76: Neha Naik: Mentoring Moms to Start Their Own Business from Conception to Delivery

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Today. My guest is Nia Naik. She is the Founder and CEO of rg the Sleepy Cub creative arc Triad Partners. Nia is a four times business owner and she runs those while raising two toddlers. Nia is an expert in career planning, recruitment, a certified sleep consultant and a mom entrepreneurship coach. She mentors moms with young children on how to start a business to create a better work life balance. She helps moms who dream of starting a business but don't act on it, takes them by the hand and walks them through all the steps of their new business from concept to delivery. Nia, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to jump in with this with you and talk about all the four businesses that you have.

Thank you so much for having me here Destiny. It's an absolute pleasure and honor. And yeah, I can't wait to dive right in.

Well, why don't you start and tell everybody about your journey into entrepreneurship and how you got to where you are today?

Yeah, so that's a really good question. You know, you guys, most of you obviously who are maybe listening, don't know me. I actually started my quote unquote career wanting to be medical, going to medical school, wanting to pursue medicine as my career. So I have a bachelor's in psychology and I decided to do a master's in medical sciences and realized that med school wasn't for me. So I already kind of felt like a failure because it was like, I am such a. I really hold myself to high standards. I think most of us do. And when that happened to me, I really took it personally because I felt like I let myself down, I let my family down, I let my fiance at the time down. And finally I was like, okay, well, we'll just start over. So I took a six month break and then I was like, okay, I have to do something. I got to figure this out. So I was like applying to random jobs on, indeed, Craigslist. And you know, there was one job that was like HR recruiting assistant. I'm like, oh, interesting. Like, what's that? And I applied, I got the job. And it was basically being a recruiter. That's really how my HR career, you know, started. And it's so funny, I always tell people, a lot of times we end up where we are. We didn't think we would be right or it just. Life just opens up new paths. Because I feel like that's your calling, it is your true calling and the universe telling you what your calling is. And basically I went from agency to agency. And finally I was working with a company that was a European company. They had opened offices here in Houston, Texas, which is where I reside. And we were doing oil and gas recruitment. But the mentality, the culture, it was just poisonous. There's no other way to describe it. Literally, destiny. I would dread going into work. Sunday nights were torture to me. Monday mornings were torture to me. It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. And part of the reason why it was horrible is because there was no lot. There was so much lack of respect. There was no understanding. I felt like there was a lot of weird stuff going on. Like I would bring in the clients, but they would go to someone who was prettier than me. It was just very. To me, it was a very nasty culture, right? And the company did shut down, actually, because they were sued. So but while I was there, I just told my husband, right, we didn't have kids at the time. We did put a down payment on a home that we were going to purchase. And you know, my husband was like, you know, like, if you need to leave, you need to leave. But at back of my mind I was like, oh my gosh, we're just buying a house. How can I just leave my job? I can't help you with bills, blah, blah. It was a lot of self doubt. It was a lot of emotional trauma for me. Not in a sense like trauma is probably a really strong word, but you know what I mean? It was very, it was really hard for me to be like, okay, I failed once and now I'm going to possibly fail again. But what I realized was that it really wasn't failing. It was just me navigating through life, figuring out what I wanted to do. Right? So finally my husband was like, you should just start your own recruiting agency. And overnight, as we were having dinner overnight, I was like, all right, let's form an llc. You know, we named the llc. And I was like, now what? And then he was like, you need to put in your two weeks notice. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. So when you put in my two weeks notice and boom, I hustled, I cold called, I cold emailed, until about two and a half months later, I landed my first client. Right? So my entrepreneurship journey started with failure. And for anybody who's struggling out there, I want to tell you, you're not alone. I plenty of us feel really pigeonholed into what we're supposed to do or we were what we thought we were going to do. And then a lot of us kind of ignore that inner voice of like, oh my gosh, you're meant for more. And I say, you know what, you have to start listening to that voice. I don't care how old you are, but you have to start listening to your voice. And that's really how I started my entrepreneurship. So I now currently work for, specifically for that business. I work with startups in the technical arena and I help them scale, which is providing operations, processes, everything within the HR and recruiting realm. And then I also help with the recruiting of high impact positions for those startups.

So you were at this agency and you, you know, you felt like there was a lack of respect there. You really dreaded going into work. You mentioned something about you would bring in a client, but it would go to someone that was Prettier than what you are. Explain what was going on there.

Yeah, of course, I'm happy to. So what happened was I remember a specific incident and, you know, there was a potential client that we were going to meet in Fort Worth, Texas, which, you know, as you guys may or may not know, about four and a half hours away. So I drove. I woke up early in the morning. The meeting was at 11. I woke up early in the morning, I went there, I spoke to the client, you know, he spoke to me. They were really nice about it. And then they signed the paperwork with me. Right. So technically it's my client because I went there and I got the client. Well, that was on a Friday. Well, I come into the office on Monday and I specifically remember. I'm not going to say his name just by the off chance was. He may be listening, I don't know, but he know, he. He walks in and he's like, hey, Neha, we're going to give this client to, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, why? Like, I just. Because I got him. So he should be like, working with me. Like, I should be getting all the roles that I'm supposed to be working with them on. But it just went to somebody else. There was no explanation given to me. The person that did get the client had obviously, like, she was a new college grad, you know, she dressed obviously like that. And without getting into further details, I just knew. I just knew that was just weird. It was awkward. And she was actually really nice to me. I have nothing bad to say about her because she couldn't control some of that either. But there was definitely politics involved. And I was like, all right, you know what? And that, I mean, I remember coming home and crying that day because I was just like, I cannot believe that just happened. Right? Like, I literally did a nine hour round trip trip in one day, one business day. Got the client to talk to me, got the client to sign. So I closed the deal. But it didn't come to me. And it broke my heart. It crushed me.

That is just devastating. I really hate to hear that. So what year was this? Were you, when you were at this agency, you were just putting a down payment on the house and you decided to leave? What year was this?

This was in 20. 2013.

Okay, so is that the year that.

You started your recruiting agency?

It was. Yep, it was. All this happened around November, and I started my recruiting agency. I was supposed to start it in December, but my accountant was like, I would just wait until January because of you know, the tax year is not messed up. Then I was like, okay, so I had the ideas ready and then I actually technically launched it in January. But I started doing a lot of the pre workings behind it, like who I was going to reach out to, how I was going to, how I was going to sell my services and all that.

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Okay, so you started this recruiting agency and then you landed your first client about two months, two and a half months after you started that. When did, and you have all these other businesses, when did you launch them? What was the next business that you launched?

Yep, so actually the next, all the other businesses happened since 2019, so they were just kind of a, it was really cool the way it happened. So what happened was when I was working with these startups, Destiny, for, you know, the, the recruiting side, you know, people started asking me questions about marketing, people started asking me questions about analytics. Because as you're starting a company and you know, remember, these are startups, these are technical, so they have the funds right. They just want to make sure they're setting the foundation right. So I was like, okay. And I know quite a bit about marketing because of my own business and I, you know, I was doing a lot of it because I honestly couldn't at the time afford to pay somebody do my marketing. So I was having to watch Google videos, I was having to do like late nights, like, you know, how do I increase my audience, how do I increase my SEO score? I had to do all that. So I'm like, okay, like I can help you. And one of my clients motivated me and he was like, look, I think you should start your marketing agency because you've got a knack at this and I'm like, you know, but, like, I don't have the team. He's like, hire a team. And I was like, all right. So I started that, and then I started Triad Partners for the same reason pretty much for data analytics. And then finally, in December 2019, around the time my daughter is born, in December 2019, I got a certification when I was on maternity leave with her for being a certified pediatric sleep consultant. Because I have both of my kids on a really good routine. And I'm not saying that, of course there's days when they sleep late and days when we have birthday parties and all that stuff, but for the most part, I'm a big believer in routine. I'm a big believer in kids sleeping well at night. And I wanted to empower women to do that, because from my culture, where I come from, it's almost as if when you have a baby, it's all about the child and who cares about self care for moms or parents? And I say, yes, I have kids, but I'm also a wife. I'm also a daughter. I'm also a owner of companies, and I'm a human being. Like, if I want to get my nails done, I can. And I wanted to empower other families to stand up and be able to voice that and make those decisions for themselves.

So Creative Arc is your marketing agency, correct?

Yes.

Tell us who you serve in that company.

Yep. So I've served specifically physicians and small private practices who are really great at what they do, but they're stuck in terms of their operations and their marketing specifically. So a lot. I work with clients right now in the Houston region who are either starting out or have started out, but now they're stuck, whether it's, you know, they're not getting as many customers or, you know, patients as they want, or whether it's like, we are getting the patients, but we're not really getting the type of patients that we want. So really going in and saying, okay, let's look at our foundation, right? Because physicians are awesome, right? Physicians are great. And obviously there's such a big contributing people of our society. However, I think the one thing that they lack is just organization as it relates to operations and marketing. And so I'm like, I will do that. So you can do what you're good at, which is working with patients and treating them.

Now is your Triad Partners firm. Is that where you help people with data analytics? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Yep. So basically, what I do is. And you know, that company is not limited to startups. So we, we work with some of the, you know, big name brands as well for that one. So what we do basically is we'll have a corporation come to us and they'll say, hey, look, like our data, we are not able to streamline our business processes because our data doesn't make sense right now. Like whoever built it, we have like three different softwares. Like we know this is here. The finance is sitting in this software, we have the HR sitting in this software. Everything is really muddled and I want to know the big picture, but also the details, right? So what we do, my team does is I have engineers that basically go in, they assess the situation, they put together an awesome, awesome data dashboard and where when we say, you know, when we sen to the CEO or the VP of whatever department, they're able to tell, okay, what was the cost, resources, what was the roi, where can they streamline? So for us it's about working smart and not hard, right? I'm a big believer in that. And so what I say is data tells stories, right? If you don't have data, you're not able to tell a story. So a lot of times in our businesses when we're like, well, what was my profit, profit, what was my loss? You know, what can I do better? What investments, investments did I make without having data? You're not able to assess that. Right? So what we do is we empower companies by providing data dashboards and analytics so that they can make that decision. They can construct their storylines for the upcoming quarter or upcoming years even and just say, okay, we're at 50 million this year, we want to get to 100. How do we get there? Well, here's where you're getting the least amount of roi. Here's where you're getting the most. How do you shift that within the internal company culture?

So I have to ask, I know you have two toddlers at home. How in the world are you managing for businesses?

I don't sleep. I'm just kidding. No, I do sleep. I would, I would literally like not, I would vanish if I didn't sleep. You know, honestly it, I sometimes don't know it either. But I will say this. I am big on priorities. I am big on working on things that provide the most impact within my companies. Right. So I do have an awesome team now. I wouldn't be able to just put my team. I have an operations director that works with me. I have like a couple of engineers, I have a couple of recruiters, I have bas. So I am at the point now where I am able to make those investments. But I remember when I first started out, right? Which a lot of people when they're starting out, you don't have that. And you know what, guys, you do have to work hard until you get there, right? And so because of the team that I have and the structure that I have in place now, I'm a very also organized person to the point where, like, it may drive people crazy, but I know exactly what I'm doing every day for the most part. And you know, and there's days, you know, when the toddlers are s. Or I'm sick or like, oh, you know, someone fell down and scraped their knee and now I have to be the mom, right? I have to kind of change my, change my roles within the household. And I'm able to do that because again, I have an awesome team in place. I've gotten really good at setting boundaries, which I was horrible at when I first started. Like, if a client asked me something, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it right now. But now I'm like, okay, we will respond to you, you know, in 24 hours. And we, you know, I believe in like, over. What is it? Over, under promise, over deliver, right? So again, setting those expectations with clients. And quite honestly, I do it because I love all of it. I love it. I'm very passionate about it. I love the problems I'm solving. And it gets me up, like, it gets me so excited for my day. And, you know, it is a lot. And a lot of people are like, how do you balance it, right? And we have as a family very strict rules. Like weekends, we don't work Fridays, we only work half days, you know, when the kids are home, no phones, no laptop. Like, we have made it to a point where now it's like I'm kind of starting getting the rhythm of it now. Do I have days when I'm working, at night when the kids go to sleep? Of course. I think we all do though, right? Like, we're like, let me catch up on these five emails because, you know, I have to go to my son's recital or we know, whatever. But for the most part, I'm really, I'm trying to be really, really good with boundary setting.

So how old are your children at home?

Yeah, so I have a 4 year old and then a 16 month old.

Oh, wow.

A boy and a girl.

So very, very young. Will the four year old be going to kindergarten next year or will mostly.

Not the, not next year, but the following year because he's born, he's born in December, so he's in that weird cutoff range.

Okay. Do you have a nanny watching them or do they go to daycare or where are they in the daytime while you're working?

Yep. So I have my nanny for the younger one and then I have, my son actually goes to a Montessori just around the corner here. It's about two streets down from where we, and you know, we pick them up. Well, my nanny picks them up at 3 and then I try to wrap up by 4. So we'll do like, you know, dinner, bath, all that with me. And, and then they usually go to bed by 7 or 7:30.

I love Montessori schools. I sent my two younger one to a Montessori school and I really think it helped set them up for success as they moved on to, to kindergarten. So let me ask you this. I know that you have an online course where you mentor moms with young children on how to start a business so they can have a better work life balance. And based on what you're telling me, with all the four businesses that you've started, I think you're a perfect person to help them with this. What business does this, does this course fall under? And tell us a little bit more about the online course that you have.

Yep, yep, that's a great question. So this business I don't think falls under any of my pre existing businesses, but what I'm trying to do with it is honestly I feel like there is a little bit of, still a little bit of stigma to women being in the workforce. Right. And so the way I think of it is a lot of times women, you know, we obviously are multitaskers. We do great when we put our minds to something. And you know, a lot of people have, still have jobs, which is great. This is specifically for moms who are working 9 to 5, but they are sick of it. Whether it's the culture where they're unhappy or they're just like, I don't want to put my son to daycare from 6am to 6pm, you know, at 4 months of age, whatever that looks like to you and your boundaries. So what I, a lot of times what happens is women will say, oh well, after the kid, I expect my employer to give me more leniency or expect to work from home more or you know, blah, blah. But I say, you know what, you start your own business and you define your life. Not only define, not only do you define your professional life. You also define your personal life because you get to work with the clients, you get to select your work hours. You get to say, I'm not going to work every Thursday, because guess what, it's your business. However, it's not as easy said than done, right? There's a lot of. There's a lot of pressure societally with all these things. When I read about 10k months and 20k months and all that, and, you know, I want to let women know that entrepreneurship is hard, right? No, I'm not going to downplay it for you. It is hard, but it is so worthwhile if you have the right guidance, right? If you know exactly which path to take. So that's kind of why that was my reasoning behind designing the course. Ultimately, what I wanted, what to happen, Destiny. Because I'm a big believer in, like, community service and giving back to the community, right? And now that I'm in a place where I can give back, even for the sleepy cub, I support the women's shelter with my profits, a percentage of them. And specifically for the course, My goal here is in the next six months. So six months or so when I start selling of it, selling it. And, you know, when we get it to be like, the way we want it to be in the feedback that we're getting for every person I sell it to, I want to donate it to a single mother who's trying to quit her job and start her own business. So that's really kind of my overlying vision behind it. Because I think that, you know, we need to empower women in our society to make that change, right? And I don't think we need cheerleading. Like, I think we know we can do it, but we need to know how we can do it. And so my course breaks it down from you all the way from, like, I have a play on words, conception to delivery, right? So if you think of, like, conceiving the business all the way to delivering it, and then how do you grow it and then how do you use that to also create passive income streams? So that's kind of what my course dives into.

So when did you launch your course? When was it available to the market?

So it's actually being launched. We had a Part 1 launch in March, and then we decided to change some things up. Like, I wanted to add in more handouts because we had a beta launch and we got some feedback, which I love feedback. And I also think that, you know, it takes time to perfect it, right? Like, you can't expect because I remember this is my first time ever designing a course and though I have an awesome team with me, there's still stuff I have to learn myself. So we did the Part 1 launch in March and we got some really good feedback. Like, awesome feedback. Oh, like, you know, I would love to see more of this. I would love to see client attraction strategies. That was one of the feedback. So I added a module, we added some awesome worksheets that people can do as they're watching it. So this isn't just you're watching there, you know, you are having you work as you're watching. So I'm having you write down what your three values are or the three pillars that come to your mind. So I'm a big believer in acting through it. Right. Like I call it because it's great to watch it. But unless you're participating, you're not going to get much out of it. So I'm launching now these. I guess my second launch is going to be May 15th.

So how many people did you have going through your beta?

So we had about, I think it was 48 people going through the beta. And all of them were, all of them took it. We provided it to them at a discounted rate. And basically the caveat was we want to know your brutally, like, honest feedback. Like, be as brutal as you want to be. You can tell me you hate it, whatever. Because you know what, I do want to make sure that people that take it are actually benefiting from it. Because if they're not benefiting from it, then what's the point, you know? So I was very particular about that with my team and I said, we are going to launch a beta and we are going to really have people tell us the feedback. And we, I mean, I will tell you there's some amazing feedback.

Where did you find the 48 people?

I found it on a lot of the entrepreneurship groups that I'm in on Facebook, also my LinkedIn network, my current existing network. I had a couple of clients that I know that are actually looking to start their own business specifically for the Sleepy Cup. And the moms that I work with, they're like, oh, I'm a stay home mom and I want to do this. And I was like, would you be interested in the beta? So, like really tapping into my email list and seeing if people would be interested and they were perfect.

So let me ask you this, Ania, what do you see as next steps in 2021? You can talk about your online course. You can even talk about some of the other businesses that you have.

Yep. So for 2021, really, my plan is to, you know, make a difference by helping women start their own businesses through this course, number one. Number two is I'm also going to be launching. Well, I just launched another course for the sleepy cup for parents who want to DIY sleep training. Right. Like, how do you do it? What are the steps? So, you know, I'm going to be launching that, so I want to focus on that. And I really want to focus on, like, taking some time off when things take off. Right. And being there, like being more available and getting to do the things I want to do because I think I worked so hard. And again, I love what I do, but I would just love to go on, especially with COVID now, you know, trying to, like, starting to fade, hopefully go on vacation. So we have a vacation planned in June and then making a difference in society. So again, like I said, in the next six months, you know, ideally by fall, I want to start supporting single mothers out there who are looking to start their own businesses. But, yeah, I would say those are my goals. I've recently also, like, been a lot of people have been reaching out about, like, business coaching. And, you know, I didn't really know as a coach, but I do a lot of Facebook lives in my group because I want to give people actual advice. So I have a really, like, weird client call and then I'll go, like, right live and I'll say, oh, my gosh, I just had the weirdest call and this is what happened. And how do you guys tackle this? And people have been reaching out about that. So that's something I'm exploring, though. I don't know if I'll have the capacity, so I'll have to work that out. But I've been getting a lot of those requests as well.

So where are you going on vacation in June?

We're going to Cancun.

Oh, fun. Very fun.

Yep, we're going to Cancun. We're going to an all inclusive resort where all we're going to do is have. Well, we're going with the kids. But as much as we can have some daiquiris on the beach and have the kids play in the pool and there's like a water park in the resort. So it's going to be about sun, water and alcohol.

I love that your kids are going to love that. So I have one last closing question for you. You've been doing this for a while. You obviously have a lot of success. With your four businesses that you've launched and the online course that you're currently working on, what advice do you for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

Yep. So a couple of things, right? And first of all, if you are starting your course or whatever is it that you're starting, just know that your first launch may not be the best launch. And that's completely okay. In fact, it's actually good because you learn so much, you guys. And I know there's so much, like I said, impending pressure of like, oh my gosh, like my first launch, I, you know, did 70k in sales. And, you know, that's all great, but. But you've got to think about all the other resources that person has. So don't compare yourself to somebody else ever. Compare yourself to you, always. Because you don't know what the other person's background looks like. You don't know the help that they have, the financials that they have to support it. So I always say, because I struggled with this initially, right, I would always compare outward. And then it took a mindset shift and it took me journaling every day and it took me, you know, just talking to my spouse or whatever, but just making that shift to like, it's not. It's okay that it doesn't work the first time, right? It's totally normal. And so don't set those expectations. And then for entrepreneurs who are starting, you know, I just, my advice is start. I know it sounds really cliche and it sounds really simple, but a lot of times we have all these great ideas and we get so muddled up in our heads and we don't start because we're trying to launch that perfect website or that perfect program or whatever. But you know what? There is no such thing is perfection and entrepreneurship. You guys, I am still to this day changing things on my website, changing things on my programs, changing my offerings, my pricing, because it is not a. It's never going to be a static thing. It's always going to be changing. There's going to be ebbs and flows. But learn from your clients. Learn from, you know, learn from your even competitors, right? Entrepreneurship is a lot about learning. It's a lot about putting into action what you learn. And so started. Just take a piece of paper tonight if you want to start your business and write down a couple of ideas and how can you start it and get things going? Don't wait. Oh, well, I'll wait until my child. No, just start. You don't have to start full time. You can just start really, really part time and work your way up. Right. But until you start, you won't know what you're working with.

I like what you said there about just starting and that you're. You are even like myself. I was doing this last night on my website, just tweeting, tweaking stuff, you know, doing a little bit of repositioning or changing up things. So that is some great advice, Nia. Where can people find you? Or where's the. I know there's a lot of places, but where's the best place they can find you?

Yep. So two places. One, if you just want to take a look at what I do and who I am in my businesses in general, you can go to my website. So it's nehanai.com so n e h a n a I k.com and you can see all my websites there. The second, the second place that you can find me is my Facebook group, which is Successful CEO Moms. And to me, success just means that you've started. To me, that's. That's it. You don't have to be a millionaire. You don't even have to have $1. But if you have the mindset and the attitude, that's what success is all about. So join the group. I'm very active in the group. I do a bunch of lives and I answer a lot of questions. So that's the two places that they can find me.

And thank you so much for that. And thanks for joining me today. I loved our conversation and learning about all businesses that you've started and I love what you're doing with your online course and where you plan on taking that and helping the single mom. So thanks so much for the discussion today.

Oh, no, thank you for having me. And if anybody wants to reach out, please don't hesitate to.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple POC or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.