One Entrepreneur's Journey: Erin Lozano of Green Sherpa

This is part of a series called "One Entrepreneur's Journey," where I'm talking with solo entrepreneurs about their successes (and failures) along the path of entrepreneurship.

In this interview, I spoke with Erin Lozano of Green Sherpa, a web-based cash flow management and budgeting solution that helps people make better financial decisions about how to save and where they spend their income.

Tell me a little about your business and how you got your start as an entrepreneur.

I have a company called Green Sherpa, and it's a software company.  We make a personal cash flow management program.  It tracks financial history, helps create a budget and financial plan, and helps facilitate financial conversation. 

Green Sherpa was born out of my almost fourteen years now of what I call "cash flow analysis."  I would meet with couples mainly.  Almost 100% of the time, women would hire me because they were going through some kind of life change, so they were getting married, having a baby, going back to school, wanting to buy a house.  There was some kind of financial impetus for them to take a look at their finances for sometimes the first time or feeling like they were in some kind of state of chaos and needing to make some sort of life change.

I created a process that I would walk people through and then help them have more meaningful conversation around their money with their loved ones.  Out of my practice, I developed this very specific process, and we turned that process into a software program.

How did you go from having this process to creating software around it?  That seems like it would have been an intimidating step.

Yes, you know, it actually came out of a coffee conversation with my best friend who has had a software company for the past fifteen years.  He and I had coffee two and a half years ago.  The conversation came out of me sharing that I had made a list of things that I wanted to do about eight years ago, and I had done everything on that list except for turn this process into either a software program or a workshop.  He said, "We should do that.  We should turn it into a software program."  He and I are 50-50 partners in Green Sherpa, and he, of course, brings the technical knowledge.  I bring the financial knowledge, and together we've co-created this.  It's definitely never something I would have done on my own.

It really speaks volumes for the value of connections.  You wouldn't necessarily equate what you were doing with this person who seems to be in a completely different industry.  Sometimes people have trouble connecting the dots.  You don't really realize how you're able to help each other and make new products and services out of those connections.

Exactly right, in fact, I write a column, and we're turning a lot of those articles into a book based on the idea of what I call "The Spiral Concept," which is if you talk to women entrepreneurs, they will tell you, "I did this because I had this conversation with this person, and they knew this person."  We are so connected to our community, and we reach out, and as far as I'm concerned, Green Sherpa gets done every day because of the people that are in my community and know someone who they think might be able to help.  It's such a female way of doing business.  We're not as linear in our drive.  We're more matrix-oriented.  We get there at the same rate as male counterparts, but the way that we get there is very different.  The way we get there is through relationships.  It's more community-supported.  I strongly believe in the value of connections.

At the beginning of your career, is that how you got your start, with people you knew?

The very first gift I ever asked for was a calculator, and I got a huge adding machine, and I still have it.  From a very early age, business and numbers always appealed to me.  I was a student at Berkley, and I was an anthropology major and studying patterns of behavior around commerce and trade was really my focus, but I was an anthropology major.  I took accounting classes, because I loved that and decided after college that I would just put it out there to people who knew me, "I don't have a CPA certification."  I was taking additional classes when I graduated in accounting and thinking, "Maybe I'll get my CPA certification," but really I just wanted people to know, "This is what I really love to do.  I love doing this forensic style of accounting.  I love going into really messy financial situations and cleaning it up and helping people create systems that they can see where they've spent and help them create better financial decisions for their future."  People would say, "You should go into financial planning," and I really decided that retirement planning and financial planning was just not my love.  My love was this forensic, detailed, get in the mess of it, and help people see the patterns of their behavior around money.  When I was in college, just talking to people about what I loved to do, I got ten clients.  That was the kickoff for me.

It's really interesting how you were able to stick with what you loved, that very specific niche, and not be influenced by those around you or by feeling compelled to have a label, like becoming a CPA or financial planner.

It is.  It really is a testimony for "do what you love, the money will follow."  Figure out what you really love to do and then just do that, no matter what.  Just stick to it.  Stay focused.  Stay passionate about what you do all the way through, and it will pay off.

And, I think we all have a tendency to want to cubbyhole people, just so we can compartmentalize things, but breaking out of that is probably one of the things that has led to your success, being able to not conform to those categories and create your own category.

Exactly right, by not being labeled, I definitely didn't go down any of those roads.  I was able to fill a niche.  I found something that no one else was paying attention to.

What do you think you're getting right as an entrepreneur?

Staying on track.  It's kind of like that feeling I had in college.  There are always going to be people who compare us to our competitors as a way of discouragement.  There are always going to be the naysayers.  What I think we've done really well is knowing that we hit on something two and a half years ago, and we're going to stay true to that.

Also, building a company and product that will be viable on its own.  We have a very, very low number of subscribers that we need in order to be profitable.  It's always been part of our DNA to build something that was profitable and sustainable.

We've done a really good job at staying on track with who we are, what we're building, the niche that we're filling, and staying true to who our demographic is.

The other thing I think we did really, really well and was a really smart move was to test our market, because we certainly started going down one road and decided, "No, that's not a viable market space."

What would be your advice for new solo entrepreneurs?

Most entrepreneurs have a higher comfort level for risk than most employee-minded folks do, but there are a lot of employee-minded folks who have great ideas.  They get started with a great idea and end up feeling incredibly discouraged and frustrated and uncomfortable a lot of the time.  Test your own gauge.  Test your own comfort level with risk.  Be really honest about your skill set.  Do something that really falls within that sweet spot of what you do really well and just stick with that.

You can be goal-oriented.  You can be driven, but if you're not passionate about what you're doing and you're not in that sweet spot of your skill set, you're going to always feel like you're picking yourself up by your bootstraps and doing it anyway.  The minute I feel that, I think, "Something's not quite right here."  Either I'm doing something I'm not very good at, and I need to ask for help, or I'm doing something I just really shouldn't be doing.