business Archives

Scaling, and starting a small business can be scary. It’s like taking a leap, but even if you’re unsure where you would be landing on.

Some people start a business out of pure fascination or even as a hobby. But whether you are starting a business to fulfill your passion or meeting your financial goals, you need to have a plan.

Starting a small business is no easy task and can take days, if not months, to prepare. Not to mention when it comes to scaling the business. The most important aspect to have is the thrive and heart to start a small business, as, without passion, no business can succeed.

In business, you are your own boss. You are making your dream a reality–or not! It takes sacrifice (sometimes your career in someone else’s business), discipline, long hours, and hard work. But, with courage, passion, and dedication, a business can be the start of something big.

During this pandemic, hundreds of thousands of workers were rendered unemployed. And so many took the chance of opening their own small businesses to generate income. To many, they saw the exciting opportunities to ‘create’ something new–new solutions, for a new world.

There’s no perfect time to start a business. What matters is how motivated you are to begin a business and make an impact through that.

In this podcast, Ali Lowndes shares about how they started their own business. Ali Lowndes, a designer, and maker based in Dublin, creates laser-cut acrylic jewelry, buttons, handmade greeting cards, retro headbands, and hair accessories.

Here, she also talks about how the pandemic helped her business to rise. Listen to some very practical tips on how one should manage their time for their scaling business while being a mother and wife at the same time. Ali also has some essential reminders in showing appreciation to customers.

Links mention in the podcast

Podcast Highlights

2:13 -8:22 – A Little Idea
16:30-19-40 – Switching Career
20:37-22:55 – Irish makers and designers
24:05-28:48 – Starting Your Own Business during the Pandemic
30:45 34:25 – Gift of Words

Pocket Quotes

“If you run your own business, you definitely get to see everything behind the curtains.”- Alexandra Kreis
“We all want to live a happy life, and happiness doesn’t often mean being safe. It means trying to go for what makes you shine and happy.”- Alexandra Kreis
“Our customers are everything to us, and we want to make their day just like they’ve made our day.” – Ali Lowndes
“When you have a creative bone in your body, you’re constantly thinking: what’s the next thing I’m going to do, what’s the next thing to make? Ideas can explode.” – Ali Lowndes
“If you just stay doing the same thing forever, you get bored, you lose passion for it.” – Ali Lowndes

Guest Bio

Ali Lowndes is a designer and maker based in Dublin. Ali creates laser-cut acrylic jewelry, buttons, handmade greeting cards, retro headbands, and hair accessories. Her designs are inspired by the decades that have passed, full of color, lightweight, unisex, and fun to wear. Her stature as rising star in the business world accelerated when Lowndes was shortlisted for the prestigious Irish Made Award 2020 by Irish Country Magazine. Her business, A Little Idea, has made it into the jewelry category’s final list.

Eavesdrop on this conversation with Richard Fuhrmann about his inner journey and sharing this journey through storytelling. With so many wonderful opportunities to share and listen to people’s experiences of healing, awakening, and self-discovery, we ask: why through storytelling?

In this podcast, Alex brings on this question (and more!). Alex navigates the conversation behind her work: making the space and sharing the limelight to people’s stories—the campfire ones that are not so alien but are so ‘us’. And Richard, a holistic consultant for entrepreneurs from Graz, Austria, and a solopreneur himself, join this by sharing the stops, bumps, and crossroads in his inner journey.

Richard’s spark and story may not exactly be the same as in many of us. It started early for him, but not one that he’s been sure about right from the start. But as he said, ‘we are all on the same journey: from ourselves to ourselves.’

Along his road, Richard realized and took to his mission the importance of bringing the consciousness of compassion and love for one another to the space of business, especially the tech industry. This is founded on his principle that human beings are meant to be tribal and that it’s part of how human beings survived and evolved. And storytelling is one act of sharing and embodying the tribe!

But as solopreneurs, how is storytelling making us visible? How is it leading people to find us? Richard’s answer is simple: People who need you will find you. And hence why our stories of awakening should be told and be brought out there. So people can stumble upon us and see what resonates with them and, eventually, find us.

And for us who listen, always be aware that the person we follow has been through a lot. Celebrate the wisdom in their stories by not putting them up on a pedestal but by giving credit to their experiences and life stories.

Surely, this is the podcast that explains why you should listen to one!