We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Monique Elwell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Monique , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

In 2018, my mother, whom I adored, was suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a year and a half to live. While still digesting that news, a few months later, she tripped over something and broke her pelvis. She was hospitalized. In the next few months, her bones started breaking even when she did something as simple as sneeze. The doctors. had missed her osteoporosis.

Mom was transferred to one of the top skilled nursing facilities here in Denver. She wasn’t well enough to advocate for herself. She was given wrong meds, was in constant, searing pain, was confused and anxious. I started working from her hospital. She told me taking my work calls from next to her bed helped her focus on what I was saying and not the pain. Sometimes, during the work day, I had to run errands to her doctor’s office or the pharmacy (which was across town.)

Since I run a company, I could work in weird locations and times (with some restrictions.) All I kept thinking was that if I had a real job, I would have been fired when I needed my salary the most.

One of my staff had something similar happen with her parents. We told her that she was amazing and that she was welcome to work odd hours and that if she needed us to support her through that period, we were there to help.

I very rarely ever pull the “female” card, but there is a reason why talented women flock toward small businesses and not large corporations. It the flexibility to be able to juggle work with those family emergencies with kids or parents, because let’s face it, no matter how “equal” we get, this burden, on average, falls on women.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Storyvine is a 12 year old business. We have a video production technology platform that really is unique. Our clients–mostly pharmaceuticals and healthcare companies, but also non-profits, advocacy orgs, government agencies and education–use our technology to film customer testimonials, thought leadership and personalized sales videos. The videos produced by our system sit in between professional and user generated video, adhering to all the brand standards and regulatory compliance, but they are still real stories, told by real people, authentically.

We’re pretty proud of our new AI products. Using AI, we can take ANY video interview (Storyvine or not) and with the press of a button, produce blog posts, IG posts, Pull Quotes, hashtags, transcripts and more. It’s like having an agency at the press of a button!

We’re also commercializing products to translate videos, create AI Avatars and personas.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Almost missing payroll (or missing payroll) is pretty ubiquitous in the start up world, especially in the first few years. Recently, someone running a small business told me they were at that point. Here is the advice I gave them.

Foundational stuff:
* Develop strong relationships not just with your customer’s day-to-day person, but their finance person.
* Develop trust with your vendors. You do this by ALWAYS paying them on time. And if you can’t, TELL THEM you will be late WELL BEFORE you will be late. This is critical. I can’t tell you how many times my clients due date has come and gone and THEN they say they’ll be late, but only after I ask.
* Be the person who does what they said they are going to do and if you can’t, then apologize profusely. Sadly, this is completely lost in today’s ghosting culture.

When you foresee that you’ll miss payroll/aka When you’re looking down the barrel of a gun:
* Offer discounts to a limited (or not so limited number) of new and existing customers if they pay soon.
* Ask existing customers to pay early.
* Look at credit options. Entrepreneurs have a LOT more options than they did before. Options include:
— you can get more credit cards (unfortunately, these come with personal guarantees.)
— Lenders, like Kabbage, can offer you Lines of Credit at screamingly high interest rates.
— call your local Economic development corporation. This is usually run by a government entity. The Denver one is VERY good. They might be able to recommend resources you didn’t know were available to you.
— call regional banks. A LOT of them. (Shout out to Huntington bank who have been a joy to work with and provided us with debt at very reasonable interest rates.)
— Look at SBA loans, and other types of government loans.
— “Lend your company your salary’ with interest. Don’t just give it to the company for free.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Crossing the Chasm – The quintessential tech company business bible. We learned that Storyvine crossed the chasm quickly in the most conservative industry there is: Pharma. This provided us a framework to assess other industries.

The eMyth – a must read for anyone looking to start a business. It talks you through how to identify roles and responsibilities and grow in a messy environment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.storyvine.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/storyvineinc/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryvineInc

Image Credits

The Colorado Companies to watch.