All Feathers and No Chicken? Building a Business to Last with Essie Escobedo, Office Angels
Essie Escobedo: [00:00:00] I think that when you’re starting a business, you have to think of the goal of establishing a business that, at some point in time, you’re going to sell it, you’re going to merge with another company. And you have to think in terms of putting and place a good infrastructure from the get-go and what are all the different facets that need to mesh well together to make that business grow. You’ve got to take care of your finance. You’ve got to take care of admin, operations, H.R., marketing.
Essie Escobedo: [00:00:42] And so, a lot of people who are going into business for themselves are what in the E-Myth Revisited – which I highly recommend to anybody who’s going into business – Michael Gerber, he calls them the technicians. These are the people who are actually doing the work. Well, if you’re busy servicing the client, doing the work, who is taking care of the back office? Who’s making sure that the bills are paid, that the payroll is done, that the facility is maintained, that the marketing is happening.
Essie Escobedo: [00:01:24] So, there’s a lot of, what I call, chicken and feathers scenario. You have a really great engagement and you’re working with the client and everything is wonderful. But your pipeline is empty now. And nobody’s back there filling it for when this engagement is over and you can move on to the next one. And that’s, I think, when you have no chicken, you just have feathers.
Essie Escobedo, Chief Executive Angel, Office Angels
Essie launched Office Angels in 2001 after a 20+ year career as a small business owner, serving as Owner and Chief Financial Officer of two corporations which she co-founded. Essie served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), the Atlanta Women’s Network (AWN), and currently serves on the Advisory Boards of Professional Women’s Information Network (ProWIN) and Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE). She mentors on how to start and run a successful business, and volunteers with the Georgia Consortium for Personal Financial Literacy and with The Edge Connection.
Essie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from The American University and has been an Adjunct Professor of Business at Lanier Technical College.
Connect with Essie on LinkedIn
Listen to the full North Fulton Business Radio interview with Essie here.
The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.
Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.
