October 9, 2026 – Home Care Franchise Amrit Dhaliwal and Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais

00:00 Intro 1: In the AM, radio network, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:21 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there and making some money and making some cool decisions as an entrepreneur. There is nothing more exciting that we can do. And this is one of the things I love the most. There’s no other occupation, vocation, anything that we would use more of our God given skills than entrepreneurship. If you are an entrepreneur, you’re using every skill that God gave you. And that’s one of the things that I absolutely love it about it. We have a fantastic show for you today. Wow, this is a great one. First up, we have Amrit Dhaliwal. He has built a huge UK-based franchise in the home care space and did it all before in his 30s and he has a long history of entrepreneurship and is a fantastic guest. I’m excited for you to meet him. You know, I love franchises because it comes with a manual. It’s a proven model that works because they figured it out in advance and made it work for you and I just love a franchise. And so I’m excited to learn about franchises in the UK and the home care space because here in the United States. That is one of the biggest growing franchise sectors. After that, we have Beth Mazza, and Victoria Sivrais, they have written a new book called Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER, and they are female mother entrepreneurs. And not only do they have a great catchy title, they have a great catchy business, they are into bootstrapping, and you know I love a bootstrapper, and we have a great conversation about passion. And you know I am very, very passionate about my views on passion. Passion should be reserved for the church, the synagogue, the mosque, your family, your bedroom, and Disney, and going down the Colorado River or whatever else is really important to and floats your boat like the river. We’re out of water though in the west, aren’t we? I don’t know if the rivers are accessible now. Certainly, Hoover Dam is at the lowest level, I think, since they built it. But anyway, I love passion for the important stuff, not the irrelevant stuff like the business that I’m running. And I know that sounds crazy, and I’m only being a little bit facetious, but you should be loving your business, not passionate for it. You should really, really, really like it. More than working for the man, certainly, but you don’t necessarily need to go out there and say, I love my business more than or as much as my children. And I have sold a business and walked away from one and I felt like I lost a child. But I still, uh, hope that I am more concerned about my family and that kind of stuff than I am about an object or a business or anything like that. So anyway, we got a great show today. Great stuff coming up too. We have a big show next week on Deep Fakes and AI. We’re doing a lot on AI, of course, because it just keeps becoming an important issue. We’re going to be talking about mind scaling to growing your mind and becoming smarter and that issue and we are on. Billionaire alert. Monday, Monday, Monday. We will be right back to get started. Thanks for being with us. Tell your friends.

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04:24 Jim Beach: Welcome back to the show again. Thank you so much for being with us. Very excited and honored to introduce my 1st guest. Listen to this life. He, well, 1st his name is Amrit Dhaliwal. He is the CEO and founder of Walfinch, which was selected as the Social Care Top 30. He started off as an entrepreneur when at 21, he only lasted 8 months in his 1st job and decided he couldn’t work for anyone else. At the age of 22, he started an Italian deli in Richmond, aged 23, took over a fashion boutique and turned it into a Marie Antoinette style tea room. 24. He won the local business award, sold the tea room, reinvented the deli into casual fine dining. At 25, he bought a home care franchise, and at 26 made his 1st pound, knowing that he would now become a franchise expert. 27, sold the restaurant at age 30, sold the care business, age 32, started Walfinch, which is what we will be talking today. He also has his own podcast and released a book just recently Time to Thrive: The Home Care Revolution. Amrit is an amazing story. I can’t wait. Let’s get started. Welcome to the show, Amrit.

05:37 Amrit Dhaliwal: Very well, Jim. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the show.

05:42 Jim Beach: How are you?

05:43 Amrit Dhaliwal: I am very well. Thank you.

05:45 Jim Beach: So, how did you get the idea for Walfinch?

05:48 Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, I actually was a franchisee myself of a different home care brand, and I remember having this thought, and it was, I thought, well, hold on a 2nd. If McDonald’s was doing home care franchising, would it look like this? And it probably wouldn’t, and I thought, well, I need to fix that. That became my 20-year mission, fixing care in the home care space and also fixing the franchising element of it.

06:15 Jim Beach: What was wrong with the model that you saw?

06:18 Amrit Dhaliwal: Well, I just sort of, it worked for a historic care provider. It worked, you know, 10, 20 years ago when you were getting government contracted work and kind of low margin piling it high. But in the new age, and what I saw happening in the future, which is, you know, unfolding in front of our eyes right now, is that actually, The market is moving to a private pay market. The market is moving to a more nuanced business owner that is coming in, and actually someone that has not been in the care background previously. And so in order to help that care provider, you need to provide a very different type of support for them, a very different kind of coaching model for them.

07:04 Jim Beach: Yes, definitely. All right, how many, how big is it now? How many franchises have you sold?

07:10 Amrit Dhaliwal: So we’re at about 40 odd locations around the country at the moment. And the sort of five-year goal is to break a 100 locations and we’re very much on track for that.

07:21 Jim Beach: Very impressive. Congratulations. That is very impressive. So When you saw this, did you have an elderly in-home care or something like that?

07:30 Amrit Dhaliwal: I did. Yes, I it was, I had a sort of elderly care home care. Uh, a franchise business at the time and I’d done various other things before that. I’d been in restaurants and tea rooms and property and so on and I kind of fell into home care and quite conveniently. Um, you know, and at the time, my grandfather very briefly was living with us and it kind of contextualized the whole thing for me. And that was really that that whole kind of period, this was around 2012 that I came into the sector.

08:04 Jim Beach: All right. Well, good that your grandfather got to spend some time with you. That is always so valuable for a family. And You saw this as a model of a franchise. You decided to go that that was the best route. Why is franchising perfect for this system as opposed to owning all of the model yourself?

08:25 Amrit Dhaliwal: Well, I think there is a lot of red tape. And actually, in order to scale quickly as a franchisee. It is much easier if you don’t own the whole thing outright because, you know, in my opinion anyway, having done both. I’ve been a franchisee and an independent business owner with this. And I think that as a franchise, you’ve got access to the support people, the tech people, the compliance people, the whole full suite of people. But, you know, when you are on your own, you’re then forking out for that straight off the bat. So if your pockets are very deep or you’re buying or going concerned, that’s a very different situation.

09:06 Jim Beach: Yes, very different. So you said that this is now a patient pay model, right? Is that how you work? Okay.

09:14 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yes.

09:14 Jim Beach: And is it affordable or is it something just for the upper? Earner?

09:19 Amrit Dhaliwal: So, I mean, so we work on a really sort of simple philosophy that actually we need to be able to pay our team properly, so pay our care stuff properly, and in order to do that, we need to charge, well, and so we end up being, um, as a result of that, we end up being ends up creating a 2 tier system. And so you’ve got kind of a government pay on one side and then you’ve got private pay on another side. And really what we’re looking at doing is revolutionizing the way that we talk about care, think about care, think about aging in the UK. And we’re really trying to do that through a focus on wellness, I don’t know, longevity. You know, we have a rally cry called time to thrive and that really is the banner that we fly under.

10:11 Jim Beach: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I like that. Time to thrive. All right, so. Do they stay? 12 hours or is this uh, like an hour that they come and take care of the patient? My father lived with us in the last year of his life, and he had to have caregivers come in and take care of some of his wounds and, you know, bathe them and stuff like that, but then they would leave. They would only be there for an hour. We had 2 or 3 different people who came in and provided different services. Is that similar to what you do?

10:49 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, and I think it really, you know, we very much, um, you know, kind lead. And and what we what we really do is say, well, what is it that your father wants to do? So yeah, there’s a practicality of it, and there’s a practicality of he needs to bathe and so on. But actually, you know, maybe your father loves golf and we’ve got somebody that could maybe take him to a golf range. You know, maybe he can’t play golf as much anymore, but maybe we could take him there for a day and, you know, and so on. And he’s really trying to say, well, or we could talk about golf or we could look at pictures of golf or we could watch a golf on TV together or something. You know, my point is, all we’re there to do is to really bring the whole thing to life and and really kind of go beyond what we have historically thought of, you go into, you do the thing and you disappear. And so, you know, we really want to unfold those beautiful stories that you miss along the way.

11:59 Jim Beach: That is a cool example. So you mentioned that most of your franchisees did not come out of the healthcare industry. Tell me about that. Where did they come from and why did they switch into healthcare? Don’t they need some background?

12:14 Amrit Dhaliwal: So we do a lot of that training? Um, and then we support them in hiring the right people. So that you’ve got some, you know, a registered manager. We call them that are, you know, the compliance person and they sort of make sure that it’s a safe business. And then we have an internal suite of people that coach the franchisee to deliver a safe and successful service.

12:38 Jim Beach: How long does their training take?

12:41 Amrit Dhaliwal: So it is it is really quite robust actually. So we have a couple weeks that is straight off the bat, so you’ll have a weak residential and then, you know, a week on online systems and so on. But then, you know, over the course of the next 90 days. You know, we have a combination of cohorts that we group franchisees in, we have a combination of in-person digital calls and then dropping meetings and so on. And so, you know, that alongside the coaching to actually get through the the Care Quality Commission, which is the regulator and their interview and so on as well.

13:18 Jim Beach: Excellent. Very cool. And how many clients can one person? Well, I guess that doesn’t matter. You could just hire more. So the franchise can cover 100s, 1000s, what’s the average that it takes to become profitable? How many patients do you need for you to be successful?

13:36 Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, I mean, you know, the, the, the numbers are too much lower than what many people think, and and really, what we tend to say is that you probably need a run rate of, you know, somewhere in the region of about £20,000 or so, a month, in order to just break even. And when you think about that and you think, well, the average client might be about 35, you know, hours or so and about sort of 14 to 17 hours per week, you could probably do that within, you know, 9 clients, 10 clients, and you’re kind of breaking even on average. And then, you know, then it starts to ramp up and then you’re hiring more people and then, you know, you’re covering that and ramping again. And so, um, what we tend to work towards it to get a franchisee up to about a 1,000,000 in revenue by year, you know, end of year 3 or so, um, and and really focusing on on building a healthy growth profit so that they can actually, you know, look at where they want to spend that. You know, I think I think that’s the 1st fundamental piece.

14:48 Jim Beach: These people, they don’t come out of the healthcare industry, right? Your franchisees?

14:52 Amrit Dhaliwal: Predominantly not. Some do, but predominantly that is not the person that we tend to be attractive.

14:58 Jim Beach: Why do you think that is?

15:00 Amrit Dhaliwal: Well, you know, I think that, um, historically that has, I mean, I think you surely that has been the person that is coming in, and I think right now we’re in a kind of a moment of change, and really what we, what I’m really looking for are people that are mission led, and people that have a commercial sense as well at the same time, you know, we want people that are providing great quality care, but also understand that, yes, it is a commercial endeavor and profit isn’t a dirty word. And so, you know, we do expect our franchisees to be profitable because you can’t do anything without it, right? You kind of provide a safe service or a great service without that. And I think, you know, that um, change has meant that many uh, sort of care provider or care experienced people have had tended not to join. And that isn’t saying that none of them do, but on en masse, they tend not to.

16:01 Jim Beach: Do you market to find new franchisees or do you go to franchise events? How are you spreading the word of your business?

16:09 Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, I, I, um, just from my life spreading the word. No, I’m spreading my, I’m spreading the word right now, you know? And I think I talk about obsession a lot with my with my team. And I really believe that it’s okay. You know, I think it’s absolutely fine to be obsessed with the mission and talk about it all the time, live and breathe it, you know, I’m out there. I, you know, post regularly on socials. I have my own YouTube channel, we go to events, I’m on podcasts. I have my own podcast, you know, I’ve just got a new book coming out as well. And, you know, really, what we’re doing is is constantly trying to, um, you know, get message out there. But actually, you know, we’re in the anti- sales game, right? You know, what we’re trying to do is get people to know really quickly and say, you know, they don’t want to do X and that we’re trying to get the right people to come on the mission with us.

17:13 Jim Beach: Tell me about the book.

17:15 Amrit Dhaliwal: So, so, um, I’m actually looking at a copy of the the sample copy right now. It’s a little sort of almost looks like the size of a poetry book, and it’s called 22 Laws for the Lawless Entrepreneur. And it’s really sort of a selection of laws that I’ve come up with over the years that have helped me think about running my own, you know, business operation, essentially. And, um, yeah, I mean, it’s really kind of everything from, yeah, the toxic people that you have to martering connection and and partnerships and so on. So it’s really kind of gone through that whole piece. It’s a little kind of pocket size piece, but it’s I think it is fun and I hope it will be enjoyed.

18:01 Jim Beach: I’m sure it will be. Is it available now?

18:04 Amrit Dhaliwal: It will be shortly. We’re just, we’ve just had a sample run through. So we’re just working on a launch shape, but I think in the next sort of 4 to 6 weeks. It will be officially launched.

18:18 Jim Beach: All right. Well, by the time this airs, that’ll be even sooner. So it might be up now. How’d you come up?

18:25 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, I mean, if you come along to our website to my socials, You’ll find the links at that point, I’m sure.

18:33 Jim Beach: How did you come up with the name Walfinch?

18:37 Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, I lamented over it for quite some time. One of the most difficult parts for me for running and starting a business is coming up with a name. So, um, I wanted something that, um, spoke about the evolution that we were trying to create within the sector, uh, both care and franchising, and that’s where that kind of finch piece came from. And “Wal” is from my surname, Dhaliwal. And that really was me thinking, well, actually, it will be something that doesn’t already exist. It is kind of a compound word that we can take anywhere in the world. And, you know, with very kind of big aspirations as we started.

19:18 Jim Beach: Do you have plans to go to the rest of the world? United States?

19:23 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yes. Yeah, I mean, I was only recently speaking to a American colleague of mine and, you know, thinking about that whole piece. I think we’re probably a couple of years away from it. Um, but um, but yeah, we, we, we’re sort of scratching on, on, um, some discussions around uh, parts of Europe and Ireland, so on. But I think that America would be 2 to 3 years and and one of the next big fun projects that we’ve got coming up.

19:53 Jim Beach: Well, the rules, how different are the rules going to be? So I know you have the NHS there in Britain and we don’t really have a similar system, but we certainly have our mess of insurance and all of the different pieces in our healthcare system. I think the fact that your patient pay will give you a huge advantage in the United States. Just say the hell with insurance. We’re not going deal with it. You want to get reimbursed. You can reimburse by yourself. We’re not going to do it. I like that model here. Is that sort of what you’ll do here?

20:31 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, I think so. And I think really, um, what I’d like to do is work with uh, sort of an American CEO and and have someone help navigate uh, all of the local states and so on. I’ve been coming out to the states now for um, 4 or 5 the, the market um, and and understanding how the different states work and the FDDs and, you know, who is regulated and who isn’t. But fundamentally, yes, what we are interested in doing, my big mission really is to change the way we think about aging and the way we behave with that whole aging piece. And I think if we’re able to do that. You know, that becomes the appeal and that USP piece.

21:15 Jim Beach: Yes. Well, you are going to need someone really good at regulations when you come here. I know that. What other countries do you think the model could work in?

21:26 Amrit Dhaliwal: I think that, um, If I look at the global market right now when where it is operating successfully already, you know, most of most of kind of Western Europe, for sure, um, you’ve got Australia, New Zealand where, you know, both kind of home care and that franchising market have become more established. Certainly, you know, North America, Canada, America, and so on. I mean, I think that, um, broad brush folks, I think that is where I’ve seen, um, this model already working and and it’s really then saying, can you come and pivoted slightly and work through?

22:02 Jim Beach: Right, I think you could take over the world with it. Do you have competition in the UK? What kind of competition do you have?

22:10 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, I mean, we have some so many good operators here. We have some not really some, you know, not really good operators, as with everywhere, I think. I’m very friendly with the good operators because I think that you can go much further together. And we keep an eye on everybody else. And it’s really sort of saying, well, actually, you know, my big thing is making sure that the franchise market isn’t damaged. And so, you know, if somebody, um, if we don’t have all finished surgery, I, I happily recommend a couple of, um, my, my competitive colleagues, uh, as I call them and, and say, well, actually, here we go, speak to these guys. And, you know, I’ve got a dinner with a few of those kind of come soon, actually. Um, but on average, I mean, we, we, there’s probably, um, you know, about sort of 6 or 7 good quality franchise care businesses that I’d say if I was buying a franchise I’d be looking at at moment in the UK. Their numbers north of that in the US.

23:16 Jim Beach: You know, the sheer size is, is, is the um, governing factor of that, I imagine. Is the… Franchise system in the UK, the same as in the US. Do you know any differences?

23:28 Amrit Dhaliwal: Many. Um… Uh, so the franchise system in the US is far more regulated than in the UK. And so when we’re operating in the UK, I really think about that US regulation and say, well, actually, could we pass the sort of, you know, scrutiny of that, um, uh, and, and if you can, then, then great because actually even, you know, we weren’t very much in sort of self-regulating. We have the British Franchise Association that helps support that endeavor.

23:57 Jim Beach: Okay. And do you have franchise associations and conventions and all that?

24:02 Amrit Dhaliwal: We do, we do. And so in November this year, there’s some British French associations, annual conference, as we call it, and you know, there are various other shows that we exhibit at that also double up as information gathering places for prospective franchisees, and they happen throughout the year. There’s probably about 3 or 4 of those, that I’d say. And then actually, I have gone about setting up a, a small, very exclusive event that happens a couple of times a year called the Founders Table, and this is directed to people in the UK that are looking at, um, entering the home care franchising market, and it’s usually held at, you know, one of the circle houses, and we, um, have a very fun lunch, but, you know, kind of dig into what it means to get into home care, into franchising. We have some of our successful franchisees that come along and kind of pass back. And it becomes really a wonderful day, actually.

25:01 Jim Beach: That does sound like a great event. When is that held, you said November?

25:06 Amrit Dhaliwal: I’ve got the next one coming up on the 17th of October in London, actually. So, yeah, if anyone is interested, please do give us a tinkle about that.

25:16 Jim Beach: Excellent. Well, Amred, I am so impressed with what you were doing. You were providing a great service, a service that I have paid for myself when my dad lived with us, and so I just 100% agree and think you’re doing a fantastic job. Really impressive. How do we find out more? Keep in touch, follow you online. Look at all the posts you’re doing.

25:40 Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, I mean, look, I’m on LinkedIn as Amrit Dhaliwal, I’m on Instagram as Amrit Walfinch. My YouTube channel is I’m at The Walking CEO. Um, I’m on TikTok. I’m on Substack, uh, and um, I have a newsletter that comes out every couple of weeks in a podcast and if you Google me, you’ll probably find a few other pods that I’ve been on and in events like this. So, I’m relatively easy to get hold of, but most of all, that information’s all, all sitting in um, uh, the website at uh, Wolffinchfanchising.com.

26:14 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot. Great story.

26:22 Amrit Dhaliwal: Thank you. We will be right back.

26:24 Intro 2: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. It has a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. That’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio.

26:47 Jim Beach: We are back and again. Thank you so much for being with us. I’m excited to introduce not one, but two great American female entrepreneurs. They have built a series of great ventures together. Please welcome Beth Mazza and Victoria. I didn’t ask you how to pronounce your name, Victoria.

27:05 Victoria Sivrais: Sivrais.

27:05 Jim Beach: There we go.

27:06 Victoria Sivrais: Thank you.

27:07 Jim Beach: Victoria Sivrais. They are the founders of Female Mavericks, and together have written a book called Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER: Build a Company That Buys You Freedom, Not One That Owns Your Life. They had been active together before they founded Clermont Partners and grew it to 43 employees and a 100 company clients, very impressive, and they’ve won awards and stuff. We’re just going to get into it. They’re both amazing, long bios on the website. Beth, Victoria, welcome. How you doing?

27:37 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: We’re great.

27:38 Jim Beach: So I interviewed a gentleman the other day, I think he aired yesterday, and he has started a fund only for women. It’s a VC for women, and I pushed him, you know, why are you, man, doing this? I see the need. Obviously there’s a huge need for it. But should a man be in charge of a female VC. It sort of like, you know, can a gay person pretend to be straight in a movie? You know, all of these silly questions. Beth, what are your thoughts?

28:10 Beth Mazza: Oh my gosh. Look, I will take any money we can get. Are you kidding me? We’ll take it from animal, mineral plant. Who cares if it’s a guy? God bless them. We’ll take them in a second.

28:23 Jim Beach: I mean, a shortage of funds available for women? Can’t you just go to a normal VC fund?

28:29 Beth Mazza: No, I mean, there’s 2 stats that really make a difference there. Only 2% of overall venture funding goes to women and in the last year. The, there are only 5 really big deals where women raised money and it was all in the AI space. When you take out those 5 deals. The rest of the women got 1% of overall venture funding. So no, for so many reasons, we’re not able to raise the money like men can. So I love the idea of a guy in DC raising a bunch of money only for female oriented companies. We’ll take it.

29:06 Jim Beach: Okay. What is the problem? Or men just such jerks that we don’t want to get rid of? Money that we money up? The response is that we see that you’re going to make money and say, ha, ha, I’m such a man and my penis is so large. I don’t want to make money with you.

29:26 Beth Mazza: No, that may be what, what summer thinking, but no, we don’t think so. Here’s what we think is going on. They, the models, right, for men, are, it’s easier for them to raise money when they don’t have a really well developed business product or service. That’s just historically done, uh, more guys create product versus services businesses. Those are easier to see easier to fund. And I think in general, people are more comfortable funding those businesses. What we do find, right, is that women who have more developed businesses actually have revenue, actually have cash flow and profits. Those businesses get funded, right? Because people are smart and we were greedy and we want to fund businesses that will make us money. Well, a lot of those women. We don’t need to go to venture. We can go right to private equity. We can go to family, we can go to friends because we have a cash flow business that gets funding. So there’s really speculative businesses that VCs are so great at funding. Women tend to kind of have less of those I mean, is there an institutional problem? Sure, there is. Sure, there is, but it really is, I think, the difference between the really well developed, you know, businesses are actually working versus a product that you need a 1,000,00000 to try and build.

30:48 Victoria Sivrais: I think that there’s also an other thing that’s happening here, which is more women don’t necessarily know to go ask for it. Like, I mean, if you look at Beth and I’s businesses, We did it the same way twice. We bootstrapped it. We funded it on our own. We didn’t go looking for capital because we just kind of are scrappy and we knew the plan ahead of us. So I think, I think that, this might be overreaching, but men are more likely to go looking for the funding, whereas women are like more likely to just kind of go heads down with a great business plan and fund it themselves.

31:28 Jim Beach: All right. Let’s stop talking about that and talk about something much more important. You two. Tell us about your, you want to do the book 1st or the business first? Which one makes more sense?

31:40 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: I think the book does. Because I think… Yeah.

31:44 Jim Beach: All right. Talk to us about the book, entrepreneur like a mother.

31:48 Victoria Sivrais: Beth and I have been together for 20 plus years in a variety of… I correct? And we have 9 children between us. Yes, we did. Not as a couple, but.. Families that have 9 children together. Ranging from ages 7 to Sam 25 now, 24. He is, yes. So, I mean, it’s a it’s a big gamut. But, uh, I mean, Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER was born out of the idea that we needed a playbook that didn’t exist when we were building Ashton Partners in Clermont Partners. So we decided once we had 2 very successful exists and we, you know, using my air quotes, retired, wanted to create that playbook that we never had. So, you know, Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER is one part memoir. All of the things that we did right and wrong, but even more importantly, a 5 step power move playbook that allows women to build and scale their businesses. And so, you know, we were lucky enough. I call Beth and I unicorns all the time because there’s not often that you find 2 women that can not only be business partners and challenge each other, but also turn in the best friends and and kind of push each other forward and get each other back. But like, not most women doing this on their own, do not have that unicorn with them. So we’re kind of hoping that this book becomes their unicorn.

33:14 Beth Mazza: And look, we have a premise, right? That women starting businesses often looks a lot different than them. Number one, especially for moms, we’re not able to go into our parents’ basement and eat ramen noodles all day and wait till we can get our product out, right? We just, we have kids and we have a different, our time is going to be taken different, and we want it to be. Like, we both love being moms. So that’s very cool. And the 2nd part of it is, we are, Our model, because we know it might be tougher for us to raise funding at early stages, and because we know we can’t work 24 hours a day, because we probably have to pick someone up at some point at hockey practice. Our business model has to look different. But it doesn’t have to be a side hustle, a candle business. It can be big and that’s what ours were, but it does have to look a little different than the one my husband at the time was starting where he could work 24/7. So we just wanted women to be able to pick up this book and say, wow, that feels a little bit more like a playbook. I might be able to follow because I’m 7 months pregnant and I want to be an entrepreneur, but I also, you know, am a mom.

34:37 Jim Beach: Well, why did your husband get to work 24/7? That’s really, really unfair. I mean, even I think we need to get out and say, what the heck, man? Make him put in his hours.

34:50 Beth Mazza: Right. Well, I will say that not only did he, but he would do driving, et cetera, but I think that’s actually a great example of the model difference. Victoria and I made a decision that we could go for really, really high ticket hourly work event crisis where we had to work 7 days a week. But we didn’t want to. So we didn’t pick that model. My husband at the time, he felt very different. He was in software and that’s what you had to do. So I do think like, I talk, we talk so much when we’re mentoring women now about, hey, before you dip a toe in, before you open a business account. Can you have done the work to say, okay, my the total addressable market in my business is big enough that I can cross 7 figures and beyond? So that’s number one. Then number two, based on the personal life I want to have and the financial non-negotiables I have. Could I actually deliver on that within the time frame I’m willing to work? And like women just have to do those 2 things. Now, do I think men should? Of course they should. But the story I know that’s authentic to V and I is women and being a mom, so that’s why we wrote that playbook.

36:10 Jim Beach: Okay. And it’s published by Wiley, everybody. So you know that it’s an incredibly well-done book. Wiley is, I’d say, in the top 2 or 3 in the world in terms of business publishing. So that is very prestigious in and of itself. So I just want to point that out. What are the differences? So you both believe in bootstrapping, correct?

36:32 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: We do. It works for us and I and it was the right path for us. Is it always the right path for every woman that’s going out there? Probably not, but we had a services business. We had a savings and a support network to tap into for Claremont. I’m speaking to specifically our 2nd business. Um, and we had a client base that we started the business with. Now, the company that we left, did not like that those clients came with us, but we did have a base to start with. Yeah, a huge base.

37:07 Jim Beach: That’s a lot to go with.

37:09 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: I mean, the paradox of everything, right, is that when we went to sell the 2nd business, we were actually offered a whole bunch of growth capital, a really significant number. And so the only time that we ever really sat and thought through, what it would be like to get a significant investment was, you know, like 20 years into both of our businesses, that was the only opportunity that we ever had.

37:35 Jim Beach: And what do you say to women in your system, in your groups that are going to go raise money. Do you tell them to start bootstrapping and that, you know, 2 years later, that money will be so much cheaper and easier? Does bootstrapping work better for a mom who maybe needs to ramp up slower?

37:55 Beth Mazza: Look, I think the discussion to have, and we try and have it with every woman is, if you take outside investment, early, you will have to meet the growth parameters they’re going for. And which means you will lose control of your personal life. And you might be ready to do that, right? There’s a model that says, do that for 5 years, make your money and then do whatever else you want after that. And it’s not the kind of money that you might be able to make if you didn’t take investment. So all we’re saying, we liked bootstrapping because services businesses. We knew we were not going to get a great multiple on a services business until we had proven. We could scale it fast and we could have real margins. On day one of us pitching to raise money for a service and business, no one would have thought we could have the growth we wanted. So that was our model and we knew bootstrapping was the answer. And then we did the math to say, because we’ve got some clients right now, we’ve got some ability to take on loans and we took on some personal debt, we can get this done. You may have to. I mean, I was just talking to a woman who’s got a really great app idea. She doesn’t have 3 years to make that work. She’s got 6 to 9 months. She has no choice but to go out and get funding. And so she knows she’s making a 3 to 4 year decision where she gives up a lot of control over a personal life. There isn’t an answer. In services, bootstrapping work for us. If we had a product business, it might not have. But we do want to make sure that every woman we’re in contact with reads anything we write. Knows for sure that that is a moment where they’re making a decision and it’s a personal decision as well as a financial one.

39:56 Jim Beach: Do we go through that?

39:58 Victoria Sivrais: Yeah, and I think… Let me just add one thing. I think what’s important too is, and it’s incredibly important to both Beth and I is that when we’re talking to women who are buying our book, we are not saying the only path is you can have flexibility and do what you want and also build a business that you can get, you know, an 8 figure return on. You can’t, like, we made the choice when we started our businesses that we wanted to exit. So yes, we bootstrapped. But yes, we also did not have, you know, the quote unquote balance that you would think that you would like as being a mother and an entrepreneur. Now, the 1st part of our book is really talking about how do you choose that right business? This goes to what fast would you just take talking about in terms of getting funding? If you were not willing to give your all and focus on growing that business, but you want to have some side income. That is a very different choice and it’s also a very different model for what you’re going from a funding perspective.

41:08 Jim Beach: Right. And I actually spoke with all 9 of your children and they claimed that just between the 2 of you. You’re not very good at moving the elf.

41:18 Beth Mazza: That is really true, but what I did that Victoria, did you do this is probably the one place I beat her at? I never, ever started or continued to play the elf game after that. I bribed them with other gifts. Darn.

41:33 Jim Beach: Don’t you talk about the elf in chapter one of your book?

41:37 Victoria Sivrais: Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. I gave up a lot earlier than she did. Let’s just be super clear. I have an elf. I have an elf baby. I have an elf dog and I think I have an elf cat as of last Christmas. So like I am losing that game. Really bad. It’s pathetic.

41:58 Jim Beach: Let’s go through the power moves, can we? Power move number one, please, prioritize the right idea over your passion project. I love this one. Part of our thesis here is that passion is not part of the game of entrepreneurship. It can be. It doesn’t have to be, only for the lucky. What are your thoughts on passion and projects?

42:19 Victoria Sivrais: Listen, I think the biggest mistake that women make is thinking that a passion equals a good business idea. It does not. Sometimes it does but very rarely. You know, this counter move is all about centering yourself and really understanding what your business can do. So it talks about, uh, identifying the total addressable market, uh, what percentage of that addressable market could you get? And all about the calculations about how you get to say, okay, could this be a $1,000,000 business? If yes, then you can move forward to the next thing. It’s really about getting the brass tacks about what a business will build. And and the idea that you have and what the competitive landscape looks like.

43:02 Jim Beach: Number two, should we move on to number two?

43:06 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: Sure. Yeah.

43:06 Jim Beach: Build yourself a kitchen cabinet. This is your bathroom.

43:10 Beth Mazza: Oh my gosh, this is my favorite one and it’s because I’m super old, so I have a huge kitchen cabinet. This is a every single business person needs to do this 15 minutes a day. No matter what, this is your greatest habit. You are, we talk a lot about, there’s 3 types of people you need in your kitchen cabinet. You need a connector. You know, that person who just says, oh, I know exactly who should buy that. I’m going to call them right now. You need a compensator, someone who’s got a whole bunch of knowledge that you don’t have that you’re going to need to scale. And then you do need a cheerleader, right? The person who you are like, I’m giving it all up. This is way too hard. I’m making mistakes, who pushes you to get back up and try it one more day. And we were not clinical about building out our kitchen cabinet, but we ended up both of us with absolute blockbuster cabinets. So, and they helped us sell big pieces of business. They helped us assess when we had deals on the table. They, you know, bought us wine and booze when we were having the worst day ever, and we really relied on them, and we do today, right? We’re, we’re selling our book. We’re putting together all these events, trying to get people to show up and buy, and it is our kitchen cabinet that keeps coming through. And that chapter is gold because, number one, it makes you introspectively look and say, what are the areas I really need help in that I don’t have today? It gives you lots of different ways to think about the 9 or 10 things that you really most need, that it gives real specifics on how to find the person, how to ask them, how to follow up with them, how to pay it forward. Literally. We wouldn’t let our editor cut the specific LinkedIn DMs that we use to ask people for favors and to thank people because we felt like this has to be really prescriptive. The, the, the kitchen cabinet is our, our ultimate power move and everybody needs to do this 10 minutes a day.

45:24 Jim Beach: All right. How many links are these people away from you?

45:28 Beth Mazza: So that’s a brilliant question. Here’s our thing. Until you’re a first-degree link, you don’t ask them a favor. The only favor you’re asking of a first-degree link is to help make a second- or third-degree a 1st. And there’s a lot of process that goes into that. But the cold DM or the I know Victoria. So I’m going to ask you if you could connect me with a client, that is a loser, and you will not build a relationship from them, and people ask us that kind of stuff all the time. So we’re super sensitive to it. Your entire job is to figure out how to get 1st links with people and then you can figure out what you need to ask of them and how you can help them, but you better 1st get the 1st link. To be super clear, that is tried and tested and failed multiple times when you go, that’s called that cold outreach and ask for the favor. It just doesn’t work.

46:30 Jim Beach: Number three, make the money moves that matter.

46:33 Victoria Sivrais: Listen, this is this one is my favorite because it’s the place that rounds me has grounded me in every business that we had. I mean, this is all about number one, understanding what you are able to take on emotionally and financially when you’re starting the business. So what are your non-negotiables? For us, when we were building our budgets, it was really all about keeping 2 months of operating cash on the books. We were collectors 1st. Uh, and we knew that we were not taking outside money unless we had a very distinct return on that. The other piece of this is, you know, there’s so often that we’re talking to new founders that say, hey, we’re making money. Hand over fist. Awesome. How much are you actually taking home less expenses? Or are you taking a salary? No, no, no, we’re not taking a salary yet. Oh, okay. Then you’re not actually making money. So like, this is all.. Clue how much they’re doing. They just have no clue. So, like, this is this is honestly getting back to basics. Build your revenue model. Build your expense model. Build your runway to where how long it’s going to take you to get to break even. For us, it was always 12 months when every time we started visiting. We couldn’t get to break even by 12 months. It was not a business or an endeavor that we were willing to take up. I mean, I think the other 2 pieces of this, this power move our. Understanding when to wait and when to swing. So, like, that is a very, that, that’s a very kind of grayer, like, you think that there is the absolute right opportunity in front of you and you got to go forward. If you’re too early to market, it’s not always going to make sense. You know, we were with our growth business at Claremont, we were a little early. And, and as a result, we kind of spun our wheels for a little bit. But once we saw the opening, we swung big and made a huge hire right as the as the business started coming in.

48:43 Jim Beach: All right. Number four, start before you are ready.

48:46 Beth Mazza: Yeah. Okay, so this is my favorite one because I’m really good at it and it makes Victoria super nervous, but she goes right on along with it. They’re, especially in services, right, but certainly in products as well. You can sit on an idea or sit on a product or service and every day you come up with great ways to tweak it. You know what? You have absolutely no idea what your buyer wants. You think you do. You think they’re in your own head, but you don’t know. So I love this one and if you want to get really tactical. It’s called MVP put out a minimum viable product. We weren’t smart enough to call it that. We just thought we’d try and put out something we could sell and see what the response was. If you put that out, and you’re utterly unsuccessful, which Victoria and I did for a full year was what turned out to be our biggest service, uh, and our fastest growing, our biggest profit, what sold the business. We got rejected for 12 months. Nonstop, we did not have an order. Every single opportunity we had. We learned something and we tweaked. We learned about the product. We learned about how to deliver it. We learned about the guy who had the budget for it. We learned about the thing they cared versus thing they didn’t care. And we finally came to the right service and the right buyer. You know, we sold it in large amounts for much more than we ever expected to sell it for. So you do have to get really uncomfortable and you do have to get out there and act like you’ve delivered on a product or service that you really haven’t. And as long as your ears are open and you’re willing to fix and and tweak, et cetera, you’re going to end up having a much more successful product. But every woman that I know, this one makes them sweat because we want to be out there with perfection. We learned early on. We were not going to be perfect no matter what we did, so we try this. And that leads us to power move number five. Respect the pivot.

51:01 Jim Beach: Okay.

51:01 Victoria Sivrais: My 2nd favorite, to be fair, because I think the reality. I think the reality of the entrepreneurship is all about being agile, right? So like, but the one thing that I think entrepreneurs really fail horribly on is admitting their mistakes and that’s what this, this power move is all about. Understanding when you need to make the micro moves within your business and understand when you need to take a wrecking ball to it. The re, I think what we mastered and we brilliantly called it, the, do the opposite strategy is when we had been trying and kind of beating our head up against the wall and thinking like, I just don’t understand why the sale’s not coming in. I don’t understand why we haven’t exploded this business. It was often because we just needed to take a fresh look and open our eyes at what we were doing and maybe try something different. So like, there has been so many moments in our careers and in our businesses where we just looked at each other and said, okay. What would we normally do? Okay, what’s the opposite? And I think that that is really what entrepreneurship is. It’s about being agile. It is about understanding when you need to make a move. Understanding when things aren’t working and how you might be able to change them. In a small way or sometimes in a in a big way.

52:27 Jim Beach: Very well said. Well said. Ladies, last word.

52:30 Beth Mazza: Oh, my last word is just do one thing today, that’s hard. Either if it’s in launching, scaling, talking a hard customer, putting out a product, do one thing, 5 days a week. You don’t even have to do it Saturday and Sunday. At the end of 3 months, you will be blown away with how many of those one hard things worked and put money in your pocket.

52:54 Victoria Sivrais: And mine thing is stop waiting. Just do it. Just move forward.

52:59 Jim Beach: Love both of them. URLs, ladies. How do we get in touch, find out more. Follow you online and get a copy of the book, entrepreneur like a mother.

53:09 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: Uh, you can order the book at any of the major retailers. You can get the book on our website, femalemavericks.com. Um, if you want to use the code Maverick 10. You can also get our course for free that has supplemental workbooks and whatnot. Follow us on Instagram at Female Mavericks. You can find us on LinkedIn both separately and together with Female Mavericks, but, You have questions, reach out, DM us, we’re here.

53:36 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Thank you both being with us. Congratulations on the book and I hope you’ll both come back. Thanks a lot.

53:43 Beth Mazza & Victoria Sivrais: We will. Thank you. Thank you.

53:45 Jim Beach: Thank you both so much for being with us. Great information. We are out of time for today, what you know what we do. That’s right. We come back. Be safe. Take care, and. Go make a million dollars. Bye now.