Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 17. From Sheep Ranch to Amazon: Mastering the Scrappy-Sophisticated Spectrum with Tina Dao

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17. From Sheep Ranch to Amazon: Mastering the Scrappy-Sophisticated Spectrum with Tina Dao · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy but Successful. This show where I sit down with your favorite consultants and we take a comedic route through their life, find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of the day, butterflies taste with their feet. Useless information, but also pretty gross. Today I'm joined by my friend, Tina Dao. She's the founder of Liberated Leaders. It's a boutique fractional COO firm. And before that, she's got some very impressive titles at some very big companies - Amazon, Fitbit, and Walmart. Tina, we know you're successful today. But the question we have for you, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side, or more on the scrappy side?
• 0:54
  Well, Jack, how do you define sophisticated?
• 1:00
  Okay, I've never got a return question like that. This is perfect. Sophistication is everything's a completely built out process and you don't send things out when they're 50% done and you roll out offerings after thorough testing and stuff like that.
• 1:16
  I would say I am successful because I understand the tension between scrappy and sophisticated and that at different stages for a company or a product or even an industry, you need to move between those two polarities and know how to move up and down. And that is why I would say that I'm successful and have been able to work in startups to Fortune One companies.
• 1:48
  Okay, so the perfect middle ground between the two, understanding both sides. I like it. Very cool. Take us back to the beginning. Where'd you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 2:00
  Yes. So I grew up in Western Colorado and I was born into an entrepreneurial family. My dad was a serial entrepreneur and my grandfather, he was a sheep rancher. Growing up in Western Colorado, I had bum lambs as a child, meaning their mother rejected them and so we would raise them by hand. I would name them and put doll clothes on them. But that is a business, right? Farming and ranching is a business and he was a second generation from his father. So I grew up being from a family of entrepreneurs.
• 2:39
  Wow. And those aren't just your average, like, I made a business, whatever. Those are like blue collar, getting hands dirty, farm entrepreneurs too.
• 3:04
  Exactly. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. The business that was most successful was an automotive repair shop. And then he ended up having other entities around it - a machine shop, a body shop, and a towing business. He was doing that in the 90s before people even talked about having a center and then getting the adjacent kind of services. But all of them he built from scratch.
• 3:53
  Okay, this is essentially a vertically integrated repair shop.
• 3:57
  Correct. The towing company he bought from someone else, but the main entity, it was called Precision Engineering and Automotive, that main thing was started from scratch, grew, and then he added the vertical integration of a couple of the areas.
• 4:22
  No. As a matter of fact, my brother and I talk about this sometimes because I'm the oldest, my brother's two years younger, and we're Gen Xers. Our parents, for the most part, boomers and people who had that blue collar background and had built their lives and businesses had the idea that going to college and having a white collar job was going to be a better life. My dad would not show my brother how to work on cars because he said, I want you to use your brain rather than your body. So we now have a shortage in the trades and in things like field service repair. I heard the term "new collar" for the first time recently. You have to be always learning, always have some technical savvy because that's just the world.
• 5:31
  All the college, white collar positions are at risk in some way or form. But the trades are not only facing a huge shortage and a need - they're also safer in many ways in terms of having good paying jobs and positions.
• 7:14
  It's funny because pre-ChatGPT, the conversations were always like, the long-haul truck driver's the first to go once AI figures that out. It has swung the complete opposite direction - college itself and anything that requires experience in college stuff, you could get 60% from AI pretty quickly. We're both consultants, we're both fractional - there's always the thought in the back of the head of, okay, this is the business plan, it makes a lot of sense, for now.
• 7:57
  Yeah, it's quite interesting. I teach a couple of classes at Lenore Ryan University, just as an adjunct. And part of what I'm bringing into the classroom is the most important thing that you need to learn at college is learn how to learn and resiliency. You are going to have to reinvent yourself so many times. And that is going to be the most important thing you can take out of your whole experience.
• 8:43
  Yeah. Okay, so let's go back. Dad's a serial entrepreneur. Are you starting off with a lemonade stand? Are you selling candy in school or anything like that?
• 9:04
  Yes. I mean, I was definitely pre-10 years old figuring out how could I make money doing something I knew how to do. I liked to cook and to bake. My dad guided hunters during hunting season in Western Colorado - you have Texans and Californians flying in on their private jets. What I came up with was that while he cooked for them in camp, he needed things like desserts, and he would pay me to make cupcakes and other things that were something he could take with him and be part of the meal.
• 10:29
  And I did the whole thing - I earned an allowance. So if I needed more money for my materials before I delivered my product, I would ask him if I could get an advance so that I could buy my materials. Then, by the time I was 10, I was babysitting neighborhood kids. By the time I was 12, I was cleaning houses. By the time I was 12, I was like, well, I have enough now I can buy my own clothes.
• 11:08
  Wow, that's impressive, especially at 12. This is all under the table cash, I'm assuming. Even then, in the 80s, you could not work a W-2 legal job till you were 16. So it was all cash side stuff. About six months before I was 16, I had my eyeballs on an Italian restaurant I wanted to work in. I started going in, asking them for an application and checking in letting them know I would be 16 in a few months. Right around when I was 16, I got my first kitchen job.
• 12:12
  Okay. Okay, so this is a very sophisticated scrappiness already because you've got a bunch of things going, but you're already understanding cost of goods sold versus revenue, getting the advance on some pastries or whatever, and you have a plan. Why did you pick that one restaurant?
• 13:11
  It was locally owned. It was close to my dad's shop - easy walking distance from my high school. I would be able to get to work relatively easily if my car didn't work or if I didn't have a car.
• 13:42
  Okay, again, there's a lot of strategy coming in here too. Do you make any big purchase in high school years?
• 14:12
  In high school years I did. My first couple of cars were cars that my dad let me use - he had an automotive repair shop so he had cars that people would leave. My first big purchase, I think I was 17. It was a car, only a couple of years old - about $14,000. So I went to my grandfather, who was the retired rancher. I told him what I had to trade in, how much money I had to put down, how much I needed as a loan. I proposed that he would loan me the money at whatever the going interest rate was at the time, and I would give him monthly payments. And he loaned me the money because he knew I was very responsible.
• 15:19
  Yeah, you came to him with a term sheet.
• 15:26
  I came in with a term sheet. Yes, exactly.
• 15:32
  That's wild. So then you buy the car, you've now got debt. How are the grades in high school while you're doing all this?
• 16:06
  I graduated high school with a 2.0 because I worked all the time. My math teachers would be so mad because I was always within one or two periods of the line where they would have to automatically fail me because I'd missed so much and wouldn't turn in the homework. And then I'd come in and get 98s, 99s, 100s on the test. But they had to give me a C because I hadn't turned in the homework. My hardest classes - the ones that didn't have what I consider to be filler work - were the only ones that I would get A's in most of the time. My parents tried to talk to me, but I didn't want to do the dumbed down work. I definitely wanted to go to college, but my parents' businesses weren't to where they could send me anywhere.
• 17:34
  College was much better because it was much more like: there's this final paper, there's this test. There's not a whole bunch of stuff to bulk up your grade. I was like, I can produce the final product. I'll do that. Okay. Okay, so what's the first job after college?
• 19:06
  I went into the US Navy. I was an electronics technician. I took the ASVAB - you could get a max score of a hundred. I got like a 98 on it and aced the math. Based on your scores, they offered you jobs. One of them was an electronics technician, which was a four-year enlistment plus a two-year extension. When I called my dad from the MEP station in Denver and told him the three things they were offering, he said he couldn't qualify for that when he was in because of security reasons and women weren't even allowed to do that job. As soon as he said that, I said, I'm in, I'm doing that one.
• 21:09
  I ended up doing four years because the first Bush administration had a major reduction in military forces. They put out fleet-wide that any electronics technicians coming up on their two-year extension period, if we put in a chit to our command, they would drop the extension. I was at Naval Air Station Norfolk. They had very, very few positions because they were reducing all the forces, so hardly anyone was getting advanced.
• 22:36
  Okay, but you're able to get out. And at this point, you've got a solid education, some college, and this very scrappy, very sophisticated and strategic mindset. You go into corporate. I imagine you crush it pretty early on. Well, I changed my major multiple times, but I was working full time in commercial construction and going to school at night. I was doing very well. But someone who comes in with that kind of energy - it can be threatening to the people who are already there. I had to learn how to navigate power dynamics, how to understand if I do this, who might I threaten, and what do I have on the other side of the equation. I really started learning that in commercial construction.
• 25:20
  This is coming up again from the beginning of the conversation - learning how to learn was something you were doing there. When I started Liberated Leaders, I had a name and a general idea, but I didn't know exactly what our market was. I knew I wanted an entrepreneurial, not solopreneurial venture because I like working in teams. I quickly navigated into: I want to help people like my parents, privately owned businesses. Privately owned businesses are the only place where conscious capitalism can truly live. Conscious capitalism means you believe capitalism is the best economic system, shareholders need a profit and should be rewarded for the risk they take, but when making decisions, you take all major stakeholder groups into account - customers, employees, suppliers, the community, the environment.
• 29:25
  My very first client was actually someone who had offered me a job before the final corporate job I had. I had gone to a very early stage startup as COO. Within a few weeks, the CEO asked me to do something illegal and I was like, no. The other company that had made me an offer became my first client. I also started the Center for Executive Coaching at the same time so that I could learn the business as well as take my skills to where someone was hiring me as a peer.
• 31:45
  Is there an early struggle? Like, do you have a version of ramen noodle dinners? Well, I had a very, very good paying job before. We moved to North Carolina so that my parents could live with us and we could help take care of them. My husband at the time wasn't working - kind of early retired. My sister-in-law lived with us, my nephew lived with us. So there was a full house dependent on my income. We had a quick family conversation about where we could cut. My husband went and started working again - and actually if he had not done that I don't know that I would have been able to start the company because of healthcare. So we're betting on me - it's not just me betting on me, it's a whole family dynamic.
• 34:09
  Yeah, okay. Do you do any scrappy solutions to get a gift for your husband during that time? Well, for a long time we were like, we don't really give each other gifts. We mainly do experiences. Now we've been married for more than 20 years and sometimes we both forget our anniversary and my mom reminds us. That's not what's most important for us.
• 35:15
  Okay. I've been in situations where I had to do a lot of handwritten cards with a lot of emotion for zero dollars. Okay, lightning round. Somebody's trying to schedule a meeting with you - are you saying hey I'm free Thursday afternoon, or sending a calendar link? It depends on who I'm talking to. If we're having a live conversation, I'm like, hey, I'm free on Thursday. If we're going back and forth, I'd say: here's my Thursday afternoon, and here's a calendar link in case you want to find another time.
• 36:34
  Similar question. Do you leave voicemails or texts? Text probably more. And if I'm dealing with someone who I know likes voicemails, I try to adapt to them - it's easier for me to adapt to lots of people than to ask a lot of people to adapt to me.
• 37:28
  Say your dog popped up in the background. Do you have a nickname for that? We put on our website that my dog Chewie is our chief dog officer. And my co-founder Alan's cat, Coco, is our chief cat officer. We have bios and everything.
• 38:20
  Two monitors - one really big one and then the one that's part of my laptop. And a lighting setup - we call it our scrappy studio. We have to set the lights up and take them down. But the reason for doing this kind of content - in reality, we crave human connection. Having things out there that people can start to differentiate - am I going to vibe with this person? - I think we can do that without a lot of super fancy production. We want to show that we have enough sophistication to always be producing some kind of quality outcome, no matter what the budget is.
• 39:42
  Okay, I like it. Take me inside the inbox. How many unread emails is too many? I would have said before that having 25 not at least triaged was very uncomfortable. Now I'm having to get more comfortable with something like 50. Give me one of your biggest pet peeves from the corporate world.
• 41:25
  I think it's that in the larger scheme of things, publicly traded companies - the shareholders are number one, full stop. HR is there to protect the company - basically a wing of the legal department. There's a subterfuge where we try to say "no, we care about people," and even though the humans saying it may really sincerely believe that and want that, the reality is the structure says that's not the case. Because if you just said the way things really are, a lot of people would get very disillusioned very quickly.
• 43:39
  Okay, that's a very sophisticated answer. We're close to wrapping up. The 60-second summary of Liberated Leaders: you're very adaptable, the goal is to understand the people doing the things to build a system that gets everything flowing smoothly. You're only signing on with clients if you can project out a 5 to 10x return on their investment. Give us your version. We do look for people to be able to get a five to 10x return on their investment, and through that, they're going to know themselves more deeply. They're not only going to get a return financially - they're going to start to find more joy in their life and their business. Not because we're guaranteeing it, but we're going to help facilitate them and the group of humans they have assembled to do that for themselves.
• 45:18
  Okay, this is great. We barely got into your value gap analysis. Higher returns and more joy. Sign me up.
• 45:33
  Higher returns and more delight. Exactly.
• 45:35
  That's awesome. Tina, thank you so much for coming on. Give us anything you want to promote. One of the things I will say is that we do love speaking. What we're trying to do is spread the word on conscious capitalism, on inflection points being when people are usually open to getting help, and the silver tsunami is upon us. To maintain the part of our economy that is privately owned, we need a lot of activation around that. Visit our website, check out our talks and events, and there's a button for us to come and speak to your group. I think there's a large population that needs better systems, higher returns, and more joy. Tina, heavily on the sophisticated side. Thank you.