Hello today's Thursday which means we're bringing you girls that start up a weekly series where we spool the tea on how to create a seven figure side hustle because no one saves their way to wealth. You're joined today by Sim a seven figure business owner and with me is Maya an entrepreneur in the making. I always said entrepreneur weirdly just then. Hi Maya.
Kitepe here. How are you? I, you know what? I'm good. I'm in New York. I am good, but Maya, I need to tell you something. I am staying in a rental accommodation in New York, and I have clogged the toilet, and oh, I don't know what to do about it.
You know? Do you have, like, you know, if you're in an Airbnb, then you have someone to contact, and then they take care of it? The homeowner? Yeah. Hey, girl, can you come unclog the toilet? Well, what? What else are you going to do? Are you just going to call a plumber to fix it? I don't know. A plumber? I don't even have a US phone number. Who am I going to call? Exactly. You've got to call the owner.
So you just have to, she came over today because she was like, oh, sorry, I like left my passport. She's like flying out, I think. And I was like, also, and I was just like in the living room because I wanted to give her space while she was like, you know, getting her stuff from the bedroom. It's like a one bedroom apartment. What if she tried to use the bathroom? Yeah, it is the funny thing. When you clog a toilet, sometimes it might literally just be the toilet malfunctioning. I'm not blaming myself. Oh, no, that's a given. No, wait, no, it's not.
Sorry, should I have started with that? Because I was going to say, you don't have to be embarrassed. I'm not. It's just malfunctioned like anything. It's a bad toilet. Yeah, exactly. Call the owners, remember, because you can't be holding in your pee for a bad toilet. Yeah, or have to pop down to a cafe every time you need to go to the bathroom.
Just call them. Yeah. No. Yeah. I think I might have to have embarrassing. So today's topic is about transitioning your skills, kind of like how we're transitioning into the episode now, transitioning your skills and talents from vegan employee to an entrepreneur. This was actually a question that came through from one of our listeners who said, what skills should you focus on to upskill into a better job? For example,
Being a virtual assistant remote working like if I am In my job and I want to quit and I want to be my own boss and I want to like just have more freedom What kind of things should I be focusing on should I be up skilling and what maybe am I already doing that could be helpful hmm?
Yeah, and I think it's a really cool kaipapa, a really cool subject to corduro to talk about because starting your own business can be intimidating and stepping into the unknown of some sorts. So it would be good to hear how current
skills that you have in your job, you know, someone could be working somewhere for 10 years. And they're so nervous about just starting something new. I think it's really cool to kind of reframe that mindset. And if you are transitioning into something else, know that you can also use, you know, the skills or things that you're currently doing in your current mahi, your current work to
into into this new realm of signing your business and entrepreneurship. So what skills and experience from your previous money from your previous work? Did you find most valuable when you transitioned into being an entrepreneur a business owner?
So my previous jobs, starting from when I was a teenager included working at a petrol station, it included working a retail job. I was volunteering at a Punjabi Sunday school for a while. My mum was a teacher, so I would just turn up and help teach as well. And then I became an optometrist, which is obviously that was my big girl job. And the skills that I think
I found really helpful and that I took away. It kind of came down to people's skills because any job that you have, unless you are, I don't think there's many jobs in the world, even if you're a software engineer that sits behind a computer and isn't really talking to customers,
You're still talking to teams and you're still dealing with people and you're still learning how to, you know, like problem solve. And so I've found that like any job I've done, the first thing it's always helped me with is getting over my fear of strangers. And then that is so interesting. Like.
and starting a new job and being the new person? Yeah, like starting the new job, being the new person, and just learning how to adapt. And like, I think we all do this. Like, you start a new job and for the first week, you kind of vibe it out. You're like, who's the cool person at this workplace?
In my case, it was Maya. Obviously. Who's the person that I can go to and be like, I don't really know what I'm doing. Can you help me? Who's the person that I definitely can't do that to? You just observe people and engage how you are going to not code switch with them, but how are you going to mirror their energy and make five tick?
Like vibe check. And so I feel like no matter what job you've had, if you start your own business and you have customers, you're going to vibe check your customers quite quickly and go, okay, like this customer, this person is super high energy. Let me match that verse like, okay, this person. If I like came in like guns blazing with my extrovertedness, they would literally run away.
So it's just sensing who your audience is and who your customers are to be able to adapt to that as well, to serve their needs really. You know, if you care. Yeah, just a little bit. And so that's like what tone of voice is. So when you start a business, you'll be asked like, who is your ICP? What's your like ideal customer profile? I've not heard that term before. You don't work in venture.
No, surprisingly not, though. So it's like a jargon way of saying, like, who is your ideal customer? What do they look like? What do they do? Like target market. Yeah, who's your target market? And like, imagine an actual person. Like, what is her name? How old is she? What kind of car does she drive? What does she do on weekends? Because like, you know,
the kind of person that maybe is buying a frank green drink bottle is also someone that like wears little lemon and goes to brunch and drinks marches. And so you'd like building out the kind of way that this person wants to be spoken to and what their hobbies are. And so if you are good at vibe checking and picking up what people like and kind of inferring without generalizing or stereotyping, then you can pick up the tone that your brand needs,
for the people that you talk to. So it was very easy for me to go, okay, who's girls invest for? It's for women. It's from women aged this to this that want to learn about investing in our smart woman. But like, God, they are so scared because no one has talked to them in a way that doesn't feel like demeaning when it comes to money. And if they Google, how do I invest? It's like 20 million articles with like
All these words, you click on one page and it leads you to another page and you click on one page and you're just in this hole and you get overwhelmed. And so Girls are investors just going to be like this older sister that's like, hey, girly, invest in index funds. Look at what bonds are. Don't day trade. I've got you back. Is that kind of considered like a soft skill? You know, like, quote, I love soft skills.
I think so. I think they are superior because I did not at all think that you were going to say like it's essentially vibe-teaking and like understanding your community, your customer, what you want to, what gap you are filling in the market. But that was very much not a business term in like knowing how to budget or invoice or how to do my taxes or things like that.
Oh, I see like you thought I was going to be like a skill that's transferable to start your business is knowing the business financials. Yeah, which is actually really insightful. And I think is really good at kind of calming people's nerves if they have nerves in that because it's like, like you said, you can kind of learn the skills that specifically the job needs when you start a new job, like you have your skills and your experience, but you've never done that.
exact job before so you're still gonna have to learn those things so like the technical stuff so it's people skills who would have thought the second school that i found really helpful when i was a barista at the petrol station you know at my dad would how kind he would like drive me there like five a.m drop me off which meant here to wake up early and i would do the coffees
New Zealand culture, for those that are like, wait, why does a coffee shop have like someone making coffees? Like in the US, there's just those like little machines that you press the button and then you get your like coffee creamer and you walk out. Oh, right. Like the ones that we have in
like the GP or like a car shop. Oh yeah, next to the water purifier. Yeah. The like buttoned coffee. So in Australia, New Zealand, we're a little bit what we call coffee snobs. And so even your petrol station will have a trained barista to make your coffee. I'm up there grinding the beans like I will make sure that you drive away.
with great coffee. And so one of the skills that I learned was that people absolutely loved it. There were some regulars and I would start to pick up that they would order the same thing every single time. And there's to this day, I remember like one lady wanting a trim soy flat white.
Trim soy flat white and she came in every morning and have a trim soy flat white. I would almost have to have been stupid to have not picked up eventually that that's just what she's going to order. Sarah is getting a trim soy flat white. Monday to Friday, rain, shine, hail, different weather, doesn't matter. She'll come in. The car's the same. She's coming in. She's filling up.
She's just, sometimes she doesn't even need a fill-up. She's just getting the drink. And eventually, I would start to just make her the drink if I saw her drive-in to the petrol station. And so by the time she arrived, it would just be ready for her. And I'd be like, oh, here's your trim soy flat white. And she...
loved it. That makes you feel special. It made her feel so special and it was not hard. Like I said, I would have to be so bad at people's skills. If I was like, well, maybe today she wants
an espresso and with full milk. That's just you not paying attention if that's what you thought. And so that was a skill that I like always remembered and I couldn't quite put it into words but eventually I realized like if you can pick up and like treat people in little ways that make them feel special and make them feel like the service is something that is catered to them and just make her feel like she is the only person in the world. She doesn't know that I'm memorizing everyone's like she's not taking
the coffee being like, well, I bet you're going to make the next guy's one for him to before he arrives. She's like, well, I'm special. I have extra service. I have a relationship with this person in this business. And I'm going to come back because she's now my coffee girl.
And so that's attention to detail. Attention to detail is understanding your audience, your target market. And so little things that we do, you know, even at Girls That Invest is whenever I reply to DMs, I will always try to use their name.
And instead of being like, oh, thanks so much for the kind message. It's like, thanks so much, Maya, for the kind message. And sometimes I'll like click on their profile. If I have time, I guess it's a little bit harder now, but I would click on their profile and be like, by the way, I just wanted to say like, I like not to stalk, but like, I love that dress that you had in your latest photo.
Or like, I love your bio. Or like, oh my God, you're a doctor. Like, that's insane. That's like such a cool thing. Like, thank you for being part of the community. And so you're not just replying to like the one thing that they've said where they've like asked a question, you're always going a little bit above and beyond. Hmm. And to build a connection with people.
Yeah, and to this day there are people that like, if they haven't DM'd for a while and then they DM, I'm like, where have you been? How are you babe? Like, what's going to happen then? I have a good visual memory, not a good like, I don't remember things, but I remember faces. So if someone's profile picture is the same profile picture of the last four years, I'll be like, you've been following us for four years, because I've seen your photo pop up.
How are we? Yeah, that's really cool. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these are skills that you can literally learn in any kind of job, like they're not specific to anything. Well, actually, sorry, they're specific to people, but most jobs
and things like that, you are going to interact with another person. The third thing that has really helped, and I think you and I are very similar on this, when I had one of my jobs, when I was like a retail assistant at an optometry clinic, this was before I was an optometrist.
I had like a really bad boss, like she would yell at us, she's maybe cry at work. And then she fired me, like it was just like not fun. She was also extremely racist, like not at me, but at like patients, indigenous patients, which is, you know, not the vibe. Yeah, no, that's terrible. Yeah, she made a lot of people cry, customers cry, but she had one good trait about her. And she would always yell at us to take initiative.
She'd be like, if you have time to lean, you have time to clean. And call me old fashioned, but it was like useful because I learned that if I do have a space again, what's the initiative I can take? Like, okay, like the
contact lens cases need cleaning. Let me do that. I need to like jump up and maybe just reorganize the shelf or like these frames, like this area looks kind of dirty. It's just not working. And what you end up teaching yourself as a muscle, especially as a business owner, is you end up saying, Hey, I have a spare hour between my next meeting. What is something that I can do and take initiative in
to just make my business a little bit clean. Like what's the equivalent of just dusting the shelves where the glass is set? And so what kind of, do you have an example for that in GTI, like for something that you do now? So it'll be a little thing, like I'll look at the GTI Instagram bio and be like, you know what?
I think we could make this a little bit more easier. It might say, world's largest investing and personal finance podcast. And I'll go, if someone doesn't know what, are they going to read that and feel like that really sums us up? Maybe let's make it more simpler and say, world's number one investing education platform.
And like just little things that are small tweaks that, you know, what difference does it make if there's a little bit of dust on the shelf? What difference does it make if there's an extra word in the bio? But I think as a business owner, that skill of like, if you have time to lean, you have time to clean transfers into, okay, the podcast is really fun. And we're calling it girls that invest. And it's really cool. But do we need to like redo
the intro to the podcast? Is it outdated? Is it old? Is it really reflector? So like, do we need to maybe figure out a better way to give investing news to people if they're not really engaging with certain kind of posts? Like maybe let's try reels or let's try stories or let's try videos like this. Just you're always looking in those little spare moments to just tidy things up.
And so seeing how you can innovate and improve on something. Literally, time to lean, time to clean. There is such a famous line for Justin. I've heard that in so many different working environments. And I mean, it's right, especially in your business. And I can see how maybe you might get complacent and things like that. But I'm a huge, huge advocate for taking initiative.
I love people who take initiative and it is so, so powerful and so many aspects in your life and outside of business as well, you know, building relationships and things like that. Do you have any more transferable skills that you've used?
I think those are the main three, but if you're listening to this, I think you're probably picking up on a theme here, which is the skills that are transferable to be an entrepreneur aren't like, oh, financial projections. They're not like, yeah, I was really good at just, you know, figuring out the big ideas in my job as a
I doctor, therefore I became a media company owner. It doesn't work like that. It's really all the amazing soft skills and like, just like, I don't know, work ethic skills that you pick up. Did you have difficulty transitioning from an employee mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset? No, I think I was always a bad employee.
I'm not going to not to agree to too much, not that you are a bad worker, but I think while knowing the person that you are, you've kind of always had an entrepreneur mindset. Yeah, like I would say that the mindset shift was always, I always believed like if I'm going to put in a lot of time and a lot of effort to be really good at something, I want to be the best in my job, not
against other people i don't want to be the best optometrist in the workplace but i want to be the absolute best i doctor that i could possibly be where i want to be the best like optical assistant that i could ever be in myself and there's such a limit to that like short of
saving people's sight, which is very important. Yes, it's very important. And I had a few like case studies and I got like my work like published in a journal because I figured out like something really rare, like I did all the cool things that made me feel like, okay, I'm actually really good at my job. But after a while,
Like, how good can you really get? And so I really struggled with that limit that like lid on my performance. Glass ceiling. Yeah, the glass ceiling financially, of course, because you can only earn a certain income, but also just like, how good can I get? Whereas with a business, the sky is the limit of how good can you get? How much can you grow? How many people can you make happy? How many customers lives can you change like that?
just is such a bigger goal. And I think I struggled with the idea of knowing that that ceiling was there. Okay. I mean, that's actually no surprise knowing the person that you are. Okay. It's not that I was curious to see if there were any mindset challenges because I think that can be a big thing for people, you know, transitioning from following orders to
being the person who makes all the decisions and all of that kind of stuff. So I just have one more part for you, Sam. I just have one more question. What advice would you give to others who are considering making the transition from employee to entrepreneur in terms of identifying and leveraging their skills?
Do you know what? I wanted to use you as an example of someone who has so many great skills that you probably, I don't know if maybe you have, but I don't know if you've ever really considered them as being like, oh, these are skills that would help me in my business. But Maya is extremely, extremely, extremely scrappy. And you will figure stuff out.
Things are figureoutable. Everything is figureoutable. I'm so resourceful. And so in our jobs, I remember you came to work one day and you were like, I don't really know how to do this thing. And I'm googling it. And it's not really helping. And I was like, oh, well, I still have, I brought all my optometry school notes with me. And we did a paper on fitting frames and fitting people. And I can just give you my booklet. And you were like, OK. And you took it. And then you learned it because
at work they weren't teaching you. So you and Addie waited like take papers from a university and just like figure out how to do it yourself. Yeah well I actually and I looked around in the office and found like another like a ring binder as well and I held on to those like long after I had left as well because I'm like this is useful information. Well that's just the thing like knowledge is key.
Knowledge is key. That's so useful because when you start your business, when you finally get around to, you've actually been pretty good at being consistent this week. Actually, I'm very proud of you. Thank you. I'm back, baby. Like I am officially back. While being with my guys, check it out. She's posting again. She's posting again.
So when you continue growing your social media account and you decide, oh my goodness, how on earth do I film that cool transition? You're just going to figure it out. You're going to Google it. You're not going to sit and wait for someone to come and tell you. No. And thank you, Sim. That's a really good reminder because
Even I look at specifically TikTok and even how people edit the things. There's so many times that I have Googled how people are editing the reels and the TikToks like what's trending and things like that because I don't know. Like I was, I'm not a Gen Z.
It doesn't like come naturally kind of in that terms, but I will figure it out because I'm when it sink or swim, I'm always going to swim because I refuse to sink.
Oh my god, that is so insanely true. I have one little piece of advice for everyone listening. I want you to go home and rather than saying, oh, well, I can't be a business owner because I'm not money minded or I don't think of business ideas. I'm not the kind of gal to like chuck on a power suit and like.
Gaslight, gate keep, girl boss my way into success. Like that's not me. Write everything that you know you're good at. And if you don't know what they are, ask your work colleagues, what are my skills? Like vague skills. Don't be like, oh, you're really good at like a specific little thing. Like in general, what are my big idea skills that I have, my soft skills? Chuck them into chat GPT and be like, my name is Simran and I am good at being resourceful. I'm good at talking to new people and I'm good at making unhappy customers happy again.
and then say, how would these skills be useful in me running my own business? And watch chat GPT tell you exactly how the skills that you have are actually extremely transferable. You'll be so surprised. It's going to be like, oh, you don't realize it, but
A lot of customers are going to have issues with your product, especially at the start because it's your first time. But because you are so good at problem solving and talking to people and hearing them out and then just fixing it, they're going to become lifelong customers as opposed to the other kind of person that gets really angry when people give bad feedback and just block them. And I think that's such a
was saying like breath of fresh air to hear because the three things that you listed, I did not think that that's what you would say either. Like I wouldn't think that it was vibe checking for in like vibe checking for being an entrepreneur and creating your own business. But it's like just reflecting on not getting hung up on the technical things, which is what I initially thought were the priority.
Like you just imagine what a successful business owner looks like and you imagine these skill sets that you just think people have. There are so many things I am bad at that would make a traditional business owner really good. I am not an organized person. I am not an operations person. It took me so long to like standardize the way my business runs. People would be like, how do you come up with content? And I'd be like, I literally just like go, beep, beep, beep, beep in my head. And then idea comes.
I'm actually trying to teach that to someone that works in your company and being like, what? So how do we make content? And I'm like, it's beep, beep, beep, beep. And then it just comes. Like you just look out the window for 10 seconds and then you make a reel. That doesn't work like that. And so I had to learn how to extract it from my head and go, okay,
These are our content pillars. People like to listen to us about this, this and this. And so I'm bad at organization. I'm bad at giving systems. For a while, I was bad at managing people and I've had to read books about how to manage that. There's so many things that I was bad at, but imagine if I was like, well, I don't know how to do systems, so I guess I'll just never start a company. So don't let that hold you back.
You can learn. If you've got time to lean, you've got time to lean and clean and learn and just do all of it. God, that woman has, that old boss has really just like done a number on me. But I wanted to say the three skills that I had learned from my previous employment that had nothing to do with starting a business were not things that you can just, you know, figure out on your own if you live in a vacuum. They come from
Having jobs and having experiences and so everything that you have done in your life, whether it's volunteer work, whether it's being in university, whether it's your starter jobs, wherever you are at, everything has been useful for you.
to transfer into the dream company that you want to start, the dream business idea. And I think it's just so exciting that once you reframe it, it's like, damn, everything was like meant to happen. Everything that I did is leading me to where I am today to create such change.
Yeah, it's all about lessons, baby. It's all about lessons. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot. It's the one thing we ask, put it on Instagram story, share it with a friend and tag us because we really, really, really value when we find more people in this world that want to grow their wild, that want to get better at investing, want to grow their businesses, because we just think the world's a better place when we all have money. All right, we'll see you next week, Maya. Take it easy. Bye. Bye.
And as always, to finish off with, the disclaimer. Girls That Invest does not provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs. We are not financial advisors. The advice from Girls That Invest exists for educational purposes only and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Advice from Girls That Invest is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances or as you research and please do your due diligence.
