00:00:31On this week's show, we meet Portland Zone. Bobby Stewart. Bobby is a Visionary who not only bills business. Has she build community? I can't wait to share this interview with you.

00:01:42I love this quote. Not only because it acknowledges the people involved, but also because it talks about problems, puzzles and solutions. It's fascinating to me that most people shirka way for problems, not to mention, puzzles, and solutions. I mean, sure, as business owners, we solve other people's problems and Hoffman, hang on to fear, rather than solving our own. It's easier to hang on to the overnight success. Smith, isn't it? Are we afraid to put in the thousands of hours that it might take?

00:02:25I think the important thing is to get started, no matter how small.

00:02:42I think it's that we're shielded so much for failure. We don't see the fear the failure of the day-to-day grind problem-solving requires. All we see is the success.

00:02:56I remember years ago when I was working as a business analyst. My first project is a business analyst. I was collaborating with a team to convert Excel, spreadsheets into a computer application. That was calculating complex tax computation to the penny.

00:03:19Because when you're dealing with millions of dollars, the pennies add up quickly.

00:03:39One Night, play about 8:30, worn out from the day and tired of working through the same puzzle. I went home.

00:03:51Cousin hug me and asked to see the equation. I even want to show it to him because so many people had looked at it. I didn't really think he can help me.

00:04:06Have you tried this? You see my husband who the lawyer solve the puzzle. The team of Tax Pro's, a business analyst in a programmer, couldn't figure out. We've been working on it for weeks. Truly. We can't do it alone. If you believe in miracles, then you know, you can't do it alone. But see today, anybody who's working in that application that we built out of a pile of Excel? Spreadsheets. As far as those people were concerned feeling the application was a piece of cake. These things never happened because

00:04:46There are no overnight successes are plenty of people who never try.

00:04:55I mean, are you trying to do something? That's never been done before. Good? Keep doing it. Is it hard? Good. That is worth it. We need to start being more afraid of never starting, then we are of the failure of doing something new, or solving the problems ahead.

00:05:22And I'll tell you what, I mean by that. Like I, I know, I know it's easy to think I'll Kennedy had to do, is say the us will go to the moon and then let the other people handle it, right? You might be thinking. Well, that's cool. He's not an engineer and astronaut and all he had to do was say, make it so and others had to do it. And that may not be the position that you're in right now, in your business. And and I totally get that. I don't have a staff of 100 people that I can make these declarations to.

00:05:59And you see while it may be true that Kennedy wasn't an astronaut or an engineer.

00:06:16You see, Kennedy had this unshakable belief that the US would land on the Moon.

00:06:50The US would be the people to do it.

00:06:56That's what we need to do. You need to practice having that unshakable belief, in yourself, and your goals in your ability to get there. Even if you don't know how to do it like 2 days, guess. Bobby Stewart, says building a business takes time dedication and a village.

00:07:27So before we meet Bobby Stewart, I want to share a few with you.

00:07:59Margaret Hamilton, she was the lead programmer on the groundbreaking Apollo guidance computer, which had less capacity. Think about this for a minute, had less capacity in the today's mobile phones and worked on every crewed Mission. So she has like involved in all of the guidance systems. And incidentally, she came up with the idea to call her discipline software engineering. How cool is that?

00:09:06Be a Visionary. Have that unshakable belief in yourself.

00:09:14I really do. Hope you love women. Conquer business. Did you know that? You can actually get paid just for listening to this podcast? I know it sounds insane, but it's true. I just discovered this free new app called podcoin, and it literally pays you to listen to podcast and more than 60% of their listeners are women. Super cool, right? So here's how it works. You listen to podcast and you earn podcoin. While you listen, then you turn that pod corn in for gift cards at places like Amazon or Starbucks, or if you're a super good person. You could even donate that podcoin to charity.

00:10:31Welcome back to the show. Let's meet Bobby Stewart. Pursuit of Happiness, is doing what you love, even when it puts the spotlight on someone else. Bobby Stewart, is a Serial entrepreneur, whose passion is engaging with the building of startups as a former business adviser with a small business development center, and tie Excel boot camp instructor for Equanimity has helped guide entrepreneurs through their most difficult start at moments Bobby believes that entrepreneurs possess strength and tenacity. That are the building blocks of L. Bobby is the CEO and founder of pallet stores. She is also the founder and president of k. I c, i t investment Club. Bobby has chosen creating developing and launching small businesses as her career teaching and mentoring as her passion. She started her Adventure as an entrepreneur at the age of 16.

00:11:40Please welcome Bobby Stewart to the women conquer business podcast.

00:12:45Bigger than even myself or even the idea. I first had and it was time for me to Pivot the business and really crazy something amazing.

00:13:01Captivated it was because they were all makers of color. That's really what it was that people just weren't creating space for specifically for makers of color. And when you start talking about different nationalities and where people come from and then you see the quality of their products and a lot of them already had a following, which was really great. So, people who already love their products are coming, you know, to support. And then the other communities like, when I had my store Boutique on 42nd Avenue, we'd have the town hall, bike, ride. Every time. Someone would come through that street, that always want to stop at my little Boutique and I absolutely loved it. And so it gave me a lot of opportunity and it really took one person giving me an opportunity to create opportunities for other people. So, that was I open or was it was really hard to get the first door open, but once the first door open,

00:15:01But also as current and future entrepreneurs, so, I just realized I've been really blessed to, I started teaching with the spdc and Tammy was the first person that gave me an opportunity to work and they offered her old realm. So I was still in the college. I went back to college at a later age and I was still in school and I did it, informational interview with Tammy and she hired me on the spot video of the spdc through PCC and Oregon Small Business Development Center at Portland Community College and I actually just saw her the other day we wouldn't had that tea her employer deny it. She was really the first person who open that gate that Floodgate up for me. And cuz I want it. I always been offered her as long as I can. Remember. I was always me.

00:17:01Getting them to a place where they can start functioning and get into working on their business, and get rid of that fear and move past it, and that doubt, and those roadblocks in those, all those crippling paralyzing things that happen to you when you're in business and just move forward to take the next step. So I got really good at that. I call it talking people off the ledge.

00:18:28That's a major thing is, when you become an entrepreneur, if you decide to be full-time, you don't get that regular paycheck. You have to work to make that money and you don't always know where that's going to come from. And so you have to create different streams of Revenue. And you have to be confident enough to know that people will invest you, or to get people to invest in you and that's a skill. So, there, you know, you have to develop all of these really important skills that have nothing to do with actually running your business, to be a really great business owner, because you are going from around of learning, how to be a business being in support to learn how to be a leader, to actually running an organization. And you really need to gain a lot of skill along the way in a while that has to do with your mental stability, your emotional mindset, you know, you're sometimes it has to really do with your support system that surround you and

00:20:28Now, so that you can have that capital for your business cuz it's going to keep eating up money and eating at money and you get money. So I sacrificed everything I possibly could to make sure that I have money for my business. And you know, it's about the long game. It's not about the I know about having enough for yourself and your son, and the rest of your family, and cuz I have enough revenue for them, and that money that you're making for your business, you have to keep reinvesting it and reinvesting it until you can actually take money out of your business because this, if you spend the first dollar, you may guess what your back to zero.

00:21:49And that is the the the biggest reason why I wanted to have you on the show is because you are responsible for helping to rise and helping other people rise with you. Is it because you know how hard it is in part that's a huge part of it because it's almost daunting trying to picture business and people having enough confidence in you to really invest in seeing past your your ability, what they think your reality is to scale a business and actually trusting in your knowledge cuz I've been to a lot of pitch contest and Mark. Do you know of networking events and all kinds of things? And I see the same people getting the award when I was like, why are we, why are we boarding the same person over again? They have enough money to move their business for

00:23:49The makers cuz you said, you saw this huge shiftwear advertisers are using faces of people of color everywhere. You look at store friends and all the posters have a whole mixture people now and you walk in the store and everything is still manufactured in China and well-liked. Who are we really supporting here using our faces? So you can take our dollars, but you're not actually putting money back into our community. So our business model, you were actually directly putting money back into the community, by supporting people and family of color locally. And that's probably the most important piece of the platform. Cuz people are so much more invested and they don't realize that the product quality is so much better when you can walk in and get affordable, organic products and locally made small batch. They're fresh. You know, I have people coming to my store and they have questions or there.

00:25:49Where is my first or just hold off? They first. They identify with the things that are in the window when they walked by cuz they don't see it anywhere else. They've never seen it in the mall. So a lot of it is very culturally specific and we do not Taylor things products to Coulter. We are so just let's just say we're whitewashed. So you can go to million stores. They can sell the same thing, but you come to a pallet store and it'll be a very specific and I have people come in and we have a line of clothing African line and they're like, there's a freaking close in the mall. Oh my gosh, there's ever really want the clothes are beautiful garments, but they just can't find them. They have to find them online and you know, they can't try them on and you know how hard it is to buy something offline and Source it and know that it actually fits and it's what you want. And you can't try for five things on and pick out the best.

00:27:26It all. Looks like it's a, it's a real personal mission and everyone has beautiful energy. They love the space, their crowd that their products are in the space. When people come in, they always talk about how beautiful the store is. And, you know me. I just see everything that I want to be perfect. And I and I realize I'm like, it's not the building. That makes it beautiful, is the products in the building that make it beautiful and you know, it's like where can you go to get handmade dolls and things that are crafted beautiful pieces of jewelry. Yeah, right.

00:29:04That come in the store are extremely loyal lot of times, they talked about how amazing the product is and what it's done for them. And I I love that. I love Bragg makers in the store. They're amazing people. We have three makers that have phds. So, yeah, they're a cool dream, really knowledgeable about what they do and you know that when you come in that, you're not going to get a product that, you know, created with a GMO or high chemical content. You can actually see the ingredients and you understand every single word on there. And we make sure that the products that have a good shelf life. So they don't go bad when you take them home because they are natural or organic. So having a quality maker make something that is just the stainable is really, really important. Not everyone is there yet

00:30:15What other health stuff do we have that? We have? So many things like this? So the story that we kind of talked about before was that I had a friend share with me that all of the chemicals like in the stuff that you put on your hair, burn her skin and that has a lot of hormones in them that especially for like young girls causes them to develop younger and and things like that. And so people, you know, white folks like me have no idea about this happening. And so, what you're doing is you're delivering something to the community isn't harmful week. We have a natural hair care line right now. We are carrying the Bahia, honey. And then we're going to be carrying another natural hair care line in the most important thing about having a natural hair care line. Is that especially African American women. They've gone through these phases or the things that how we met.

00:32:15And wearing her natural hair, and loving our natural hair and being able to have those products in the store. The people make a beeline to it. I bet you know, it is. Can you stop more product please? Can you, can you just bring the product? And that's not a bad thing. I also wanted to point out that you're being exceptionally modest by just talking about the makers and not talking to you at yourself right now. So, what I want to do is just share like a little, a little story that I haven't shared with you before, we have this big events. It's like quarterly called my people's Market me, and it's a place in town where, a lot of the makers are right. You want to talk a little about my people's Market, or do you want me to tell my story to tell you're? So I'm going to Lake all of these, you know, so I've worked with many people who have booths at my people's market and met a lot of people.

00:33:23I was going and I was talking to people who like all you got to talk to Bobby. Oh, you got to talk to Bobby, Bobby Bobby. You know, that's a palate. You can buy that at palate, you can buy that are palate palate. Who's this Bobby person, you know, and then I met you and I was like, oh, I get it now cuz you're like bigger than life. You have these great goals and you are the place, right? I mean, you are the place for all of these people who are doing pop-ups and working their ass off everywhere. You know, when you're like the one, who's like, come on, bring your products here. We will sell them here and it's like their home base. Yes, and it's very grounding for people and I appreciate that about you, that you provide like the safespace this grounding space for other people. Because most people don't have that in that Community. The I'm going to make what I make and I'm going to sell it and I'm going to go. That is hard work. It go from place to place, pop up to pop up.

00:34:42Ted just add to that and and thank you for saying that Jared is when you are vending. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of time and it's not easy and you have to dedicate that entire day or that entire weekend or however long does events are and you do it over and over again, but the second the vending is over. So is the cash flow? You're not making money anymore. And then how do those customers find you? You know, you meet them ones and if they don't, if they don't follow through to your website and that doesn't happen very often. How do they find you? I actually had one makers like, you know, I'm so glad I got my partner so I can stop beating people in parking lot.

00:36:30Do you have the farthest to reach that they can? And if their platform to get started is palette that makes me extremely proud, very, very proud. So, I want to just help as many makers, grow as possible, because that's what the palate brand is all about. We're really a teaching store. I will give you feedback, you know about, you know, what, what your next steps are? What you need to do. I'll work with you on your labeling and you know, what, what customers are actually saying. If you actually have returns. I'm going to find out why you had to return our return to really exchanges and not really, you return. People don't really bring stuff back cuz they're unsatisfied there. Just like I grabbed the wrong size or grab wrong thing, or they just preferred, you know, something else. And we don't we are very open with returns and exchanges because we don't want the customer to leave with a bad experience. So giving that

00:38:30Expense, I can't even.

00:39:36Wish you well, and that actually matters and that will go back into the community that you wanted to go back into and that's what we provide for people that pallet absolutely and also providing top providing products that you can't find another. You definitely can't cuz you know, they're the local makers. Most of them still work full time jobs and they have families and they're the only way they can get away from working a full-time job and really focus on their businesses. They have to grow it and they have to grow it online. They have to grow it in stores that have to grow it in more locations, you know, they have to, you know, get to a place where there in distribution and they can actually have their products made and shipped. And that threshold is huge for a small batch makers. It's almost impossible for a lot of them because it takes a lot of capital and that's how we need two more investment in

00:41:36You do next is we will be working on. I always say wheel, as if I have the two large army of makers cuz I'm like, where is the? We I think it's kind of always say, we is like me and myself and I honestly, I don't do everything by myself. But you know, like Jasmine, she's our content manager, all the stuff you see on social media, she creates and people are always complimenting me. So, you know, I really don't do everything. I Outsource things that I'm just not good at I already. I know, I have to, because I just don't have the time things that eat at my time. I have to Outsource. I just have any to give me to that. We all have MS about like being aware about like our blind spots.

00:43:06How to do it. All of them, be the chief of everything but the most important part of running a store where you have Consignments place is finding the best way to sell my software. Does it for me, but it's not perfect and so I'm always looking for something that works better. So, I've been with the same company since I opened my first store and fixing all the little problems as, you know, sometimes a little daunting. But now we're in a good space. We're really in a good space but you know, sometimes we have to do a lot of adjustments and go back and fit, you know, you have to check a can of the guess what? I don't have to manually. Do anyting. Yes, and then everyone has visibility of their own accounts. Their own inventory. They know when they need to restock. So that's the best part is that is very transparent and

00:44:22I mean, getting back to the big goals and you want to take this, you don't take this big, right? Yes. So our next phase is to go eat Commerce and we want. Yeah, there's that word. Again. We want a national platform. So I was thinking about just doing something local for the local makers and then I decided, you know, why are we thinking so small? We need to think big people are coming from all over the country and wanting stores like this everywhere. So let's go on the internet and create an e-commerce store for makers of color. So that is our next goal. And so I'm going to spend the next year fundraising for that.

00:45:37Yes, I got to be working on that. So we're going to do we're going to do a small website in Squarespace and really highlight the makers and then the e-commerce will be, you know, it'll come later and it'll be something different. But this website our current one will just be for palette at loy's and that horrible Wix website. I did that fight myself. So that's like I told you, it's a great start a website. I just got to tease you about like scaling to e-commerce like completely off the table, but I had to give you a little job. I was like, looking for your bio for the podcast and I was like, hey, she's still got this Wix website.

00:47:26I got I got 20 other things, I could be working on it until we get back to this, you know, cuz I, you know, for a company culture, what I want to create at when I become a real Corporation, is the first thing I want to do is Implement a 32 hour work week. So you have eight hours a week that you can choose to work or not to work. You have to be at work for 32 hours. And the other eight are I have to take my kids up by 3. I have a doctor appointment. Do you know how hard it is in a large company? To get time off to go to the doctor? Why?

00:49:02Business owners like you and me who been there to be the ones leading the world, because we know, because we know how crappy it is to work in these situations where they don't care about your family. They don't care about your health. Just want you to get the work done, no matter how long it takes and it's because they don't have any perspective anymore, or maybe they've never had things happen, you know, that that are avoidable and you know, but you work for a jerk and they don't consider like the whole person. Yeah, you know, I work for a few people that were not the most lovely people. She kept all the female employees late and let all the employees go home and every single one of us had a child to pick up from daycare.

00:50:56Working another business somewhere else. That's the most people already have my cell phone number and I have to stop. Yes, I do. But if you want to email me, you can email me at Bobby at pallet 42.com and it'll be that way till I finally change it. The pallet 42 was the first store that I had on 42nd Avenue on 42nd Avenue and just in case you don't know palette that the whole meaning of pallet is that it represents color and makers and creativity and originality, and now it's all about that whole color scheme and just Beauty and, you know, so that's why we chose pallet and I wanted something that represented the whole and not just the one and because that's what we are. We're Collective of a lot of

00:52:56Cuckoo.

00:53:35Why people say that it still confuses me, never heard that term drive or heard it a few times and and it's just like the same. I feel that same way about that is as when people say I don't see color and it's like you don't see me. If you don't see tell her I got you. You just made me invisible. So please know that I am a person of color and love me the way I am and not the way you think I should be, you know, so don't, don't think telling me that I buy a half wide is a complex and you learn how to act accordingly and pleasant than every person in their families taught manners and home training and has nothing to do with race.

00:55:32Can my shoes but I bet half the people I know or maybe not I know but half of people make a face pain today and if they be like I'm going to check out right now, you haven't, I've been through, I've had some experience. I've been through a lot but I just have this this mechanism in My DNA that just doesn't allow me to quit. And fortunately, I have that and because I and I believe that straight comes from my, my family line, you know, my grandfather was very entrepreneurial, you know, he was self-sufficient. He would work over here to supply over here and I'm like, that's brilliant. So proud family life and I have my grandmother's skin.

00:57:18Having a business Mentor, is its huge. Someone who is accomplished. But if you are at the beginning stages, don't get someone who's over there, get someone at your level that can get you to the next level. So I just a little bit ahead of. Yes. Yes, that is that will help you take off the training wheels and get started, you know, and make sure you have a good support system. Not everybody has that. You might have to go find a group for that. But I realize that business you have to always be able to Pivot your ideas. And you know that first ideal you have may not be the one. Just like when I opened my first Boutique, I had to Rebrand it because it was not the one

00:58:36You're amazing. Thank you. You're amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show.

00:59:49Takes a few minutes at Jen mcfarland.com, ready?