Scale Your Success: Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast. I'm Kelly Resendez.

And I'm Mandy McAllister.

And we are so excited just to have a conversation with all of you guys today on what Mandy and I are seeing in the market as far as women trying to grow their businesses and investment portfolios. You know, there has definitely been some challenges in the market with rising interest rates, gas prices, and most importantly, unfortunately, just women kinda sabotaging their own success by not having a clear vision or strategy to get to the next level.

So we're gonna dig into kinda what Mandy's seen in the real estate market. She's an expert in this area, and I just wanted to kinda have her share a little bit of what she's heard and maybe some steps that you can take to be able to analyze your position and what steps you should take next.

Yeah, Kell. I playing in commercial real estate and and multifamily real estate is my kind of primary shtick. I I'm seeing a lot of change in sentiment. We've had a lot of kind of doom and gloom for a long amount of time and, you know, with the geopolitical stuff that's going on. You know, there's always, you always need a place to live. Maslow's hierarchy of needs tells me that you can go your entire life and never own a Bitcoin, but you need a place to live every single day of your life.

And the general sentiment I actually heard a, an attorney, a syndication attorney at one of the last events I was at. He said it's gobble gobble time. I just I thought that that was hilarious, and I told him I was gonna make him a t shirt that said gobble gobble time. But, basically, what he meant is, you know, if you have capital to deploy, there are a lot of deals that are hitting the market. If you've kept your kind of, you know, eye on how much outstanding debt is going to reset over time, we've reached kind of a peak and things are you know, I'm seeing, reasonable sellers. So sellers be a little bit more reasonable than they were over the course of the last three years. So deals are actually starting to get closed and and loosen up.

But, you know, I do see, you know, the tendency for women to, you know, overanalyze maybe a little bit, especially if they're getting into a first deal or a second deal or, you know, changing a play that they're doing. And I I think one thing that's worth saying again is a high performing girl, you know, you talk you hear this that girls are taught to be perfect and boys are taught to be brave. This incredible, TED Talk that was also turned into a book that, you know, if you're a high performing girl, you might want to you might be stuck, needing to be perfect. And if you're going to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to be an investor, you have to be willing to embrace, potential failure. You know? Failure is how you move forward faster.

So I I think that more generally, not just what's happening right now, the the more women lean into that willingness to fail forward and reframe what failure really is, that is the way that they're going to move into larger investments that are potentially going to make them more money. I kind of am the the real estate investor part of our duo, Kel. You are the business scaling expert of our team. When it comes to women and their operational companies that you help women scale, tell me what you're seeing in terms of patterns right now.

Yeah. What I would say is that I am seeing more women growing instead of scaling, and there's a distinct difference between the two. You know, scale basically gets you to a point where you don't have to match your operational expenses against your revenue. And growing with human capital and additional resources can definitely be a great step, But really getting to the next level, we have to learn how to leverage technology, automation, and AI to be able to scale our revenue without it being proportionate to the amount of, you know, basically, operational expenses that you have.

So what I would say is what I'm seeing is there are a lot of women that don't have a really good business playbook. So what does that mean? They don't have their KPIs dialed in. They don't know what their cost of acquisition, their lifetime value. They don't know what their gross profit margin is, and so they wanna grow. But when you don't know some of these key performance indicators, you don't know really how to get there.

And so I would I would suggest that anybody listening that owns a business is that you do leverage AI to find the best ways to grow. What is required of you to be able to do that? And then spend a little bit more time investing in your own education. How can you automate more, leverage, you know, a CRM, leverage some sort of, even if it's virtual help, to be able to to kinda get to that next level.

On a personal level, like you said, the perfectionism is still real. It is definitely a challenge. You know, women tend to overthink decisions rather than execute quickly. And so it's really important as an owner today that we are also working on ourselves and knowing, like, how do I make decisions? What is the fastest way for me to be able to get out there and and find the right next step for my business growth?

And so one of the one of the areas of vulnerability that I would say is required right now is asking for help. Too many people are trying to do it on their own, whether it's investing or growing their business, and they're missing out on a conversation with someone that's done it before. They're missing out on that ability for someone to connect them. I know, Mandy, you and I are both similar because we bounce emails back and forth to intros every single day. You know, just having a really strong ask. Like, what do you need help with? Do you need a marketing expert? Do you need a fractional CFO? Do you need AI tools? Like, what is it that you really need that are gonna get you to that next level? And every conversation that you have, really being willing to ask for help is gonna open doors that you didn't realize have been there all along.

So, you know, kind of flip flopping a little bit, you also own businesses, small businesses. Right? What would you say the greatest challenges that you've had in in your business growth?

You know, I first, I wanna echo a couple of things that you said. Because whenever anybody has found success, you're not the first person to do anything, generally speaking. And if you look at where they've gone, things rhyme. You know, it might not be exactly the same. So if you can if you can learn from that person, your your path will be so much faster.

And, you know, I always say that if you got a problem, the easiest way to solve the problem is to put more truth to the problem. There ain't nothing more truthful than numbers. So you need to know those KPIs. You need to be dialed in in terms of what your numbers are. That that is really what gives you power.

I I find in my small businesses, the motel, the car wash, the, you know, I purposely picked businesses that had as little human intervention as possible because, you know, the managing of the people, the finding of the right people is traditionally the hardest. The the motel specifically is in a super rural area, and finding, you know, workforce in a super rural area has been traditionally difficult for our business.

And, you know, one thing I challenge our team with every single week in every single business silo is bring me something that we can automate. Bring me something, you know, that we can lean into AI on because, you know, while humans are brilliant, you know, I got I got some real bright minds that work on my my companies, Kell, but people make mistakes in a way that computers don't. Right? So if we could automate messages, automate reports, things like that, we're really leaning into, Manus AI for automating of reports that come to our managers on the motel. We're leaning into Claude for, you know, making some first drafts of social media posts. What are the things that you can lean into to remove the rote human intervention?

And, actually, you know, one thing that's kind of a a really timely and intense conversation within GoBundance Women is artificial intelligence. Where our one of our members, doctor Rachel Gainsborough, leads our micro group on AI, and we challenge each other to figure out ways to lean into it every single day. I I'm curious for your business silos, Kelly. What are some examples or what you see in the women that you coach? What are some AI examples of how women are going further faster? How are they leveraging it? Yeah. Well, first of all, you have to have multiple tools.

There are so many out there, and I think just talking to other people with similar businesses about which tools work best for you. But I tend to use Claude when I need some creativity. Right? And I'm leveraging Claude on a daily basis just as my thought partner, really, on whether it is social media post or, you know, what what conversations and questions I should be having, what's what's out in the market.

You know, one of the things that I love, there's so many great, I would say, thought leaders in the business scaling world, and it's so easy just to ask Claude, you know, what would Dan Martel say about this? What would Tony Robbins or Dean Grazioso or, you know, anyone else out in the world, what would they say about it just to be able to support me on a daily basis with just it's kind of my thought partner. Like, what should I be looking at today? And so Claude is definitely great at writing and being able to kinda help you organize plans, you know, just your business playbook, just prompting it to give you, you know, ideas for the things that you could do. What are other people doing to ensure that they have enough content so that their SEO strategy is on point? Or how do I ensure that my my website is actually informing AI at the same time? And so I definitely love it for that.

You know, I use chat more for, like, basic questions of just, like, it it's it's not gonna bring me the same level of creativity that it would otherwise. But, you know, having custom ones developed based off of your voice, your resources, all of the tools. You know, having written several books, we're working on, you know, tools that people can ask questions within it.

And, you know, on the Minerva side, which is the women's femtech company that I'm president of, we're, of course, using AI to be able to digest digest very complex data coming from wearables, blood work, symptom management, you know, just whatever medications you're on, nutrition, exercise, being able to take all that information and give people actionable steps.

So I think every business is different. What I'm noticing, and I don't know if you saw Reese Witherspoon's post the other day on Instagram. It went really viral. She had a lot of conversations with women who were not using AI, like, at a high level. And and her biggest, you know, recommendation was, like, find a unique way to use it yourself. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of getting out there and just asking questions.

I know people that use it as their therapist, as their life coach, as their financial, you know, basically, backbone. There's so many different ways that you can use it. And so identifying your top problems in your business or real estate acquisition, operations, identifying what those are, and just going in and asking questions about how do people use AI for this or going to the next level and finding a tool that somebody's already built that is gonna be able to help them kinda take it to this next this next level for you without you having to do all the research on your own.

Yeah. The the more you use it, the more it learns what you need. You know? So in my in the very beginning, I asked AI so I started with chat g p t. Like, how what are the best ways I could leverage? Like, what are the things that I'm working on? Ask me a question one at a time to get to know me and what I'm working on better. And we had, like, a full thirty minute conversation back and forth so that it learned the things that I was working on, and now it gives me ideas for social media content for Lumberjill Lodge. You know?

One really good book I wanna call out here is The AI Driven Leader. It I I think it was excellent. It really kinda changed my mind in using AI as a thought partner, like Kelly was saying, rather than just, like, a different Google. You know? Like, the more you use it as a thinking partner or a creativity partner, that is a thing that matters a lot.

Actually, based off of a conversation with, Rachel Gainsborough, I made an app to plot how much brain space and how much money something brings you, in terms of investment. So you decide where you want to be spending your time. So return on brainspace.com will get you to an app that's created by Claude, but a concept that came from me in a book that I'm writing.

The Power Up Your Life podcast is powered by GoBundance Women. I could tell you stuff about it, or you could hear from some of our members. Here you go. GoBundance has connected me with an amazing group of entrepreneurial

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that I can learn from and support and grow together. GoBundance gave me a boardroom of sisters who refused to let me settle.

You know, within the first two months of me being a member, I enrolled someone to help them with their high ticket sales. I got double back my investment within the first, you know, sixty days of being a member.

So it was it's incredible. You guys are just amazing, and there's always somebody to look up to in in, in GoBundance, so I love being a member.

That's why you owe it to yourself to check out goabundancewomen.com. Kelly, tell me more. Tell me what's what's up next for you. If you were talking to someone who just is hungry for what's next but is also hungry for balance, like, what are the things that you tell her to look out for? What are the things that you tell her to spend some time on right now?

Yeah. So I think the first thing is to really dig deeper in how you wanna feel and what outcomes you desire. So what I would say is the one conversation I probably have most with people is in learning if they're more interested in creating income or equity value. That informs a lot of your path forward. And when you don't know the answer to that right away, you are a little lost because then you get a little bit of both. Right? Well, everyone's in a different situation in their life, so just really understanding what outcomes you desire so that you can create some solid actionable steps on how to get there.

And so on a daily basis, what I what I really, you know, recommend to people is that they know what their priorities are. And when you mentioned alignment, so I think it's a lot easier for us to identify what misalignment is. That's where you don't feel the way that you want to feel. Maybe you don't feel motivated or energized or excited anymore, and you're dreading having to do certain things, that is where we know we're out of alignment. Alignment is really where our life experience is matching the way that we wanna feel in our life.

And most of us think it's about doing. Well, I can tell you in coaching thousands of women, if you just focus on doing, you're in a hamster wheel forever because your brain never gets out of, like, that forward momentum, believing if only if only I had more time, if only my business sold, if only I had this amount of passive income, if only I was in the right relationship. If only I was able to move. If only my kids were older. Like, the if onlys can trap us. And so what we wanna do is accurately look at where we are today and be able to create a life experience that matches, again, how we wanna feel. So I know I wanna feel grateful and blessed and inspired. I also know that that's gonna require a lot of discipline.

And so one really big step, and it is a big step, most people don't realize how big this is, is we have to move from waiting for motivation to drive behavior. We need to commit to discipline to drive behavior. I don't ask myself if I feel like waking up and doing my morning ritual. I don't ask myself if I feel like getting my emails done or, you know, making phone calls that could potentially be rejection or whatever it might be. I don't ask myself how I feel if I'm ready. I just do it. And being able to execute really quickly is key. But knowing what you're executing on, having a vision of where you're going so that you can feel as if you've already created the success that that you wanted for yourself.

So number one mistake people make, they believe goals or outcomes. Our brain doesn't do well with outcome Because here's the here's the critical piece. Most outcomes have dependency on other people or things to be able to align. Right? And so if I have an outcome that I desire, like, I'm gonna buy my first investment property, that is dependent on finding the right property. That is dependent on the seller accepting your offer, the inspections going well, financing coming together, so many things outside of your control. Your brain really doesn't know what that that that means. And so creating actionable goals based off of that outcome, You know, I'm gonna look at five properties a day. I'm gonna underwrite the top one or two. I'm gonna make offers on x number of properties, and I'm gonna require inspections or whatever it is. Like, I'm gonna create my buy box. I'm going to do all of these things. Super important that you make your goals actionable.

So you wanna do that, and that will really help. Again, going back to alignment, the way that we get alignment is being really clear on what our priorities are. And one other mistake that a lot of times women make are letting go of our own, like, abandoning our own priorities for distraction, which means I'm working on other people's goals. I'm working on making sure that I'm people pleasing, improving my worth, and all of these other things. So just centering back into what are my priorities. You know? And they change. You know? I I have grown kids now. Like, my priorities have really shifted in terms of how I need to show up for them. Like, if you stopped cooking dinner, Mandy, like, who's gonna eat? Right? Like, I'm not in that same situation anymore. And so we can really play with our priorities over time. And I always try to encourage people, like, do them in short stints, like, three months. Maybe this is a season for work or hell or well, whatever that might be, and just really making sure that your goals align with that, you know, how you wanna feel, your priorities, and what outcome you really desire.

And where I noticed the most challenge that women have is self abandonment, and it looks different for all of us. And self abandonment means, like, I have to make some tough decisions sometimes in order to not self abandon. You know, I've got an aging father, and I could easily put him first. And I could go down hard on my goals and my life or whatnot, and I just have to I have to be okay with not being perfect for him, not being, you know, there at every appointment or being there beside him every single day. And so there there's gonna be some tough decisions that we have to make in order to be able to create the life experience that we want.

Yeah. It's it's all starts with that vision and then what your priority what your priorities are. I think too that if you got too many priorities, then you then you have no priorities. You know? So you gotta you know? It it's the Warren Buffett idea that if you write down your 20 top goals for the year, and then you rip off that sheet of paper underneath the top two. And then instead of just focusing on us those top two, don't do the things that are the the next 18 because those will serve as distractions.

So I think a great follow-up for our listeners here are, you know, put in the comments for us, what is the big thing that you're working on? What is this three month sprint that Kelly was talking about in terms of your goals that is really actionable because you gotta control the controllables. You know? Are you gonna underwrite those five properties? Are you going to to go look at businesses? Are you gonna develop your KPIs? What are those things? And let us know how we can support you.

Absolutely. And it is so important that we do that on a regular basis because just putting it out there, that's kinda like asking for help. Right? So in addition to that, make sure that you know what resource or connection is gonna really change the ballgame for you because you never know where they're gonna come into your life.

So this has been a great conversation. And I think for anybody looking to scale your business or your investment portfolio, part of what we do at GoBundance Women is provide the environment that really puts you into the right room. So what is the right room? The right room says, how can I help you? Or have you thought about going bigger? Like, what do you need in order to be able to to kinda get to that next level?

What it doesn't say is, Mandy, like, when are you gonna slow down? Like, when are you gonna be satisfied? Like, that's be nice. Yeah. It must be nice, or I should do this, or I should do that. We wanna get away, as Ellen Petrie Lenz, one of our members says, is we gotta quit all over ourselves. Right?

So we wanna make sure that we know what ask and and that we can bring into that room. So we'd love to have a conversation with you. We'll leave our link in the in the notes here, and and definitely just connect with us on the ways that GoBundance Women can support you.

Yeah. We are so grateful that you've chosen to listen to this. If you know someone that needs to hear these things, needs that sprint, needs this type of support, make sure that you are sharing this with her and, like and subscribe, and we will see you on the next episode of Power Up Your Life. Bye, everyone.