#023 – On this episode, Mayra talks to Lisa Lanaola from LisaLanaola.com. Lisa is a small business owner and she walks us thru the steps she took to have a thriving online business.
For the Small Business Toolkit go to DebtFreeLatina.com/tools
Transcription
[0:00] Today we are going to talk to my very good friend, Lisa Lanaola. She is an amazing entrepreneur, and I cannot wait for you to meet her. So let’s get to it.
[0:14] Welcome to Debt-Free Latina, the podcast where you can finally realize your dream of being debt free and feeling peace about your financial future. And now your host, Mayra Alejandra Garcia.
Mayra [0:32]: Hola, hola. Thank you so much for being here. Today, I have a very special guest, her name is Lisa Lanaola, and she is a small business owner who has an online store. I met Lisa through a program for entrepreneurs by Nicole Walters called 1k, One Day. She was in my group and we became very close friends. Thank you so much for being here, Lisa.
Lisa [1:00]: First of all, I want to say thank you for having me. I listened to every episode. I am a Debt-Free Latina fan. And I’m so so honored and grateful to be here today.
Mayra: Thank you so much for saying that. That’s so sweet. I know you have listened to every episode. I have some analytics that tell me where people listen from and I would see New York come up fairly early in the release of my episodes. So thank you so much.
Lisa: I love the emails. As soon as I get the emails, open it up. They got the gift from Mayra.
Mayra: Thank you so much. All right. So I wanted to invite you to be a guest here because I was interested in you sharing your story. So I’m interested in you sharing your story about how and why you started your business. What inspired you to create more income and just tell me how this all started?
Lisa [2:09]: Okay, it all started because I had my daughter at 21 and when I had my daughter, I just started raising her. I had to get a job, work out, because I was a single mom, I had to do whatever I had to do just to make sure that we were both fed and taken care of. So raised her all of my life basically. Then about two or three years ago, she was going off to college. So I did my job as a mom, I raised her and she was going off to college, and I realized that I was going to be alone with the whole world ahead of me, my whole life ahead of me, my whole future and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I was like okay, Lisa, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? Because I was only I was only 40. I was going to be a 40 year old empty-nester, with my whole life ahead of me and I had to choose what I wanted to do.
Mayra: Very nice.
Lisa [3:19]: Yeah, yeah. So after I thought long and hard about it, I kept seeing things online about multiple streams of income and growing and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, I want to open… I didn’t know that I wanted to do the website thing and all that. So I started off as a side hustle. So I started on side hustle, picked the products that I wanted to share with others, which started off with some wraps that I was wearing that people were falling in love with and the hats. I started going to vending events and people were just loving the products. So it just started off as a side hustle.
Mayra [4:00]: So, started with pop-up events, just around where you are.
Lisa: Yes, yes pop-up events where I was and they fell in love with it and it just grew from there. I had sold out of all the products that I had in the beginning and I just kept growing and learning until it became a full-blown business with my own website and it’s just growing, growing continuously every day and I’m so happy.
Mayra: That’s so awesome. So tell us, if someone wants to start a business, to create extra income, maybe they have some sort of a need, they have they have debt mounting and they want to do something similar to what you do. They want to start with an online store, or they want to start with pop-ups, what would you say are the three things that you’d recommend someone that wants to start a business, that they do?
Lisa [5:04]: The first thing that I would recommend that they do is to write their ideas down and they should start with who, what, where, when, and how. So my thing is, who do they want to help? Who do they want to serve? Who do they want to provide their offerings for? Because there’s a lot of people in the world, but you have to narrow it down. Who do you want to serve? Write that down and get clear on that. So that you know what products you want to offer. Because starting off, I didn’t start with a lot of money. So I couldn’t have a big warehouse with a lot of inventory. So I started with what I knew and what I can offer and who I wanted to help, and then I got a little bit of inventory and I made sure that that was going to be what people wanted, because you have to start off small. So I would say start off with who you want to help so you know what to offer. And then you start off with, how do you want to help them? Where are your people? You got to find where your people are. So narrow that down. I started off like I said, because I’m a people person, so I wanted to go out and see people and meet them where they were, so vending events are great for me. Pop-up events are great for me because I love people and I like to meet them where they are. So find out where your people are, what they need, and who they are. And then you start your offering by that. And start small. I would say start small because a lot of people, they have great ideas, big ideas, grand ideas, but you have to make sure that your idea is valid, your products are wanted. So start off small and make sure that people want what you’re offering and make sure to find your people wherever they are. So that’s my tip.
Mayra [7:09]: I love it. So I remember when we first started the program, 1k One Day, with Nicole Walters, we rallied around the launch of your website and your very first lanch. And I mean, it was so awesome to see even Nicole posting it on her own social media, which she has hundreds of thousands of followers. And it was… I remember just being like, I’m going to tell the world because she has to have a great lanch. Tell us what it felt like to reach the 1k in one day.
Lisa [8:01]: It was exhilarating. It was so inspiring for me to reach that goal, because I started out, just I started out small, making a couple hundred dollars at events that I went to. And to actually I always want to say I love Nicole for the program that she had. It helped me grow immensely because that is how I started my website and I started my business officially through that program. So I would always love that program and Nicole.
Mayra: I second that.
Lisa: It just felt so good to actually hit that 1k One Day milestone because to go from making a couple hundred dollars, to now knowing that you are loved and your product is wanted, it just feels so good. And I have to say that community matters. To find your people, that you want to not only serve, but actually grow with, and people who motivate you and have the same type of ambitions and goals that you do, it felt good to have a community of people that got me and understood me and I felt seen and it was so good to be seen and appreciated. It feels really really good. And she not only says, 1k one day is not the goal, but it’s to be consistent with the 1k one day. So everything that I did, I knew it was possible so I just keep repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, and that’s what I do every day.
Mayra [9:45]: That’s so awesome. And this is not sponsored by Nicole Walters. We just love the program. I think it set us up to win. That’s number one. I think for me, I had hired a web designer to create my website, my very first website, which was my Smart Money Coach, which is no longer up. But I was so intimidated by the process of starting a business. I had to learn a lot of things on my own. I had to go and find mentors here locally. I was really just trying to learn how can I monetize this? How can I help people? How can I really do what I love? And when I came across Nicole a couple years back, I just remember like I can’t do this out of profits, I’m not there yet. And so it took a few years for me to really dive in and take this course. But what I loved about it, is that even though I knew a couple things, and not 100% new to me, the way she put it together and the way she pushes you to get your website, Do this, do that. And she paces you, so you’re constantly having to post on the Facebook group, you’ve done XYZ. And I think that really… and then she of course… it’s like hundreds of us doing this at the same time and like you said, it’s like it builds a community and I have built relationships with so many people that are on there. I mean, we still hang out, we still have our own little Facebook group, where we tend to hang out and chat. I love it. I think it’s a really good starter program.
Lisa [11:42]: Yeah. Yes, for sure. For sure. It got me tto take my business more seriously because like I said it was just pop-up events and growing small, and then once I saw what I could do and what I can become, and that people really had a need for what I had to offer, because not even just the head wraps and the other products that I sell, but all the time in my inbox, in my DMs, my emails, I get people asking how do I do this? How do I do this? So I had to set up my consulting company, which I did, and they booked me through that, on my website lisalanaola.com. Because I get it all the time. How do you do what you do? How do you start an E-commerce site. So it’s like… you grow so much, you go from offering products and serving others, to now serving them in a different capacity by letting sharing the tools that I used to build what I have and I’m proud to do that.
Mayra [12:50]: Yes. So I got to meet you in person a few weeks back. We, actually, Lisa came to visit me here in Arizona. We went to Sedona and we spent some time together, a few days, and I learned that Lisa, you are still pushing forward in learning how to do different things with your site, how to get more people on your site. That’s so inspiring to see that you’re still reinvesting a lot of your money that you’re earning, back into the business to just continue to grow, and I just want to like tell you how proud I am of you. Because I know we’re like out of the whole 1k One Day, and we have been for about a year now, but you’re still pushing, you’re still learning, you’re still investing and I love it. I love to see how much you’ve grown.
Lisa [13:52] Thank you so much, Mayra, that really means a lot to me, because I pride myself in always being self-improving. I want to improve, to be the best version of me, every single day. is what I wake up to do and then I want to share that with others. I don’t want to keep it to myself. I always like sharing it with others, but I always want to learn, I always want to grow and I never want to stop no matter how old I get, no matter where I am in life, I’m always planning on doing that. And I’m proud of my website and you build it. We were up late nights doing it. I was like Mayra, I don’t know. I’m just so scared. So nervous. And we just took our time and you built it. You built it from nothing and to be what it is today, to have people come to my website, they come to my website every single day since that website has been built. Can I tell you that? So I’m proud of it. I’m proud to share it with others and I don’t want to stop. I just want to keep growing and becoming better. And that just means becoming a better version of me and I just want to do that every single day. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for, we push each other.
Mayra [15:06]: Yes we do. And they… I just want to mention, you mentioned I created your website and I didn’t know anything about creating websites, we learned together. And it was… I was really playing with it a whole lot more and clicking on everything and I’m not scared to get my hands dirty with things.
Lisa: You are not.
Mayra: So when I created my new website, the one that we have now, the debtfreelatina.com, I built that from scratch myself and that’s when I was like, okay, I can help somebody else and I knew that you needed help. So I jumped in but it’s not something that I do. It’s not something that I want to pursue like a career at all. I just saw a need and I could fill it. But I love to… If the audience is interested in learning tips and tricks, I do have a PDF that I give to my friends, and I would love to share that with everybody. So I will be posting the link to that in the show notes. If you’re interested in learning what you need to set up your website, because I’ve done it myself, I have all the links to guide you to do that.
Lisa [16:29]: They need it. It’s fabulous.
Mayra: It’s work, it’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. It’s so worth it.
Lisa: If people are willing to put in the work to do what they have to do and build what they have to build, it feels so, it feels so good to know that people want to do the work and they plan on doing the work. So go download those tools, get those tools, and start building, people.
Mayra: Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, Lisa. Where can people find you on social?
Lisa: People could find me on, I’m on Instagram @lisa_lanaola, but mostly on my website. I’m always on my website. Just go on there, lisalanaola.com. The shop is up there if you want to buy any head wraps, they’re there. Hair accessories, umbrellas. They’re beautiful gift ideas. And if you want to learn how to start an E-commerce shop, build your website, grow from there, you can hit the work with the link and work with me through that.
Mayra: I love it so much. Thank you so much for being here. I loved our conversation.
Lisa: You know I love you. Thanks for having me.
Mayra: Of course. Thank you so much.
[17:58] Thanks for listening to Debt-Free Latina. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can take Mayra with you on your journey to become debt free as you build financial wealth. Looking for more? Follow Mayra on Instagram @debtfree.latina, on Facebook @debtfreelatina, and online at debtfreelatina.com.