What is the real cost of entrepreneurship?

Hey, hey, hey, I'm back. It's me, Tiffany, the Budget Nista, your favorite financial educator. And this is Money Glow Up from Yahoo Finance. In this show, we really help you to unlock the misunderstandings that you might have about money. And by might, I mean you do. OK, it's happening. As a financial educator, I really help to transform the way you think about money, the way you navigate money and the way you glow up with your money. And this episode in particular, we're going to talk about the true cost of entrepreneurship. Are you ready? Let's go. Class is in session. You know what that means? It means that I want you to focus forward. I want you to turn your phones off, unless, of course, though you're listening to me on your phone. And I want you to get your notebook out. OK, because we're talking all things entrepreneurship. Here's the thing. Did you know that there are 33 million small businesses in America right now? They employ 61 million Americans. That's like half the private sector of employees. That's a lot. And despite that, entrepreneurship literally is the backbone of the economy in America. There is no safety net. Entrepreneurship is so hard. I mean, ask me how I know. Oh, oh, oh, oh, because I'm a small business. I've been in business for 16 years. And sometimes I want to quit because it can be so overwhelming. You invest so much emotionally, financially, spiritually, relationshipally, if that's even a word. You know, you put so much time and energy and there's no guarantee that you're going to get a win. Did you know that less than 20 percent of new businesses every year even make it? And every year past that, more and more business fall off. Entrepreneurship is hard, y'all. And you think to yourself, if I start a business and I do make it, I'm going to have an easier life and I'm going to be able to extract wealth and make more money. You know, but is that actually true? These are questions that need answers, and we're going to answer them today. How? Because we've got a guest today. We got a guest who's actually my bestie, Cabral Miller of Elegant Eyes. Elegant Eyes is an optical center that has been based in Newark, New Jersey for 80 years, y'all. Yes. His grandparents started it in the 60s. His mother started hers in the 80s, and he and his sister started theirs in the early 2000s. So think about entrepreneurship and you bring a little family in there. Does it make entrepreneurship easier? Does it make entrepreneurship harder? Well, Mr. Cabral is about to let us know. Before I invite him into class, though, I want to make sure that you're on your best behavior. We are going to learn from him. What does it look like through his lens to have a business? Does it guarantee wealth? Does it guarantee headaches? Is it worth it in the end? Well, we're going to find out. Cabral Miller, welcome to class. First of all, I'm so excited because, Cabral, you are one of my bestest friends and you're in the studio with me. So one of the ways we met is because you're a business owner. But what's really unique is not only you, business owner. Your mother is a business owner. Your grandparents were a business owner and really kind of in the same business. Right. Elegant Eyes. It was not always called Elegant Eyes when we started, when my grandparents started back in the 60s, in the early 60s. It was Slaughter's Opticians, which is my grandparents' last name. OK. And then as it transitioned and developed over the years, then it became Elegant Eyes as we know it today. OK. Again, that was in the early 60s. My mother was about five years old. Wow. And so she was born into this legacy business. Was it in the same location where it is in Newark or someplace different? It was not in the same location. It was actually in Hay Circle, which is up near Clinton Avenue. And so it was a different area. It was the South Ward of Newark. OK. Because back then in the 60s, there was a line of delineation between where we could shop and where black folks could shop and couldn't. Wow. And so because of that, there was a need. And the interesting thing about entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurship is that most success happens when you find yourself meeting a need. And so my grandfather probably did not think that through, but it was the reality. OK. And so once he learned how to make glasses, he began to make them. He literally could make a pair of glasses from a block of glass. Wow. And so he you know, we don't have to do any of that anymore. Now it's all digital. You hit a couple of buttons and the lens comes out all done. It has been an interesting journey, really exciting and really inspiring, even even as a family member to see a legacy. And I think for myself personally, the older I get, the more I appreciate, you know, one thing. I had a vocal coach that used to always say youth is wasted on the young. And so I realize and I understand that now. Yeah. That now we really can appreciate what they started and how this legacy began. So so your grandparents started this business. And then when did your mother join in? So my mother joined in in an interesting capacity. This is this I love this story because this is like what it was like to be a young woman during those times, you know? Yes. Yes. To be a young woman during those times. So picture it. Sicily. For those who don't watch Golden Girls, it's a reference. Picture it. Newark, the mid 80s. My grandfather and my mom had a disagreement and she decided to move on. OK. When she moved on, she continued relationships with some of the companies that came in and sold frames. OK. And so one day, one of the people she knew said, Denise, there's an opportunity around the corner from where you were. And it's an it's an eyeglass store. And maybe you might want to consider that. OK. So nice thing is that my grandparents, for as much as, you know, when you're in a legacy business, your parents and your family want you to stay there throughout the legacy. My grandparents were supportive. OK. So financially, they supported and helped her. OK. To purchase her business, which was around the corner. OK. Now imagine that this is 1987. So my mother's business was at the corner of Broad and William Street. My grandparents, who as children, we didn't even know were divorced because their stores were my grandmother was 44 Brantford Place. My grandfather was 50 Brantford Place. Oh, they had two different stores. They had two separate stores. They had been divorced since the 70s. OK. And none of the grandkids knew. OK. We thought they were married because they would like we would. My mother would say, oh, go to go to your grandfather's store. And we would go down there. Three doors down. Three stores in your family at that time. One, two, three. Yes. Right on those corners to grow up in a legacy business. You almost don't see anything else. Like this is what you know. Yeah. This is what you're good at. Yeah. This is what you've grown to love. And so as it moved forward and progressed in back in 2003, my mother decided it was time to allow us to kind of spread our wings. And I know you told me that the way she did it was she gave you $100,000 worth of glasses. Yes. OK. She gave us the product. OK. And she helped us get the deal signed for the space. OK. And then she said, do your thing. Wow. But that's because, you know, first of all, to be black in America and we you rarely hear that you kind of get this leg up because essentially $100,000 for the product is $100,000. Yeah. That's a rare thing to get that kind of money. For anything. Yeah. So and to think that like that happened for you, it's just amazing. And the exciting thing about it was she gave us a loan that it was a loan. OK. She made it very clear. And we were very clear that it was a loan. Yeah. But she gave it to us. It was a it didn't have terms. It was it was a loan where when we were able to. OK. And so the blessing with it is that it didn't put the pressure that normal entrepreneurs have. So I know that my sister and I were an anomaly. Yeah. As far as opening up a business is concerned. Yeah. Oh, my God. Cabral, I love that. Hold that thought really quickly, because we're going to take a quick break and we will be right back. And we are back. Thank you for coming back to Money Glow Up with me, Tiffany, the budgenista. In the studio, we have Cabral Miller of Eleganize. And the conversation is getting so juicy. So let's get back to it. So, well, speaking of like some of the lessons that you've learned, I know you've seen on social media that the the I don't know so much now, but especially during the panorama, aka the pandemic, that everyone just said, start a business, start a business, start a business, start your LLC, because that's the easiest and fastest way to make money. So has that been your experience that like starting a business has been easy and a fast way to make money? No. OK. That's that's not been my experience and not been my reality. And even for friends of mine, it has not been the experience or the reality. Is it easy to put some documents together and type them into a form? Yes. When you think about. Owning and operating a business, it comes with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, literally. I remember days of sleeping in the store, like because I knew I had so much to do. I knew I didn't have anybody who I could afford to pay to do it. I remember weeks and months of no pay. You know, I remember all those things. So those are misconceptions of entrepreneurialism that I'm always like, how's that work? Yeah. And how's it working out for the folks? Because it is easy to create. How do you thrive? How do you survive all of it? Because it gets really hard. And sometimes sometimes in business, you make bad decisions and you think you're doing what's right for yourself or you think you're doing what's right for the business or in general people and you make a bad choice and then it becomes a financial hit. And then you you don't have any savings or you find that yourself you're working financially from from Robin Peter to pay Paul. And that does not that does not happen for long periods of time. But there are moments. Well, I want to tell you some of the some of the best pieces of advice you gave me in business. So I used to tell me because one, I respect Cabral's in business so much because one, it's not just you yourself has been in business for almost 20 years. Right. And then your mom, but then also your your grandparents. And so one of the best pieces of advice you gave me, you said, Tiffany, stop giving people a damn title. You love to give it because I don't have any money. So I thought, oh, you know what, girl, we're going to call you the chief operating whatever. And then I know and then what happened? He said, watch them get to Googling. They get to Googling. According to this, my salary should be. And I'm like, oh, no, no, that's just that's just the title. And you would tell me that, you know, that if you give people a title, they'll be happy with it at first and then they're going to want the money attached no matter what size business you are. You know, another piece of advice that you gave me. And I used to want to give raises all the time. And you said based upon what? Because you had a good month, remember? And I remember the first person I want to give a raise to. Remember, you told me it would be better to give her a bonus because at least it's done right. You know that it's this one time payment. And, you know, you know, you can afford it because you've had your good month or six months or whatever. But you don't have to worry about moving forward, always having to pay that. Unless you have this new shift in income for six months to a year, then, you know, you can afford it. Right. And you find yourself in those instances where you are doing that. It's from the heart. And so that's the hard part. Because you want to do the most that you can for those who are alongside you as you move forward. But the the the flip to that is that there are going to come days where you need something aside. Yeah. For those lean times. Yeah. And so if you find yourself giving so much away. I was the who? Yeah. Cabrini's going, OK, well. Oh, she getting a title. I'm like, girl. Oh, my God. And so I just thank you so much because I have learned so much. I mean, I know that, you know, over the years, there's been ups and downs and certainly seven figures have come in. I, you know, I know firsthand I have worked seven days a week, 24 hours a day, it seems, because I feel so attached to my business. Would you say from your perspective, seeing it from your perspective, your sisters, your mom, your grandparents? Have you seen entrepreneurship sometimes take over? Like it's like you can't there's no line of delineation between Cabrini and elegant eyes. You know, have you seen that? That is just, you know, your one person becomes the thing itself. You know, I have seen that and and I've experienced that and I've been there. And what I know for sure is that's a highway to not so nice thing, you know. And it's because sometimes you think that you're giving your all to this big thing. And really, you miss out on so many other things. I can kind of think about my mother, for example. I remember us being children and being very young. And so we have some photos. We went to Disney World. OK. And we went to Disney World. My parents were not in the photos. Why? They weren't even there. Why? Because they were in Newark working. So they had to use family members to take us places. So we got the opportunities. We didn't get the experience with the family. And so there are elements of it. You know, I think that every generation tries to improve how they do things. I would say that as an entrepreneur, you have to allow yourself what is enough. Yes. And where you can cut it and focus on family, focus on work life balance, focus on focus on other aspirations or loves. And so with that being said, so I know oftentimes we we chatted about like earning a tremendous amount of money in the business. And one of the ways to grow the business is you have to reinvest back in the business. But I remember thinking to myself, the budget needs is making all this money. Why am I broke? Because I was putting everything back into the business. What how have you been able to extract or have you some of the wealth that the business has made so that way you can have money to like, what does that look like? It's a it's an interesting line because the intermingling of your personal finance and business finance, it gets interwoven and and it's not necessarily very easy, especially early on to know how to balance those things. The first thing you need is a good financial person, a good accountant to help you, because oftentimes we find ourselves one, we find ourselves throwing everything back into the business. And then you're looking at your personal bank account like, oh, my God, can I borrow $20, you know, and you know, yes. And so have I. And so but, you know, the the flip to that is it can be very, very nice to have your business earn you the livelihood that comes with wealth, you know, the things, the things that you find important to yourself. What I've learned and what I know at this point is the things that I thought were important maybe 20 years ago, you know, my my grandparents started in 1962. My mother started in 1987. We started in 2003. So over each of those groupings of life and of our lives, things change. So once you own a home, then it's like, do I want a house or do I want a condo? I might want I might have wanted a condo. I may have wanted to live somewhere else. Do you want a big car or do you want something small and compact so that you can use the rest of your money? Once once you really lean into what your why is, then it really will allow you and your financial team to work to get you where you need to go. My last question to you is that, you know, does entrepreneurship automatically equal wealth? Because even though I'm sure you can say your businesses have made seven figures, typically annually. But does that mean like, oh, you're driving a Maserati, you know, like at the end of the day? No, you can you can make seven figures and drive a hooptie, you know. One, it's about what the priority is. That's a big piece of it. But secondly, it you know, you can make these incomes. But in my industry, the higher the luxury in terms of brand, the lower the profit. OK, so for us in our industry, maybe I sell a bunch of luxury items, but the profit is even lower. And so so when you look at you in each business, I'm sure there are differences depending on what what a person decides to get into. But, you know, the seven figures, you know, it's also what your why. Yeah. You know what your why. And that's what I learned from you, because, you know, you have taught me and kind of grinded into my skull that money is the tool. And I love that because I used to think that, you know, you you get more money, you get more money, you can provide more, you know. And and now I just look at things from a different perspective. So what you do as the budget needs to for the world and for for friends of mine, I mean, because people walk up to me like, oh, wait a minute. I know you and I'm like, can you tell the budget that she do private calls? You're like, no, I don't know. You know, it's really good, but there are no seven figures does not mean seven. OK, because you got to pay six of those figures to the to the bill. So I just like in the end, just like quick yes or no question. Could you see yourself being an entrepreneur any other way or would you rather go to a regular job like entrepreneur? Yes. Regular job. No. Or, you know what I mean? Like which if you had to choose, you have to go back and look, you know, would you choose the entrepreneur journey? Give me the day. No, no, no, no. I don't even think from the perspective of, oh, let me go get a job. I wonder how that would be for me. You know, because you've lived your whole life. Yeah, because I've lived my life and I've only seen it. OK, you know, I've seen very powerful women in business sit in these corporate environments and talk to men because our business is led by men still after all these generations. But my mother and grandmother were bosses. And so for them to watch them, I have a very comfortable engagement with women of power. OK, and I, you know, I kind of that's my zone. So you say so you would still choose entrepreneurship at the end of the day? I would choose entrepreneurship at the end of the day. Well, thank you, Cabral Miller. Thank you. Thank you, my boo. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this interview. And yeah, you get to decide for yourself. Entrepreneurship ain't easy, but it can be fun. It can be fun. Yes. Stay tuned. Don't leave because we're going to do a little deeper dive into what we learned from Cabral today. Oh, my gosh. How amazing was it to hear from my bestie, Cabral Miller? Of elegant eyes. Wasn't he amazing? He really was. To hear from somebody that's had a legacy business and to see what does that mean? How does that translate into wealth or maybe how it doesn't translate into wealth? The ups and downs of entrepreneurship. If you have joined us for after school tutoring, I'm about to dive just a little bit deeper into what we learn with Cabral from today. OK, so here are some of the things that I learned. If you want to get a pen and pen out, I wouldn't be mad at you as long as you're not driving. I learned that entrepreneurship is not a guarantee to wealth, that you have to be intentional about extracting wealth from your business, right? That your business can make a lot, but it doesn't mean that you will necessarily make a lot unless you do something about it. So what would that actually look like? It means that you have to build the right team to help you do so. Don't make the mistake that I made was to hire an admin as my first hire. You want a financial person that might be a bookkeeper, a few hundred bucks a month, definitely an accountant, maybe a financial advisor, a money manager. And you want to make sure that you have people on your team that are going to keep you out of the orange jumpsuit. You know what I mean? That's IRS trouble. And although I look amazing in orange, you might not. We don't want that for you. But also, too, that your business is not your whole life, that you want to make sure that if you master your money well enough, you don't actually have to work as much so you can enjoy life outside of your business. These are some of the core takeaways that I took away. I wonder, what did you take away? Let me know. OK, and so here's a little bit of homework because, you know, I'm a teacher. Tiffany, if you are thinking about starting a business or a side hustle, and if you're listening to this, you probably are. I want you to just take pen and pad to paper and I want you to to write down what that might look like. You know, like how much would you make? What would you have to do if you're not really sure? We talk to your family and friends and people who love you and ask, what are you really good at? Right. Just start mapping out some of these goals, journaling, if you will. That's not the end of your homework. You're going to head over to getgoodwithmoney.com. This is where I've created a bunch of tools and resources to help you get in, stay on financial track and be on. You know, teacher Tiffany already got you. All right. So this has been Money Glow Up from Yahoo Finance. You can find us every single Thursday, 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Yahoo Finance dot com and wherever podcasts are streamed out there in the ether. I'll be there with you. Thank you for joining me. I am Tiffany the Budgetnista, a.k.a. your favorite financial educator. I know there's other people, but you know, I'm your fave. And don't forget one core major thing. Dream big. OK. All right, y'all. Bye. This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.