Back to small business

I didn’t expect that getting better at helping small businesses would eventually take me away from them.

But that’s how my career unfolded. I started in online marketing, learned statistics because I wanted to be a better media buyer, and kept learning whatever helped me do the work better. That led to coding, bigger opportunities, and eventually a role as head of marketing science working with large national corporations.

It was the kind of progression I’d worked toward. But somewhere along the way, the budgets kept getting bigger while the impact I felt I was making got smaller. I could spend a lot of time answering a difficult question and still be far removed from whether anything changed because of it.

Today, I run Zaldivar Labs, where I work with clients and build my own products and businesses. And part of that work has brought me back to the people I started out helping.

I met Dawn when I was at The REC Lab. That connection eventually led to working with San Diego Partners for Economic Prosperity, or PEP, through its El Camino program. Zaldivar Labs is the digital and technology partner, helping local business owners with how customers find them, buy from them, and stay connected.

This time, there’s grant funding behind the work. I get to help owners who couldn’t normally afford my services.

That’s the part that means the most to me.

I’ve watched family and friends miss opportunities because they didn’t know how something worked. They didn’t know what was available, which questions to ask, or where to start. I think about them when I do this work. I think about what a timely explanation or the right kind of help might have made possible.

Many of the owners in this program are Latino. I can sit with them, work in English or Spanish, and help them understand their options. Teaching and mentoring have always been among my favorite parts of my career. Here, I get to stay involved as we put those decisions into practice.

And I want some of that help to reach beyond the businesses in the program.

Because if you own a small business, or you’re thinking about starting one, you’ll face many of the same decisions.

Do you need a website right now? Should you spend money on advertising? Are people struggling to find you, or are they finding you and leaving without buying? If sales go up after a change, how do you know whether the change helped? And how do you answer any of that when your records are a spreadsheet, some phone calls, and what you remember from last week?

Those are the questions this series will work through.

We’ll follow real decisions with real constraints: limited money, busy owners, imperfect information, and tools that still need someone to maintain them. I’ll explain what we notice, what we choose to do, and what happens afterward. When something doesn’t work, or the evidence isn’t clear, that belongs in the story too.

Along the way, I want to help you recognize problems before you spend money solving the wrong one. Understand what to ask someone offering you a service. Find useful information in the records you already have. Choose a change you can manage, and know what to check before making the next one.

You won’t need a background in statistics or technology to follow along. Explaining that part is my job.

I started with small businesses, and the work took me further than I expected. Now I get to bring that experience back, with funding that lets more people benefit from it. Writing about it is a way to take that opportunity a little further.

We’ll start with a food truck, a business listing with the wrong hours, and a question worth asking before you pay anyone to change anything:

What’s already working, and how would you know?