Gloria Ward With Girls L.E.A.P. and The I’m Loving Me Project

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Gloria Ward. She’s with Girls Leap and the I’m Lovin Me Project. Welcome, Gloria.

Gloria Ward: Hi, Lee. How are you? I’m so glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: I am doing well. I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. So let’s take things one at a time. Start with Girls Leap and then tell us about the I’m Loving Me project.

Gloria Ward: Oh, Girls Leap is my amazing platform for those women business owners out there who is looking to scale their business or even start their business. Leap stands for Learn, Earn, Advance and Profit, which means that when you come into Girls Leap, we really teach you what it means to be successful in business. And what that means is how you make sure your paperwork is in order, making sure you understand the software that you need in order to run your business, showing you how to do leverage, showing you how to go ahead and earn money working on pricing. Right? Because pricing is the biggest thing as to why most businesses go broke. Show you how to get out there and network. Show you how to get out there to pitch and earn money and then leave. Take all of that to the bank because you should be in profit by then. So I’m excited about that. I’m loving Me project. That’s my baby. What we do is, is that while you’re working on your business and while you’re trying to push yourself each and every day, you got to make sure you have the perfect mindset. You have to know what your blocks are. You have to deal with your trauma. You have to be able to be around other people who are like minded just like you. So we have this sisterhood at the I’m Loving Me project where we inspire every woman to love herself and know her worth and her value. So that is our time where we get together and we have retreats and, you know, we do workshops and seminars just to relax for late release, to learn and to figure out more about ourselves. So that’s the both of the programs.

Lee Kantor: Well, what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work? It seems very inspiring and rewarding.

Gloria Ward: Oh man, I am one of those women, right? I am a business owner. I’ve been a business owner for 19 years, went through a lot of struggle to go ahead and build up my business to the million dollar level so I know what it takes to actually get there. But I had some setbacks and most of those setbacks came in the form of making bad decisions with divorce and drinking every day and getting DUIs and doing all those things. But what I discovered, Lee, was that I had to deal with me. I had to deal with the issues that was going on with me inside because it wasn’t that my business wasn’t performing well. I had a block, I had a money block because I was raised in the Bronx. My mom died of Aids, and it was six of us in the house. So we knew how to survive. But we didn’t know how to get out there and grow a business, let alone even thinking about having a business. Right? And so I had to learn from the school of hard knocks how to actually go ahead and get those things done. And once I started to work on myself and love myself just a little bit more and remove those roadblocks, my business actually took off and I wanted to go back and help other women like that because we blame a lot of society and say, you know, women don’t get enough capital, which is true. You know, it’s hard for women to get out there and network. We’re scared of rejection. Right. And some of those things are true. But the biggest thing is, is that we don’t put ourselves first. We sacrifice everything for our family and the kids and everyone else. But when we know that when we put ourselves first, everyone else is happy, that’s exactly how you grow. So that’s what I’m stomping out here, teaching all the women that I encounter. That is, when you put yourself first, everything around you changes, including that bank account.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did you kind of come up with this methodology? I know you went through some struggles and you overcame some challenges. How did you document everything? Did you, you know, come up with a methodology so that you can share with the next person so they don’t make the same mistakes? Like how did that part, you know, how did you come to the conclusion of I better write all this down so I can help somebody else rather than just like, just keep going and keep just pursuing your dream?

Gloria Ward: I had a mentor. That’s the biggest thing that people are afraid of today. You need somebody who is ahead of you to go ahead and show you the way. I had a mentor, I was doing all of the regular stuff. Right. You go. Go to Barnes and Noble’s. You buy a whole bunch of books, you get finance books, you get marketing books, you get all of these books on how to run your business and how to fix yourself and do all that. You’re reading all day long and they tell you business owners or readers, but when are you ever working on your business? Right? When are you ever pushing yourself to the next level? Because you’re basically going back to school in order to learn where. When I got a mentor and a coach Lee it made my life harder, but my business more profitable, right? Because what I learned was how I can take the skills that he already had, apply them, learn them, put in my 10,000 hours and start to climb my way up. Was it easy? Absolutely not. That’s why we have that methodology of learn, earn, advance and profit, because you need somebody to help you get there. You need to learn what leverage is right? Because nobody gets there by themselves. For those solopreneurs that are out there thinking that they’re going to get to their goals all by themselves, that is not true. You need someone who knows where you want to go. They’ve already been there and they can show you the blueprint. And that’s what happened for me and that’s what I put into Girls Leap to show other women.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have any advice for those entrepreneurs out there that maybe have never had a coach before? How do you even go about finding the right coach? Because there are so many, and how do you make sure that it’s the right fit and they are going to gel with you and you know that they can really help you. So you’re not just kind of just spending money in the hopes that it works, but you’re investing money with the idea that it will work.

Gloria Ward: That’s a fantastic question because everybody is a coach on social media, right? Everybody is saying that they can help you get yourself to the next level. The biggest thing that I did is I asked to I looked at my coach and looked at their results. Right. And I saw their business. I interviewed them like I was like they was interviewing for a job, Right. I asked them to show me how they were moving and getting to the next level in their business. Remember, when you are getting a coach, you are entering a partnership. They have the way to get you to where you need to be and you got to make sure that they’re the right fit for your industry and what it is that you want to accomplish. Please do not go out and get a coach that has not achieved the goals that you are looking to achieve because you will never get there. I don’t care how much money they said they made, they could have made that money 1520 years ago and never learned how to get it back. Right. They can also be telling you a story about what they think because a lot of them have intellectual knowledge but have not been in that school of hard knocks to show you how to get to the next level.

Gloria Ward: Those are the people you want to stay away from you. Your coach will be that ideal role model where you will see them put in the results to get to where they need to be. And they’re always reaching back to let you know and give you help and guidance and ideas on how you can get to the level where they at or where they have where they’re trying to go. Right? So I always say interview that coach, make sure they have the same interests and have been there already. And, you know, just make sure that you’re getting in the right group. And if you don’t, if you don’t gel with your coach, then that’s just not the right one for you. Right. Because that relationship should be a long term relationship. It’s been over 15 years now with my coach and we’re doing just fine. I was I was one of the lucky ones.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients. And sometimes, though, at least the business people I come to are aspiring business people, that they might have a passion or something that they love and they’re like, well, I you know, I wish that I could just make this my business, you know, like my wife likes to bake cookies. Is that necessarily a, you know, a future business for her or is it something that should just stay at that passion hobby level? Like, how do you discern which is the which passion you should be investing in and really making into a business and some that you should just keep as a passion on the side?

Gloria Ward: I tell people who have passions like that, if you love to make cookies and that excites you, that’s where you use your leverage and you go find a business person that can help you build that business because one, you’re going to be stepping into a realm that you’re uncomfortable with and it’s going to make you not like being in business and not like making cookies, right? Because a lot of especially like artists and bakers and and chefs, all of those people who just love doing what they love to do. Stay there. Stay there. Find someone who’s the business mind that can that can put a business around what you love to do and make sure you can trust that person to help you move along the way. Because if you are really serious about it and you get that right person, you will form a good business and you will grow. You know why? Because you love it and they love what they do. And you’re in two separate realms and you only come together on business matters. You can make cookies all day long, come up with different recipes and shapes and sizes and everything, and they can go out there and promote and sell and make sure that your pricing is good to bring you back the money for more ingredients. Right?

Lee Kantor: So how do you how do you go and find that partner like that? Because like, if you’re good at one thing and they’re good at something totally different and you just, you know, pair it together, that’d be fantastic. Is there some sort of matchmaking app out there that finds these people? Like, how do you find that person that’s that, you know, hand and glove fit with what you’re trying to accomplish?

Gloria Ward: That’s a that’s the beauty of networking, especially local networking, because let’s say you go to the Chamber of Commerce, right? Or you go to the SBA office. Those people who are there are just starting out just like you. Most of the people who are volunteering at the SBA and the Chamber of Commerce have been business owners before who have who have decided to dedicate their life just to helping business owners and just want to work at a government job to get a little bit of money. Those people have resources and contacts of people who they can pair you with, where you can see again if they can become a coach for you or you can actually do business with them to help you grow. Or you can become a piece of a puzzle for someone else. So if someone is making one thing and you add the cookies, if if that person is giving out cards and you send cookies for every card that they give out, now you got a person who needs what you have, right? So there’s a lot of ways that you can mix and match, but you have to be able to get yourself out there and network social media is okay, but for something like that, face to face is very important. And they’re out there. They’re out there. So I say start on the most basic level that you can get as much information as you can and get out there and network. Like I said, even an SBA office, those people who are in the office, usually the counselors have businesses before, have great networks and can really pair you with someone who can help you make your business grow. And all most if not all of the time, especially when I was starting out, that was for free. That was just an exchange of emails and phone numbers.

Lee Kantor: So it sounds like you’re helping a lot of people and growing like crazy. What is the best way to connect with you? If somebody wants to learn more and get plugged into your network and to see the different services that you have and maybe they want to be helped or mentored or coached to get to a new level, where should they go? To learn more.

Gloria Ward: You can go to my website, Love and Net. That’s our website where we have all of our things there that work on your mindset and also to work on your business. You can actually go to that website and click on our. Our programs and see our business innovation program that we have. You could click on that. It’s a free downloadable that you can get from a course that I taught to show you how to work on your business model, making sure your business model is good, making sure you’ve got the right business model for your business, and how to use that business model to come up with a pricing strategy so you can actually price your product based on it’s worth, right? Because value is something that’s relative. So you have to know the value of your product. You have to know the value of yourself. And I teach that in business model innovation. And you can find that on Amazon dot net or you can follow us at Net Girls Leap Elite on social platforms on Facebook and Instagram.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, if you go to the website, there’s just so many resources, some of them free, but just a whole variety of resources. No matter what stage you’re at, you could be at just the idea stage and there’s stuff that you can learn from the website or if you’re a veteran business person that maybe just hit a plateau, there’s resources for that person to.

Gloria Ward: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Well, Gloria, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Gloria Ward: Thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor, we will see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.