Business founders roundtable: bonding through the entrepreneurial experience

Key business takeaways

• Irma on delegating: “Start the process of delegating from day one, the day you start your business. Realize what areas that you’re not an expert at and that wouldn’t serve you to become an expert at.” 
• Dianna on parenthood and business: “You can prepare as much as you can, but you can only give it room to grow into what it’s supposed to be. My children need room to grow into who they’re supposed to become, just like this business.”
• Miriam on educational marketing: “We’re not just trainers, we’re humans first. That’s why it’s really important that when I show up online it’s as myself—to humanize that trainer-client relationship.”

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Irma Cedeno, Dianna Rose, and Miriam Fried lead small businesses across three different industries: language education, sustainable catering, and personal training. But when they sat down together for a conversation with Yelp’s Small Business Expert Emily Washcovick, they found they had a lot in common. 

Each founder is dedicated to humanizing the small business experience—from mining reviews for feedback that can help them better understand their customers, to structuring services collaboratively instead of top-down, and showing up authentically at work. In this conversation from Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s Behind the Review podcast, these three Yelp for Business x Luminary fellows share how they forge connections and grow their businesses by putting people first.

Meet the fellows

Irma Cedeno

Irma founded the language learning platform Diáfano to support companies, schools, and individuals looking to create meaningful change through language. Her business offers online classes for 20+ languages, as well as cohort-style language classes at companies in order to help them improve their work culture and support employees with limited English proficiency.

Dianna Rose

Deeply rooted in her community, Dianna strives to ensure access to healthy living in New York City’s Southeast Queens neighborhood. Over the past 15 years, Dianna has launched multiple initiatives to reconnect people to the planet—from her MWBE-certified zero-waste catering company, Jars of Delight, to the first community farmers’ market and commercial kitchen in Southeast Queens.

Miriam Fried

Miriam is the founder and head trainer at MF Strong, a New York City-based coalition of personal trainers. After years in the fitness industry, Miriam became disillusioned with the harm it perpetuates toward women and their bodies. Seeing a need for more inclusive workouts, she founded MF Strong to provide one-on-one training from a compassionate and human-focused approach.

You’re in different industries, but you all do some level of educating in your marketing to customers. How do you communicate and educate at the same time?

Miriam: Something we talk about at MF Strong is that we’re not just trainers, we’re humans first. And our clients are humans first. In the fitness industry, there’s this idea that you work with a trainer and they tell you what to do and that’s it, whereas we want it to be a collaborative experience. 

We are obviously using our expertise—we all have multiple certifications and knowledge about training—but at the end of the day, you are the expert on your body, right? I am not the expert on your body. I wanna work collaboratively with you so that you can get the best possible experience, so that you can enjoy yourself and relearn that trust within yourself, so that hopefully you enjoy movement again and find something that’s sustainable for you. That’s why it’s really important that when I show up online it’s as myself, to humanize that trainer-client relationship. 

Dianna: [When we pitched our first client, our educational marketing was] just talking to her about why the company existed and our foundation: why zero waste is the core of our business, how we handle our food waste, how we handle our customers and our marketing materials… and how it’s different from greenwashing of zero waste that we’ve seen over the past decade. Like Miriam said, we’re humanizing these terms and not letting them be buzzwords, but really understanding why we use glass mason jars and why we recycle them.

That’s what drew a lot of my corporate clients in. It wasn’t this grand idea—it was this small company trying to tackle something. The food is pretty, the food is delicious, but also the education is simple for you to understand. I feel like if I could explain it to my 6-year-old, I’m doing a good job.

Irma: We’re all talking about humanizing the process, right? In the language industry, we’ve seen a lot of [companies] dehumanizing the language learning process. When the truth is, we all want to learn language because we wanna connect. That’s the only reason why we learn languages. For Diáfano, that educational component goes to the student because we have to explain to them that you don’t learn a language with just 10 minutes a day. You’ll need like 10 lifetimes if you wanna do that. 

Then we also have to educate the corporate client, and that’s tougher. We have a very data-driven approach to how we actually do business [with corporate clients]. In most cases, it’s not one executive at a company coming to us and saying, “We just wanna learn Spanish.” It’s us going to them and saying, “You might be interested in Spanish, but I need more data to really find out not just what you want, but what your company wants.”

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, especially for women battling gender inequality in their industry. Why is it important to connect with other women through opportunities like the Luminary Fellowship? What does connection mean to you?

Dianna: When you’re starting out, there’s so many things you don’t know and are afraid to ask. Opportunities like the Yelp for Business x Luminary Fellowship are so important because one, we’re here now, and I’m sitting with two amazing business owners that I probably would have not met outside of this fellowship, right? After this conversation, we’re gonna be able to connect and talk and just bounce ideas off one another. It’s gonna be a lot easier for me to talk about the highs and the lows of what I’m going through as a female entrepreneur.

Especially as a Black female entrepreneur, it’s discouraging at times because we know that barriers of receiving capital to build my business are real barriers. It doesn’t matter if your projections look good, it doesn’t matter what your history looks like—it’s just a barrier. So I think opportunities like this fellowship strengthen you. You don’t feel alone. You don’t feel scared as much as you would when you’re by yourself.

Miriam: Something that’s really striking me right now as I’m listening to Irma and Dianna talk is all the shared things we have in common although we’re in completely different industries. I think it’s helpful to speak to people in other industries who are doing similar things or have similar goals because you have that distance from your own little bubble, and then you can hear what they’re doing and get ideas that would work for you.

This is also a group of women who are moms, going to be moms, want to be moms. How do you get to the point of being able to step away and let the business run without you?

Irma: You’re never really ready for anything—not to be a mom, not to be a business owner. [I’m about to go on maternity leave,] but the preparation starts way before. You wanna start the process of delegating from day one, the day you start your business. Start to realize what areas that you’re not an expert at and that wouldn’t serve you to become an expert at. For example, I’m not interested in becoming an expert at social media, so eventually I had to hire a social media manager. And there are certain things within my business that I hold onto a little bit too tight, right? Those are the things that I have to start letting go of slowly. 

Allowing myself maternity leave was a gigantic step for me because I had a moment there where I said, “You know, because I’m not in corporate America, I’m gonna miss out on maternity leave.” And then I was like: “Wait, I own my company. I can go on maternity leave today if I feel like.”

Dianna: I have a 15-year-old and a six-year-old, and everything you said, Irma, was so true. I liken entrepreneurship to having a child because it’s your baby. It’s your thought. It’s your vision and it’s your job to nurture and grow this business and grow and trust people just like how you would trust a baby. And when it’s time to go to childcare, you have to find the right childcare person, right? That’s like finding your team.

There are so many similarities that I call [my business] Jars of Delight my third child. There’s so much attachment—emotional, financial, mental. There’s tears, there’s joy. It’s important to realize that it’s not gonna be perfect. Parenthood is not perfect. You can prepare as much as you can, but you can only give it room to grow into what it’s supposed to be. My children need room to grow into who they’re supposed to become, just like this business. And sometimes it does mean stepping away from parts of the business that you can no longer grow. As a mom, it helps me to realize: “Okay, Diana, you’re stunting the growth of this business by holding on so tight. You gotta let go.”

Miriam: I’m still in the process of transitioning from being the face of the business to the leader of the business, where the business can operate wholly without me. A part of that is separating myself, Miriam Fried, from MF Strong. I have someone else running my social media and featuring our other trainers so people can get to know them as well. I want clients to know when they reach out to us that they are going to be in amazing hands, regardless of who they’re placed with. I have personally vetted and worked with all of these trainers to make sure that they are going to uphold the standard that we put out there.

I eventually wanna be able to step away even more. I would like to start a family in the next few years. That goal is what’s pushing me to make this happen and to really get on that track and so that I can fully step away for a little bit and feel comfortable doing that.

Let’s get into customer feedback. How do you listen to it? How do you leverage it?

Miriam: Since I’m [in this transition of giving new clients to other trainers], I am not always in the session, so I don’t know what’s happening unless I’m able to get feedback. I do really love hearing that feedback. Then I know what sort of continuing education to work on with my trainers and can make sure they are checking in with clients about things like: Have your goals shifted? Are you happy with your progress so far? What do you wanna work on now that we’ve been working together for a few months? Those things are so important to that one-on-one experience.  

Irma: I think it’s super important to get feedback. It’s so wonderful to hear all the wonderful things people have to say about us. That’s always great. But one of the things that I’ve been emphasizing lately is we want to hear the bad stuff. The reason why is because oftentimes, if we don’t hear anything and classes continue, then I think it’s all good. But I’m always looking for patterns to see if we can make any tweaks here and there.

We actually send out midterm and end-of-term reviews through our online portal. It’s amazing what you find out, and it’s great to go back to the teachers and say, “These are the things that are working, and these are some of the things that I want you to consider.” Even though it’s also challenging to tell your staff, I think they also appreciate that—to be able to know how they can grow.

And sometimes those clients who are very upset become your greatest fans. When people give us [really negative feedback], I’ll meet with them… and hear what’s not going great and what you can actually do about it. Those students convert for years.

Dianna: As a nugget for parents and soon-to-be moms, I actually do that with my children. I have reviews with my children about how I am doing as mom. Just like your business, you want to know how you’re doing—like: “Let’s have a talk. How’s Mommy doing right now?” Because I give them that open access to speak to me, there’s a lot less lashing out and acting out because it’s a safe space. You’ve created a safe space for your clients to come and vent to you.

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These lessons come from an episode of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear more from Irma, Dianna, and Miriam, or visit the episode page to read more, subscribe to the show, and explore other episodes.