Are You Ready for a Change?
 You’re innovative, and driven with a strong purpose.
You’ve a deep passion for things you love.
You want a business that helps you thrive, without sacrificing your inherent worth and your health.
You want to harness your superpowers as your strengths to excel in your business, and in every facet of your life.
You know that you’ve untapped power, and
You want to explore and unlock it to create exponential impact.
BUT
You’re unclear on the impact that you want to make.
You’re not confident about yourself and in your story.
You’re not maximizing your superpower to its fullest.
You’re lacking a marketing strategy and system to sell your product.
You’re exhausted, left with no time or energy.
You’ve tons of potential, yet making little impact.
LaunchFit Accelerator ™ is designed for corporate-burnout turned entrepreneurs, high achievers, and resilient founders just like you.
At its core, this signature program is here to help innovative and driven humans to share your stories authentically and powerfully, develop and position your products for market-fit, and cohesively launch them to the world. So, you can gain rapid traction, attract the right people to you, and make the full degree of impact that you’re here to make.
We’re starting our next group coaching session on October 18, 2022!
 In 90-days, you can:
*Cultivate a focus & energy maintenance system;
*Develop a human story that resonates;
*Augment your personal brand to build early trust;
*Channel your energy to create impact, remove limiters;
*Harness your powerful idea and bring it to life;
*Embrace your superpower to its fullest;
*Develop a marketing strategy and system to sell your product;
*Design a cohesive launch plan and share it with the world;
*Gain early traction and attract the right people to you.
You will have clarity, feel confident and empowered, knowing deeply that you’ll have what you need to be successful – making the full degree of impact that you’re here to make.
And ultimately, owning a business that you love to work on. Achieving impact, income and financial freedom all together.
Interested in joining, apply here. Put “launchfit” in the message. We’ll send you more details.
Humans who test drove several key components shared their love for our program:
“I loved it! I could not have done it by myself!” ~ L.F.
“I liked it!” ~ M.O.
“It’s good. It’s a vision that I believe in.” ~ S.S.
“I love the formula. It’s easy to plug in what I want to articulate for my value proposition.”
~ S.M.
“Good! Love it!” ~ K. W.
“I loved everything here, from my vision to my value proposition. The creativity that goes into my early adopter marketing plan is incredibly thoughtful. I feel confident launching this business in October.” ~ M.K.
About Jenny:
Jenny Huang is not your ordinary business and marketing coach. She is a seasoned brand marketer, a business advisor and an entrepreneur at heart. Drawing from her own experiences and those of her clients on their entrepreneurial journey, Jenny has poured her heart and soul in the past few months and developed the LaunchFit Acclerator™, a premier business and marketing coaching program, for corporate-burnout turned entrepreneurs, high achievers, and resilient founders. It’s her life’s work, in its most potent and collected form, condensed into a concise program that will benefit you deeply, even long after you’ve graduated from it.
I grew up in a middle-class family.
At a young age, my world was turned upside down with the fall of Saigon in April 1975.
My parents took us four kids and fled the country. We left Vietnam safely, but we lost everything.
 For my dad, it was his entire business — something that he had built since he was 16.
We had to rebuild our life in America.
Acclimating to the new culture and a new language was not easy for us in the beginning. But as young kids, we adapted quickly and assimilated well into the American society.
I carried a pocket dictionary with me at all times, because I felt a strong desire to fit in, and be able to understand and speak the language fluently.
My parents, however, had experienced their shares of hardships and struggles.
Growing up in America gave me the freedom to speak freely, and I have found a place in my heart to honor this privilege to its fullest.
Often, I helped my dad translate and edit letters that he wrote to company executives where he asked to represent them as their import/export agent in the U.S. – a dream that my dad had never let up.
Through letter writing for dad, I was able to amplify his voice, and found great satisfaction in me that I helped him communicate effectively.
The confidence in my own voice grew steadily over the years.
That confidence of language fluency led me to be nominated as the valedictorian for my graduating class in middle school, something that I still feel over the moon about.
Since that time, I’ve continued to nurture my new-found voice, and speak freely from my heart, on things that I deeply believe in and care about.
A new year comes with new momentum, new thinking and new energy!
As we march into a new 2022…
* Have we given ourselves time to celebrate the human from within?
* Have we allowed ourselves to do deep dives and define what impact and joy that we want to bring to our life, our work, and our vision for the future?
In the past few weeks, I’ve the opportunity to do just that.
Connecting with my journey, from a young age to where I am today.
Unpacking and reflecting on emotions and pains that lie deep within me,
things that were buried because they are difficult to talk about,
things that were worthy yet I don’t talk enough about them,
things that had shaped my journey and are essential building blocks of who I am today, how I show up, and how I help others.
It has been one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever felt🌠
Liberating in a sense that I feel that I am being understood.
Liberating in a way that it unpacks pains that I’ve buried deep inside, and now I’ve given them a life and meaning.
Liberating because I feel complete and whole.
And exhilarating because I now have clarity in
my vision, value proposition, and personal story,
to empower the type of work that I want to do,
gathering all that I’ve learned and known into a product,
to help others who are on a similar journey as I am.
More soon…🚀🚀
Video courtesy: Van Gogh’s immersive exhibit
When I was a young marketer just getting out of business school from UC Berkeley, I sought employment intentionally with big brands who have great reputation, run by leaders who have great visions.
I was drawn to their artfully-crafted, bold visions and the way how they put their visions into meaningful actions.
Today, after having worked with big brands and advising numerous entrepreneurs, I get to create my own vision, aligning with values close to heart, speaking to the truth, and committing my personal growth and business to what I strongly believe in.
My vision serves as a compass that will guide my work, and give me the energy to feed my mind, body, and soul.
Here’s the Vision that I am committing to:
“I believe in a world where every human is able
live out their full potential,
do meaningful work,
find their own voice,
speak freely from their heart, and
innovate their own entrepreneurial path to personal fulfillment, helping others,
and living a life of kindness, collaboration, and peace.”
What are yours? Love to hear some!
*An edited version has been published in the Los Altos Town Crier *
The pandemic, in a big way, has accelerated the pace of long-form content consumption for workers, professionals, and students alike, due to remote working arrangements and online distance learning.
Can you imagine that long-form reading fatigue could affect a normal person’s academic or work performance?
Now imagine someone who has a learning disability or visual impairment and struggled with reading. How would they be impacted?
Up to now, there has not been a tool designed to improve the cognitive efficiency of reading on-screen, and to make the process easier, faster, and more enjoyable for readers at all levels.
BeeLine Reader, a young start-up based in Menlo Park, California, recognizes the pain point of long-form reading fatigue, which affects multiple population groups, ranging from normal people, people with learning differences and visual impairment, to students coping with increased reading loads.
Improving On-Screen Reading Ability for All
 Nick Lum, Founder, BeeLine Reader BeeLine Reader’s Founder, Nick Lum, is a former Mountain View resident. Lum worked as a corporate lawyer before he embarked on his entrepreneurial journey as the Founder of BeeLine Reader. Because of his personal experience in dealing with reading fatigue, from reading legal and business documents on screen for many hours every day, Lum saw an opportunity to develop a solution that would make reading easier, by displaying text using eye-guiding color gradients. He teamed with his cousin, Andrew Cantino, a software developer, and launched a browser plugin that applies BeeLine’s reading technology to website text. This technology also benefits users reading downloaded PDFs or on mobile devices.
Primary functions of BeeLine Reader include: helping maintain focus while reading, decreasing visual fatigue, and improving the accessibility of text for people with learning differences or visual impairment.
“BeeLine Reader takes the visual tracking aspect of your eye movement while reading and automates it. So your brain spends less efforts in keeping track of where your eyes should be. Instead, it allows you to allocate more cognitive resources to other reading-related sub-tasks, such as comprehending and analyzing what you’re reading,” said Lum.
 According to Lum, readers can customize the way how BeeLine Reader operates, from choosing the color gradient that they like best to deciding which websites it should run on.
“For many people, BeeLine Reader fundamentally changes their ability to read. After they’ve experienced this new, easier way of reading, they don’t want to go back to reading plain black text again,” said Lum.
In addition to functioning as a browser plugin and an app, BeeLine Reader also licenses its patented technology to companies of all sizes. Licensees have found that their users who activated BeeLine Reader’s feature ended up reading more on their platforms than other users who didn’t.
Creating Social and Human Impact
BeeLine Reader’s simple technology goes beyond the accessibility benefits for readers who get fatigued due to heavy-reading loads. The company has received feedback from users with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, indicating that BeeLine Reader is extremely helpful in making reading easier and more enjoyable.
In addition to social impact, the technology indirectly helps those who might feel that they are never good enough of a reader to see their potential as efficient readers. This type of encouragement can boost a person’s self-esteem and help them achieve better work or academic performance.
 “A great example of BeeLine Reader’s impact is echoed through our successful pilot program with Blackboard Ally, who strives to provide a more inclusive learning for all types of learners. The feedback from the pilot was so successful that Blackboard Ally ended the pilot early in order to expedite a full release of BeeLine’s feature to all users,” said Lum.
“Feedback like this is what keeps me energized — nothing is more satisfying than getting an email from a BeeLine user whose life has been changed by our simple tool.”
BeeLine Reader has won several notable awards for social impact, including a recent award from the MIT Solve Global Competition. Its technology was one of a handful selected for the Digital Inclusion Global Challenge, out of hundreds of applicants worldwide.
Previously, BeeLine Reader has won awards from the UN Solutions Summit and The Tech Museum of Innovation (now The Tech Interactive).
Looking ahead, BeeLine Reader will continue to grow their impact globally and in local communities. To learn more about BeeLine Reader’s tools or partnership opportunities, visit www.beelinereader.com
Photo courtesy: BeeLine Reader
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How often have you heard of this phrase that “being a good detective means good business?”
This means doing mystery shopping looking for inspirations, uncovering needs, or checking out your competition.
On top of mystery shopping, keeping a pulse of what’s going on with online commerce big trends can help you see where things are going and their implications.
In this blog, we want to share some detective work we did on 2021’s online shopping that’s going to excite you — identifying possible gaps in online commerce that could mean new business opportunities.
Here’re some nuggets from a recent report* that we’ve researched:
- 2021 Global ecommerce sale = US$4.89 Trillion => 2024 Global ecommerce sale = US$6.4 Trillion
- Convenience and competitive prices are two key factors people choose to buy online.
- Customer online buying journey begins with Google and Amazon searches.
- Amazon, Alibaba, eBay account for 50% of global sales in 2018, and is expected to increase even more post pandemic.
- People are increasingly buying their groceries online, and will continue to do so even post COVID.
- 62% buys online at least once/month, 26% once/week, 3% once/day.
- Most shopping card abandon rate is due to high extra costs, including lack of transparency on shipping costs, taxes, and fees.
These stats lay out a partial view on what online shopping landscape may look like. As a consumer, I’ve personally experienced some gaps in my buying journey that could be addressed.
For example, my recent experience with Amazon’s grocery buy wasn’t great. It created frustration for me. Their product took longer to deliver. The seller didn’t have good communication about product delivery delays, and their costs is 25% higher than if I were to get them from the store directly.
Another example would be a lack of transparency on shipping costs, taxes and fees at the check-out stage, when we had to abort our shopping cart and go elsewhere.
This is the case of my recent online transaction with Walmart, which I later changed to purchase at Bed, Bath and Beyond, because Walmart’s delivery mechanism did not recognize a campus address with a mailbox number.
There are so many little things that could go wrong in the shopping journey, from customers deciding on things to put into their shopping cart to pushing the check-out button and confirming the purchase.
In sum, as a consumer, I see lots of gaps that these big companies have in their online commerce operations. One bad experience could shake my trust of the company if they don’t pay close attention to win back my loyalty.
With that said, I believe all business owners have the opportunity to do deeper dives into these issues that I’ve experienced from online shopping. See if you have any bold ideas that could solve the problem and make it a profitable business.
Be a good detective and keep an eye on stats and trends in areas where customers experience pain or frustration. You’ll be amazed with uncovered opportunities. They could mean new business revenues for you.
*Source: Online Shopping Stats by Maryam Moshin, Oberlo, June 2021
Photo courtesy: Tamanna Rumee of Unsplash
Does a purse need to be used completely as a purse? As consumers, do we ever imagine a product that could go beyond its conventional use? I believe some of us do!
This belief of maximizing a product’s utility and its lifecycle to the fullest extent has been the underpinning guidepost that drives the birth of Sumsaara’s products, a young start-up company, led by a mother-and-daughter team, Mini Bansal and Jannat Saxena. Saxena is a San Jose graduate in Design. She is also a recipient of the Los Altos Mayor Award at the Los Altos Rotary Art Festival in 2018.
Turning Passion into a Real Business
The three-year old start-up has a great passion in creating and designing everyday consumer products that are versatile, aesthetically-pleasing, and environmentally-responsible.
According to Saxena, their company’s vision from the beginning is to be creative and establish themselves as an innovative brand. They’ve created a rich product portfolio consisting of their Essence Collection, from an evening purse and card wallets to tray puzzles, do-it-yourself jewelry kit, and reversible accessory belts. They take design thinking holistically in that every product which they’ve designed goes through a rigorous refinement process, from its initial form to its final best.
“Every single product is handcrafted, made in small batches. We select materials that are environmentally-friendly, ranging from cork fabric and wood to the packaging of our products,” said Saxena. “Because of our product’s versatility and its multi-faceted usage, each item is unique and can be adapted as a displayable work of art, or be re-used and made into a new creation by end users.”
Their products’ re-usability adds the carbon-footprint reduction dimension that most consumers these days look for and appreciate in responsible companies.
Saxena and Bansal said Sumsaara’s products make their customers happy and bring a smile to their faces, making them great gifts for families and friends.
Expanding Portfolio into Multi-Folds
The pandemic has helped Sumssara evolve their product focus from creating items that are stylish and easy to carry, to items that their customers can enjoy making at home with their friends and families.
Their next plan is to introduce additional new items to allow their customers to be the “creators” as well. Taking their base product framework and letting customers create things the way they want them. This concept is in lockstep with today’s emerging trend of “the creator economy,” where consumers who are users of the product can build and showcase products of their own.
When we asked Sumsaara to reflect on their journey and lessons learned through the pandemic, they believe that their success rests on the fact that they started small. By building clientele and satisfying early customers through solid products and efficient customer service, they were able to sustain with more new sales, repeat buys and referrals that will allow them to scale and go big when they are ready.
In the future, the duo hopes to open a studio to help young adults with designing and manufacturing their own products, using the approaches that they have gathered and curated in their business, and encouraging others to follow their dreams and make things happen.
Sumsaara will have a booth at the Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival in September. For more information, visit www.sumsaara.com. Sign up for their newsletters to get updates on new product releases, and their participation in other fine craft events in the Bay Area.
**An edited version of this article is also published in the Los Altos Town Crier June 2021 online and digital editions. **
(Check out Our Quick, 3-minute clip from the Workshop)
“I don’t know anything about Personal Branding. A topic that I have avoided in my entire career. I did not know that it’s about messaging, social media, and platform. So, this has been very educational for me.”
~ Sam, Business Coach ~
A couple of months ago, I taught a Personal Branding Workshop to an intimate group of BerkeleyHaas alumni attendees who were eager to evaluate and improve their personal branding efforts. Audience took away valuable, personal branding arsenals that they can apply right away.
Here are top 3 takeaways for attendees:
- You need a road map. Don’t leave your personal brand to chance. Control your narratives.
- You need to be intentional. Invest your energy and time in the right places to create impact.
- You need to start with an anchor. Use the anchor content/channel as your springboard that leads to greater reach and exposure.
Questions from the audience prompted me to offer the following specials. They are intended to help entrepreneurs and founders who have yet launched their products or started their companies, and that they don’t have strong digital footprints nor strong human networks.
These specials offer exceptional values. They will transform how you define who you are, inject focus and disciplined in being strategic on how you build your personal brands with a clear roadmap. The outcome could help you attract early adopters, raise additional funding, or find great people to join your team.
Personal Branding Lite (Strategy Session Only): $700
Sign up and enjoy our introductory pricing
What you’ll get:
- Discovery and assessment on current personal branding challenges
- Identify and address gaps with recommendations
- Strategize Personal Branding roadmap focus and determine execution priorities
- A 30-day follow up on execution progress and make adjustments
Personal Branding Premium ( Monthly Coaching Session): $1,400 (Fee for first month. Subsequent months will enjoy reduced fees)
Sign up and enjoy our introductory pricing
What you’ll get:
- Develop a 90-day Personal Branding roadmap, including content topics and channel strategy
- Guidance on how to create engaging content and marketing assets
- Content review and feedback (email/phone calls combo, 2x/month)
- A bonus 30-day follow up on execution progress and make adjustments
Introductory pricing good through December 9, 2021. Contact us if you have any questions.
Why Content Marketing?
These days, we all need a content marketing calendar, regardless of what you sell, or size of your business.
We need content to drive our marketing messages and customer engagement through various channels: from blogs and emails to social media and podcast.
If you are a small business owner, you are probably the content owner. Or, you may have a small team who can help you with creating, posting, monitoring and analyzing your content distribution results.
How do you ensure everyone gets onto the same page? By creating a content marketing calendar could just be the answer.
How do you then create a robust content marketing calendar?
Let me share some Pro-Tips based on my own experience.
7 Pro-Tips for a Robust Content Marketing Calendar
1. Identify themes for the year across your business
These are topics or news that you are passionate about following. You want to share them with your audience consistently because they speak to your brand and what you care about. They can be organic, unplanned, fresh content that you want to share, repost, or have deeper conversations with.
2. Align your content with product launches, major sales and marketing events
These are priorities for your business and can benefit from planning. Use a monthly calendar to plan out how you want to launch these activities. You want to give enough time to stage and distribute them in various social media and digital marketing channels in a coordinated effort. For example, one of my initiatives this year is to talk about “Becoming an Entrepreneur.” I will be creating a series of blogs and social media posts in a story-telling fashion that will lead to several workshops that I will be launching in the spring of 2021.
3. Assign content developers and owners
Typically, in a small-team environment, you may be the content owner and developer. It could work to your benefit because you own the brand. You would want to own your voice and represent the real person behind your product. Given enough planning and execution time, this task is not as daunting as it sounds.
4. Plan content details a month or two in advance
With planning, you have a bit more time to create or find images for your blogs, social media posts, or do a video production. For examples, I use Ubersuggest to find key words to be included in my blog post. Google Keyword Planner is another great tool on keyword search. I love using Unsplash.com to find ready-images that I can use for my blogs and social media posts, as long as you give credits to the photographers. Canva.com is another option to use your own images to create great social media and digital content.
5. Be intentional and consistent with your posting
Don’t post and run. If your intention is to engage in that channel, e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest, don’t just post your content and run. Make sure you spend time engaging consistently with other people’s posts besides those of your own, and give your deepest thoughts to what they say. You will be surprised how much the engagement strengthens the relationships within your community before you can start doing social selling.
6. Repurpose content to extend reach
You don’t have to create different images or content for different media. For example, your Instagram post can be shared in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest with a slight modification to the copy, tone, and images. Because each medium has its own personality and demographics, you want to maximize your reach and exposure, tuned to the channel’s user makeup and its strength.
7. Monitor and review your channel and Google analytics
Check in with analytics offered by each social media channel. Also review your Google analytics to monitor overall traffic from your digital media assets. See where your efforts are giving you most gains. Monitor indicators that make sense based on objectives of your websites (e.g., ecommerce vs. non-ecommerce). Then modify your content based on data, your business and marketing goals.
By following these tips, you can develop your own content marketing roadmap with consistency, investing time and energy in the right places. And that’s an important step in making your marketing sustainable in this digital age.
** An edited version of this article will appear in the Los Altos Town Crier Business Matters Column **
2020 was a tough year in terms of helping clients survive the storm brought by the pandemic.
Because of my work as a business advisor for the San Mateo Small Business Development Center (SBDC), I was able to lift many clients up and created amazing impact for many small businesses.
Collectively, clients were able to access relief fund at state and federal levels. As a result, they were able to keep their business afloat. Some were able to pivot online or plan an exit strategy.
Total relief fund accessed: $125K
Total incremental sales achieved: $400K
Total jobs retained: 14
Total new jobs created: 8
Phenomenal, I could not be happier!
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