Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Why You Don't Need an MBA with AMASS founder Morgan McLachlan

Transcript

GEMS: Why You Don't Need an MBA with AMASS founder Morgan McLachlan · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  It's always interesting hearing how people get into things. And this really kind of started almost more of an intellectual curiosity. And then I moved into developing this trade, this skill, or this craft, really, which is distilled spirits. Then I moved into other beverage categories. And then from there, kind of thinking, well, maybe I could do this as a business. And really having no concept whatsoever involved.
• 0:37
  I didn't know what a cap table was. I didn't know what liquidation preference was. I didn't know what a financial model was. For that matter, I barely ever clicked around in Excel. So I was a little bit intimidated and sought the help of people who I thought were, at the time, I thought were maybe business experts because they had MBAs. And this is actually a funny story.
• 1:04
  One of the people that I sort of engaged to help build my financial model early on, I trust. And this is a theme of my life, trusting professionals because they have professional degrees. So they must know what they're doing, whether it's a lawyer or somebody with a different type of professional degree. I kind of discovered pretty quickly within several months of working with this person that they were a little dyslexic with numbers.
• 1:34
  And this is the person who's building my financial model. So the funny thing was, and this is a business prior to a mass. The funny thing was, it was sort of trial by, you know, baptism by fire, because I had to learn my modeling, which is a whole business plan can really exist in a financial model. I had to learn modeling because I had to audit every single cell and every single equation in our financial model because this guy was so sloppy.
• 2:04
  But that made me learn. And then what I also learned is I actually absolutely love modeling, not fashion modeling, financial modeling. I guess it's like a recipe, right? You're working on a recipe within a document and you're making it come to life. You're making it look good, taste good. Absolutely. So it was sort of interesting, I think, from there.
• 2:30
  that force functioned me to develop a lot of skills. And then of course, when you're fundraising, you know, you have to have answers to all of the diligence questions. So I kind of just did it. I didn't go to school for business management. I just kind of did it. And I also found, you know, I myself found early on several mentors in the industry, in the beverage industry as a whole, who are very helpful and,
• 2:57
  You know, I was like, well, should I go get an MBA? And they're like, oh, my God, no, don't do it. Just like start this business and you're going to learn. So that's my very long winded way of encouraging people who don't have a business background, but have an entrepreneurial idea to just go for it. You know, it is a lot of work to learn business principles, but I would really encourage people to do it.
• 3:21
  Absolutely. And I think it's so spot on. Sometimes you're thinking about, you know, everyone else has the answer when really you're the person that cares the most about your business. You just need to get in there, knuckle down and learn it yourself and you're going to do it the best ever. And yeah, I guess an MBA is like building a business, sorry, is like an MBA times a million in real life. It really is. And that's, you actually bring up a good point
• 3:48
  which is nobody, when you're an entrepreneur, nobody's going to care as much about your business as you do. What any consultant, it doesn't matter how expensive they are, any employee, you are the one holding the bag in the end. And you just have to accept the fact that no one's going to care as much as you. And this is also the other kind of sad part of it that you have to
• 4:14
  you know, if you're in a founder role or a CEO, no one's actually going to, people aren't going to care about you. Your employees, I don't want to, I know this sounds kind of dark, but like, you know, the same way that you care about your employees and your people, you shouldn't really expect them to care about you so much. So it's a little, I'm really glad that you're doing this podcast because being an entrepreneur is, is kind of lonely a lot of the time. And, and it's a
• 4:45
  trying endeavor in every sense of the word it's certainly the hardest thing I've ever done and it's good for entrepreneurs to connect because you know they also know how difficult it is sometimes it can also it's also incredibly rewarding yeah there's like highs and lows in every day I totally agree
• 5:09
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• 5:34
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• 5:56
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