Starting a Business with Christian Young

Welcome to Fight Talk. My name is Christian Young. Welcome to Hollywood. What's your dream? My name is Christian Young and I'm the host of Fight Talk. And today we're going to talk about starting a business and where do you start? So... A lot of times in my experience, what I've had clients come to me with are usually around three different scenarios. One is, I want to start a business. What do I do? The other is, everyone is telling me to start a business because I'm good at something. What do I do? And then the third is, my business started itself. What do I do? And what I typically tell them is to start with the five W's and an H. Who, i.e., who are you? The second is what? What do you want to do? Third is why? The fourth is when? Definitely you want to hit it with a where. And then the biggest question, which is how? So starting with those five questions, you can really get a picture of what it is that you need to do in order to move forward. So when you're tackling the who, you really want to understand where you are in life in general before you embark on starting a business. Now, if your business started itself, that's a little bit tough to do, but you do have to go back and reflect a bit. And that who could be, OK, like, where am I at from a financial perspective? Personally, am I comfortable just not working and doing this? Do I need to do this while I'm working? Kind of really getting a truthful picture of who you are. In addition, it's important to understand what type of role that you would like to play. Because being an entrepreneur is. A little bit like being a utility player. You have to understand all of the different positions before you move forward with your entrepreneurship. Now, once you understand who you are, the next thing is what? What do you want to do? And that can be a really tough question. Some people just say, I just want to work for myself. But part of that working for yourself is understanding what it is that you're good at and then also understanding what it is that would keep you stimulated and motivated to continue to move forward. The third is why. Why do you want to start your business? Do you want to make a whole lot of money? Do you just not want to have anyone tell you what to do? Do you want to fulfill some sort of a bigger picture element that really inspires you and or inspires others? Those are questions that you definitely should consider as part of your path to being an entrepreneur. The fourth is when. In my world, I really like to use the term, it's not an if, it's a when. So anything can be done given proper time and planning. And now, well, let me back it up. If you want to play basketball like LeBron James, some of that requires some innate, I was born with this skill. But for the majority of things in this world, if you plan effectively, you can make it happen. So it's not usually a topic of if, it's just when. And then the last W is where. Where do you want to have your business? Is this a global business? Is this something that you're just going to do for your town? Do you want a small brick and mortar that's in your city? Do you want to do something that's web-based so that you can have access to the U.S. or certain countries? There's a lot of different concepts to really understand when you're thinking about when for your business or where for your business and I think that all of those starting with the W's really helps. Once you have a clear understanding of the five W's then you get to the how and the how I think is very extensive in certain instances and can also be overwhelming so that's why I think it's critically important. to really start with your business plan. And once you get through the five W's and then your H, you're able to effectively move forward with your business or determine if maybe this isn't your ministry. Maybe you need to bring on partners. Maybe this is something that you can give to someone else as an idea and invest in. There are a lot of different options that you have as an entrepreneur, and it really starts with understanding your position. and what it is that you would like to try to do and then planning effectively for it. Today, I'm here with my friend Nicole, and she is the co-founder and COO of Pound Business. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Christian. Can you tell us a little bit about your business? Sure. First of all, we are Pound Business, the best Bundt Cakes in the Bay rooted in love and butter founded by Nicole and Reggie Borders about six years ago. We started our business... You know, the story goes, I was hiking on the trail and Reggie was chasing that tail. And so we were talking. And as we got to know one another and would go out on dates, Reggie would always bring his auntie's recipe to different friend events. And so on a few occasions, Reggie showed up empty handed. It was like the cake was a price of admission. And so I told my honey, I said, you know, you got demand, we have to give them supply. And so a little bit of background behind about me is that I have my own nonprofit for middle school students and their families teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship. And so Reggie, at the time I met him, I met his son Devin at the time he was nine. And so they actually went through my nonprofit program. And so when we were going to all these events and individuals were asking for the cake, and I said, we have the demand, we have to get them supply, or he has the demand. It was just something that he thought about at the time. So fast forward a little bit later, I ended up getting sick. And while I was sick, Reggie and my mother. were taking care of me. And so they would do these different shift changes, if you will. And so on one particular day, my mom did her shift change and she was going to her church. And at the church, you know, in the Black community, they have different fundraisers at church, the fish fry, if you will. And so my mother was going to the fish fry. And so Reggie made my mother four cakes to take with her. And so when she came back home, she was like, I got you guys a dozen orders. And I said, how did you get us a dozen orders when we're not even a business? And she was like, everybody loved the cake. And so it was kind of like the same reaction that I had with going with him to different parties, right? And so that first Thanksgiving, we fulfilled the orders and everything. And that. following a couple of months later, Reggie was getting ready to celebrate a milestone birthday. And so on his birthday, he went down to the city and filled out the business, the paperwork to start a business. And that's how Pound Business was formed. So you had the unique experience of kind of having your business start itself. What were, you know, One of the things that I've always noted is when you're starting a business, like a lot of times from scratch, and it's not starting itself, you know, you go through this entire kind of emotional gauntlet of, you know, can I do it? Can I not do it? Should I quit my job? How does all this work? You know, will anyone even want to buy it? And when your business starts itself, there's that unique nuance of, yeah, somebody wants to buy it, because that's why the business kind of started itself. How did you kind of... How did you all kind of catch up to, you know, yeah, we have orders, we're fulfilling orders, we've now set up this business, and now what? Like, how did you move towards the, like, full-fledged, built-out structure? Yeah, well, one thing about us is that we're not only rooted in love and butter, but we're also rooted in community. So we have a lot of relationships. that we could tap into. So in the early stages of this business, like we would bake cakes, get a PayPal order, write it in a notebook, fulfill that order. And we had one situation where we fulfilled the order and the person changed their mind. And we were like, what do you mean you changed your mind? We already made this cake. And so it was at that time that one of his mentors and friends. suggested that we create an e-commerce business. And so they made us aware of Shopify. We went and had a meeting once again in the church. And they helped us set up our Shopify account. And from that Shopify account, we ended up becoming an e-commerce business that was shipping outside of California. We started shipping across the U.S. And so that was one. opportunity that helped us to move forward. Another came during the pandemic. You know, there's a lot of things that propelled our business during the COVID pandemic. And what I mean by that is when we, right before March, we were preparing to bake our cakes and have it at a catering event. And then That weekend, which just so happened to be like one of my birthday weekends, so we had a lot of cakes, we went to the shelter-in-place mode. And so we had to put all of our cakes into the freezer and figure out what we were going to do with it. At the same time, a local news personality was on social media saying that they wanted to go to a brick-and-mortar to get specifically a pound cake. And so my mother heard about that on his social media page. And so she was like, he's looking for a cake. And we said, well, we're not a brick and mortar. And she said, just send the cake to the station. And so after a few days or so, we found out the information. We mailed it to the station. He sliced the cake on his social media page. And we were just at home one day just laying around because it wasn't much to do during shelter in place time. And all of a sudden on the Shopify platform, we kept hearing the cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. And we were like, what is that? What's going on? And so, you know, I told Reg, I'm like, we have to get up and start baking. Something is happening. And we just started getting a lot of orders. And. Later on, we learned that one of his followers saw the cake and wanted what he had. So that pushed us into an expansion of our orders online community, if you will. And so also during the pandemic, essential workers were classified, you know, as firefighters, as EMT doctors, nurses. but it was also considered anyone in the food business. So farmer markets were still very open, very much alive. And so there was this community in an area where they were giving out free food through the World Central Kitchen grants or what have you. And so someone that knew that we had the cakes was like, we have this grant. A lot of us have been providing dinners and lunches to the community, but we also want to provide them dessert. And so they reached out to us. They purchased cakes from us. And since we weren't doing anything, we went out and actually served our cakes and the food and started doing community service on that ground. Well, that ground that they were. having cars drive through to pick up their food boxes and drive out, was able to receive a grant to become a farmer's market. And so that same group invited us to come out and do some vending there. And so we started being a part of the farmer's market. Now we are becoming quote-unquote essential workers and having another consumer base, if you will. Our friends would come out and see us. Our friends had kids. They were needing an outlet from the homeschooling and everything. And so then their kids came and worked with us and then they were able to get customer service skills and learn what it means to start and run a business. So every aspect of our business, I could keep sharing with you, Christian, story after story after story. But every aspect of our business came from a need of something else. So one of the things that you also mentioned is community. And in business, one of the things that I've always said is that you need a community. And sometimes it's the people you know. And oftentimes it's the people that you don't know yet. How has community, be it those people who have been there for you for years and those new entrants really supported your business? Yeah, I was always raised in regards to, you know, the circle of friends that you have are the circle of friends that will help you to move up in the world and to, you know, to just see things differently, if you will. And so... I was blessed early on, like first generation college student. And so I looked for organizations to be a part of to learn. And so those individuals became my community. The one that I contribute a lot to is the National Association of Black Accountants. I have been involved with them. I'm a lifetime member for now 30 years or so. And so a couple of my mentors within that organization have always supported me, my efforts, my dreams, my aspirations. They were the first ones to help me get a 501c3 with the nonprofit that we have. And they are on our board of directors for our business. And so without them, there would be things about this business process that I wouldn't even know. One thing that Reggie and I have with the business is an operating agreement. You know, we were girlfriend, boyfriend, starting out this business, eventually got married. And, you know, it was the, well, we're going to do it this way because I said so type of thing. And so we had to kind of put some structure in place. And, you know, that's how we came up with our... our respective roles because that we naturally grew into, but our operating agreement, our mentors helped us find the lawyers and the programs in order to be able to get our structure in place. Getting our LLC came at the advice of some of Reggie's friends because, you know, being a home owner and having a business and he... heard the unfortunate story about one of his friends that started a business that something happened and he lost a lot of his assets. And so we had to learn how to separate our personal items from our business items. And so we formed the LLC and got some support around that. And we have been self-financing the business for a long time. And a lot of our mentors and friends have taught us about grants. have taught us about programs that we wouldn't have been familiar with, that we have gone through, that have helped and supported and elevated our business. And now our business is at the point to where individuals are telling us, grants are good, but you can't build your business just on grants. Now it is time to go after capital. So we have some really great friends in the community that continue to push us. and push us and help us to elevate. And, you know, when we thought about pound business, it came at a time where I was telling Reggie, what you got here, what you and your aunt have been able to develop is something that's really good. And if we do it right, we could help set you up for retirement. We can start considering, you know, paying for Devon's College. And that was like. Early in 2018 or so when we had that conversation, fast forward to 2022, Reggie retired. And now we're two years into his retirement. I'm still working full time. But having the community has helped us to reach some of these dreams and aspirations and, you know, things that were just conversations. It helped us to take our business to the next level. So you mentioned that you have the privilege or I don't, I guess the privilege of being a parapreneur. So you work full time, you have a separate career, and then you also have this COO role where you are building and growing a successful business. How do you find balance in that space? And have you considered whether or not, or actually how have you challenged yourself in the ongoing? determination of whether or not you go full force into the business and retire your career side of life. Yes. We got one retired. Now it's time to get two because Reggie makes retirement look so fun. And so, so it's definitely a goal. How do I find balance? Well, I learned early on in my working career that there's really no balance. There's more of integration. There's more of helping things to align, but there's never really true balance, if you will. That's just my personal opinion. And so I've learned to integrate. I am a woman of faith. And I always say that God makes room for gifts. And so I've been amazed at some of the things that we've been able to accomplish. A twenty five hundred slice order for a major corporation serving cakes to to about six or so different corporate corporate. corporate sponsors, if you will. I've been amazed at some of the doors that have been opened to us from the cake. And so I would say that what I've been able to integrate between working full time and what the business is, is that baking is actually my outlet. So I could be on my calls all day and I can have a stressful situation. But when I go and I flick that KitchenAid and it whips up that butter. It's like my breath that I took in a great yoga pose. That's my Zen moment. And so that has been the balance for me. Now, some of the things is like, every time we go to an event that we've approached and it's something new, I have, I'm just going to say it, sometimes I have panic attacks. But then it's something that I learned how to do. It taps me into my mental health. I take whatever moments that I need. I reset. I call you. I get advice from you on different things. You know, you've given me some simple things. And I'm like, why didn't I think about that? That was too easy. So the way that I find balance or how I do integration is I get in tune with myself. I look at what the. good outlets are within it. I phone a friend, you know, Christian, I'm not just saying this because you're interviewing me. I'll specifically give you the example of one Thanksgiving where I was telling you about all the orders you had and you were like, well, just buy some Ziploc bags and pre-measure your ingredients and have them ready for when it's time. I was like, why didn't I think about that? So it's tough. I remember that. And I ordered cakes too. So that was partially my fault. You had all those orders. Yes, you did. You ordered for your aunt and your nieces and everything. So yeah. And then last question, because I think that this is one where a lot of people really would like to understand your formula. You work with your family. Lord have mercy. You live with your family. How do you make sure that your family continues to be your family through this process? Yes, girl, that is a thing. And I, you know, I have to wear a lot of different hats. I have to be Nicole, the professional and her nine to five. That's not really nine to five hours. I have to be wife to my husband. We've been married for two years, got married on 2-22-22. I have to be bonus mom to Vaness and Devin, and I have to be grandma to Taylin. I have to be the community leader in all of my organizations. I have to be co-founder and COO of Pound Business. I have to be mother. I'm sorry, I have to be daughter. I have to be sister. I have to be aunt. I could go on and on and on about all these different labels. How do I do it? I, once again, a woman of faith, is saying that he doesn't put more in you than you can bear. So that's the cardinal rule. And then my therapist, you know, I have the privilege of being able to have someone to talk to. I have someone that I can talk to from a mental health perspective, from a business perspective. So I have my board of directors. I have. And when I say board of directors, I'm not specifically just thinking, speaking on pound business. I'm speaking on Nicole Felix Borders board of directors and who it consider, who it consists of are other entrepreneurs. I think you, we spoke earlier about the importance of community. Our community is very rooted in other entrepreneurs. We are a part of. different city chambers, ethnic chambers. We have some of the mentors and sponsors that I mentioned earlier. And then most recently, I started working with a coach. And your coach is not your therapist. So those are a few of the folks that helped me to be able to show up for Reggie as his wife when I need to, which is all the time. as well as for Reggie as his co-founder of the business, as Devin for his bonus mom, and any other role that I play. I tap into my board of directors. And to conclude, do you have any socials to share? Yes, yes. You can find Pound Business on all social platforms. And by all, I speak of... Instagram at Pound Business, as well as Facebook at Pound Business. We're on TikTok at Pound Business LLC. And then you can also find us on LinkedIn. In addition to that, you can find us on our website at PoundBusiness.com and email us at info at PoundBusiness.com. Now, in all of those platforms, know that business is B-I-Z-N-E. S S. Y'all are standing on business. We're standing on business. Thank you.

Welcome to Fight Talk. My name is Christian Young. Welcome to Hollywood.

What's your dream? My name is Christian Young and I'm the host of Fight Talk. And today we're going to talk about starting a business and where do you start?

So... A lot of times in my experience, what I've had clients come to me with are usually around three different scenarios. One is, I want to start a business.

What do I do? The other is, everyone is telling me to start a business because I'm good at something. What do I do?

And then the third is, my business started itself. What do I do? And what I typically tell them is to start with the five W's and an H.

Who, i.e., who are you? The second is what? What do you want to do?

Third is why? The fourth is when? Definitely you want to hit it with a where. And then the biggest question, which is how?

So starting with those five questions, you can really get a picture of what it is that you need to do in order to move forward. So when you're tackling the who, you really want to understand where you are in life in general before you embark on starting a business. Now, if your business started itself, that's a little bit tough to do, but you do have to go back and reflect a bit. And that who could be, OK, like, where am I at from a financial perspective? Personally, am I comfortable just not working and doing this?

Do I need to do this while I'm working? Kind of really getting a truthful picture of who you are. In addition, it's important to understand what type of role that you would like to play.

Because being an entrepreneur is. A little bit like being a utility player. You have to understand all of the different positions before you move forward with your entrepreneurship.

Now, once you understand who you are, the next thing is what? What do you want to do? And that can be a really tough question.

Some people just say, I just want to work for myself. But part of that working for yourself is understanding what it is that you're good at and then also understanding what it is that would keep you stimulated and motivated to continue to move forward. The third is why. Why do you want to start your business? Do you want to make a whole lot of money?

Do you just not want to have anyone tell you what to do? Do you want to fulfill some sort of a bigger picture element that really inspires you and or inspires others? Those are questions that you definitely should consider as part of your path to being an entrepreneur. The fourth is when. In my world, I really like to use the term, it's not an if, it's a when.

So anything can be done given proper time and planning. And now, well, let me back it up. If you want to play basketball like LeBron James, some of that requires some innate, I was born with this skill.

But for the majority of things in this world, if you plan effectively, you can make it happen. So it's not usually a topic of if, it's just when. And then the last W is where.

Where do you want to have your business? Is this a global business? Is this something that you're just going to do for your town? Do you want a small brick and mortar that's in your city?

Do you want to do something that's web-based so that you can have access to the U.S. or certain countries? There's a lot of different concepts to really understand when you're thinking about when for your business or where for your business and I think that all of those starting with the W's really helps. Once you have a clear understanding of the five W's then you get to the how and the how I think is very extensive in certain instances and can also be overwhelming so that's why I think it's critically important.

to really start with your business plan. And once you get through the five W's and then your H, you're able to effectively move forward with your business or determine if maybe this isn't your ministry. Maybe you need to bring on partners.

Maybe this is something that you can give to someone else as an idea and invest in. There are a lot of different options that you have as an entrepreneur, and it really starts with understanding your position. and what it is that you would like to try to do and then planning effectively for it.

Today, I'm here with my friend Nicole, and she is the co-founder and COO of Pound Business. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Christian. Can you tell us a little bit about your business? Sure.

First of all, we are Pound Business, the best Bundt Cakes in the Bay rooted in love and butter founded by Nicole and Reggie Borders about six years ago. We started our business... You know, the story goes, I was hiking on the trail and Reggie was chasing that tail.

And so we were talking. And as we got to know one another and would go out on dates, Reggie would always bring his auntie's recipe to different friend events. And so on a few occasions, Reggie showed up empty handed. It was like the cake was a price of admission. And so I told my honey, I said, you know, you got demand, we have to give them supply.

And so a little bit of background behind about me is that I have my own nonprofit for middle school students and their families teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship. And so Reggie, at the time I met him, I met his son Devin at the time he was nine. And so they actually went through my nonprofit program. And so when we were going to all these events and individuals were asking for the cake, and I said, we have the demand, we have to get them supply, or he has the demand. It was just something that he thought about at the time.

So fast forward a little bit later, I ended up getting sick. And while I was sick, Reggie and my mother. were taking care of me. And so they would do these different shift changes, if you will.

And so on one particular day, my mom did her shift change and she was going to her church. And at the church, you know, in the Black community, they have different fundraisers at church, the fish fry, if you will. And so my mother was going to the fish fry. And so Reggie made my mother four cakes to take with her. And so when she came back home, she was like, I got you guys a dozen orders.

And I said, how did you get us a dozen orders when we're not even a business? And she was like, everybody loved the cake. And so it was kind of like the same reaction that I had with going with him to different parties, right?

And so that first Thanksgiving, we fulfilled the orders and everything. And that. following a couple of months later, Reggie was getting ready to celebrate a milestone birthday.

And so on his birthday, he went down to the city and filled out the business, the paperwork to start a business. And that's how Pound Business was formed. So you had the unique experience of kind of having your business start itself. What were, you know, One of the things that I've always noted is when you're starting a business, like a lot of times from scratch, and it's not starting itself, you know, you go through this entire kind of emotional gauntlet of, you know, can I do it?

Can I not do it? Should I quit my job? How does all this work?

You know, will anyone even want to buy it? And when your business starts itself, there's that unique nuance of, yeah, somebody wants to buy it, because that's why the business kind of started itself. How did you kind of... How did you all kind of catch up to, you know, yeah, we have orders, we're fulfilling orders, we've now set up this business, and now what?

Like, how did you move towards the, like, full-fledged, built-out structure? Yeah, well, one thing about us is that we're not only rooted in love and butter, but we're also rooted in community. So we have a lot of relationships. that we could tap into.

So in the early stages of this business, like we would bake cakes, get a PayPal order, write it in a notebook, fulfill that order. And we had one situation where we fulfilled the order and the person changed their mind. And we were like, what do you mean you changed your mind? We already made this cake. And so it was at that time that one of his mentors and friends.

suggested that we create an e-commerce business. And so they made us aware of Shopify. We went and had a meeting once again in the church. And they helped us set up our Shopify account.

And from that Shopify account, we ended up becoming an e-commerce business that was shipping outside of California. We started shipping across the U.S. And so that was one.

opportunity that helped us to move forward. Another came during the pandemic. You know, there's a lot of things that propelled our business during the COVID pandemic. And what I mean by that is when we, right before March, we were preparing to bake our cakes and have it at a catering event.

And then That weekend, which just so happened to be like one of my birthday weekends, so we had a lot of cakes, we went to the shelter-in-place mode. And so we had to put all of our cakes into the freezer and figure out what we were going to do with it. At the same time, a local news personality was on social media saying that they wanted to go to a brick-and-mortar to get specifically a pound cake.

And so my mother heard about that on his social media page. And so she was like, he's looking for a cake. And we said, well, we're not a brick and mortar.

And she said, just send the cake to the station. And so after a few days or so, we found out the information. We mailed it to the station.

He sliced the cake on his social media page. And we were just at home one day just laying around because it wasn't much to do during shelter in place time. And all of a sudden on the Shopify platform, we kept hearing the cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. And we were like, what is that? What's going on?

And so, you know, I told Reg, I'm like, we have to get up and start baking. Something is happening. And we just started getting a lot of orders. And. Later on, we learned that one of his followers saw the cake and wanted what he had.

So that pushed us into an expansion of our orders online community, if you will. And so also during the pandemic, essential workers were classified, you know, as firefighters, as EMT doctors, nurses. but it was also considered anyone in the food business.

So farmer markets were still very open, very much alive. And so there was this community in an area where they were giving out free food through the World Central Kitchen grants or what have you. And so someone that knew that we had the cakes was like, we have this grant.

A lot of us have been providing dinners and lunches to the community, but we also want to provide them dessert. And so they reached out to us. They purchased cakes from us.

And since we weren't doing anything, we went out and actually served our cakes and the food and started doing community service on that ground. Well, that ground that they were. having cars drive through to pick up their food boxes and drive out, was able to receive a grant to become a farmer's market. And so that same group invited us to come out and do some vending there. And so we started being a part of the farmer's market.

Now we are becoming quote-unquote essential workers and having another consumer base, if you will. Our friends would come out and see us. Our friends had kids.

They were needing an outlet from the homeschooling and everything. And so then their kids came and worked with us and then they were able to get customer service skills and learn what it means to start and run a business. So every aspect of our business, I could keep sharing with you, Christian, story after story after story. But every aspect of our business came from a need of something else.

So one of the things that you also mentioned is community. And in business, one of the things that I've always said is that you need a community. And sometimes it's the people you know.

And oftentimes it's the people that you don't know yet. How has community, be it those people who have been there for you for years and those new entrants really supported your business? Yeah, I was always raised in regards to, you know, the circle of friends that you have are the circle of friends that will help you to move up in the world and to, you know, to just see things differently, if you will. And so...

I was blessed early on, like first generation college student. And so I looked for organizations to be a part of to learn. And so those individuals became my community. The one that I contribute a lot to is the National Association of Black Accountants.

I have been involved with them. I'm a lifetime member for now 30 years or so. And so a couple of my mentors within that organization have always supported me, my efforts, my dreams, my aspirations. They were the first ones to help me get a 501c3 with the nonprofit that we have.

And they are on our board of directors for our business. And so without them, there would be things about this business process that I wouldn't even know. One thing that Reggie and I have with the business is an operating agreement. You know, we were girlfriend, boyfriend, starting out this business, eventually got married. And, you know, it was the, well, we're going to do it this way because I said so type of thing.

And so we had to kind of put some structure in place. And, you know, that's how we came up with our... our respective roles because that we naturally grew into, but our operating agreement, our mentors helped us find the lawyers and the programs in order to be able to get our structure in place. Getting our LLC came at the advice of some of Reggie's friends because, you know, being a home owner and having a business and he...

heard the unfortunate story about one of his friends that started a business that something happened and he lost a lot of his assets. And so we had to learn how to separate our personal items from our business items. And so we formed the LLC and got some support around that.

And we have been self-financing the business for a long time. And a lot of our mentors and friends have taught us about grants. have taught us about programs that we wouldn't have been familiar with, that we have gone through, that have helped and supported and elevated our business.

And now our business is at the point to where individuals are telling us, grants are good, but you can't build your business just on grants. Now it is time to go after capital. So we have some really great friends in the community that continue to push us.

and push us and help us to elevate. And, you know, when we thought about pound business, it came at a time where I was telling Reggie, what you got here, what you and your aunt have been able to develop is something that's really good. And if we do it right, we could help set you up for retirement.

We can start considering, you know, paying for Devon's College. And that was like. Early in 2018 or so when we had that conversation, fast forward to 2022, Reggie retired. And now we're two years into his retirement.

I'm still working full time. But having the community has helped us to reach some of these dreams and aspirations and, you know, things that were just conversations. It helped us to take our business to the next level. So you mentioned that you have the privilege or I don't, I guess the privilege of being a parapreneur.

So you work full time, you have a separate career, and then you also have this COO role where you are building and growing a successful business. How do you find balance in that space? And have you considered whether or not, or actually how have you challenged yourself in the ongoing?

determination of whether or not you go full force into the business and retire your career side of life. Yes. We got one retired.

Now it's time to get two because Reggie makes retirement look so fun. And so, so it's definitely a goal. How do I find balance? Well, I learned early on in my working career that there's really no balance.

There's more of integration. There's more of helping things to align, but there's never really true balance, if you will. That's just my personal opinion.

And so I've learned to integrate. I am a woman of faith. And I always say that God makes room for gifts.

And so I've been amazed at some of the things that we've been able to accomplish. A twenty five hundred slice order for a major corporation serving cakes to to about six or so different corporate corporate. corporate sponsors, if you will.

I've been amazed at some of the doors that have been opened to us from the cake. And so I would say that what I've been able to integrate between working full time and what the business is, is that baking is actually my outlet. So I could be on my calls all day and I can have a stressful situation. But when I go and I flick that KitchenAid and it whips up that butter. It's like my breath that I took in a great yoga pose.

That's my Zen moment. And so that has been the balance for me. Now, some of the things is like, every time we go to an event that we've approached and it's something new, I have, I'm just going to say it, sometimes I have panic attacks. But then it's something that I learned how to do. It taps me into my mental health.

I take whatever moments that I need. I reset. I call you. I get advice from you on different things. You know, you've given me some simple things.

And I'm like, why didn't I think about that? That was too easy. So the way that I find balance or how I do integration is I get in tune with myself.

I look at what the. good outlets are within it. I phone a friend, you know, Christian, I'm not just saying this because you're interviewing me.

I'll specifically give you the example of one Thanksgiving where I was telling you about all the orders you had and you were like, well, just buy some Ziploc bags and pre-measure your ingredients and have them ready for when it's time. I was like, why didn't I think about that? So it's tough.

I remember that. And I ordered cakes too. So that was partially my fault.

You had all those orders. Yes, you did. You ordered for your aunt and your nieces and everything.

So yeah. And then last question, because I think that this is one where a lot of people really would like to understand your formula. You work with your family. Lord have mercy. You live with your family.

How do you make sure that your family continues to be your family through this process? Yes, girl, that is a thing. And I, you know, I have to wear a lot of different hats. I have to be Nicole, the professional and her nine to five.

That's not really nine to five hours. I have to be wife to my husband. We've been married for two years, got married on 2-22-22. I have to be bonus mom to Vaness and Devin, and I have to be grandma to Taylin. I have to be the community leader in all of my organizations.

I have to be co-founder and COO of Pound Business. I have to be mother. I'm sorry, I have to be daughter.

I have to be sister. I have to be aunt. I could go on and on and on about all these different labels.

How do I do it? I, once again, a woman of faith, is saying that he doesn't put more in you than you can bear. So that's the cardinal rule. And then my therapist, you know, I have the privilege of being able to have someone to talk to. I have someone that I can talk to from a mental health perspective, from a business perspective.

So I have my board of directors. I have. And when I say board of directors, I'm not specifically just thinking, speaking on pound business.

I'm speaking on Nicole Felix Borders board of directors and who it consider, who it consists of are other entrepreneurs. I think you, we spoke earlier about the importance of community. Our community is very rooted in other entrepreneurs. We are a part of.

different city chambers, ethnic chambers. We have some of the mentors and sponsors that I mentioned earlier. And then most recently, I started working with a coach.

And your coach is not your therapist. So those are a few of the folks that helped me to be able to show up for Reggie as his wife when I need to, which is all the time. as well as for Reggie as his co-founder of the business, as Devin for his bonus mom, and any other role that I play.

I tap into my board of directors. And to conclude, do you have any socials to share? Yes, yes. You can find Pound Business on all social platforms.

And by all, I speak of... Instagram at Pound Business, as well as Facebook at Pound Business. We're on TikTok at Pound Business LLC. And then you can also find us on LinkedIn.

In addition to that, you can find us on our website at PoundBusiness.com and email us at info at PoundBusiness.com. Now, in all of those platforms, know that business is B-I-Z-N-E. S S. Y'all are standing on business. We're standing on business.

Thank you.

Transcript for:Starting a Business with Christian Young

Transcript for:
Starting a Business with Christian Young