Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Latanyua Robinson, Founder of LATROBE LLC, located in Marion, AR, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

LATROBE LLC's mission is Economic Empowerment through Education + Work Experience + Entrepreneurship. We operate training and transactional businesses to teach employers how to improve the essential skills in their workforce by investing in their most valuable resources, using our transformative employee to entrepreneur to employer model.

Tell us about yourself

My background is in industrial engineering and manufacturing. After two decades in corporate, I started LATROBE LLC's consultancy to provide for my personal work-life balance as a wife and a mother in 2010. The original business model focused on assisting local manufacturers and fabricators to compete globally by using existing machining capacity more effectively and efficiently to improve operating costs. Along the way, the projects moved towards a focus on workforce competencies and training. In 2019, the LATROBE business evolved into a consulting firm that operates transactional businesses to provide livable wage job opportunities and development.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

As an employer, our measure of success happens during the exit interview. We ask a single question: Are you leaving LATROBE better than you came? When the answer is YES due to an employee going back to school, starting a business, or leaving for career advancement, our work is done. We are really proud of some of our success stories that we've been tracking since 2020.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

One of the hardest lessons of owning a business is learning that you cannot be involved in every facet of the business. Delegating and developing others to replace you is a game changer.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. You can't scale and grow the business if you are the business. Hire others as soon as you are financially able.
  2. Have multiple/adjacent revenue streams to offset different business cycles.
  3. Don't be afraid to fail...just learn to fail fast and adjust!

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Our hope is that when more people learn about the heart work of LATROBE LLC, they will want to partner with us to provide value-added packaging, distribution, or delivery services that create more job opportunities and commercial development in our local community or to use our proven employee to entrepreneur to employer model of training services to duplicate economic empowerment in other communities.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.latrobellc.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LatrobeDSP
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LTR_Latrobe_Mfg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/latrobe-llc/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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