Build It So It Can Run Without You with Beth Mazza

BETH MAZZA

Build It So It Can Run Without You

What inspired you to start your business?

I left the highest paying job I ever had because it gave me the least time with my kids. I was in a different city half the time, always on a plane and really personally unhappy.

I had already built and sold my first firm. The acquirer kept me on. Fancy title, big paycheck, an apartment in New York, and I saw my four kids less than I had when I was running a company myself. I was building someone else’s business at the expense of the one thing I had structured my entire life around.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

The market does not pay you for how hard you worked. It pays you for delivering on a promise to a buyer, something they need, delivered excellently. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find the niche, make sure its big enough to support your financial dreams and then build a strategy around that to grow.

It is ok to dream. In fact, it’s mandatory. Manifest away. But in my experience, don’t use social media to manifest. Turn off Instagram and social media at least in the beginning. Nearly every message you hear makes you feel like you are behind. You are not and so many of those stories simply aren’t true.

What do you wish you knew then that you know now?

That an outside opinion is the cheapest thing you will ever buy, and I waited far too long to go get one. I was so used to being the only woman in the room that I lived in my own head most of the time.

That network, what we call in Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER, our kitchen cabinet, saved me time after time. It’s filled with three types of people. Champions who tell you the truth, Compensators who are strong where you are weak, Connectors who open doors. Not a mastermind group. Not paid advisors. People with no financial stake in your decision.

I wish I had built that bench in year one instead of year ten. You cannot assemble it in a crisis. You can only use it in one.

What kept you going when things got tough or doubt set in?

I have been fired, sued, cheated on, and doubted in the past. I would like to tell you that what carried me through was some deep well of conviction. It wasn’t. It was abject fear of failure and not being able to provide for my kids.

I have a way of dealing with it even now that seems to work. First, I picture the absolute worst case scenario and realize that I could live through that. Then, I pick the one thing I could do right now to make it one minor bit better, and I do it. And then I just keep doing that.

Final advice for women growing their business or career?

Start now and build it so it can run without you.

Don’t wait until the kids are older, the savings hit a number, the website is right. Because trust me someone less qualified and more impulsive launched, learned, and took the market. Perfectionism is often a woman’s greatest weakness. Get over yourself.

Then one more piece. From day one, build the business you could hand to somebody else. Figure out recurring revenue instead of one-off projects. Build a narrow niche that clients cannot easily swap you out. Make sure you have margins you can live off. And always be building a team of people that trust you as much as you trust them.

Do that and you have so many more options than a solopreneur business.

That is the argument at the center of Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER, and it is the part nobody tells you at the start.

To connect with Beth or purchase her new book, visit her at www.femalemavericks.com