Brian Thompson chats with Conrad Ruiz, the founder and CEO of Well Aware, a company dedicated to helping business owners reclaim their time. With a background in biomedical engineering and consulting, Conrad blends technical insight with an entrepreneurial spirit to help business owners simplify complex operations and master time management. He shares his personal journey into entrepreneurship, which started with a medical crisis, and offers practical advice on creating efficient systems and finding balance in business.

For Conrad, a mission-driven business emphasizes the "why" behind the work. Once a business has a clear sense of its “why,” it can use its resources — time, money, and systems — toward fulfilling that mission.

“Being a mission-driven business is recognizing wholeheartedly why you’re doing what you’re doing and what that impact is for,” Conrad said.

Conrad explained that having a clear “why” is like having a compass to direct a business’s decisions and actions. By staying focused on the mission, entrepreneurs can avoid distractions and stay aligned on their goals.

“The why is the compass north,” Conrad said. “If you find yourself going in a million different directions, you’re ultimately going nowhere.”

Conrad’s business, Well Aware, helps very busy people buy back their time. He encouraged business owners to invest in affordable solutions, such as virtual assistants or scalable systems, to free up time.

“We decide with them how they want to approach this mercantile equation of money versus time,” Conrad said. “Let’s go ahead and make the equations easy.”

One of Conrad’s key recommendations is to perform a time audit to identify where your time is truly spent. He suggests looking at three key initiatives: time spent marketing, time spent selling, and time spent delivering services. Once you see those three, then you can look at how finance (money) and administration (time) unpin them.

“I love auditing on the basis of time,” Conrad said. “There’s a three-legged stool of marketing, sales, and service delivery, and from there, the underpinnings are finance and administration.”

• Conrad Ruiz: LinkedIn

• Well Aware: Website, LinkedIn

• Brian Thompson Financial: Website, Newsletter, Podcast

• Follow Brian Thompson Online: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Forbes

Brian Thompson, JD/CFP, is a tax attorney and Certified Financial Planner® who specializes in providing comprehensive financial planning to LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs who run mission-driven businesses. The Mission Driven Business podcast was born out of his passion for helping social entrepreneurs create businesses with purpose and profit.

On the podcast, Brian talks with diverse entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Listeners hear stories of experiences, strength, and hope and get practical advice to help them build businesses that might just change the world, too.

Brian Thompson chats with Lauren Tilden, host of the Making Good podcast and a marketing coach dedicated to helping creative small business owners who want to get out of their own way and start making an impact. After 8 years in corporate marketing, Lauren left her corporate career and began her winding journey to owning and supporting small businesses. She offers insights into defining one’s ideal customer, creating goal-oriented marketing plans, and staying consistent with your message.

Growing up, Lauren felt she had to choose between making a living and doing meaningful work. But once she entered the small business world, she realized she could achieve both purpose and profit by being intentional and putting her values first.

“I always sort of felt like I had to choose between making money ... and doing something I cared about," Lauren said. “It wasn’t really until I got into the small business space that I realized you can do both at the same time.”

Impactful marketing starts with a well-defined goal. Lauren advised small business owners to pinpoint what they need from their marketing efforts, such as increasing brand awareness, generating sales, or expanding a specific client base. Knowing your goal can help you create a campaign that helps you achieve it.

“The first place that most people overlook is to get really, really clear on what your goal is,” Lauren said. “Marketing can do so many different things for us. If I didn't know my goal, I could end up spending my time all wrong.”

Instead of solely focusing on servicing a niche, Lauren encouraged entrepreneurs to understand their ideal customer’s motivations, challenges, and values. By getting clear on these psychological details, business owners can create messaging that resonates with target customers on a deeper level.

“What unites the people that buy from me and that are part of my community are their psychographics and what they care about,” Lauren said. “I know my ideal customer super well.”

Small business owners are busy, which is why it’s especially important to realistically assess the time you have available to dedicate to marketing. Lauren advised entrepreneurs to create achievable marketing plans they can follow consistently, even if it means starting slow and with just one or two platforms.

“When you set yourself up for a plan you can’t actually stick to given your bandwidth, that is a recipe … for feeling bad about yourself and your ability to follow through,” Lauren said. “There is no upside to biting off more than you can chew, so create a marketing plan based on the time you have available each week.”

• Making Good Podcast with Lauren Tilden

• Lauren Tilden: Website, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn

• Brian Thompson Financial: Website, Newsletter, Podcast

• Follow Brian Thompson Online: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Forbes

Brian Thompson, JD/CFP, is a tax attorney and Certified Financial Planner® who specializes in providing comprehensive financial planning to LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs who run mission-driven businesses. The Mission Driven Business podcast was born out of his passion for helping social entrepreneurs create businesses with purpose and profit.

On the podcast, Brian talks with diverse entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Listeners hear stories of experiences, strength, and hope and get practical advice to help them build businesses that might just change the world, too.