159 – Having and Finding the Money You Need with Mimi MacLean

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 159.

Intro 0:06
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:24
Hello, I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And this is Episode 159 of the good girls get rich podcast. And this show is brought to you by our she’s linked up at family and community where we teach women simple relationship and heart based marketing. We use LinkedIn to do it, get you on the phone consistently with people that are just the perfect people, people you didn’t dream that you’d ever be able to get on the phone with people that can change your business, your life and your bank account for ever. We teach digital marketing with the human touch here human to human marketing. And you learned a lot about what we do and how we teach these things. On this podcast, we’ve had a lot of different episodes about how to specifically use LinkedIn. Today we have an episode with someone who I think you’re really going to love because her goal is also in supporting women, but it’s in supporting women to have and find the money to be able to do the kinds of things that you want to do. So I think you’re really gonna love this. If you are loving this, make sure that you are subscribed to this show. So you can hear more great episodes like this. But also take a quick screenshot of this. And before we get any further and share it on your social media, put it in a story, put it on, you know your Facebook or your Twitter or your Instagram or your LinkedIn feed. and tag me I’m @KarenYankovich tag Mimi, you will see all her links in the show notes here, which is at KarenYankovich.com/159. And then we get to share it with our audience. And that’s how we all lift each other up. Right. That’s how we do it around here. Alright, without further ado, I am really excited for you to hear today’s episode. I am here today with Mimi MacLean on the good girls get rich podcast and Mimi and I met literally like a few days or a week ago. And we had such a fun conversation. And I said, I just want to I want to continue this conversation on the podcast, because there’s so many things that Mimi was talking about, that I wanted you to hear. So Mimi, I’m gonna let us I’m gonna introduce you and let you tell them a little bit about your background.

MiMi MacLean 2:22
Sure. Hi, thank you so much for having me today. So I am a serial entrepreneur. I started out in vestment banking when I graduated from college, and I also went on to get my CPA. And from there, I actually went and got my MBA, and my focus is on entrepreneurship. And since then I’ve kind of started a bunch of different companies sold some clothes, some down. And then I also became an angel investor. And so through that experience, one of the companies I invested in is beauty counter, which hasn’t been you know, sold or gone public yet, but people are pretty, you know, know about it, because it’s, it’s pretty popular. And one of the reasons why I bring that up is I actually got super involved in that company, as a as a consultant, I signed up as an independent consultant. And I have a pretty big team. But in the process of doing this for the past seven years, I’ve been continually investing in other companies. And about a year ago, not not even like during quarantine, like last May or June, I started a podcast as well called the badass CEO, which I love to feature other female CEOs and talk about their experiences and what they’ve learned and what they insights that they can pass on. And so that’s where I came and found you. I think it was through one of our podfest where you’re asking about

Karen Yankovich 3:43
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So cool. So cool. And you know, in our conversation, one of the things we talked about was, and you know, this statistic better than I do, but something like only 1% of women CEOs reach a million dollars in their business. Is that the statistic?

MiMi MacLean 3:46
Yeah, that’s what I believe. That’s what I’ve heard as well. And I, when I heard that a couple of months ago, I was kind of blown away. I’m like, wait, sweet, all these women have these great businesses only 1% reach over a million dollars in sales. And that’s just crazy. And so I was like…

Karen Yankovich 4:14
because I know, it sounds like a big number. But when you break it down, it’s really not.

MiMi MacLean 4:20
No, it’s not

Karen Yankovich 4:20
But we should be easily able to reach that number.

MiMi MacLean 4:23
Right? And so like, why is that? Right? And I know that when we talked last week, we kind of were trying to dissect like, what is is that and that’s one reason with my podcasts. I’m like, trying to figure that out, and then make sure that we could try to help other female CEOs increase that number and get to that number. Right. And so it’s like, why, why do we think that is? I mean, I think just from my experience of talking to people for the past, you know, couple years women CEOs is one, I think they’re insecure. Like they say that they tell me they’re insecure. They imposters syndrome, which I’m like what like, I can’t imagine In these beautiful successful women, oh, I hear you have imposter syndrome because I thought I was the only one who had imposter,

Karen Yankovich 5:06
right? We all do. And you know, it’s it’s so funny because like we write LinkedIn profiles as a part of the work that we do with our students. And a lot of times women are like, Alright, I need to sit with this for a week before we can go live with it, like, What are you talking about? Like, I don’t know if I can say all these things about myself. So you did all these things, you know, like, What do you mean, you can’t say all these things. So it’s not like we’re even making stuff up. And it’s, we have a hard time kind of just owning all the amazing things that we’ve done and and the impact it has on the world. Right?

MiMi MacLean 5:31
Right. Right. And so I was talking to another CEO about this. And she’s like, you know, it’s interesting, because men will walk into a room and assume they know more than they know. So they have like this, like, I don’t wanna say arrogance about it, but this confidence about them. Whereas women tend to undersell themselves and kind of assume they know less than they actually do know. And so it’s almost the opposite effect. It’s kind of interesting. So I think that’s one of the issues of why. And I think, too, is they’re not thinking big enough. Meaning they like, Oh, you know, I’m going to just start making perfume and sell it out of my or candles, and I’m going to sell it out of my garage, or I’m gonna do that in my spare bedroom. Instead of being like, Oh, my gosh, these are selling. And I’m actually in Sephora. And now I’m going to go out and raise capital, and I’m going to get a friends and family round or an angel investment round. And I’m gonna, like, blow this up, and like, really increase the sales and take the market. And I don’t think enough, women think big enough.

Karen Yankovich 6:32
I just totally, I totally agree with you, I totally agree with you. And I’ve had, I’ve had kind of, I’m going to say hard conversations, sometimes with women doing those kinds of things. Like I’ve got this candle and, and you know, or I like to crochet or things like that. And I literally say, Well, how long does it take you to do this? And if you’re doing it, because you love it, then do it. But if you’re doing it for a business, you’re making $1 an hour, you know, like, by the time you’re done, like so. So I think that we You’re right, we don’t think big enough. We don’t think big enough, because it is it is there for us. And the other thing is that I feel like too as women, we we and this is not this is not man bashing at all. This is why I do this work, right? Because women need to hear this stuff. We feel like we should be doing everything right. Like we do it at home, we do the laundry, we do the dishes, we what we don’t like the way anybody else loads the dishwasher. Right? And you know, all this crazy stuff. And that translates to our work as well. Right? Hmm. And it and we think we can do it all ourselves. And then when you know, the best way to take that path to that million dollar business is to bring other people on to stay in the place that you are strong in, right so that you’re not wasting all your time doing all the busy work, that you can pay somebody 10 or $20 an hour today,

MiMi MacLean 7:43
you brought up a really good point, my husband taught me that early on, because, you know, he worked so hard, you know, 100 hours a week travels all the time, and he would come home on a Saturday. And I’d be like, you need to mow the lawn. And he’d be like, me, me. Like, I’m not mowing the lawn, like I like I can pay somebody X amount of dollars to mow the lawn. And I make more than that. So why would I in my free time do that what I can pay somebody or I rather just work because then I can make more than that. And I’d rather spend that time with my kids like, and so that’s why he kind of retaught me, like, if you can make more than what you can pay somebody else to do the same job then, like farm it out, because you can be making more, and then you know, subsidizing that. And I think a lot of the reasons why is because we’re perfectionist, right? So we don’t we’re afraid to let it go because then the other person is not going to do as good of a job.

Karen Yankovich 8:35
Right. And I take the load the dishwasher.

MiMi MacLean 8:37
Yeah, right, exactly. And then I say clean. Exactly. That’s exactly right. And I think too, is they don’t know where to go. And the resources. And I think that’s where I think I’m trying to, like help out and be like, Look, it’s easy. Like it there’s a solution for everything. You know, like there’s Upwork, there’s Fiverr, there’s, you know, someone like you that can help write a better LinkedIn profile than they would be able to write. So it’s, there’s so many go get the expert, who already knows how to do it better than you do, to do things.

Karen Yankovich 9:11
I love that. I love that. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about something you mentioned earlier, though, because this is something we have not talked about on the show at all. And I’d love to hear more about it, and hear you know, where and how and when we think about this, and that is raising capital. Right? That is something it was even in my own business in my own life, you know, to be perfectly open and honest about this. I have a client who is I have we have a CFO for my business. So it’s not like I don’t understand the value of having somebody that knows money. But I have a client who is also a fractional CFO. And she said in not to me just in a conversation that way especially now with COVID with all the money that’s out there, you know for businesses, she says so many businesses are afraid to take the money they don’t want to go into debt but you can’t you can’t run a business without debt debt is good in a business right? Some Debt could be good in a business. And it was like, it literally stopped me in my tracks. Because I always think like that you don’t want to have a lot of debt and your business and not that. Not that raising capital is debt, right. But, but there’s a but the but the point is without enough cash, right, you’re always trying to catch up. So tell me how you got involved in that. And supporting women in raising capital and what that looks like?

MiMi MacLean 10:21
Sure. So I do more of like the friends the seed round. So like before, either it’s a proof of concept, or before they even went into business, like I was telling you like with beautycounter, when I invested in beautycounter, she didn’t even have a product, I invested in a concept like I didn’t see product, I didn’t see anything. So you know, if you have a proof of concept, like, let’s just go back to the example of a woman who has a candle that she sells at a farmers market, and she’s selling, I don’t know, you know, $30,000 worth of candles a year, that work that people really want to use it, that’s when you can go to your friends and family or go to, you know, start asking around saying, hey, do you know any angel investors? Where you then can say, Hey, I have a proof of concept. I know people want this, can you help me? You know, why would you want to invest? Just know that you’re gonna be asking a lot of people, it’s not going to be the first person you ask, I think it’s like, for every 100 person 100 people you ask, you’re you’re gonna have you only get two or three responses. So that’s the percentage. So just know that it’s a numbers game. Don’t take it personally. But really early on, like you said, you’re probably going to want to do convertible debt is what most people are going to do early on. And the reason why you do that is because you don’t know the valuation of your company. So you don’t want to set a valuation that early on, but you don’t really even have, you know, because you’re going to be valuing your company so low, because you don’t have proof of like sales to prove my what the valuation is, and you don’t want to make it too low, because then you’re giving away too much of your company that percentage wise, so you want to do a convertible debt, which means they’re buying it at a price for a future valuation. Usually, it’s like 20%, below what they’re gonna value like the next round at. So it’s like, you know, if in two years, you go do another round with, you know, venture capitalists, and it’s now valued at $20 million. me as an angel investor, if I did a convertible debt, I’m going to take 20% off of that price. And that’s what I get it for. But to answer your question, as far as like, do you take, you know, venture capital is a different beast, because they’re going to get in your business, like you’re reporting to them, you have now quote, unquote, like a boss, you know, like, Yes, they’re going to help you. But they’re also going to have a lot more, but they want to be on your board, they want to make sure that they want a monthly report that they’re going to be a lot more like kind of overlooking, whereas some of my angel investors, I never hear from the people again, for a long time, maybe I get an annual report, maybe I get a quarterly report, but it’s not required as an angel investor. And also if you want, the other thing I would say to a lot of my CEOs want is smart money, when you hear somebody saying they want smart money. If you want strategic money, you don’t just want your next door neighbor, that’s willing to give you $50,000 if you can find somebody who’s already in your industry, and understand your product and understands your market, and is willing to give you money, that smart money, because they’re going to open the doors for you too, and give you their contacts, because they want their money to be successful. So that’s the thing, you kind of want to see if you can find Smart Money early on somebody who’s gonna like also help you and give you advice and guidance, because then it’s a win win for everybody.

Karen Yankovich 13:42
Does this work with services as well as products? Or is it mostly a product based concept to do this?

MiMi MacLean 13:48
No services technology? Yeah, I mean, we’ve done services as well. You know, I think it has to be scalable. You know, like, for me reasons why I have turned down businesses is because of women didn’t think big enough. Okay, you know, like, I have looked at concepts where I love the idea, but it’s just relying, like you said, on her business, like, she hasn’t told me how she’s gonna scale it so that it’s like, tons of people and, and usually, if it’s scalable, and it’s a service, like, hey, it’s a digital marketing, they don’t really need my money, because it’s becomes a cash cow if they can figure out how to write, you know, like, right to scale it. But in general, I would say like the products that weren’t thinking big enough, like weren’t going after a big enough market that they were only going to go like, I’m only going to sell it, you know, there was one company I am thinking of him, I won’t say the name, but they were trying to do a business to business play and selling their service just to other businesses and to like institutions and like colleges and stuff. And I was like, No, no, no, that’s not where the money is. The money is this if you take what you’re the data that you’re collecting, and the information you’re collecting and selling it to consumers. That’s where the money is. And they’re like, well, that’s not where we want to go. And I’m like, well, then I’m not investing. So it for me, it has to be like a huge market to be able to like, get a big win, because there’s a lot of risk when you invest as an angel investor. And so the chances of it being successful are pretty low, because it’s not really proven yet. It like there’s such a high risk that you have to be able to invest in companies that like if it does take off, like beautycounter is now going to be a billion dollar business

Karen Yankovich 15:32
to be a nice payoff. Right? Right. So what do you look for as an angel investor? What do you look for in companies? Is there anything that you know, is there like a few things that you want to see before you even take the next conversation?

MiMi MacLean 15:42
It’s my number one thing is the team. Okay, it’s who that person is, and what the team is, it could be the best idea. But if you don’t have a team that knows what they’re doing, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to go anywhere. And like if they don’t seem to be getting along, or if there’s partners, and you can’t really sense what’s like, the whole team is like, together, that kind of scares me. The other thing is, they could have a great idea. And they they don’t have a way to get the customers, as you probably know, is super expensive. To get clients. Yeah, like super, it’s very hard. Like I have had a lot of people come to me like, Well, I have this great product. I’m going to build a website and it launches on March 1, and we’re gonna flip the switch and what we’ve been in business, and I’m like, Okay, well, how are you getting people to that website? And they’re like, oh, they’re just gonna come because we have a great mic. No, they’re not I say,

Karen Yankovich 16:32
oh,

MiMi MacLean 16:34
they’re not gonna just come like, it’s so hard. And then sure enough, like, they’ll won’t listen, and they’ll come back and then be like, okay, like, yeah, we don’t really like we thought our email list was gonna do it. And I’m like, I know, like, it’s really hard. So unless they have some, like magic, something like, their sister is some like a list celebrity, or they are an A list celebrity, or they have some other like, Hey, we already have a contract, because my uncle is the buyer at Walmart. Okay, like, if there’s some like Ernie hook that they have, they know what they’re getting themselves into. As far as like, we know, it’s hard to get in here. Or, hey, I, I’m, like a, like a couple of people. I’ve listened to an interview recently on my podcast, I got off and I was like, Oh, I want to invest in them. And it was because one of them already brought two companies public. So she was just doing the same thing a third time. And I was like, Oh, my God, like she’s already onto something. cuz she’s already done this twice. Right? Oh, my God. The other one, she is in a family business early. Like his her family has done this already. She’s already been in industry her whole life. And she just created a new product and just plugging and playing what she already knows. So it’s kind of like, what’s gonna make you different? And what’s gonna make you last, I think is the biggest thing for me.

Karen Yankovich 17:52
Cool. Very interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, I think these are conversations that so so Alright, let me ask you this. At what point in your path? Do you want to start thinking about getting investors, whether it’s angel investors or whatever? Is it right in the beginning? Or do you want to have, you know, like, I’m thinking about the bazillion entrepreneurs out there, right? That all of the the 99% of the women that are not reaching the million dollars, right? That’s a lot of people, right? So if you if you are starting a business with the intention of having a be a million dollar business, at what point in that process, do you do you start looking at does this is this something that goes public someday? Or is this something that I you know, I’d love to get investors in?

MiMi MacLean 18:32
Mm hmm. Well, I think, I think for one, you’re going to want to do it, right? Because you’re going to want to grow. Because if you’re like, No, I’m just happy, you know, having, you know, $10,000 in cash every month to pay for my XYZ, that’s all I need with then no matter money is gonna get you to that next level, because you’re gonna have to want to do it. But assuming you want to do it, and assuming you want to grow, do it sooner than you think me. Okay, good, good, good advice, like do it like, okay, you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna do it, like in six months from now, when I’m ready, and my perfect packaging, and XYZ, well, you don’t want to be struggling. You don’t want to go to somebody when you’re already on fumes and you’re desperate, because it’s going to take a lot longer than you think like I said before, it’s going to take, you know, talking to 50 people, 100 people, whatever, just because that’s the way the numbers are. So you don’t want to be desperate, because anybody can smell desperate, and no one wants to invest in anything that’s desperate. So I would say like, if you do want to grow, I would start like making a deck, right? Like a pitch deck. A pitch deck is kind of like don’t spend your time on a business plan. Just go right into a business pitch.

Karen Yankovich 19:43
Oh my God, what a great idea.

MiMi MacLean 19:45
Because that’s what someone’s gonna want to look at. And instead of spending the hours in, like putting together an actual business that no they just want to see a pitch deck like no, like just do the whole summary of a pitch deck. Start making your business do the pitch deck for yourself. Right, right. And so that’s and it could be evolving and always be like changing. And so that’s what you want to show people and then just start talking about it. Because you never know, like, you’re talking to your next door neighbor, and you’re telling them like, Oh my gosh, I have this great honey that I’m making from my honeybees in the backyard, they might be like, oh, like, I’d like to, like invest in honey, and honeybees, you know, because I, that’s something special to be, I want to save the bees. And so your next thing, you know, you’re, you know, going to get $25,000 from your next door neighbor, and take it because you know what, like, that’s going to give you money to then put it towards digital marketing so that you can grow more, or have a filming center or get an outside kitchen or whatever are more Bs, right? But but just do it before you think you need it. Because it’s going to take you longer than you think. But at the same time, don’t take more money than you need. Because you don’t want to dilute yourself either like,

Karen Yankovich 20:56
Well, that wasn’t I was just going to ask you. So if your neighbor comes to you, and he’s giving you $25,000, or an angel investor is going to give you $25,000 or whatever, what are you giving them? What is their protection? What you know, what is their investment,

MiMi MacLean 21:08
you’re just gonna give them a percentage of a convertible, you’re gonna give them a convertible debt, so they’re getting debt, but it’s gonna be able to convert to shares, but they don’t have protection. Like, that’s why right, angel investing is risky. And people know that like, so. If I invest in a friend’s company, as an angel investor, and she loses her money, like, I’m not gonna be like, Oh, I’m never talking to her again, I’m mad, like, no one should be investing an angel investor, if they’re not think they’re gonna lose their money, they have to be willing to lose that money that money can be it’s an interesting percent money cannot be like, Oh, my gosh, that’s my kids college education. Because if that’s the case, then go invest in stocks. You know, I mean, like, it’s a liquid, I will not see that money for seven to 10 years. If I even see it again. I go, you know, I think don’t ever take anybody’s money that you know, that they need it for their kids education, or they’re going to need it within 10 years. You don’t take it?

Karen Yankovich 21:59
Right. Oh, my gosh, good advice. Good advice.

MiMi MacLean 22:02
But the other thing to point out too, is you want to have everything takes, as you probably know, takes double the amount of time and double the money that you think that someone writes. So if you are in your business, and like, Oh, this 25 grand is gonna last me for six months, no, no, double that. Because you’re gonna, you’re going to need 50 grand for six months. Right? Right. So just know that everything takes longer and more money, because there’s mistakes to be made. There’s, you know, you hired the wrong person, the product came in wrong, the labels were made wrong. And now you have to read like, you know, one of my people I just interviewed last week, her $80,000, and labels came in. And then the government said, Oh, no, no, like, you don’t have them labeled. Right, you need to change the way you wrote this. Oh, my gosh, right. So like you Those are the mistakes that you don’t account for.

Karen Yankovich 22:51
Right, right. Right. And that happened and that you can’t beat yourself up for because it’s just a part of doing business. Mm hmm. Okay, so now you support Tell me, tell me how you are supporting people. Now, in addition to doing the angel investing that you do, what else are you doing? And how can people learn more about what you do and how you know, they can learn from you. So podcast, which we’ll share as show notes, yeah, I support people.

MiMi MacLean 23:15
So if you go to the badass CEO, I have a bad seo.com forward slash tips. I have a top 10 tips list for entrepreneurs that they can get for free, and join my newsletter so that each week though, I do a blog each week about a topic, you know, it could be about venture capital, it could be about social media, usually I try to relate it to whatever the podcast was that week, and kind of dive into the topic a little bit more. And then I also just let you know that there’s what the podcast was each week as well. And I’m currently working on two courses. One of them’s like how to raise money course, like a little mini MBA course about like, giving you the nuts and bolts of how if you want to raise money and how to go about doing that. And then also just a kind of like a getting started, like toolkit, like, Hey, I’m doing you know, I’m making candles out of my house, but I want to grow this business, what do I need to do next? Like what do I need to do to become legit? And how do I do it? And I’ve kind of done all that research for you. So like, Why spend the hours of googling and trying to figure it out, when you could just kind of go through this course and just go, you know, down the list and just kind of set everything up. And

Karen Yankovich 24:23
this awesome, MiMi are so huge to be helpful. This is a topic that I don’t know why women don’t talk about more. I don’t know why I have not talked about this more with more people. You know, I don’t I mean, a lot of the things you’re saying I barely know what you’re talking about, you know, so I have a lot of homework to do. And I because I want to get better at it right? I want to get better at it for my business and for the people that I support. And I want women in my life that think big also right? We help them think big and you know, that means I need to be able to walk the walk right? Not just talk the talk so, so thank you for teaching me today and we’ll link to all of these things in the show notes. And I think this was really is there anything else you want to share with them? With our audience today before we wrap it up

MiMi MacLean 25:02
No I’m just so grateful that you invited me on, I’m used to being on the other side. So it’s fun being the person who’s being interviewed.

Karen Yankovich 25:11
Yeah, great to get to know you. I feel like there’s so much we can do together. So, but this is a great start. So I’m happy to introduce you to my audience. And I know they’re gonna love your tips. And I love your tips. I mean, I downloaded your top 10 tips thing, and it’s hugely valuable. And I’ve been doing this for a lot of years, right? Like, you just need to hear this. It’s not you’re never done. You know what I mean? You’re never done. Never

MiMi MacLean 25:31
always revisiting it after you’ve done it. And you’ll be like, Wait a second. I didn’t like at the time I didn’t need that. So I kind of passed over it but now I need so relevant now. So you kind of just have to keep going back through course, is there anything that you’ve like bought or listened to ever before? Because you take away something completely different than next time around?

Karen Yankovich 25:47
So true, so true. Mimi, thanks so much for being here with us today.

MiMi MacLean 25:50
Thank you very much.

Karen Yankovich 25:52
Don’t you just love me Isn’t she amazing? I’m so grateful to have her in my life because she really brings some energy to it. And I just you know, I just love surrounding myself with smart women. And if that’s what you want if you want to be surrounded with smart women in your life, you know that that’s something I can help you with we have our she’s linked up program is just, oh my gosh, I’m so grateful for the amazing smart, successful crazy fun women that are in that group. But we also have a free masterclass. So if you’re if you’re interested in the kinds of things I talked about here on this podcast, and you just want to get a little more clarity on whether or not you think LinkedIn might work for you then you need to watch our masterclass you know I refer to LinkedIn as my money tree right it is where the big money opportunities are, it can be the same for you. So just go to what are that money tree.com and you can check out our free masterclass. And you can see if you feel like it’s a fit to have a conversation with us to talk a little bit about how we can support you. So check that out. Where did that money tree calm. And I will see you back here again next week for another episode of the good girls get rich podcast.