was. It was an entirely different tone — they were the only ones who said anything about care. They remembered that the end product was care to seniors, and we appreciated that and decided to franchise with them because of their integrity.”

– Scott Savel, owner of a Griswold franchise in Scottsdale, Arizona

Our future is brighter than ever.

New franchisees are finding their calling by helping adults in their community age in place with dignity and providing peace of mind to their families. There has never been a better time to build a brighter future by taking care of those in your community who need you most.

If you’re a deeply empathetic person and you place compassion and a desire to help others above everything else, then Griswold is the right fit for you. We have developed a business model, the training, and the ongoing support that will help you become established, and we’re going to be with you the whole way. We’re most passionate about the success of our franchisees because we see the work they do and the good they bring to their communities. There is no other brand like Griswold in the senior home care space, and we’re here to ensure that the next 35 years are even better than the last.