Kathryn Finney, tech pioneer and author of 'Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business If You're Not a Rich White Guy,' joins Cheddar News to talk all about her new book. 

Between Bells

'Build the Damn Thing' Aims to Help Readers Create a Startup

Welcome max between bells, that's baker, I'm Hannah, our next guest has made it her life's work to invest in bipac founded companies and now Kathryn Finney is helping others achieve success in her new book, build the damn thing, how to start a successful business if you're not a rich white guy, the book offers read, there's a hard won battle tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment may have left out, which by the way, is a lot of people out there on our show and linear sat down with Kathryn Finney, founder of genius, killed and also author of build the damn thing all to talk about the inspiration behind the book, take a look Catherine, I Gotta tell you this is such a great read and it really provides readers with an opportunity to get the footprint of how to build a business and become an entrepreneur that's not intimidating or scary or overwhelming. What inspired you to write this book? This is the book I wish I had when I started 20 plus years ago. Um it's written for those of us who are not a part of these traditional networks, those of us who are what I call builders, people who have to work a little bit harder in the game of startups. Maybe we don't start off on the easy level, We start off on the medium level, the hard level, depending on your identity. And so this book is how do we get to be a part of this startup game and how do we win at it as well? And just to be clear, what is your company, what company did you create? Oh gosh! So I created one of the early early lifestyle companies called the Budget fashion. Is that start off as this blog and it just exploded and became this whole thing. And it was a correspondent in today's show, talking about budget, Halloween costumes and all this other stuff and then I sold it became one of the first black woman to exit the startup and then I went to go work for another woman led startup called blog that also got bought. So it's part of these two exits fairly quick and they were early, you know, the early part of the startup world and so learned a lot about the power of startup community, not only to change my life, but also my community's life because then it gave me the funds to start digital and divided, which is a massive organization now that works with black and latin X women to get more into the startup world and now you're taking entrepreneurs through this journey and learning from your mistakes and all the things that did work for you, but why do you think there are so many misconceptions associated with entrepreneurship and people are so afraid to take that step? Well, I think entrepreneurship has been glamorized, I'm a venture capitalist. Now I run a fun called genius guild and I see it every day with the startups that are coming to us who are pitching us of entrepreneurship being glamorized, but no one really telling you what it takes to build a company, no one really telling you what it takes to build the damn thing, right? And so oftentimes there's amazing ideas that I want to invest in and I can't because there's structurally some issue with it, Maybe they're not focused on growth, maybe they're not understanding their customer, you know, all these sort of things that are real basic business and these founders can do it, they can actually do it, but no one has explained how, because it's also daunting for a lot of people and they are intimidated by it. What are some of the key questions some entrepreneurs should be asking themselves before they step out and try to create. Yeah, I mean some of the questions are, you know, how am I mentally meaning one of the first things to do before you head down the journey of becoming an entrepreneur is to really look at yourself and ask yourself, are you okay with uncertainty? Are you okay with taking risks? Some of us aren't so okay with that because the journey to be an entrepreneur, the journey to build is full of risk and uncertainty. Um, who are you as a person? What are your core values in the book? I talk a lot about setting up your core values and understanding who you are because as an entrepreneur particularly as a woman or a person of color, you're going to be challenged, you are gonna be asked to do things that may or may not fit within your own personal ethics and your own personal goal. You won't know what that line is if you haven't said it. So creating your own personal core values is a way to help you understand what your line is because it gets hard, it gets tough, you know, you're alone sometimes on this side and a lot of people say, oh I didn't like working 9 to 5. So I became an entrepreneur now I work nine to midnight, a lot more involved in that. And so I think that's important to answer all those questions for yourself first, but also it's important to get financing and I know that sometimes white men or people that are women and minorities do not get as much visual capitalist funding them than their counterparts. So what are some of the things that they should prepare for the, when creating maybe an eye catching pitch to try to get the attention of some of those people with the money? Well, one of the big things is to understand the difference between a small business and a startup. What's the difference? A startup is growth as a venture capitalist. I am like the fuel to the fire. I'm not the starter of the fire, right? So I want to fuel the fire to get bigger. I don't want to Really feel it to get started and so that's an important distinction when it started because a small business, you may have one brick and mortar location or one online store and you may not want to expand, you may not want to grow and that is fine. I think it's also important to know that what is considered a small businesses, any company that has less than 500 employees, right? So that's not really, you know, most of us. Um, and in many ways startups are technically small businesses because of the size, but it's that growth, that's the big difference is that when you're building a startup, you're building for scalability growth so that you can get to what we call a positive event and exit. So once you know that you have this startup or the other one that you may involved in that, how do you catch the attention of these people with the capital? Well, if it's a startup, what's gonna catch my intention is your growth is going to the potential for growth, the potential for growth and your current growth. So if you're in a market that I know that's underserved, particularly in the area that I invest in which is in health environment, um, people who are rethinking how capital flows in marginalized communities, what's gonna get me excited is that if you're attacking a problem that has a huge market that no one else is thinking of or maybe there's some folks in it that are legacy and they haven't exactly applied tech to it, so they're not able to really grow. I know a lot of people they struggle with when they have great ideas like that, when to pivot to say, ok, I'm gonna quit my day job, I'm gonna put all my energy into this. How do you know when is the right time to say now I'm gonna go full force into this as an entrepreneur. I use what is called the exit number and I talk about this in the book because the exit number is not the same for all of us, some of us have different exit numbers and your exit number is the point in which your business is making enough for you to live. Whatever is considered, you know, based comfort for you. And it's not like to live like Oprah right? But but it's whatever is based comfort if it's like to have a roof over your head food and you know, the occasion no latte right? Like that, that's what I mean by base comfort and that's your exit number and once your company consistently is able to provide you that income to be able to do it, then, you know, it's a time to exit because you know that you're gonna be able to continue survival