Tri-County Vanguard

Digby entreprene­urs encouragin­g others through YouTube series

- AMANDA DOUCETTE DIGBYCOURI­ER.CA

Judy Green and Yuki Inoue Matsunaga are two Digby-based entreprene­urs who understand the challenges of starting your own business.

Through a new YouTube series called Digby Busi Talk, they hope to break down the barriers of entreprene­urship and inspire others to take the path less travelled of starting your own business.

“We hope to give other’s ideas that they can think about and use to benefit themselves,” says Judy Green, owner of Raw n’ Green.

Green has been operating Raw n’ Green for about three and a half years. She teaches people how to make lasting life changes that allow them to achieve their goals. Green is also an Amazon Internatio­nal author, a wellness educator and a public speaker who specialize­s in emotional freedom techniques (EFT), mind hacking and whole food plantbased nutrition.

Inoue Matsunaga has operated Ordinary Family Food & Life for six years. She offers bulk buying of healthy, organic foods not readily sourced in the Digby area. She also offers cooking classes such as Digby Style Kimuchi (Kimchi), Ying-Yang soup, Miso dip and more.

The pair hopes to draw an audience of all ages to their YouTube series, but they hope to especially appeal to youth who may be curious about entreprene­urship.

“Hopefully they’ll consider it an option if they know more about it because it is a bit of an unusual route and can seem intimidati­ng

Visit their websites here:

Yuki Inoue Matsunaga: www.ordinaryfa­milyfoodli­fe.ca Judy Green: www.rawngreen.com Digby Busi Talk: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=t1h4dm7ayc­o

at first,” says Green.

Although the pair have been running their business for a few years now, they still run into challenges and are still learning as they go.

“Things change so fast and you have to keep up with that to be successful,” said Inoue Matsunaga.

Inoue Matsunaga has been busy practising new marketing and self-promotion skills.

“The market is small here but its diverse, so you have to keep trying to expand to all the diverse groups to be successful,” she adds.

They’ve released three videos so far and in the upcoming months they hope to bring in special guests in the community to guest star in the videos.

They don’t plan any specific topic to talk about in each episode – what they do is get together an hour before they film and start talking about challenges their facing and new ideas they’ve come up with and just go from there.

“Once we get together and start talking, it just starts flowing. I’m much more creative when I can bounce ideas off of someone else,” says Green.

She admits that’s one of the challenges solo business owners face, because everything in the business is done by one person.

“I won’t call it a struggle, but it’s definitely one of the challenges I have to work past.”

Although there are challenges in running a business solo, there’s also a lot of benefits to it.

By working on your own the pair both agree it gives them a more personable approach to their customers.

“I really enjoy it because it’s a great way to connect with people

 ?? AMANDA DOUCETTE ?? Judy Green and Yuki Inoue Matsunaga are entreprene­urs in Digby who hope to inspire others with their new YouTube series called Digby Busi Talk. Although their businesses are very different, they talk about the challenges and benefits of being a business owner in rural Nova Scotia.
AMANDA DOUCETTE Judy Green and Yuki Inoue Matsunaga are entreprene­urs in Digby who hope to inspire others with their new YouTube series called Digby Busi Talk. Although their businesses are very different, they talk about the challenges and benefits of being a business owner in rural Nova Scotia.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada