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.

February
24, 2021

12 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

There was a time in my life when, determined to start and get out of the rat race, I met with my friends once a week and attended networking groups looking for the answer to a simple question: “Where is a good deal?”. In this process I had a partner: my friend Arturo, who was more or less along the same lines. We went from one place to another looking for a business.

Other times, like many, I would approach my friends or acquaintances who already had some success or whose business was growing. “Look at that” -he said to Arturo- “Pepe is doing well. There is the business, there is the money ”. And “The Business” could be literally anything: Selling houses, selling cars, selling gum, selling furniture, cleaning offices.

Then we analyzed them to “make a decision”, with words and phrases that we had learned in business courses. We asked “What is the Return on Investment of this business?” or “What type of platform do you require?” or “What can we learn from the Benchmark?” We were businessmen without businesses, without products, without customers and, of course, without money.

Not because we didn’t try, of course. During that decade we started or tried to start -some together, some separately- several businesses that failed: an “everything for the same price” store, a chain of vending machines, an app developer, a chair importer, a sandwich shop and even a worm farm! There was everything, but we just couldn’t find “the business”.

What were we doing wrong?

“All businesses are good businesses. But not all of them are for you ”.

This story is far from unique. It happens to thousands of young people and adults all over the world, every day of the week: after taking a business course or seminar, they decide they want to start a business. Then they “look for a business” among their friends or acquaintances, or with the same people who – coincidentally – already sold them the seminar.

If you go down the street, almost all the businesses you come across are viable businesses. That hardware store, that bakery, the painting on the poles and the spectacular signs. Everything is business. They are all good deals, but not all of them are for you.

Some are undoubtedly “better” businesses in strictly financial terms. Some have more profits, more sales or better returns. But beware! This is not the only parameter to choose a business to undertake. It is not even the most important. ROI is a great parameter to invest, but not to undertake. When it comes to undertaking, you have to start your search elsewhere.

And you already have that part. In fact, only YOU have it. There are thousands or millions of different businesses; But there is only one person with your DNA, your name and your surname, and that person is you. We are all unique in many ways and, above all, we are all born with a power that distinguishes us from others: that power is called TALENT.

PART ONE: THE TALENT

Talent is the first step to undertake. It is the set of abilities and natural powers that we are born with. Talent is a gift that is given to us, it is not up to us to have it; but it does depend on us to grow it, strengthen it and put it to work.

You have a particular skill set. Think what things are easier for you than for other people? What things come naturally to you? What subjects were easier for you in school? What things do other people say about you? Maybe your talent is numbers, maybe words, maybe relationships, maybe drawing, maybe sports.

We all have a talent. We may have more than one talent. But nobody, absolutely nobody, has all the talents. Talent is part of who we are . And if we choose a business or career aligned with our talent, then it will be much easier for us to find success there, stand out, sell, and grow.

Some people will tell you that “perseverance is more important than talent.” But they are wrong. If you’re not talented, it doesn’t matter how much perseverance you put in – you can never be the best. You might be “acceptable” or “sufficient”, but never the best. In clear terms:

• Talent without perseverance = Waste.
• Perseverance without talent = Mediocre.
• Talent and perseverance = Real advantage.

Therefore, the first step in starting a business or choosing a career is to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, What am I? What are my natural talents? – It can be anything. All talents can be turned into a business: artistic, sports, scientific, manual, mental, and social. There is money everywhere for those who know how to put themselves in their ideal place, in their element .

STEP TWO: FIND YOUR ELEMENT

Another common conception when looking for a business is “do what you love” or “follow your passion” or some variant of this concept because, they say, if you do what you love, you will never have to work, do you agree?

Following your passion is important when choosing a business, but it is not the most important thing. The first thing, as we saw, is to find your Talent. Once you have defined what your talents are, the next step is to follow your passion and place yourself in your element, that is, place yourself like a fish in water, in the best possible place to enhance your nature and your personality. A passion is something that you can do for many hours, without getting tired, without getting bored, and that you would do even if you were not paid. It is something that you enjoy, that you love and that makes time go by without realizing it.

“Your element” – says Ken Robinson – “is the place where your talents and your passions meet.” Following only your passion can be a risky game, played by millions to poor results. “My dream is to sing,” says someone, but if you don’t have the vocal cords – a natural talent – then it doesn’t matter how much you “love” to sing. You will never go beyond being a common singer: there is not your career, nor your business, nor your mission.

Does it seem cruel to you? It is not. It is only realistic. If your dream is to be a footballer or a basketball player, the dream will be of little use if, like me, you have two left feet. Talentless passion leads nowhere and can become an inexhaustible source of frustration and defeat. So I repeat: do not seek business in what you love . Look for business in your element , which is the place where your talents and passions meet.

The same thing happens the other way around. Following a talent without the necessary passion to do it day and night, with perseverance and resilience, soon results in an abandoned career. In clear terms:

• Talent without passion: Boring job or failed business.
• Passion without talent: A great hobby. Is it fair!
• Talent and passion: Your element. It is the place where you can grow.

Looking for a business? Do not do it. Find YOUR business. The business where you can stand out – because of your talent – and what you can do even when things get difficult – because of your passion. Now yes: persevere.

Lastly, consider:

STEP THREE: SOMEONE WANT IT

For many years I have moved in certain artistic circles, among writers, poets, theater actors and musicians. Many of them resent the fact that there is “no market” for their talents, and that they fail to achieve a standard of living. They eventually end up leaving their element and taking a job in order to support themselves. They have missed a great opportunity.

In many cases, the problem is not that they are not in their element, they are: they love their art and are good at it. But still they can’t take off, what is happening?

The third step is key, because it is a necessary condition for any business, and it is something that everyone can learn if they set their mind to it, but that many leave aside. The third step is to find a market for what you do in your element. And believe me: there is a market for everything, and even more so in such an interconnected world. I know successful artists as well as successful lawyers; and successful philosophers as well as successful salespeople. Before leaving your element, stop and ask yourself, is there really no one who shares my talents and passions and who, at the same time, is successful in business?

As Seth Godin states in his latest book Linchpins (Essentials), just because you learn to sell does not mean that you are losing your essence. Finding your market may mean transforming your product, searching for platforms, changing continents, or rethinking your entire career. The world won’t magically reward you for doing what you love to do – that’s why there are artists and inventors and failed athletes. You need to do what few want to do: design your element as a business and not just as a hobby .

This involves parts that may seem “boring.” Make a plan, budget, hire people, promote, have an accountant, pay taxes. This is where many stop, because they just don’t want all of these problems. They want a business that is fun 100% of the time, but that doesn’t exist. In clear terms:

• No market element = Frustration and abandonment.
• Market without element = Nonsense and drift.
• Element with market = Your ideal business.

THE ORDER OF THE FACTORS DOES AFFECT THE PRODUCT

It is these three elements, and in that order! The ones I recommend you take into account when looking for a job, a career or a business. Money is everywhere, but first you must know who you are and what you want. Finally, find the tools to offer a value that the market recognizes as useful.

Your unique mix of talent and passion accommodates dozens of different businesses. Before considering a definitive business, write down the list of 10 or 15 things that fit in your element. If you are a painter, for example, your business may be illustrating books, teaching others, setting up a gallery, or inventing a painting system for children. Don’t close to the first option, or the obvious option, or what everyone does! Think outside the box and come up with ways to live in your element and build business. Don’t settle for less.

The sum of the three steps mentioned results in a successful business. If we put it in mathematical terms:

Or, if you prefer, in graphic terms:

The three steps, and in that order, are necessary to find your ideal business. I’m sure you can do it. For now, stop looking for “a business”! and, instead, discover YOUR business, the one where you will find an exciting life, you will help others, you will get paid well for it and it will give a totally different meaning to your life than just looking for the next check.

On the contrary, once you have found your ideal business, you can put it at the service of other people and causes. Money is necessary, but it is not the end goal of our life. Find your element, make it business and help others. It’s a different way of thinking about success, don’t you think?

Now look for it and if you find it let me know! I will be very happy to hear from you.