Unemployable Since '92: Building Four Successful Businesses (with Ande Lyons)

💡 Guest Bio

An enthusiastic and experienced entrepreneur with four businesses to her credit, Ande is the host of the Startup Life LIVE Show, where she conducts lively, engaging interviews with founders at all stages and industries, and provides advice, tools, and resources to first-time founders launching, branding and building their businesses.

Her earlier companies include dot com, venture-backed College Broadcast, a broadband media portal with over 50,000 viewers per day; Goddess Granola, a gourmet food product Ande took from recipe to manufacturing, branding, and national distribution in less than two years; and Bring Back Desire, a website devoted to sharing tips, tools, and resources with couples seeking more love and intimacy in their relationship.

Ande is the co-host of a popular startup pitch event in Boston for Founders Live. She loves sharing her startup wisdom all over social media and as a volunteer mentor at local non-profit accelerator programs.

❇️ Key topics and bullets

- Promoting oneself as an exceptional founder and the business's ability to deliver products/services

- Introduction to Ande and their journey as a founder

- Emphasizing the importance of launching a business for first-time founders

- Highlighting the professional and personal skill sets gained through the experience

- Preparing to pitch to investors

- Recommendation of Scrubius as a platform for pitch preparation

- Building visibility and engagement

- Andy Lyons' live startup show schedule and platforms (Tuesday/Friday at 12 PM EST)

- Joining meetup groups to receive alerts when Andy goes live

- Following and connecting with Andy on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

- Subscribing to Andy's YouTube channel for insightful conversations with diverse founders

- Representation and expansion opportunities

- How the speaker's business benefited from supplier diversity programs at companies like Sodexo, Aramark, and Compass

- Obtaining certification as a women-owned business through WeBank and the Women's Enterprise Business National Council

- Presence in corporate campuses, college campuses, hospitals, and eventually grocery shelves

- Lessons learned and the value of entrepreneurship

- Sharing regret of passing up a $14,000,000 funding opportunity

- Discussing the skills and knowledge gained from launching multiple businesses

- Highlighting the transferable skills obtained through entrepreneurship

- Building an online presence and networking

- Setting up a podcast as a low-cost and effective content creation tool

- Amplifying work and business opportunities through in-person conversations and networking events

- Being media prepared and having sound bites ready for interviews

- Managing investors and bootstrapping a business

- Importance of having a clear exit strategy and managing the capital table

- Resourcefulness and utilizing available tools for bootstrapping

- Mention of Canva as a valuable marketing collateral tool

- The key steps to bootstrap a business and the importance of a dream team

- Seeking support and spreading awareness

- Utilizing accelerator programs, business advisers, and organizations like SCORE

- Finding service providers offering quality work at minimal budgets

- Onboarding team members willing to accept lower salaries based on the business's vision

- Sharing the business story and networking for increased awareness

- Success story in scaling a food manufacturing business

- Achieving nationwide expansion in less than 2 years by staying off the shelves

Relevant Links:

andelyons.com

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