Micaela Brown grew up planning a diplomatic or FBI career before turning to entrepreneurship. She bootstraps startups using free resources and pre-sales to fund development, and reads a book a day, mostly novels with strong female characters. Her advice for 20-year-olds: collect varied experiences instead of locking into one path early.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Makayla Brown with us. She's an entrepreneur and startup founder, so welcome to the show, Makayla.
Thank you, I'm excited to be on the podcast.
Of course, thank you for coming on, and we'll dive right in. And the first question that I have for you, Makayla, is What's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
I thought that my, my entire path is going to be government. My father is a retired lieutenant colonel, disabled vet, FBI. My mom's a doctor. You know, the status quo sort of thing, the 9 to 5, get your job. So I went the government route, passed for the Foreign Service to come to— oh my gosh, I can't even speak— to become a diplomat, passed FBI, went into the Department of State, Foreign Service. I mean, you name it, I did all of those things. And nothing fit. So the underlying message that I would say is when things don't fit, keep going, keep pushing through because you'll eventually find it and everything will have been worthwhile. Everything will have been to prepare you for the thing that you're meant to do, whatever that thing is.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Use every single resource you possibly can get your hands on to get your product to market as soon as possible, even before your product is ready to sell, because you can test the market without having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for market research. If you have your target demographic on lock, got the branding right, you have the messaging right, Throw it up on social, test the tone, test your imagery, test your target demo, and see if it works. And it's not expensive to do that. And then once you start getting responses, you could do pre-sales, you can fund your own products without having to go out and try to find investment. You can do it on your own, go to market as soon as possible, beat everyone else to market.
Yes, I agree. Very much like The Lean Startup teaches. And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
I just have to keep reiterating, you don't need to get investment to go to market. You can do pre-sales, get on social, build communities around your brand, around your product, and find your demographic early, as early as you can, and kind of live in that demographic and build your social strategy around it. Start with social, especially if you're going lean. Start with social, build I put product samples on my social media, put the demographic into Facebook and Insta, and I went viral within 2-3 months and I didn't even have products. So that was a huge, huge relief for me. Validation. I had market validation from the beginning, at least for one of my startups. I mean, everything else is, is different. I've got different advice depending on the, on the, the business. But that's, that's what I recommend.
Definitely. Now, and thanks for reiterating that because I think that that is huge because I think what happens to a lot of people is they're like, well, I can't do this because I don't have the money. But, you know, really, like, if you just get the idea out there, get some samples or whatever, like as you're saying, you can actually get like pre-sales and then that can actually fund the business. So exactly. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
In your 20s, don't think that you have to figure out exactly who you want to be, what you want to do. Use your 20s to get every single bit of experience possible, everything that you can possibly do. Work at a job, move to the next, just keep building that experiential sort of learning. Because by the time you hit your 30s, you start figuring out, all right, this is the lifestyle I want, this is the type of work environment that I want, this is the product an industry that I like this. And by the time you're ready to do that, you have to have your 20s to build that foundation. In my 20s, I thought that I had to be grown up and I had to have my entire life planned out. But instead, I took my 20s way too seriously when right now everything that I'm doing is built on the foundation of experience that I built in my 20s. And in Europe, it's a completely different thing.
Yes. No, no, I, I agree too. And I think A lot of people with that is they do kind of take things like very seriously. Like they see the success of somebody who is maybe like mid-30s or mid-40s and they're in their 20s and they're comparing themselves to that success. And it's like you don't realize how much you can actually get done. I forget what that quote is actually. There's some quote that's like, we mistake what we're able to get done in like 10 years, but we also— but then we— or we overlook like what we can get done in a long period. But not in a short period. So like in 2 years, if you start a business, most people in the beginning are like, why am I not at like a million dollars? But somebody who's been doing it for like 15 years is like, dude, it's because you've only been doing it for 2 years and that's not that much time.
So that's exactly right.
Um, and in your opinion, so next question is, in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Find what you're passionate at. And do it every day. You can get stressed, you can have some worries about business, but if you love what you're doing, you wake up in the morning excited about doing it and you don't even notice the hours.
And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
You know, see, here's where I get a little— I have a bit of a challenge. I try to read one book a day. I know that's a little crazy, but all of the books that I'm reading have a strong, powerful female lead, whether it's historical fiction or sci-fi adventure fantasy, it always has a strong female. And I think that growing up, we didn't— women, we didn't have these strong characters that we could adjust our worldview and imagine the world where women ran their own companies and were powerful and impactful. So now I'm surrounding myself and my leisure brain, that sounds so odd, I'm sorry, my leisure brain now, I'm programming myself to see what the world can be and changing my paradigm for the woman who is powerful and confident and isn't seen as something other than just a person, not through gender lens, not through any other type of lens. So those are the types of books that I'm reading. But for a business startup, I think the best thing that you can do is subscribe to Digital Marketer because you can learn how to blast your company into the stratosphere with minimal dollars by just going through Digital Marketer and looking at all of the apps, all of the advice that they give, and the strategies that they provide. Yeah, teach yourself how to market your business without having to pay firms and agencies. You can do it yourself.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is Henry David Thoreau, and it is, go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. And the reason why I like that is because I feel that as entrepreneurs, we can make problems much more complicated than they need to be. If we simplify, find the one solution, once it's launched, everything is fine. Also, um, before I became an entrepreneur, I kept thinking I just need that one great idea, just that one great idea that I can launch, it could be amazing. And I had too many ideas. And I became very frustrated that I couldn't launch everything. Do one thing great, then move on to the next. Do that one thing great, move on to the next.
Yes, I agree. Thank you so much, Michaela. And, uh, just before we let you go, where is the pla— the best place for people to find you online?
MichaelaBrown.com. And then I'm on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as Michaela Good friend, CEO.
Perfect. Thank you again, Michaela. We appreciate it.
Thank you.
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