Bianca Miller-Cole and Dr. Byron Cole: 'We live together, work together, share an office together – it works!'

Sam July 23, 2024
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Welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. Today’s guests are Bianca Miller-Cole and Dr. Byron Cole, who are both entrepreneurs and authors.

We’ll be discussing how to find a mentor and believing in yourself as an entrepreneur.

Listen to it in the media player below.

Alternatively, you can watch the full interview.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsjxUs0awM8[/embed]

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Want to read Bianca and Byron’s podcast transcript instead?

Hello and welcome to Small Business Snippets. I’m your host, Anna Jordan.

Today’s guests are Bianca Miller-Cole and Dr. Byron Cole. Bianca is best known for reaching the final of The Apprentice in 2014 with her skin tone hosiery brand, Bianca Miller London. She also founded personal branding firm, The Be Group, in 2012. Byron is a serial entrepreneur, speaker and business start-up coach.

They’ve written three books together: Self Made: The Definitive Guide to Business Startup Success; The Business Survival Kit; and Rich Forever: What They DIDN’T Teach You about Money, Finance & Investment in School. The pair have also developed a mentoring programme to help over 500 business scale to six or seven figures.

We’ll be talking about essential financial habits and believing in yourself as an entrepreneur.

Anna: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the small business of this podcast. Today we have Bianca Miller-Cole and Dr. Byron Cole with us. Hello, guys. How are you doing?

Byron: Very well. Under the weather with man flu. But other than that, life is good.

Anna: Yeah, there’s really something going around.

Bianca: And I’m okay coping with Byron having the man flu.

Anna: It’s half the job! Well, thank you for coming on. And congratulations on the new book.

Bianca and Byron: Thank you. Thank you.

Anna: I’m going to do a really nice segue into here and go to our first question.

One of the key themes in the book is about building essential financial habits from your first day on your business journey. Tell us more about that.

Bianca: When you’re in business, you really have to think about how you’re going to make the money stretch, especially if you haven’t had substantial investment. I think the majority of entrepreneurs start with a very small amount of cash or a little bit of investment, and so they have to make it work.

One of the first steps is really thinking about budgeting. What do I really need for that business to enable me to get started, to get my first set of customers or first set of products? Then being able to look at how you make that cash last thereafter and how you make more of it. So fundamentally, I think a lot of the focus in business is budgeting and sales in order to maintain that cashflow.

Byron: And just to add to that – chapter nine, in the book, we talk about smart accounting.

When we go into business, we have a great product or service and we have all these dreams and visions, but we don’t know how to account properly. So smart accounting should not only save you money, but it should make you money in the long run. So, when you’re talking about being an entrepreneur and entering that entrepreneur sphere, it’s so essential to not make the mistakes early. Have a professional. Have an accountant to give you some advice on how to structure your business, how to set it up and the best way to manage your funds, VAT and all these other things. We talk heavily about smart accounting in the book and it’s essential to stop all the pain that you will experience on this rollercoaster journey of success and entrepreneurship.

Other than not hiring an accountant, what are the most common mistakes that you will come across?

Byron: It’s overspending on things that don’t give you a return. We see that all the time in marketing. They sell you the dream – if you have this stand, this exhibition –we’ve all been there. We’ve gone through that experience as well. They’ve got 5000, 10,000, 50,000 people walking through the door. You’re doing the maths in your brain. You’re like, ‘Well, I’m sure I’m going to get 500 sales, right?’ And you spend all this money and then you don’t get a return. We see that time and time again.

People always say, ‘Oh, my business will be more successful if I did more marketing.’ If that was the only problem, we’d all be rich, right? It’s not the only problem. And we see that time and time again. That is not the only problem you’re going to have in business.

I think a lot of people turn to social media because it’s free and it’s accessible and it’s wide-reaching. Tell me a bit about optimising your LinkedIn, especially from a marketing and relationship-building standpoint.

Byron: Oh yeah. We love talking about LinkedIn – I’ll let you start with this one.

Bianca: Yeah, we love talking about LinkedIn. It’s one of those fairly underrated platforms when it comes to business. I think people focus naturally on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, and that’s not necessarily wrong. I think it works for different environments, but I found that working with nearly 1000 entrepreneurs in the last five years that LinkedIn can be such a crucial part of them building not only their personal brand, but building those relationships with potential clients, suppliers, stores and so on.

For us, it’s a case of, okay, let’s build your profile to make sure that it accurately portrays who you are, that you’re able to share your story, you’re able to share your expertise in a way that ensures that you’re perceived as a thought leader and expert in your field, but also allows you to have what we would we say to our mentees is a ‘connection strategy’.

What is your strategy for connecting with the right people – who are going to be able to get you in the right rooms and let you have the right conversations that will then result in opportunities and sales? We have found, regardless of industry, you can find the right people on LinkedIn if you’re going for kind of that people-centered strategy where you can be quite specific with who you’re targeting.

I think that’s that’s one of the gems that people miss.

Where do you start on that kind of strategy when you’re forming it?

Bianca: I think one of the first steps we always look at is the profile itself and building a profile that represents who you are. I think people sometimes shy away from building their own personal brand profile. They’re often focused on building the business brand, the business name. They want people to know what the business does, and they forget that people buy from people that they know, like and trust.

Therefore, your business could be exactly the same as your friend’s business. But actually, because they like you, they like your story, they can see your passion, your enthusiasm. They understand why you created it, the solution you’ve created, that makes them want to buy it from you. So, the first step is building a profile that represents you.

Who are you? What do you offer? Why? What’s the problem you solve? How did you come across this problem? Why is this the right solution? Sharing that, I think, is the first step.

We talked a little bit about mentoring there. You are both are mentors yourselves. So, somebody who is starting out, especially if they are in something which is so niche that perhaps they don’t have any visible competitors or there’s not much of a market. How do they go about finding the right mentor for them?

Byron: Finding the right mentor is really interesting because it depends on what you need. Some people need accountability, some people need marketing, some people need someone to just keep pushing them forward. Sometimes you need expertise. What I would say is that you don’t need to have one mentor. You can have multiple mentors. There are no rules. You can try different people.

Yes, there are costs attached to it, you may have a bad experience with one. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get another because having a mentor can save you 5-10 years of pain, of figuring it out. You can even find people even on LinkedIn who are mentors.

If people are in business, typically they have a mentor consultant. No matter where they are on that journey, people that they get advice from are their advisory board. We have some businesses doing millions of pounds who have an advisory board of people because you’re good at your job in your business, but you’re not good at managing the finances or the marketing.

That’s why you hire people, right? It’s just an extension of that.

When you’re in your early days and you maybe have less cash to offer, what else can you exchange for a mentor’s time?

Bianca: I think for us, we’ve built not just our mentoring community, which kind of is built on our mentees speaking to us directly and having one to ones with us. We’ve also built what we call the ‘Rich Forever’ community, and that community allows our very small entry price. It allows them to have people around them, like-minded people, who are all talking about the same topics, because that’s one of the problems with being in business.

If your friendship group or your family don’t understand or don’t have any knowledge that can really prevent you from taking those first steps forward. We have the community that gives you that like-minded support. But also, we have the masterclasses from experts who can give that insight. And we have those problem-solving sessions that can help you with those initial problems. And you create friendships and dynamics that help you along the journey.

So, I would say even if you can’t afford a mentor – and the prices vary, by the way, for mentoring. I think there’s a perception – people assume sometimes, ‘Yeah, I can’t afford a mentor’. You’re like, ‘Do you know how much it is?’ They know they have no idea, but they’ve decided that they can’t afford it because they made an assumption.

I think if you genuinely cannot afford a mentor, find a community. Find a community of like-minded people who give you the information, the tools. Buy books that are written by people who’ve been there and done it so you can find that knowledge and you can start to expand that business to the point where you can now afford that one-to-one support.

Just out of interest – very ballpark-ish – how much can a small business owner expect to pay for a mentor?

Byron: Anywhere from £100 an hour. I have a friend who just paid £57,000 for a mentor. I think it’s ten three-hour sessions and access to his team. £57,000.

Anna: I suppose that pays dividends in the long term.

Byron: Yeah. You invest in yourself. And sometimes it’s not just about what you’re going to learn. Sometimes it’s about the process – you’re learning the process. Okay, this is how they do it, so I can just replicate that process. And some brands are making tens of millions and letting you just learn how you do their process.

So, it varies very depending on who you go to and their level of success.

Anna: Yeah, I suppose that’s why it’s all important to have somebody who’s in your industry.

Byron: Absolutely. Yeah.

Bianca: But then you also find that there are some people who may be all kind of generalists in terms of mentoring. Although we have mentees across a variety of different industries and sectors, and so you might be perceived that, okay, Byron and I don’t have any experience in food, for example, but yet we have mentees who have now gotten into some of the biggest department stores in the world because of our mentoring. The reality is some of the information that we have, that the knowledge that we have is based on business as a whole and actually can be used in any industry.

I think it’s about finding someone who has experience and that they can align with your path to success and help you to create an action plan that works for you and a strategy that works for you.

Excellent. And yeah, you’re finding all these, as you say, through LinkedIn and through social media.

Byron: Yeah, absolutely. I did a $10,000 three-and-a-half-day mentorship. I had to fly to California for those three and a half days. And then I said to Bianca, ‘Do you want to come?’ and she said ‘No, you can go to that one!’

Bianca: It doesn’t have to be a two-person expense – come back and bring the knowledge.

Anna: And bring back some sunshine!

Byron: It wasn’t very warm either.

Bianca: No it wasn’t – that didn’t sell me either.

Byron: What an incredible three and a half days.

Anna: I bet, I bet.

Bianca: And I guess having a mentor, just on that, who also still invests in themselves. It’s so important because, you know, you want someone who is not just stagnant. They understand what’s happening in business right now. They’re willing to invest in themselves. They go on courses, they’re still training, and so they’re able to share that knowledge and that new information with you so you don’t have to meet that similar level of investment.

You might not have to spend £10,000 or $10,000 to do that, but you’ve now invested in that person to share that knowledge with you specific to your needs. And that, I think, is where the perfect kind of mentoring dynamic comes in.

And you spoke a little bit before about having friends and family to support you throughout your business journey. I think you guys are very well placed because you’re both entrepreneurs. You both get it. How does it help? Both for your wellbeing and with your joint and respective businesses.

Byron: I mean, we love it. We love the fact we’re both entrepreneurs. We have a fantastic life together. If you look at how it works, you spend all day together and we can separate it. Sometimes. We live together, work together, share an office together – and it works! We have similar interests and often you find that the people that you hang out with the most are people that have similar interests, right?

It’s the same thing. Entrepreneurship is what we are really interested in and personal development is what we’re really interested in. So yeah, it works really well. [Looks at Bianca] I hope you say the same thing!

Bianca: Yeah, I would agree.

The question we get asked is, ‘How are you married and you’re having a baby and you’re still running businesses together? How does this work?’ And I think, as Byron said, we have similar passions. We have similar goals. We’re working together towards those things. I think in any relationship it’s that shared passion and enthusiasm for something or similar interests that keeps you bonded. And I think it works perfectly.

On the opposite end of that, being with somebody who isn’t an entrepreneur might lead to issues of time spent together or anything else that might come up.

Bianca: We have a chapter in our second book, The Business Survival Kit, all about relationships, because I think the dynamic does shift. We’ve seen people who we’ve mentored entrepreneurs, who suddenly they are very successful, but they’re therefore putting a lot of time and energy into the business. Of course, that means that the family now have more resources and they can go on better holidays and have a better education and a better home and so on.

But then that also impacts the relationship, the romantic relationship, because sometimes the other party maybe feels a little bit envious or a little bit left out and so on. I think it is about trying to bring that person on the journey with you. It’s funny because people look at it like, ‘Oh, one is an entrepreneur, one is not. How does that work?’ But it’s like one being a vice president of a massive organisation and one having a different level of job. You both just do something you love. That should be the core foundations of it, and you should support each other in fulfilling that passion. So, it’s about communication. And I think we are not in any way saying every entrepreneur should find another entrepreneur to marry. That’s not the golden rule of it.

And I think, certainly – it might not work for everyone in that way, but I think it’s about communication and seeing where you need the support. Conversely, if things are not working out, where do you draw the line? Because a lot of the time that journey of going into entrepreneurship isn’t always successful.

A lot of businesses fail. In that failure, that could impact negatively on the family and the relationship dynamic. So, having that conversation about:

  • When do you call it a day?
  • How much of our savings are you willing to invest in this business?
  • What happens if it doesn’t work?

Again, communication is core.

Anna: Absolutely. And who knows? Maybe there’ll be baby entrepreneur as well!

Bianca: I hope so.

Byron: They better be!

Bianca and Byron: No, no they have freedom of choice.

Bianca: We’ll set them up with a shop in their bedroom!

Okay, just before we wrap up, there is one thing I would love to know. Bianca, I’ve seen before that you’ve said that you feel some discomfort in calling yourself an entrepreneur. And I’m sure a lot of the people listening and watching will feel the same way. How have you overcome that?

Bianca: I think certainly when I started out, I was maybe 21, 22, and had a lot of enthusiasm to become a business owner or to run a business. I think that was kind of how I looked at it. Then people started saying, ‘Oh, you’re an entrepreneur now’. And I was like, ‘Ohhh, I don’t know about that’. I kind of associated entrepreneurship with having multiple businesses or at least finding a certain level of success in business.

I didn’t feel in that early stage of my journey that I had achieved that success to give myself that title. But I came to terms with it and I realised that the journey of being entrepreneurial is just having an idea and having the willingness to try and make that idea a reality. And of course, to find some level of success is an important part of that.

But certainly, that journey of using your entrepreneurial mindset and trying to solve a problem I think is a strong part of what makes you an entrepreneur. And so now when I go into corporate environments and corporate clients and speak to them about, they’re career professionals, people who are in jobs, I’m speaking about that entrepreneurial mindset that makes you an intrapreneur. So that’s being an entrepreneur in an organisation and I think that proves the fact that it’s not just about money necessarily as an illustration of success, it’s about how have you made a viable product or service? Are you able to help someone or a group of people? And of course, money helps, but that’s not the only factor.

Anna: Absolutely. And you’ve said you’ve been selling since you were a kid. Yeah, it does seem like an entrepreneurial instinct that people who run their own business have.

Bianca: Absolutely.

Anna: But I can see in there that there is that whole delaying happiness mindset. ‘Oh, I’ll be happy when… I’m rich, I’m fit’ or whatever.

Bianca: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a gender-specific problem, but I think there is a little bit of that, ‘Yes, I’ll be happy when…’ or ‘When I’ve achieved this’ or ‘When this happens’. Part of me loves that about being an entrepreneur and being kind of a goal-getter, so to speak, is I’m always striving for more.

But I think there also has to be a level of satisfaction in what you do achieve. You have to kind of enjoy the moments. And I’m conscious, I’m not always great at that. It’s something I’m like, ‘Okay, great.’

Byron: No comment.

So yeah, the next day after achieving a goal that we’ve worked so hard for, we’re like, ‘Okay, what’s next?’

Anna: It’s so common.

Byron: We don’t let it sink in. We don’t celebrate it as much. Yeah, but we sometimes do.

Bianca: I don’t think we do, to be honest. I think we’re kind of like, ‘Okay, great. Oh, the book’s out. So should we write the fourth one?’

We were thinking about that today with okay, what should the fourth one be? I mean, this one’s not even a month old [At time of recording, October 2023].

But I think that hunger is something that I think is part of every entrepreneur’s journey. Just about the hunger to keep going, to keep growing, to keep achieving, to solve more problems, or to solve the same problem for more people. I think that evolution of being an entrepreneur is defined by some of that hunger.

Yeah, yeah. Because Byron, I believe you started in property investment and then rose your way up from there.

Byron: Absolutely, yeah. Very young. When I was in university, I was obsessed with Homes under the Hammer, like most people were.

Anna: Ahhh, daytime TV.

Byron: And yeah, it came on really frequently. But anyway, I would go to all of the online catalogues. It wasn’t as seamless as it is now, but you would get these big, thick catalogues. I flick through and I just look for anywhere that’s local to me. And then I would go to the actual property on the viewing day and I had no business really going there. That was the start of my networking journey. And then I got the opportunity to broker a property deal, which I did, and yeah, property is a great asset and being in property has been great and a phenomenal experience for me.

I learned so much very young – invaluable experiences from myself and the people around me. They took me under their wing and I was just watching and learning. So, 18 years later, people ask the same questions about property and not much has changed, which is really interesting that the same process still exists.

Okay, the acquiring finance might be a little bit more tricky when it comes to the subprime market, but that’s still there as well. But yeah, it’s been a phenomenal experience, a phenomenal journey. And we all have property to make our money business and invest in property. For some people that’s what they want to do – invest in property – but it does take a lot of capital, so it depends on the strategy. But yeah, you can’t go wrong. I’ve only had one bad experience over the years, which I’m still traumatised about, but otherwise it’s been a good journey.

Bianca: I think that’s why we have a chapter in Rich Forever all about property, because I think it is the kind of go-to sexy investment that people love to talk about on Instagram and social media. ‘Oh, look at this property. I flipped it. I did a buy to rent’. There’s all kinds of buzzwords going around. And I think it’s still a very stable investment option.

But I think it was important for us in the book to outline all of the other options, but also that property doesn’t have to be your primary focus. It can be that you acquire property as a result of success in your career or in your business, that you use that revenue to then be able to invest. I think that was one of the things we wanted to say in the book, was don’t be misled, but be informed that there are lots of options and here they are for you.

Anna: Yeah, I suppose that can be an entrepreneurial mindset as well and it’s quite intense and very all or nothing. But I think what you guys are getting across is that you can have bits of investment, bits of business, diversify.

Byron: Yeah, yeah.

Anna: Yeah. Especially with the economy we’re in.

Bianca: It can be quite risky strategy to put all your balls in one court. I think to have a strategy allows you to be able to have a diversified portfolio is a really strong position to be in. But I think, most importantly, is to have the knowledge to make a choice.

So, it might not be the right choice for you. You might decide property’s everything, you’re putting all your money into property and that is fine if that is your strategy, but have the knowledge to make that decision.

Absolutely. Before we wrap up here today and for businesses that are just starting out, kitchen-table-concept stage. What would be the one piece of advice you could give?

Byron: Get a mentor! It’ll save you five years of pain, save you money, make you money because they’ve already gone through it. Well, I mean to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to add something like, ‘Okay, like this has been our experience. We’re going to go and do this exhibition. We’ve been there. We spent ten grand on an exhibition before and yielded very little returns.’

We can give them our advice on what will give them the best chances of success. They’re looking for investment. Okay, well, we can tell you how to do that in a very succinct and clear way. So, getting a mentor is great or advice from somebody who’s an expert in their field. And you can use LinkedIn as an example to ask the question, ‘I would love to pick your brain for five minutes over coffee on me.’

People, particularly in a career, they’re always open to giving advice. I would say my one piece of advice is to get a mentor who can guide you through this journey of entrepreneurship and save you time, stress and the grey hairs that you get along the journey.

Bianca: Just to add to that, sometimes for our mentees, they come with just an idea. They haven’t actually created any structure around the idea. They just have a problem that they feel they have a solution for. And I think a mentor can give you that understanding of how you turn that idea into a viable business proposition and, as Byron said, can save you a lot of time and energy because sometimes, with all the best intentions in the world, you can set that kitchen table with an idea and you’ve got no experience.

It’s going to be very hard for you to think, ‘How do I get this from the paper to being a physical product to a tangible service?’ And so, I think a mentor gives you that knowledge and insight that can be very helpful.

Anna: Excellent. Well, that’s it for me, but thank you both so much for coming on.

Byron: Thank you for having us.

You can find out more about Bianca at biancamiller.uk and Byron at byroncole.uk. You can also find more tips on managing your finances at SmallBusiness.co.uk. Remember to like us @SmallBusinessExperts, follow us on X @smallbusinessuk (all lowercase) and subscribe to our YouTube channel, linked in the description. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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