Ashley's Story: Business Beware

Today's story comes to us from Ashley, of Southern Florida. With a little bit of initial resistance, some persistence, and a lot of hard work, she found herself running a very unique B2B service that she had no idea she would ever have been so passionate about. The planets aligned for Ashley, all right - but in quite a different way than she thought they would.

Thanks for sharing your story, Ashley! And to the readers: what do you think of this concept? Have you heard of anything like it before? Interested to hear your feedback!

"I had absolutely no idea that I would be doing what I'm doing now with Business Beware. I had this whole idea of where I saw myself or where I would be working, but it's funny how life takes you on a different path even when you don't fully realize it.

I headed out to Los Angeles to work with a production crew on a documentary because I seriously thought that was what I wanted to do, and I jumped at the opportunity. Right before I headed out there, my Dad and I had discussed an idea about creating a website for business owners to use, in the same way that customers use the Better Business Bureau. He has been a business owner for over 30 years, and wanted something like that to be available to business owners. At the time I thought it was a good idea but didn't fully grasp the concept since I was not a small business owner, nor had I really worked with a small business yet. So that was in the back of my mind while I was in LA.

Things didn't turn out quite like I had hoped or planned with the whole documentary idea. I called my Dad and talked with him about working for the family businesses for a little bit to get some experience before jumping into a job, so I packed up and moved to southern Florida. We started talking about the concept of the website again, and after working with the family businesses for a few months, I was able to fully understand exactly why this site needed to come into existence.

I had lots of run-ins with problem customers that just could not be pleased, saw me as a young person who had no idea what I was doing, and didn't give me the time of day when I treated them better than I even should have. So we sat down and started working on the concept, and that is when BusinessBeware.Biz was born. While it all seemed like it was golden, I quickly realized I needed to build this website when I had no idea what I was doing; I'd taken only one web class in college. So after visiting the bookstore almost every week and spending many long nights and weekends teaching myself how to set it up and build the back-end database, we finally launched the site in late May 2008. We had no idea how people would react to it, but we quickly learned that the concept was a hit with business owners and they were thrilled it existed.

Since then, the site has changed quite a bit as I learned more and more. We have changed the site and bended with the wind in response to feedback, and even launched a new service we call our 'beware letter' that helps business owners collect from customers who won't pay, without charging a percentage. To be able to help business owners nationwide everyday is more than words can describe. In this journey that I have taken to get to where I am now, I've realized that I have a passion for learning about businesses and why they started, how they started, what they do, and how I can help in any way with young entrepreneurs trying to make it.

I didn't realize it at the time but things in my life were setting me up to lead me in this direction, building an amazing passion for Business Beware that I never knew existed. There were many times I pushed it aside, thinking I needed to concentrate on other things, but it kept falling right back in my lap, so I knew that it was something I was meant to do. Learn from everything you do, take what you learn and apply it to the next thing. Never stop learning and listening. When the wind blows learn to bend with it because if you don't, you will break. Learn from those older and wiser; they know what they're talking about. And absolutely never give up."

Make sure to check out the Business Beware website, radio show, Facebook, and Twitter to learn more about their service.