Avoid These Common Startup Mistakes with Zoe Charif

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue strategies and their 10x ROI B2B growth guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. Today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Zoe Sharif. Now, Zoe is a lifelong entrepreneur who grew up in a family business and spent the last 20 years launching and refining her own ventures. Now, as the owner of Business Plans USA, she helps entrepreneurs secure funding by crafting SBA business plans and investor-ready documents that outline their business models and financials. Her mission is to empower founders to turn their visions into thriving realities. So, Zoe, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Mark. I appreciate the intro. That was really nice.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I'm excited to have this conversation. But before we jump into some of these topics, I'm going to throw it back to you. Tell me a little bit about sort of your journey. It sounds like it hasn't all been, you know, peaches and cream. You've had refining your own ventures, finding something that works. And I know you're a big believer in sort of resilience. Tell us your story.

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, I grew up in a family of business. So I think the first exposure that I've had of not making big mistakes in business was through my parents. Their first business was actually a gas station back in Canada.

Okay.

So the gas station was small, it was manageable, and we actually did very well. And my parents expanded a little too fast into a company that they knew nothing about. So we were stuck within that business for, I think, 7 years, and that's where we saw everything dwindle. So of course, my parents working together, I observed and I didn't realize that it was actually wiring my psyche and my subconscious to learn about what not to do.

Yeah.

But them working together, having a huge operation, not hiring the right people, not having solid execution or marketing strategies. Yeah, it affected us a lot, a lot, a lot. Eventually, They moved on to another business. So I think by the time I was 18, I had seen them go through at least 5 businesses. And then at just like that, I started to have an entrepreneurial mind. So I noticed in myself that I would see gaps in a market and I would aim to fill those gaps, right? And then I would say 10 years following that was just a lot of stories of my own failures in business. So now, almost being 40, right? Um, I, I feel like I now am in a position where I can talk to entrepreneurs, especially in the startup phase, to teach them how to make the right decisions to minimize risk. But beyond that, how to be strong, how to be strong and how to work through those ebbs and flows and just not give up.

Yeah. You know what they say, or at least what I choose to take in from all the things that people say is, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you can see it as a learning, then it's not a failure. It's just another step in the process. Whereas if you see it just as a failure and you're not learning from it, then that's not really the right entrepreneurial mindset.

Yeah, exactly. And unfortunately, we live in a world where we're very aware that people are watching us, right? So when we announce, hey, I've got this business venture and it doesn't work out, sadly, you know, that feeling of failure sometimes humiliation kind of sparks. So, A, that either causes people to not jump into their dream vision, or as soon as they see a failure, um, they, they internalize that too much and they're— and they feel that embarrassment. They feel that— maybe embarrassment is not the right, but they feel that failure.

Yeah.

And they're like, I don't want to try again. And then they fall right back into a 9 to 5, um, where they're not super fulfilled. Right.

So tell us about what you're doing today. Business Plans USA, right? That's the—

Yeah.

What do you guys do?

Yeah. So we write business plans. Um, what that means is we articulate company blueprints that can include the company vision, uh, of course the mission vision statements, right? Um, the high— the organizational hierarchy, the marketing strategies, all of that. This document is typically used to scale a company and to get funding. So we do SBA business plans. The Small Business Administration will provide loans to small businesses, right, at a very good rate, but they want to understand the company blueprint. They want to understand the growth milestones, and of course, they need to see the profitability of the company. In other words, if they were to give you the money, how is the money being distributed, and how is that contributing to the growth, right?

Right.

So that's the SBA and bank side. Then we do investor packages. So investor packages, the financial models are slightly different, right? Beyond that, we also provide an in-depth feasibility report, which is an unbiased market research whereby we evaluate the business model within the industry and essentially like drive home the point that, hey, this company and this business will be successful because there is a market gap and the company is there to fill it.

Wow, that sounds like really powerful foundational stuff that really ensures a lot more businesses are successful with that kind of insight.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's our goal.

Yeah.

Sorry, go ahead.

I'm curious, as you work with all of these businesses and they come to you, do you see common sort of mistakes or missteps of either they have false assumptions or they're heading in a wrong direction that then once they engage with you, you're able to kind of help them understand?

100%. The biggest misstep I see is first-time entrepreneurs or startups starting their journey with a business plan. Keep in mind that the business plan is an articulation of a business model. It's not a tested business model. It's not a business model that's been market researched. Yes, you have to add market research in a business plan, but usually that's biased, right? Same thing with the competitor analysis. There's actually a preliminary step to that, which I kind of mentioned before, and that's the feasibility report.

Ah.

When you are thinking about starting a company or acquiring a company, That unbiased market research and evaluating how the company fits within the industry will give you a very clear idea, or at the very least, the likeliest scenario of how that growth will happen and whether it's profitable. One of my biggest mistakes in my first 10 years of entrepreneurship was relying on a gut feeling and thinking, oh my God, like, for example, the wellness industry, right? Thinking, oh my God, the wellness industry is so massive. I can't fail. No, I did fail. Okay. Yeah, I fucked up. I spent a lot of money. I spent a lot of time and I fucked up. Excuse my language. But that's okay. The thing that I learned was the gut feeling that I had was not necessarily wrong, but I didn't check to see how I could actually grow this business model. I just assumed I wouldn't fail, right? So, A, that type of tenacity, that type of, you know, like just self-confidence is very important in entrepreneurship. But it's— if it's not backed by smart decisions, by pragmatic steps forward, by a very sharp understanding of return on investment, right? And mapping out your milestones, your strategies, hiring the right people, executing strategy, all of that, you're not going to optimize your success. Right? Your your potential for success. So I think that's where I had misstepped a few times, actually. So I think I had probably five yeah five ventures in a span of ten years that did not go well. And throughout all of that, I I learned from my mistakes. And it just so happens that now running company and business plans, right? I understand you know where. Like how to minimize those risks.

Yeah, well, that makes sense. You learned a lot from the process, and so now you can arm people with, uh, sort of some of the tools that maybe you were— you didn't have when you were coming through. And so it's so interesting to, to hear that talk about, you know, sort of a real feasibility that's an unbiased perspective, because very often, your times— you're right, when you're building a business plan You're interpreting the marketplace to sort of justify why there is an opportunity for you versus actually just taking an unbiased look at, is there an opportunity for me or not?

Exactly. That's exactly it. Like in a business plan, for example, you're meant to lay out your milestones, right? By year 1, I want to achieve X. By year 2, I want to achieve Y, right? What are we basing that on?

Right.

Like truly though, what are we basing that on? It's great to have a vision, but a vision not backed by some sort of reality and market dynamics is just a vision, right? You're not gonna be able to solidify that into reality. And beyond that, if you're approaching an investor, they can very well ask you and challenge you. So the fact that you have a feasibility report, that's where you stand strong with self-confidence and you're like, nope, I did my research actually. And this is why I'm confident that by year 1, we can have, let's say, $500,000 in revenue, right? So it's all those pieces fitting together. So yeah, so again, that's why in our investor bundles, like, we don't shy away from the feasibility report, and we don't shy away from the difficult analysis as well. If the analysis shows that, A, the vision is unrealistic, or that the business model could be enhanced either by tweaking the pricing strategy, We're tweaking the target market. We will tell our client that because we want them to be successful. And if they accept our recommendation, then we move on to the business plan. And the business plan, as I said before, is an articulation of a business model. So at that point, we've done all of our research, we've covered all of our ground. So when you present this to whether it's SBA or investors, you're like, challenge me, challenge me, go ahead. This is all backed. Right.

Well, and, you know, such a stronger way to do it to where that you can actually sort of make sure that the research and numbers make sense before you just put all that time, energy, and effort spinning your wheels on something that is not likely to be successful.

Yeah. Yeah. And then spend all that money. Like, right now, your dollar is, like, worth sadly a lot less than it was 30 years ago. What that means is You know, holding on to those dollars is very important. You're working very hard for them, right? You've got your student loans to pay off. You've got your mortgage to pay off. Now kids are expensive. There's all these things, right? So all to say, if you're going to invest in yourself, that's such a strong, powerful move. But like, but understand the value of that dollar. It's very important, right? Because you need it. You need it to have a sustainable lifestyle.

Yeah.

Right. It's harder for us today than it was 20 years ago.

For sure. So it's so interesting to hear you talk because it's so obvious that not only do you have sort of like the technical expertise to help do this analysis, but also like there's a bit of a psychology component here too. And the sort of the confidence that comes from having the research, which then gives you the confidence to really commit to moving forward in, in your venture so that you won't, you know, have that potential, you know, embarrassment or shame or whatever it might be of failure. Talk to me a little bit about how you see that in terms of, you know, as part of the building blocks of entrepreneurship and even, you know, sort of success for some of the companies you work with.

So I was lucky because I grew up in a family of business. So already my psyche was wired Right? My subconscious was wired to look for opportunity and to go for it, right? My mom, she's a very powerful businesswoman in terms of like, that woman does not give up. It could be the most unfeasible business model. God forbid that woman gives up, right? That's what I mean by powerful. Like, she— failure will not stop her. So that's essentially, I think, what I picked up, right? Um, so I was lucky in that sense, but I'll be honest with you, for those 10 years, every time I tried to launch something, and of course my immediate network, they would be the people who would know about it. Every time I launched something, I felt so good about it. Every time it failed, I'm like, fuck, excuse my language. I hope it's okay to swear here. Yeah.

Okay. It's an adults-only channel.

Okay, good. Um, but every time it failed, like, dude, like I, I would really internalize that failure because it wasn't just a matter of so many people know. It was also like, like I'm broke. Right. I, and also I was working for my parents, so I was lucky that I had that as a backup. But in terms of making my own money and, you know, getting my ventures to start on their own, like it was at that time, I interpreted it as a failure. Now I understand that, God, I had to go through all of that to be successful today and to understand businesses and beyond that, to consult with businesses. Right. But going back to the psyche and the psychology of business, dude, like you really need to be resilient. You need to be strong. You need to be sure of yourself. And every time you fail, you need to twist that narrative of, I just learned something new of not to do next time. And as you're learning, hopefully you're making smart, pragmatic decisions to move forward and save that dollar because it's better to have a $10 mistake than a $1,000 mistake. Better to have a $1,000 mistake than a $1 million mistake, right?

Yeah.

So that planning, that market research is so important with that. But yeah, like all I can say with this is if, if you're sick of your 9 to 5, if it's just not fulfilling you, that's fine, right? Take your steps forward. Just accept that there will be ebbs and flow.

Mm-hmm.

Like if, if there isn't, that means that you're not actually tapping into your full potential. as a business person, right? Like, there should be dips because you're meant to learn from those dips.

Yeah.

And actually, just as a side thing, I became a lot more confident as a businesswoman when I started, uh, surrounding myself with business people, especially business groups. What I love about business groups is you're in very separate lanes, so no one is competing Right? No one is like, so like the industries are usually separate if that's how the business group is set up. Right. But you're also all cheering each other on and you can talk about revenue, you can talk about expenses, right? I know for me personally, my friends, my family, they don't know because I don't feel comfortable telling them what my company revenue is, right? Because what's the point? There's just like, You know, it's just not a conversation to have with— for me anyways.

That's right.

Yeah, it's just, it's private. But when it comes to business groups, that's where you can really let it out. That's where you can say, I had a bad month, or that's when you can say, I had a strong-ass year. That's when you can say, hey, like, I'm projected to meet X for this year, right? And it's basically people who are cheering you on, not just cheering you on, but telling you how can you tweak your business model every so slightly, you know, to like reach that goal, or maybe significantly, whatever it may be, right? I'll just say, if you are now entering the world of entrepreneurship, it can be very lonely, very, very lonely. And then when those quote-unquote failures happen, you can really internalize that. But when you have a business group there, they don't let you sit in failure. They tell you, okay, what are we doing to change that? So then, you know, it's a form of a tribe, actually. It's a tribe that sees you for who you are, for what you're doing, who will not accept your mistakes as failure and who will take your mistakes as what did we learn from that and how can we take the next step?

Yeah, that's so important. And it's so interesting hearing you talk. It reminded me of a study that I read once about entrepreneurship. that was saying that the single most predictive measure of success for an entrepreneur is their ability to get up and try again. Because there are almost zero examples of people who hit a home run on the first time at bat. Like, there's a lot of batting practice. There's a lot of striking out. There's a lot of getting hit by foul balls and all of those things.

Yeah.

And it's that ability to get back up and try again is the single most predictive factor for success for entrepreneurs. And I also really love and support the idea of surrounding yourself not only with a family, with friends, with folks that love you and believe in you and say, go get them today, but there's something very different that comes from You know, someone who might be, you know, at arm's length from your business because they're family or a friend who believes in you, but they can't really kind of give you tactical advice versus someone else who's also on that entrepreneurial journey who can say, I truly know what it's like to fall down and skin your knees or to strike out at the bat. And here are some tips. that have been helpful for me and some ways that can help you, you know, get back in that, um, that batter's box and take another swing. Um, and encouraging there.

Exactly. So besides these business groups, um, coaches are actually very important too. So a coach will hold you accountable, but also you've got someone that you can look up to who's either been in it, right, and who has the experience to just see your company business model from a bird's eye view and just say, okay, here's where I see, you know, like room for improvement, right? So having that coach beyond just a business group, in my opinion, is very important if you want to make it as an entrepreneur. Like I said, it's a very lonely, lonely place if you're building a company by yourself, if you're celebrating by yourself, if you're failing, quote unquote, failing by yourself, right? So having a tribe is important. And there are a ton of business groups out there. Like, I'm a part of EO, right? Or EO. Um, SCORE now has these business mastermind groups where they help these small groups like hit $1 million in revenue. Um, let me think what else. If you go on to Meetups, there's a ton of business groups there as well. So yeah, for anyone looking for an entrepreneurial group, um, I would suggest those avenues and those channels.

Yeah. So there's a great book, Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited. I don't know if you've read that or not, but it talks about there's this entrepreneurial myth that we have in America where we, you know, we really glorify, you know, sort of the people that succeed. And but we, you know, sort of fail to recognize the, you know, sort of littered, uh, you know, hallways of fail, of people that don't succeed. But the other thing that he talks about, which I think is really powerful and aligns with what you're saying, is one person kind of can't do it all. Uh, like, we have this sort of vision of the entrepreneur as, you know, the idea person and the execution person and the, you know, the people leader and the salesperson and like all of these things. And it's really impossible.

Mm-hmm.

For one person to live up to that mythology of doing all those things. And not only— and so, he talks a lot about how building different roles within your organization and using those roles to do multiple things is really valuable. But I also— it reminds me of what you were talking about of working with a coach and a support group because even the best— and I'll stick with the sports analogies, although I'm not much of a sports person, but even the best, you know, hitters in the world have a batting coach that they work with day in, day out. In fact, they probably have multiple batting coaches that work—

Totally.

Day in, day out to teach them how to be better. And they're already the best in the world or best within their space. And so to think that it's a sign of weakness Or somehow not a, you know, strong business investment to invest in yourself by getting a coach or getting help with business planning or other things that, you know, it's hire a professional and it saves you the time and the headache.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're on point with that. Sorry, I just totally lost my train of thought.

Oh no, no worries at all.

I had something to say, but I'm falling into the mud. Well, while you're thinking about it.

I'll, I'll sort of pose another question. What's something that's on the horizon for either you personally or your business that you're excited about coming up here in 2024? Yeah.

So scaling is very important, right? So my business group, what we focus on is how do you get bigger? How do you scale? How do you increase your revenue? So for me right now, that's been the key thing. But do you know what comes before scaling? Hiring. So how do you hire the right people?

Mm-hmm.

Right. Um, I think that's been a very key thing. So one thing I learned is making sure that the people that you hire fit your core values, right? If your core value, for example, is, um, just someone who takes initiative, right? Someone who can be trustworthy, someone who's good with clients, whatever it may be, list them out and then rate that person for each of those core values. And essentially based on that rating, you'll know whether they're a good fit for your organization, right? So with that, right now I'm in the process of hiring more people and just making sure that I've got a nice strong machine, right, that can kind of run without me, that can be self-sustained. And that way I can just focus on scaling, getting more people through the door, helping more entrepreneurs get through, get, you know, or achieve their vision, but also helping them get funding. So an arm of the company that we have is loan brokerage. So we have a wide network of lenders out there. So when clients come to us for their business plans, we fill out, we work out their financial model, and beyond that, we liaise with the different lenders to see if we can find a good match for them and if we can shop for Rates on their behalf, right? So yeah, that's essentially, that's the end goal here. So A, making sure that the company right now has the right people so that it can be a self-sustained machine. And as it's a self-sustained machine, we can bring in more clients and help more clients and get them the funding that they need to reach their vision, essentially.

That's awesome, both from the perspective of A, understanding that you got to build the machine before you run it and scale it, and B, that you've got this sort of multiple, you know, sort of value proposition for your clients. Not only can you help them get that business model in a place where it could be investable, but then you can help them find that investment as they go and grow.

Yeah, exactly. And by the way, just for the audience, I didn't just like come straight out the door with all of these different like value propositions. I had my core one. My core one was always business plans, right? As I started doing business plans and I had a team that was writing business plans, that's when I identified a need for the feasibility reports. So it was a process. I didn't just come out the gate and say, I'm going to do all these things, right? Which, by the way, was my mistake with one of my past companies, right? And that's where I quote unquote fucked up. It's because I was I had way too many eggs in different baskets. I was not focused on a core strategy and I didn't have the right people. So that business failed, right? But with this particular one, I just focused on my core and then I naturally brought in the feasibility reports. I've been doing feasibility reports for maybe a year, year and a half, and now I'm naturally bringing in the loan brokerage. The loan brokerage we've been doing for maybe about 6 months now. Right? And this company is maybe 4 years old, right? So it's still a relatively new company. But notice how, A, I'm not bombarding my team with all these things that we want to do. B, I'm not bombarding my clients with, hey, you know, like, we, whatever. It's just a matter of flow. It's a matter of what they need for that moment, right? And now that I have solid products and a solid value proposition, now I can hire the right people to slowly make it grow. slowly get it self-sustained so that I can slowly take a step back, right? Watch the machine run and flow and then focus on helping more clients. In other words, bringing them on board and giving them that attention again to reach their vision, to reach their goal.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And, you know, people talk about, you know, sort of niching down and the mistake that companies make so often, and we see it a lot in the marketing space, is They don't want to limit their marketplace either from what they offer. So then they don't have a scalable, repeatable process because they offer everything to everyone or to who they serve because they don't want to turn anyone away. But, you know, when you say the right thing to the right market, you cut through so much better than trying to say everything to everyone.

Exactly.

And the same is true in building that business process and the scalability and repeatability there and all those things.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you can really confuse your own process if, if you're too distributed amongst, you know, your, your value and your products. Like, so back in the day, I had a company called The Wellness Pages. It was an online directory for wellness providers, right? And I was doing way too much.

Can't fail, right? So beyond such a big industry.

Yeah, because it couldn't fail. Exactly. It could not fail. It failed so hard. This was 3 years of my attention. It was a solid amount of money, right? And it was so much of my heart and my soul. But I was doing too much. I was doing like TED Talks. I was embedding video testimonials into the website. I was, and I was doing online content strategy as well. Like, it was just too much. And what I should have been doing was just focus on the core product, bring in the, the wellness providers, have them post up their director, their page, right? Bring in the wellness seekers, right? And that's what I should have done. I should have just grown the community rather than offering too many things, right? Um, in the end, when I shut it down, like, it literally broke my heart. Right? It broke my heart because, A, I had put so much time and effort into it. It was so much of my heart and soul. And to be honest with you, I still think it's a good idea. Like, I still do. I just think that I had poor execution. Right? But yeah, and like, hopefully never again will I make that mistake. Although I understand that if I do make another mistake like that, it's just another learning opportunity, right? And it just means that the next time I'll be better at it. But no, it really, like, I just was not smart. I wasn't smart.

Well, Zoe, you're such a charming individual and have so much great background, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate, and I know our audience does too, your transparency and your candor and your willingness to share some of the skint knees that you've experienced along your entrepreneurial journey. But congratulations on the success that you're having with business plans and Adding in that feasibility capability and bringing in that ability to actually fund and the brokerage. But so, for folks in our audience that they've got an entrepreneurial idea, or maybe they've skinned some knees along the way, and before they get going with this next one, they want to get some of that expertise from you. They want that feasibility. They want that really solid investable business plan. How do they get in touch with you?

Yeah, well, thank you for asking, and thank you for all those kind words. Um, you can find us online, businessplansusa.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Zoe Sharif. Um, yeah, or email us at zoe@businessplansusa.com, and I'll personally chat with you. We'll go through your business model, and I'll let you know what I feel it is that you need to get to that next stage. Awesome.

Well, Zoe, thanks again for joining us today. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you so much, Mark. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share it Share it with others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story? Send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.