<p>The idea of being your own boss is very attractive and with 62% of U.S. billionaires being self-made, why not give it a shot? In this episode of SHRM's <em>Career Compass </em>podcast, hosts Erica Young and Kevin Abbed are joined by special guests Emily Arnold, Associate Consultant at <a href="https://franklinadvisory.com/">Franklin Advisory</a> and Kendra Ward, Co-Founder and COO of <a href="https://getunboxt.com/">unboXt, Inc.</a> as they discuss the rewards and challenges of starting your own company. Listeners will be captivated by Emily and Kendra’s personal accounts and receive tips on how to launch a business.<br /><br />Subscribe to Career Compass on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out <a href="https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/Pages/Podcasts.aspx">SHRM.org/podcasts</a> to listen to all of our episodes and also hear more podcasts from SHRM. And, be sure to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice.<br /><br />Keep up with SHRM by visiting the <a href="https://www.shrm.org/">website</a> and follow us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/societyforhumanresourcemanagement">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/shrm/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SHRM">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shrmofficial/?hl=en">Instagram</a>.</p>
The idea of being your own boss is very attractive and with 62% of U.S. billionaires being self-made, why not give it a shot? In this episode of SHRM's Career Compass podcast, hosts Erica Young and Kevin Abbed are joined by special guests Emily Arnold, Associate Consultant at Franklin Advisory and Kendra Ward, Co-Founder and COO of unboXt, Inc. as they discuss the rewards and challenges of starting your own company. Listeners will be captivated by Emily and Kendra’s personal accounts and receive tips on how to launch a business.
Subscribe to Career Compass on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out SHRM.org/podcasts to listen to all of our episodes and also hear more podcasts from SHRM. And, be sure to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice.
Keep up with SHRM by visiting the website and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Kevin Abbed:
Welcome back to Career Compass, a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and the SHRM Foundation. Career Compass prepares the future leaders today for better workplaces tomorrow.
Erica Young:
As the voice of all things work, SHRM supports students and emerging professionals with advice, information, and resources for every step of your career.
Kevin Abbed:
Designed for the student or emerging professional, Career Compass delivers timely, relevant, and critical conversations about work to help you succeed in your career journey. Thank you for joining us for this episode. I'm Kevin Abbed and I will be your co-host.
Erica Young:
And I'm Erica Young, and I will also be your co-host. During this episode, we will discuss entrepreneurship and business acumen. And we have two very special guests joining us today to discuss their experience with entrepreneurship. So we'll go ahead and dig right in. As we all know, entrepreneurship is a growing topic among emerging professionals and within our businesses and within enterprise, and also, surprise, within SHRM as well. In fact, many don't know this, but we have a whole department within SHRM actually designed to support the next generation of startup workplace technology. And I've specifically been working on creating SHRM's first workplace tech accelerator program, which is how I came across our two very special guests today.
Kevin Abbed:
It seems entrepreneurship is an amazing life experience that can really help hone your business acumen skills. I guess one example for me is my college roommate and one of my best friends, actually, Sean McClean, who recently launched his own mobile app called Passport Coffee Club. And to keep it short, it's a mobile app that tries to help drive new customers to independent coffee shops, as well as develop a loyalty program for their existing customers. So what he's helping do is help small businesses and coffee shops, especially in this tough time during the pandemic.
Erica Young:
Absolutely. That's a great segue way into introducing our first guest. I am thrilled to introduce Emily Arnold. Emily is an associate consultant at Franklin Advisory, which is a consulting firm that helps large institutions develop entrepreneurial, startup, and venture capital related programming. Franklin Advisory uses its deep knowledge of entrepreneurial ecosystems and program building to help organizations with the strategy and execution of each project. They bring a results oriented and hands on approach to clients. Current and existing clients actually include SHRM, so we are working with Franklin Advisory and we can talk more on that later. But also Georgetown University, the Korea Innovation Center, Greater Washington Partnership, and more. And before Franklin Advisory, Emily worked at a large economic development organization based near Washington DC. She studied the intersection of entrepreneurship, environmental studies and English at Georgetown University where she was a Baker Scholar and co-founder of a composting startup. Emily was also recently honored by the Washington Business Journal as one of DC Inno's 25 under 25.
Kevin Abbed:
And I'm thrilled to introduce Kendra Ward. Kendra's the co-founder and chief operations officer of Unboxed Incorporated, a platform that enables team leaders to improve team performance and employee experience by increasing team trust and transparency. On average Unboxed is proven to reduce voluntary turnover by 10% to 18%. Prior to Unboxed, Kendra worked with Prudential as an actuary, and Goldman Sachs within their equities derivatives group. After a brief stint in corporate, Kendra went to the University of Southern California. While there she became highly interested in entrepreneurship and developed mentors within the Marshall School of Business. With their advice, she identified the skills gap of storytelling. And post graduate, Kendra secured a role at Oracle within their enterprise technology sales department. Shortly thereafter, because of customer traction with Unboxed Kendra left Oracle in January, 2018 to commit her full attention to the startup.
Erica Young:
Awesome. Well, I'm really excited to bring in our special guests, Kendra and Emily. Kendra and Emily, thank you so much for being here today with us.
Kendra Ward:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Erica Young:
So to get us started, I think it would be really helpful to hear a bit more about what you are working on these days. Both of you, I think, are working on some really, really exciting things on both sides of the kind of entrepreneurship circle. I know Kendra, you're working as a startup founder. Emily, I know you're working to support startup founders and to support innovation ecosystems. So love to hear a little bit more about what that looks like on the day to day. And maybe Kendra, if you're open to it would love to hear what that day to day looks like for you being a startup founder.
Kendra Ward:
Unboxed helps turn lifeless, fractured, or in some cases non-existent employee data into actionable insights that turns more managers into great leaders. So for me, my day is definitely different every day, but it's jam packed for the most part. I try to make sure I squeeze in a little me time, which is gym time. And so more times than that in the mornings, I am on calls for business development or sales, trying to grow my company. During the evening is where I find that I get most of my actual work that needs to get done. So from like 7:00 PM until about 12:00 AM, I'm hammering down. And then every now and again, I have some calls with our developers. So some of our developers are in the US, but then some of our developers are in Europe. And so every now and again, I'm up at 3:30 in the morning having a call to make sure that things are running smoothly.
And one of the things that you'll find that as a startup owner is that if you're a product company, you have to make sure that your product side is fully loaded. And so for us, we're bootstrapped, meaning we didn't take in any venture capital. We're running our business off of revenues and so we have to think smart with our money. And so for us, that's why you'll hear that our production side is split across the two, US and Europe. Then outside of that, on the weekends, I work as well, but it's not as bad. I'll take my computer to a coffee shop and feel like I'm out and enjoying the world.
Erica Young:
Wow, wow. Just full grind all the time. That is incredible, honestly. Good for you. And I think it shows. I think your product is awesome and really interesting. Emily, from your perspective, sort of supporting startups and supporting the innovation ecosystem, what is your day to day look like?
Emily Arnold:
So as Erica mentioned, previously at Franklin Advisory, we help larger institutions develop entrepreneurial programming. And this can look like a lot of different things. So similar to Kendra, my day to day kind of changes every single day. But some of the things we do are help launch accelerators or create pitch competitions. We even help develop proprietary entrepreneurial curriculums. Most recently I've actually been working with Erica on a special project for SHRM's workplace tech accelerator. And I've also been helping the Korea Innovation Center, which is an organization funded by the Korean Government to develop a proprietary entrepreneurial curriculum that's aimed at helping bring Korean entrepreneurs expand into the US market. Right now it's actually over 400 pages long, so that's kind of an exciting project that I've been working on recently.
Erica Young:
Super cool. And so cool that we can have both of your perspectives here on the show with us today.
Kevin Abbed:
Thanks again to both of you. I guess this is more of a question for Kendra, but what drove you to entrepreneurship in the first place?
Kendra Ward:
So for me, I grew up in a neighborhood where there were people selling incense on the street, but I did not correlate that with entrepreneurship. It's when I was in school and we started having different dialogues and I was really opening my mind to what entrepreneurship is. I took it as a class, as a part of my industrial and engineering degree, and so I wanted to learn a little bit more about the business side. It was entrepreneurship that I decided to really go down the path of. And it was with that I was able to understand that it's really about having an understanding of the world that you are in, meaning everything is a business. For me, entrepreneurship was just the road that I wanted to go down. I felt that I would be able to learn a lot in a little bit of time, and I have been able to.
I've learned much more than I possibly would have learned in corporate for a small stint because you're just being thrown into different fires. And I'm not saying that it's all bad because a diamond is pressed through a really, really, really hot fire essentially. That's the journey that I chose to go down. And for me, I'm definitely stepping in fires every day and I'm just hoping that I can come out unburnt and just continue to grow.
Erica Young:
That was beautiful and a really, really great metaphor. The diamond metaphor, I hadn't heard that before. Super interesting. Emily, I'm curious from your point of view, because you were driven to entrepreneurship too. I know that you're not a founder currently in your current role, but you're still driven to this sort of space. So I am curious what is it about this space that has you interested and engaged?
Emily Arnold:
Yeah, definitely. I think to me the draw is this idea that you can build things from scratch. So where there was nothing, you can put things together. And at first it's hard and you're bootstrapping and you're picking up pieces from random locations to build something really cool that then functions on its own. So what originally drew me to entrepreneurship was as a kid, I grew up on a farm and actually had a little chicken business going. And I sold eggs to our neighbors and sold $4 a dozen for some eggs. And I made $4 a day. So very small scale, but it was kind of my first experience with business at all, and entrepreneurship specifically. And that kind of led me to study entrepreneurship in college, which then led me to my current role where we're supporting entrepreneurs.
Erica Young:
That's such a fun example. I've always wanted chickens. That's fantastic.
Emily Arnold:
They're fun.
Erica Young:
I'll have to ask you about that when we're not recording for this episode. And I want to follow up on both of your points here. Both of you I think have taken different paths to this kind of entrepreneurship ecosystem. And I'd love maybe to start with Emily this time. What advice would you give our listeners who maybe dream of having their own business someday? What advice or could you point them to some resources?
Emily Arnold:
Absolutely. So one of my favorite entrepreneurial resources is the podcast by NPR, How I Built This with Guy Raz. So maybe you guys are familiar with this podcast, but they talk with founders of really big companies and some of my favorite companies and hear about the early days of the business. The days that aren't so glamorous, the days like Kendra's talking about where you're stepping into fires all the time and trying to put them out. And I think that this is just so powerful and so inspiring to learn about kind of the challenges that they faced in those early days and how they overcame them. And it kind of sends the message of you can do this too. This is how we started and it wasn't glamorous, it wasn't pretty. And we faced all these challenges, but then we became Sweet Green, or then we became Cliff Bar and these household names.
Erica Young:
Awesome. Sounds like a great resource. I'm definitely going to look into that podcast. Similar question to you, Kendra. Currently going through this grind as a founder, as an entrepreneur, what advice would you give a listener who might dream of having their own business someday? And do you have any resource that you'd point out?
Kendra Ward:
Yeah. So the advice that I would give to a future entrepreneur is that you don't have one boss. That is an extreme, extreme misunderstanding about what it means to be an entrepreneur, especially as a founder. You have many bosses. Your customers are your bosses, you want to see them happy. I would say, if it's hard to juggle one boss, it might be a little bit hard to juggle many bosses. The next advice that I would give, or piece of advice, would be to make sure you understand yourself when you go into the business, because you're going to wear many hats. But as you grow, you need to understand your role and your role as far as growth goes for the company. And so Nick Saban coined do your job. Just do your job. When you do your job and you have a team, you can expect that your team will get things done and that it will help you grow as a company, but that takes you understanding yourself for you to be able to do your job.
And I know it sounds a little soft and squishy when it comes to understanding yourself, my whole platform is about understanding and understanding the person that's next to you. I would say that's really important because you might not be the salesperson. You might be the technology person. You might not need to talk. You might not need to go to that meeting because you might actually hinder it more by not owning your role. That would be my advice. And as far as different or resource to go and look at, I would say go and look at a lot of the different YouTube videos. I spend my time on YouTube. I look at leaders such as Nick Saban, where I'm just listening to him talk or Phil Jackson, as you all can see, I am a sports junkie. That's where I get a lot of my leadership type of advice from.
Erica Young:
Great resources. Thank you.
Kevin Abbed:
Yeah. I got to say, I absolutely love the sports metaphors. So if you want to keep those going, I would definitely invite it. But I guess you mentioned earlier, starting your own startup, you faced a lot of challenges and you're putting out fires constantly. So what are some of those challenges that you've had as an entrepreneur, or in Emily's case, as a supporter of entrepreneurs?
Kendra Ward:
So for me as a entrepreneur, when I said stepping into fires, I don't necessarily mean always putting out fires, but what I mean is putting yourself into uncomfortable positions. Let's take it one of our customers our UPS. We walked into the president's office and I was uncomfortable because it was... It's the president of UPS, they have this stature. Everyone in the office is suited and booted and you have me. An entrepreneur that's trying to come out here and hopefully help them with their employees and help them fill the gaps within the employee experience. Not sell them, but help them really fill that employee experience gap. For me, that was a fire for me because I was uncomfortable. I felt a little small in that room because of how big I felt that they were. Like this can be a big contract.
It had to come down to me just saying, "Hey, you're worthy to be in this room." When I say fires again, I don't mean just putting out fires, but I can give you an example of a fire that I actually started. And it's using the wrong language in an email. Little things like that actually mean a lot, especially when you're a startup of this size. You really don't have the time to make anything wrong, but you'll find, and excuse me, guys, I have a dog named Trojan, I went to USC. So you hear him in the background. But you'll find that it's even the little words matter when it comes to having a conversation. I had to put out a fire when for something that says per my legal counsel, when it had nothing to do with legal counsel.
Erica Young:
Really, really, really good points there. I think that's something that at least I hear from other entrepreneurs is a big part of that journey is the kind of self-confidence piece of... I mean, it's really vulnerable work to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, to be in this space and it's risky in a lot of ways. And I think you hit it spot on that they're, at least I've seen and talked to, other entrepreneurs who go through kind of that internal process of building up self confidence in this space. Really good point.
Kendra Ward:
It's your baby. And sometimes you get a little scared, a little finicky, like, "Are they going to accept my baby?"
Erica Young:
Yeah. No, for sure. And then Emily, on your side, maybe what are some of the challenges that you've experienced in your role or what are some of the challenges that you see entrepreneurs having in this space? You could go either way.
Emily Arnold:
Yeah, definitely. I think this probably applies to both of those scenarios, but one challenge that I've had supporting entrepreneurs that I see entrepreneurs have is I'm really a planner. I like to plan for things and make sure everything's following a timeline, we're running smoothly. The reality is a little bit different, especially in the startup world. When you're working with entrepreneurial related projects or entrepreneurs, things just come up. A lot of the time you may need to pivot what you're doing. And these pivots and changes are ultimately good. This is the innovation process happening where you're realizing, "Okay, what we originally thought was the best way to go, isn't actually the best way to go anymore. We have this new information and we need to kind of change our direction."
That can be frustrating when you just want to plan it all out at the start. But really it's about being quick on your toes, being able to make those pivots so that you can go in this new direction that will ultimately end up giving you a better result. And I think that applies to a lot of the projects I've worked on. And I've also seen this in a lot of startups.
Kevin Abbed:
Yeah. I guess, one thing that I kind of got from what both of you said is you kind of have to be comfortable being uncomfortable because it's not linear. I mean, projects can take you in other directions and stuff can flip on its head the next day. So just being able to kind of do what you can with what you're given is something that I guess that is a main part of entrepreneurship.
Emily Arnold:
Absolutely.
Erica Young:
Yeah. And I think that's actually a good point to bring up as it relates to business acumen in general, that being comfortable with being uncomfortable, I feel like is a core. I think it's an evolving core skill set if you will, in business and something that obviously very important in the innovation space, but certainly also very important in established businesses as well.
I do want to transition a little bit. So one of the reasons I was really excited for this episode is because I feel like there's been a lot of conversation about women in business and especially having women founders and elevating more women founders in innovation and within the startup world, it does look like women business ownership has steadily increased over the past 15 years, which is good, including today, and women account for about 40% of business owners.
With that in mind, bringing both of your experiences to the table, when you think about sort of women in business, women founders, and the like, I just wanted to see if any experiences or stories come up, either on the good or the bad side when thinking about this transition, especially knowing that women founders, women in business, there's still work to be done in this space. So just wanting to get any sort of general thoughts or general experiences. And it's okay if you don't have anything in particular. But Emily, maybe I'll start with you and just see if anything came up related to that.
Emily Arnold:
Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. There's still, as you said, a lot of work to do. The first thing that kind of comes to mind is one of my venture capital classes in college, we were talking about percent of venture capital dollars that go to different groups. Women receive, I think women receive less than 5% of venture capital dollars, which is pretty staggering. So there's definitely a lot of work to do in that area. Also, as we've seen with the pandemic, women were exiting the workforce at a rate four times greater than men and the female labor force participation rate dipped below 55% for the first time since 1986. These are kind of heartbreaking statistics as we come off National Women's Day. But I think that I'm hopeful as we see with this 40% of business owners' statistic that we're making progress.
Erica Young:
Absolutely. And really good point about female founders receiving less than 5% of VC dollars. I've seen very similar statistics as well and am aware of some organizations sort of in this innovation space that are trying to flip the script on that. Kendra, as a woman business owner. What are your thoughts? Are you seeing any changes from your point of view?
Kendra Ward:
Yeah. So definitely seeing an uptick in the amount of women that are becoming entrepreneurs, but then even in the number of young ladies that want to become entrepreneurs and founders. I work a lot with junior achievement. I hold near and dear to my heart to teach adolescents that they always make a choice, whether they're listening to their parents. I've been able to really see how young ladies in general are moving towards just wanting to have their own and establish themselves, wanting to be a part of the technology world, asking for robotics instead of a baby doll. And not to take there's anything wrong with it, but to see them expo into a different horizon has always been, or is continuing to be, really uplifting for me.
As a founder, it's been interesting. I've received mixed reviews about how to act around men specifically to make my voice deeper sometimes because I have a light voice. To wear heels because I'm 4' 11", to always have one lipstick or whatever the case may be. And so what I really chuck that up to is just it, and I hate to harp on this point, is I had to understand who I was and understand that I'm going to bring to the table what I am capable of and more, and that I deserve a seat at the table. I just had to really just come as I am and say, "Accept me. I'm going to respect you," meaning you, whoever else is in the room, "but I'm also going to make sure that I earn your respect in turn."
Erica Young:
Absolutely. Interesting that you receive some of that feedback. I've heard of other female founders getting similar feedback, but it's still kind of astounds me, quite frankly, that is still being shared in this day and age, especially, quite frankly, with you Kendra, where your product quite frankly speaks volumes on its own. And the fact that you're getting this feedback to either look more feminine or sound more masculine or what have you, is beside the point. Your product shines without those things. So pretty passionate about this subject as well. But thank you both sharing those experiences, stats.
I think this is certainly an evolving conversation and I hope that we start to see some greater progress, including not advising emerging professionals and founders and the like to put on lipstick. Kind of mind blown by that. But I know we're coming close to time here and I do want to respect your time. And I think you both have provided so much insight into this space of entrepreneurship and business acumen. I have one quick question just to close up the conversation here, which is what advice would you give your 20 year old self, if you could? And maybe Emily, we could start with you.
Emily Arnold:
I think I would tell myself to just try and talk to more people. Engage lots of interesting people in conversation. I have learned so much about the business world, about entrepreneurship, about my own path and what I want to do through just talking to other people and hearing their stories. And I wish I had done more of this. I think at that age, I was often scared to reach out in case someone thought that I would be a nuisance, but now I'm just so excited. Anytime someone reaches out to me for career advice, and I think I probably would've found that other people feel the same way as I do now. So that would be my piece of advice to my 20 year old self.
Erica Young:
Awesome, totally agree. Especially these days, pandemic days. It's I think maybe more people are open to having these sorts of conversations just because we're virtual conversations is a ongoing trend here. But Kendra would love to hear what you would tell your 20 year old self as well.
Kendra Ward:
So there are a few things that I would tell myself,.I'm laughing because I was thinking like, "You shouldn't have wear that outfit." That is out of style. But one thing that I think that hopefully our listeners can take for me is that it's not enough to just be intelligent or smart. A lot of it goes back to those soft skills, goes back to even how you all were describing business acumen. I wish that I would have found a mentor, a woman, a C-suite woman mentor that could have me in those rooms where I could understand the actual meaning of office politics. Because as much as we believe that they aren't there, politics are everywhere. That is where I struggled with the most at the beginning. And I thought I was great. I thought I knew how to work a room if you could ask me. But no, I wish that that's one of the things that I would've done. I would've found myself a mentor that I could strengthen my weakest skill with.
Kevin Abbed:
Yeah, Kendra, that's a great point. I mean, you don't really learn that in undergrad, post grad, whatever, masters, PhD program. They don't tell you about how to communicate with people and how to conduct business in certain ways. Like you said, office politics is a lot bigger than people think. And it's something that you don't learn in any business class. So that's a great point.
Kendra Ward:
Even the handshake thing, that astounded me. When I watch movies, I see when people, when men give handshakes, and I now know the top one means I'm dominant.
Erica Young:
Oh.
Kendra Ward:
It's small things. Yes, it means so much. Yes.
Erica Young:
Fascinating.
Kevin Abbed:
Yeah. I did not know that.
Erica Young:
I did not know that.
Kevin Abbed:
I did not know that.
Emily Arnold:
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Erica Young:
Again, business acumen. Learning so much here. Very good to know. No, but you're totally right. And I think if I could summarize both of your pieces of advice here. I'm hearing the general trend of basically reaching out to the network right and finding advocates, finding mentors or confidants, or people who you can kind of question in a way, question the way of the world and learn what these unsaid and said pieces of business are, which I would totally agree with. I mean, I feel like I have learned the most from my relationships with people and from people who have supported me along the way, mentors and the like. So really good points. With that, I do want to thank you both so much for taking the time to share how connected entrepreneurship is to business acumen and success. We were really glad to have you and to chat about this and also really interesting. What you both are doing, I think is so cool and just awesome. Y'all rock.
Emily Arnold:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be on the podcast.
Kendra Ward:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me and supporting Unboxed. I truly do appreciate this opportunity that y'all gave me.
Kevin Abbed:
Yeah. Thanks again, guys. It was so fun chatting with Kendra and Emily, but we're going to have to bring this episode to a clos.e we'd like to thank SHRM and the SHRM Foundation for providing us with this platform. But more importantly, we'd like to thank you all for joining us. And make sure to join us next week as we cover how to manage up, down and all around
Erica Young:
For more exclusive content, resources and tools to help you succeed in your career, consider joining SHRM as a student member you can visit us @shrm.org/students to learn more about being a part of a community of over 300,000 HR and business leaders who impact the lives of over 115 million employees worldwide.
Kevin Abbed:
If you liked what you heard, we'd love your subscription. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And do you have a topic you think we should cover or a guest we should hear from? We'd love to hear it. Email us at careercompasspodcast@shrm.org.
Erica Young:
Lastly, are you looking for more work and career related podcasts? Check out all things work and honest hr@shrm.org/podcasts.
Kevin Abbed:
Thank you again for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode of career compass.