A FEMALE entrepreneur who’s built three multi-million dollar firms from scratch has shared her five top tips for women looking to succeed in business.
Joi-Lin Hunt, 47, first trained as an attorney and set up her own law practice called The Hunt Law Group, and an income tax franchise called Caliente Xpress Tax Service in 2007.
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Hunt grew up in Los Angeles, California and now lives in Orlando, Florida.
In 2011, she branched out into hair extensions and ended up owning five salons in Houston, Texas called Super Weave Xpress, with a further five franchises in Louisiana.
Her hair extensions have even featured in a Justin Bieber music video.
Hunt further diversified in 2017 when she co-founded a car dealership and sold them on finance to customers.
The dealership was wildly successful, and went on to grow into a multi-million dollar business in less than two years.
The mother-of-one, who calls herself an entrepreneur’s “Business Bestie,” now runs coaching courses to help others trying to create and scale their firms.
Giving her advice to budding female entrepreneurs, Hunt said: “There is no course or one thing that is going to make you successful in business.
“Business is hard and it’s going to make you want to quit before it starts paying off. It’s going to take everything out of you. And there will be plenty of ups and downs.
“There will be growth – sometimes it’ll feel like you’re printing money. At other times things will be slow and you’ll be losing money.
“But if you can stick at it and immerse yourself in the industry you’re in so you master it, then the rewards will come.”
1. BE BETTER
I’m black and female, so I’ve got to be 10 times as good as everyone else. I’m a double minority and my dad would say that ‘life isn’t fair and you have to fight 10 times harder to succeed.’ My dad was one of the first black kids that went to a desegregated school in the 1950s. He’d say ‘anything that sets you back, don’t complain, you need to find a way to get through it.’
I had a teacher at school who was always on me for any minor mistake. I told dad and he said ‘Don’t complain, you are going to come across people like this in your life. So you need to find a way through it, otherwise you’re destined to fail.’ That’s a key lesson that he instilled in me and I apply to my businesses.
There will always be problems. If you want to succeed, you can’t expect an easy ride. Instead, you need to see how you can get through it. Know that it’s not going to take you out. You need to fight to be recognized.
2. ALWAYS BE UNIQUE
As a woman, how you view situations and who you are is a positive. I think every great business needs a woman’s touch to make it successful. We pay attention to detail and sometimes we are a little better with customers, and we bring balance to everything.
When I set up a hair extensions business I saw that all the competition were appointment only and weren’t open on Mondays. So I made sure our business took walk-ins and opened seven days a week.
I did the same when we were selling secondhand cars. We used to stock cooler cars like Dodge Chargers, Nissan Maximas, and Buick LaCrosses that people actually wanted to drive, and sold them at similar prices to more boring cars other dealerships had.
3. YOU HAVE TO BE THE BEST AT WHATEVER YOU DO
Become an expert in your industry – whatever it is. And understand that it’s always changing, so you need to innovate too. You have to be on your Ps and Qs all time.
When I was an attorney, I was dating my then-husband and he was buying hair extensions and selling them. He wanted my opinion, and once I invested in business I became a student and wanted to know everything.
I went to conferences, classes, and I was around people more experienced than me, so I was learning from them. That way, I mastered the industry. It was the same with cars. My ex-husband was really into cars, but we lost around $500,000 trying to buy and sell cars because we bought a lot of vehicles and it turned out we didn’t have the titles.
From that, we learned all the things you’re not meant to do. We started a dealership afterwards, and then we knew what to do. We ended up buying and selling cars to people who struggled to get financed because of Covid and the banks wouldn’t lend them money. So we created our own finance agreements with them so they could get the cars directly from us without involving a bank.
It made us unique amongst our competition. You just needed to show some ID, make a downpayment, and it’s your car. That was a major selling point and made us really successful.
4. TAKE TIME FOR SELF CARE
Nine out of 10 times in business, you are going to be a wife and mother as well as an entrepreneur. That’s a lot of balls to juggle, so you have to have some time for self care. Whether that’s working out or going to a nail salon, you need to relax because running a business and a household takes a lot out of you.
It’ll be especially intense at the beginning when you have to do a lot of the jobs in the business yourself. When I first started my salon, I was working 10 to 12 hour days, then going home and spending time with my son. We later went up to five salons in Houston and five more franchises throughout Louisiana.
By that stage I’d delegated more of the roles to other people, but I was still in the businesses every day, making sure they were running properly. To stop it becoming too much, I had to take care of myself.
5. THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
Don’t let anyone’s expectations or stereotypes limit what you can achieve. Just go and get it. The reality is that business is hard, but it’s not impossible. So be tough and understand that you are not going to be an overnight success. It’s going to take years and years of ups and downs, and that’s just a part of the process.
You build your strengths in the ups and downs – they are preparing you to handle everything. To start with, your expectations in life are probably similar to what you saw growing up. Early on in business, I stumbled across people making what I thought was a good annual salary in a month. I thought if I earned that then I’d be made. Then I got introduced to manifestation and vision boards where I’d map out what I wanted and it took my belief to a whole new level.
I’m always telling myself I want to earn this money in a month, have this car, or this house, or this holiday. Set yourself goals and make it clear in your mind what you’re working towards. Every house I’ve ever owned, I’ve spent six months driving around looking at it and imagined myself living in it. It sounds crazy, but you have to ask yourself ‘why can’t that be me with the massive house?’ That’s the mindset I took on.