Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 54. Nine Revenue Streams and One Referral Rule with Tina Ruark-Baker

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54. Nine Revenue Streams and One Referral Rule with Tina Ruark-Baker · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:11
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jock Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:15
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple An Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data driven.
• 0:20
  Fun fact of the day, sp very specific for our guest today, it's estimated that
• 0:24
  a whopping three hundred million golf balls are lost in the US every single year.
• 0:28
  I contribute about half of that, but I don't think our guest contributes at all
• 0:32
  to that. She's a pro. But that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by
• 0:37
  my friend, Tina Ruark Baker. That is the first time I've ever said your entire
• 0:41
  name, because I just call her T, like everybody
• 0:44
  I know.
• 0:46
  else does. She's the founder of TRB Creative. She's a three-time founder. Couple of nice
• 0:50
  exits under her belt, too. She's been a scrappy founder and a sophisticated corporate C-suite
• 0:54
  exec. She got the strategic thinking. She's a LinkedIn expert. She's a speaker. She's a
• 0:59
  super connector. She's got all this stuff. She's a straight talking advisor. Let me tell
• 1:03
  you folks, she plays to win. T, I'm so pumped that you're joining me today.
• 1:08
  I know that you're successful. We all know that you're successful. The question we have
• 1:12
  for you, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more on
• 1:17
  the scrappy side?
• 1:18
  I am 100% scrappy. But I can also put on a polish when I need
• 1:25
  to.
• 1:26
  There you go. Okay. Most of my guests I'm like, you know, we'll see. This
• 1:28
  one, I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm gonna agree with you at the end of
• 1:31
  this.
• 1:32
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:35
  Take us back to the beginning. New York girl, right? Tell us about where'd you
• 1:38
  grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:41
  Yeah, so I'm actually native Detroit girl. So grew up in Detroit, and I think
• 1:45
  that's probably where the scrappiness came from. Started my first business at 18 in my
• 1:50
  dad's basement. It was a staffing company, and I had worked for other staffing firms.
• 1:54
  Remember the workers' permit that we had in high school? Like you could go get
• 1:59
  a job part-time. That's where I worked and I figured it out. And
• 2:03
  Nice.
• 2:04
  my clients were Ford, Chrysler, and GM. My dad was a Ford guy and built
• 2:08
  up that business. And then I also had a second company that was a it
• 2:12
  was called the Service Connection. And I was on the news every time a storm
• 2:17
  hit, my 1-800 number would come up, and it was much like Angie's list. It
• 2:21
  gave contractors that were already approved to people that needed help, right? So both of
• 2:25
  those companies I sold, and that's the company that bought my business, is actually the
• 2:30
  company that asked me to go to New York City back in 2000. God, I'm
• 2:34
  old. But
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  Yeah.
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  that's where I I knew no one. In New York City and a very tall
• 2:40
  six foot four Italian by the name of Joe Rizzo was at the gate and
• 2:44
  picked me up. And that started my New York journey. He was one of our
• 2:49
  employees that was at boots on the ground in New York City. And he just
• 2:53
  basically took me for a cup of coffee and it was over
• 2:57
  Yeah.
• 2:58
  from there. Yeah. So was in New York City for 20 years, met my hubby,
• 3:03
  and we cashed out right before COVID and went to Charlotte, and that's where I
• 3:09
  met you. And we recently just moved to the vacation forever paradise home over at
• 3:15
  the beach in the golf community. So full 30 years of change, but yeah, I'm
• 3:21
  a little scrappy when it comes to that.
• 3:25
  And starting is at eighteen, getting two X
• 3:27
  Eighteen was my first official LLC. Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:30
  I mean, that's pretty awesome. What like w did you r were you running like
• 3:32
  lemonade stands before that? Like what'd you do as a kid? Yep.
• 3:35
  yeah, I had the paper routes. I was the I was the the the grandkid
• 3:39
  that was like playing office and had everything organized. My grandparents owned a marina in
• 3:44
  Michigan, and my grandmother on my mom's side had a dairy farm. So we were
• 3:49
  always hustling for jobs, always hustling. And I think I got the bite from them
• 3:54
  of just doing my own thing. But listen, it's not all rainbows and sunshine. We
• 3:58
  know that, right? Whenever you start a business, there's some dark times and there's a
• 4:03
  lot of doubt. But I think my corporate background, because I was always in sales
• 4:08
  and I was always in the staffing industry, which is every industry possible, I was
• 4:13
  just a sponge on what was working, what trends are working, where to leverage, when
• 4:17
  the markets crash, you gotta go to a different entity, like all of the shifting
• 4:22
  that goes on with human people that led to that scrappiness of always kind of
• 4:27
  landing on my feet, keep the wheels spinning and keep going.
• 4:31
  Okay, I love it. And it shows up today too. I mean, even just in
• 4:33
  our conversations, it's very much like, all right, well, let's do this. Like we did
• 4:36
  a webinar however
• 4:37
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:38
  long ago. It was like, hey, let's just do this. And like there wasn't like
• 4:40
  we'd need a planning committee. It was all right, let's just do it. We're gonna
• 4:43
  invite some people, we're gonna have a good time. okay, this is great. I'm I'm
• 4:46
  pumped. I got so many I got a million questions for you.
• 4:49
  God.
• 4:53
  As a kid, were you bordering with friends at all?
• 4:57
  Yeah, I mean, I had tons of cousins. So it was like you were constantly
• 5:00
  coming up with different ways of getting more money or getting and the money always
• 5:03
  went to the candy store or the ice cream parlor. Like that's where
• 5:07
  course.
• 5:08
  the money went, right? But it was things like, you know, hey, I own a
• 5:12
  company now and I've got a position that I would bring family into work with
• 5:17
  me and they would then put the siding on my house. Like we were constantly
• 5:21
  trading the trade, right? That's what we do.
• 5:24
  This is great. This is scrappy through and through. ever collect
• 5:26
  Yeah.
• 5:27
  anything as a kid?
• 5:29
  Collect. people would probably say I collected souls, but I'm kidding. No. I didn't I
• 5:33
  mean, no,
• 5:34
  Collected money.
• 5:36
  I didn't do any collecting of anything, I don't think. I mean I had a
• 5:39
  doll house, but that was it, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:41
  Okay. All right. Not bad. how are the grades while you're doing all this entrepreneurial
• 5:44
  stuff as a kid? The grades in high school.
• 5:47
  How are the what? I I was kind of above the bar, but I never
• 5:51
  was an A student. My attention span was of a gnat, and I was always
• 5:56
  thinking, doing, going. But, you know, even in the college side, when I went to
• 6:00
  go start to dive into school, I my mom got pretty sick with lupus and
• 6:05
  I had to help out financially and like time and all the things. So I
• 6:09
  said, let's just start the business and let's start making money. And next thing you
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  know, my My family was working for me and I had people and subcontractors and
• 6:19
  it just college kind of went out the window and I kept pulling it back
• 6:23
  in from time to time. But leaning into owning my own business was definitely a
• 6:28
  moneymaker for me and I had I had to make it happen.
• 6:32
  Okay. Give me give me thirty seconds on what you do today, what you most
• 6:35
  commonly do today, and we're gonna build that bridge throughout the episode.
• 6:38
  I coach people on how to grow their business. That's what I do. Whether it's
• 6:42
  a small business or it's an entrepreneur, I try or a nonprofit. I try to
• 6:46
  show them how to grow their business quickly within 90 days, start to see money
• 6:51
  coming in. And my tool of choice is LinkedIn. I've just gotten really scrappy on
• 6:55
  the corporate side of how to use that tool to build business and teach teams
• 6:59
  to do it when I was in corporate. So I adapted that and that's what
• 7:04
  I do now.
• 7:05
  Okay. Okay. this is great too. I got a bunch of selfish LinkedIn questions for
• 7:08
  that maybe we do have Air or something like that. But all right, so that's
• 7:11
  that's
• 7:12
  Anytime.
• 7:13
  where we're at today. You're helping people grow businesses and why LinkedIn? Is it just
• 7:17
  you ha you kind of got a feel for it and then it's an untapped
• 7:21
  kind of market? Like why why that?
• 7:23
  So for me, when I started my first business, I leaned heavily on it and
• 7:27
  it's changed so much over the last five years. But the thing that shocks me,
• 7:31
  and if you would have told me two years ago when I leaned into this
• 7:35
  full time, because I was doing it as a side hustle when I met you,
• 7:39
  right? I was kind of putting my toe into the water again. But when I
• 7:43
  fully jumped off into the pool, I thought it was gonna be a fractional CMO.
• 7:47
  And that's I always did marketing and sales. That's what I did. But there's a
• 7:51
  huge gap. I'm like, okay, so let's talk about your LinkedIn. We got to upgrade
• 7:55
  it. And they're like, what you mean? How do you find you know, and people
• 7:59
  just didn't know how to use it. It's not about posting and praying. It's about
• 8:03
  connecting your brand to the companies, your dream clients that you want to work with,
• 8:07
  right? And a great example of this is there's a a person I was coaching
• 8:11
  in Charlotte, and she wanted a specific company in the sports industry that she wanted
• 8:15
  to work with. And she wanted her product to be sold at their At their
• 8:19
  stadium. And I said, okay, let's target it. Let's go after it. And to this
• 8:23
  day, she now has a contract for three years and her product is now being
• 8:27
  sold at the at the stadium. So
• 8:29
  Well.
• 8:30
  little things like that is that's where I learned really quickly, I'm in the right
• 8:33
  lane. And I'm not doing it for people. I'm teaching people how to do it.
• 8:38
  That's a big difference. I don't want to be working 40 hours a week, 60
• 8:43
  hours a week anymore. But if I can teach them in a short term and
• 8:47
  the money that they're paying me to coach them, they get that back in in
• 8:52
  revenue fast. That's when I know I I knew I had a win. So it's
• 8:57
  it's been really cool to watch it from the outside in. But it was not
• 9:01
  my business model. It was not my website. It was not what I was gonna
• 9:06
  do when I walked away from corporate. And here we are.
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  There you go. How do
• 9:12
  Here we are.
• 9:12
  you find those first clients? So starting kind of on the side, dipping a toe,
• 9:14
  where do you get your first clients from?
• 9:16
  Networking. I was a big, big, always have been a big networking person. And my
• 9:20
  one of the women who one of my favorite clients, she was so shy, she
• 9:24
  actually didn't come to the event that we were supposed to meet. She she was
• 9:29
  there, but she hid in the back. Let me rephrase. And I I'm texting, I'm
• 9:33
  like, hey, are you here? And like not seeing the next day I email I'm
• 9:37
  like, Hey, were you there? And she's like, Yeah. And I'm here I am in
• 9:42
  the front row of the event, ready, like bright eyes, bushy-tailed, ready to go. And
• 9:46
  We just had a really good working relationship for over a year and it's just
• 9:51
  a funny thing of like people's strengths versus what they'll utilize my skills for. It
• 9:55
  usually fills the gap there.
• 9:57
  Yeah, 'cause you're as soon as anybody meets you, they're like, I like this girl,
• 9:59
  I just want to keep talking 'cause this is a fun time.
• 10:01
  Or they hate me. It could go either way.
• 10:05
  Ha ha ha
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  I mean, you know, I do have I do have that moment. I have to
• 10:09
  have fun. Yeah,
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  The rare one in a million.
• 10:13
  I have to have fun at what I do. And I look at other people's
• 10:17
  businesses as where's the shortest way I can help them make a correction. Now that
• 10:21
  could be like I have a company now that I'm working with and I pulled
• 10:25
  in another vendor because he's the specialist in the CRM world. I know how they
• 10:29
  work, I know what's happening, but it's not what I do. But to my client,
• 10:34
  I'm a superhero because I helped fix that, which then in turn is driving revenue
• 10:38
  for them automatically, right? So it's just thinking differently about I might not be able
• 10:42
  to do the fix, but I know people that can, right? And then paying that
• 10:46
  forward.
• 10:47
  Gotcha. Okay. Do you have any employees today?
• 10:50
  I have three that I use on a virtual basis. And I have what I
• 10:54
  call my power partners. And I consider you one of those, someone who I know,
• 10:59
  love, and trust. And I know I can bring into a company that I'm working
• 11:04
  with or an individual, and they're gonna do right by them. Right. So those people
• 11:08
  we all kind of met during COVID and we kept most of us were unemployed.
• 11:13
  We were, you know, trying to figure out where we were gonna go. But we
• 11:18
  kept together and now they all have their own businesses. One's a bookkeeper, one's a
• 11:22
  lawyer, one deals with insurance, corporate insurance, and we constantly are giving each other leads.
• 11:27
  So that referral network is what led to one of the communities that I built
• 11:32
  specifically for people that want to grow their business and we're not selling to each
• 11:36
  other, we're lifting each other. So it's a big difference.
• 11:40
  And and what is that community? Is that a publicly available thing?
• 11:42
  Yeah, that's it's actually on my LinkedIn. You can see some of the links and
• 11:46
  sign up sheets for it, but it's called Rev Lab and it's a revenue driven
• 11:51
  leadership group that we all are entrepreneurs doing different things. Some of us do the
• 11:56
  same, but we do we still share business or we partner together to do the
• 12:00
  business.
• 12:01
  Yeah, you go there you go. Okay. Very nice. Very nice. Okay. did working with
• 12:06
  family and managing family members, did that sour the like employee employer relationship for the
• 12:11
  future? Or was that just, hey, we're all in this together kind of thing?
• 12:17
  Well, you know, it was years ago. So this
• 12:19
  Sure.
• 12:20
  is and I'm gonna age myself. This is before the technology w that we have
• 12:23
  now, right? So I had three pages on my hip. I worked three shifts a
• 12:27
  week or three shifts a day. And I had a car phone that was in
• 12:31
  a bag car phone, right? So having family work for you and being able to
• 12:36
  work now versus then was a whole other ball game. I mean, it was like
• 12:40
  you didn't show up and what's going on and I flat tire, I couldn't call
• 12:44
  you. And, you know, it was that kind of a world. Where now I think
• 12:48
  even my clients that are family owned businesses, it's a really hard mix sometimes. And
• 12:53
  me as an outsider coming in as an advisor or coach, I kind of have
• 12:57
  to be kind of the referee and just say, listen, guys, we all know each
• 13:01
  other, we love each other, you guys are gonna have dinner tonight together, but we
• 13:05
  got to do what's right for the business. Raise your head. Stand up tall and
• 13:10
  make the business happen. So that's, you know, to answer your question, family stuff is
• 13:14
  is I don't know that I would ever do it again. But it's a different
• 13:18
  game now. It's a different time, you know? But yeah, well, there was a lot
• 13:23
  of cousin rivalry for sure. And being all rue arcs, it could get crazy. You
• 13:27
  just never know. Big comedy people.
• 13:29
  Yeah. About a couple of Thanksgivings. Okay. Okay. because you're such a super connector and
• 13:36
  you have that again, that just immediate likability, do you find that the difference between
• 13:44
  connecting people and managing people is significant, or do you find there's a lot of
• 13:51
  overlap?
• 13:52
  I tend to and I've learned in my old salty dog years is that I
• 13:56
  don't want to control the relationship of the connecting. My job is to make the
• 14:01
  connection and they're two adults and they can figure it out. I don't want to
• 14:06
  be the person who is guiding the relationship because it just never works. That's where
• 14:11
  a lot of saltiness can happen. but if I can bring value to someone's life,
• 14:16
  business, or family based off of making a referral for someone. Yeah, I'll do it
• 14:21
  in a heartbeat. Yeah.
• 14:23
  Okay. Okay. Starting this business or the other ones, I suppose, whichever one you feel
• 14:28
  like. Do you ever get in a situation where you somebody asks you to do
• 14:33
  something and you're like, sure, a hundred percent, can totally do it, absolutely, full confidence,
• 14:38
  but you've never actually done it?
• 14:40
  I think everybody has done that at
• 14:41
  Yeah.
• 14:42
  one point because we're figuring stuff out, right? But I'll and I'll give this analogy.
• 14:47
  I also do abstract art. And I was asked by a doctor at that I
• 14:53
  she was my doctor, my OB at Novant to do her entire office. What?
• 14:59
  well.
• 15:00
  Yeah, it was over 20 paintings, huge paintings. And I
• 15:02
  Holy crap. From scratch, brand new.
• 15:05
  said yes. I turned my
• 15:08
  Yeah.
• 15:09
  bedroom upstairs into an art studio. My husband hung all of the huge canvases up.
• 15:13
  They all had to have Novant purple in them. And they had to be modern
• 15:18
  with like foil and all kinds of crazy textures. And I had never done a
• 15:23
  project like that before. And they loved every piece. I'll get I'll send you the
• 15:28
  link so you can actually show it. There's a video of her office on it.
• 15:33
  I sit back and look at stuff like that and the only reason that happened,
• 15:38
  which kind of launched my art career, which is another revenue stream for myself, was
• 15:43
  because I said yes.
• 15:45
  Just diving in.
• 15:46
  I said yes. I had never done paintings that large, that many, at one time.
• 15:51
  it it was a lot of pressure, but my husband will tell you I probably
• 15:57
  went 100% gray. And so did he. But it was so cool to sit back
• 16:03
  in that lobby and go, this is gonna be hanging here for years. And I
• 16:09
  did that because I said yes. So do I say yes often? Yeah, I do.
• 16:15
  I do.
• 16:16
  Okay. Okay. Give me give me the scrappy conversation. Like how do you figure out
• 16:19
  going about pricing something like that? Like this that's an out of the blue request,
• 16:23
  something you've never done. What is that conversation like?
• 16:26
  Yeah, that was very uncomfortable because there was a third party vendor that was price
• 16:31
  gouging my pricing that he had
• 16:33
  geez.
• 16:34
  the contract through procurement. And if I was in New York and still knew my
• 16:38
  six foot Italian, I would have been like pulling a soprano card, but I didn't
• 16:42
  Yeah.
• 16:44
  have those people in Charlotte. So I had to just kind of navigate that. And
• 16:48
  it was awkward for the doctors. There was four doctors that were or three doctors
• 16:53
  involved at the time that were in that. Practice. And it was uncomfortable for me.
• 16:58
  It was uncomfortable for my vendors that I was getting supply. It was just uncomfortable.
• 17:02
  But I chose it to flip it and put it into a positive bucket of
• 17:07
  I'm going to do this. It's probably not the money that I want. It was
• 17:12
  still great money, let me tell you that. But to someone else who's established and
• 17:16
  their art is what they do, they probably would have said, you need to get
• 17:21
  at least double. But for me, Working full time, doing this for the exposure, supporting
• 17:26
  a doctor that I loved. She saved my life. that to me was a full
• 17:30
  turnaround give back. So it is awkward, but I say little prayers that I hope
• 17:35
  that his hair falls out and it makes me feel better.
• 17:39
  Yeah.
• 17:42
  You know how you have that thing and you squish their head? Yeah, that's what
• 17:45
  I do. But
• 17:46
  Yep.
• 17:47
  I never have to see him again, but it was definitely an interesting experience for
• 17:50
  sure.
• 17:51
  Sounds like yeah, that's I'm like, Man, I hope he wakes up with a hangnail
• 17:53
  every morning. Nothing detrimental, just
• 17:54
  I know. Yeah, I wished worse, but that's okay.
• 17:58
  Sure. first version of this of the new business of the TRB creative business. Was
• 18:01
  it something that you had kind of fleshed out of all right, I think there's
• 18:05
  a market for this, I think I can offer this and there's a good value
• 18:09
  there? Or was it just, hey, I'm I'm doing this stuff, I'm gonna talk with
• 18:13
  some people and see where the market is and and roll out a first offering.
• 18:17
  Okay.
• 18:18
  No, I was I'm a planner. I'm a lunatic when it comes to that. So
• 18:22
  I had, and don't laugh, I had my website built, I had my logos, I
• 18:27
  had my taglines, I had my pitch deck all done before I had my first
• 18:32
  client. And
• 18:33
  Respect it.
• 18:35
  but none of that is even what I'm doing right now. So I mean I
• 18:39
  hired a coach to get my head straight from going from this great corporate job
• 18:44
  and salary, and I'm walking away from that. And how am I going to leverage
• 18:49
  that to and spending a lot of money on coaching and tech skills and all
• 18:54
  this like how to build websites? Like so much work was wasted. Good to learn,
• 18:59
  good to teach people now what not to do when I'm getting them walking through
• 19:04
  my door. But It's it's interesting when you start to look at like what I'm
• 19:09
  actually doing now. I have about then I just shared this on a conference call
• 19:14
  with a private community. And these people, when I say private, like what happens in
• 19:19
  Vegas stays in Vegas. We all have signed agreements, nobody talks about it, but we
• 19:24
  bring our situations and problems. And I brought my business right now to them on
• 19:29
  a PDF and I shared it on the screen and said, This is where I'm
• 19:34
  at. These are my revenue percentages, this is my growth strategy, these are my growth,
• 19:39
  blah, blah, blah. And I have nine different revenue streams in my business. But I
• 19:44
  think that's because I'm learning that all of these things are semi-connected. It's all about
• 19:49
  growth. It's all about supporting other people. I'm just attaching some bit of revenue to
• 19:53
  it. And if it's a what I call one of my power partners, there's a
• 19:58
  referral piece for that. And if it's a nonprofit, there's a referral piece to that
• 20:03
  going back to their nonprofit. So it's kind of gets sticky. But at the same
• 20:08
  time, my accountant probably hates it. But I don't want to say no to an
• 20:13
  opportunity if I can bring a partner in to make something happen for someone that
• 20:18
  I love and trust. That to me, I'm a valued asset to them regardless. So
• 20:23
  technology, I use you and I have had conversations about what you do, connecting you
• 20:28
  to some of the vendors that I work with that are in your world on
• 20:33
  the CRM side, like all of that stuff is. It g it's sticky, but we're
• 20:38
  also supporting each other's businesses.
• 20:40
  Okay, if I go serious business for a second, we'll get back to the random
• 20:42
  jokes and stuff like that. No, what what I'm saying is a compliment,
• 20:44
  God. All right. I'm ready.
• 20:48
  like there's you're willing to say yes to the full flywheel of things, if you
• 20:52
  will, but you're still sticking within your specialty, right? You're still doing the stuff that
• 20:56
  you love and the stuff that you're an expert at. And then you've got the
• 21:00
  power partners that kind of fill out the rest, right? Like I that's years of
• 21:04
  networking and finding the right people to actually put that together. Was your ICP, your
• 21:08
  ideal client, was that right from the beginning or has it evolved over time? Okay.
• 21:13
  No. No. I was selling myself into corporate to be a fractional CMO. And what
• 21:18
  I found out very quickly is they have marketing teams and they don't want to
• 21:23
  be told what to do by an outsider. It's a really, really it's a really
• 21:28
  hard road to navigate. And marketing people are replaceable, right? If the money's not coming
• 21:34
  in and it's not showing on all of these lovely platforms that we use. The
• 21:39
  marketing people are the first to go and they'll replace them very quickly. So that's
• 21:44
  when I said, This is not what I want to do because I don't wanna
• 21:49
  have to feel pressure on something I can't control.
• 21:53
  Yeah.
• 21:54
  So it was a really quick learn for me that if I can bring value
• 21:59
  on how to sell and how to build relationships and network yourself into profitability, that
• 22:04
  I love. Like that stuff I love. But to sit and talk about a marketing
• 22:10
  strategy, go-to-market strategy that I'm hoping a 21-year-old is going to understand with no business
• 22:15
  experience, that's gonna fall flat. And that's the daughter of the owner and I can't
• 22:20
  do anything with that. Or that's the son of
• 22:24
  Yeah.
• 22:25
  the mother that like, you know, so there's a lot that happens there. But if
• 22:29
  I can teach them how to think differently about business and watch the winds come
• 22:34
  in and they're learning as we go, that's a different ballgame.
• 22:38
  Okay. Yeah, that I mean it's a very different ballgame and it's that kind of
• 22:41
  to your point about the LinkedIn stuff too. When somebody learns it, it's teaching how
• 22:44
  to fish, right? It's it's much more powerful. Who is
• 22:47
  Yep. Yep.
• 22:49
  your ICP today? What has it evolved into? Okay.
• 22:51
  I have three. Small businesses that have teams that need to break the silos and
• 22:56
  grow, and it's all focused on growth. I have nonprofits that want to grow their
• 23:01
  board, their funding, and their volunteers. And I have entrepreneurs that are trying to figure
• 23:06
  out how to grow their business. Those are my three buckets that I have right
• 23:11
  now.
• 23:12
  Okay. And LinkedIn is one of the more consistent levers to pull in all three
• 23:16
  of those.
• 23:17
  LinkedIn is my tool of choice that I teach people how to use properly. A
• 23:21
  lot of it is lifting on the profile. They there's there's so many levers that
• 23:26
  people don't even know are there. And then once that happens, I teach them there's
• 23:30
  three steps. I teach them how to use it and then how to turn those
• 23:35
  people into clients.
• 23:36
  Is it about the follower count? Is it about the like count? Okay.
• 23:39
  No. It's about the peop being in the right lane for what you do.
• 23:45
  Okay. Okay.
• 23:46
  I mean, if you're selling a a a a widget of some sort, you want
• 23:50
  to make sure you've got volume on your socials. But the thing I think is
• 23:54
  so amazing about LinkedIn is there's so many people on it, and there's so very
• 23:59
  few people that use it correctly to get seen. Or do people even know that
• 24:03
  they're people are using it like Google? They're searching for leaders, they're searching for talent,
• 24:08
  they're searching for nonprofits that they can invite to things. Like they use it like
• 24:12
  Google and If you don't have your right SEO optimize all the things, you you
• 24:16
  just you're never found. You're you're invisible. You know? Anyway, LinkedIn talk. LinkedIn talk.
• 24:21
  No, this is this is great. I th I think this is I mean, do
• 24:24
  ads come into play? Do you do a LinkedIn ad?
• 24:27
  I've never spent a dollar, never spent a dollar on ads. And as a matter
• 24:31
  of fact, there's a marketing company that I adore. And I wanted to do a
• 24:36
  partnership with them and using a different platform using Insta. And I said, Hey, I
• 24:41
  have this online program. I want to sell it. I want to do it. And
• 24:45
  then everything just started just started slowing down. People everywhere were talking about like the
• 24:50
  amount of money they were spending. So we decided to put a pin in it
• 24:55
  and not move forward with paying for ads, but every single every single coach or
• 25:00
  business that I see, it's a struggle. It's a real struggle to get any social
• 25:04
  platform to see a return unless you've got tons of followers and you, you know,
• 25:09
  that's a different ballgame. But for LinkedIn, everything that I teach, everything that I I've
• 25:14
  personally done in my corporate life, we did not have a budget for ads. So
• 25:18
  we had to get scrappy. We had to get scrappy. And it stayed.
• 25:23
  You had to get scrappy. Exactly what I was going
• 25:27
  Ha ha ha.
• 25:28
  for. for your own businesses, any real scrappy, real hustle marketing things, any ridiculous marketing
• 25:33
  events that you had to throw or anything fun like that?
• 25:38
  Well, I always do when I was in Charlotte, I always would try to do
• 25:42
  power like groups, right? Getting people together for an event and what have you. Those
• 25:46
  are always great. And I try to get people from different industries so they can
• 25:50
  learn each other and learn about what they do and all the things. but probably
• 25:54
  one of the most fun I've done are around golf outings, because that, you know,
• 25:59
  to me, that's my jam. So if we can get a cocktail in a golf
• 26:03
  club, I'm I'm a happy girl.
• 26:05
  How much are you golfing? Yeah.
• 26:07
  Right now, like a lot, like two, three times a week we're out there. But
• 26:09
  the golf cart is literally in the garage now. So I don't have to
• 26:11
  Okay.
• 26:15
  it's we just go out the driveway and we pull out on the course. So
• 26:17
  the great
• 26:18
  It's too easy.
• 26:19
  thing is is people are already calling me the mayor here. So I I know
• 26:22
  everybody and the guys at the golf course are great and you know, I celebrate
• 26:26
  their birthdays and get treats and they they treat us great. So it's all good.
• 26:30
  It's all good.
• 26:31
  the super connector coming out too.
• 26:32
  I know.
• 26:33
  How is the golf game? Are you are you winning? Are you a bogey golfer?
• 26:37
  What kind of scores are we shooting?
• 26:39
  I'm in the nineties, which I'm not mad about,
• 26:41
  Sure.
• 26:42
  but I just had my knee replaced. God, I'm old. I just had my knee
• 26:43
  replaced
• 26:44
  Yeah.
• 26:46
  in January. And of course I had to plan that for it did mess up
• 26:50
  my summer. And I
• 26:52
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  went back to Charlotte, which is a two and a half hour drive from here.
• 26:55
  I'm at the beach. I went back to Charlotte to get the surgery done because
• 26:59
  I wanted the Novant system. So it's just, yeah, I came home the same day
• 27:03
  and now I'm back on the course. I was really on the course three months
• 27:07
  later. My
• 27:08
  Yeah.
• 27:09
  PT guy wouldn't like that. But what is the luck too? My PT guy was
• 27:12
  literally a scratch. Like he was like a handicap of like two. And he did
• 27:17
  all the things to get me back on the course fast. So yeah, I play
• 27:21
  a lot, but it's also now that with the keynote speaking that I do, I
• 27:26
  am able to select where I want to go that have good golf courses. And
• 27:31
  Yeah.
• 27:32
  I bring the hubby with in the club. So we're making a little You know,
• 27:36
  we don't have kids, so we've got like the whole like we're just yeah. That's
• 27:40
  what's happening now.
• 27:41
  That's awesome. You are living the dream, T. I love it.
• 27:44
  It's fun. I don't know. And I get to meet cool people and I get
• 27:47
  to support other people and it's just yeah, it's fun. It's fun.
• 27:51
  Give me some keynote topics. What are you speaking on these days?
• 27:54
  the one everybody wants is LinkedIn. So that that's the most popular. But the one
• 27:58
  I really like is for stop asking for permission. And it's getting your head straight
• 28:02
  with what your goals are versus what the corporate goals are and thinking completely differently.
• 28:07
  And most of the time that lands for people that are thinking about doing an
• 28:11
  exit to startup, whatever. And funny story, Barry, if you're listening, this is a this
• 28:16
  is a coworker of mine from Detroit. We've known each other for Over 30 years.
• 28:20
  And we both worked at a staffing firm. I leave New York. I do my
• 28:25
  thing. She's still there. She's still there in New York. And she randomly sends me
• 28:29
  a message and says, Hey, do you can I get on your calendar? And she's
• 28:34
  starting up as a coach, health in the health industry for for women's health. And
• 28:38
  she signed with me, and she was the one that I was literally on the
• 28:43
  golf course, and she texted and said she got her first keynote. She got first
• 28:47
  client, she got her first, her first, her first. And that's the stuff that tells
• 28:52
  me I'm in the right lane. That's the cool stuff. Yeah. So people
• 28:56
  Nice. that's awesome. A lifelong person making that's beautiful.
• 29:01
  that you knew in your career, they don't forget, you know, they see. And I
• 29:05
  was actually talking with someone today that just I haven't talked to her in years.
• 29:09
  And she, her doctor was my doctor in New York. And she and I worked
• 29:14
  together in the staffing industry. And she's now in the Hamptons and she's living her
• 29:18
  life and she's singing and she's acting and she's doing comedy and it's just where
• 29:22
  people's lives go. You just never know. You never know. Yeah.
• 29:26
  Yeah. That's fantastic. How so I on that note, how do you actually measure success
• 29:31
  for yourself, but also for clients? Like is success being able to golf three times
• 29:36
  a week? Is it is it
• 29:39
  Yeah.
• 29:40
  a number? What are you talking what are you doing?
• 29:41
  I mean, it really depends on what their goals are, you know. I know people
• 29:45
  that want to make a million, you know, and is that realistic? Are you gonna
• 29:49
  do that your lifetime? What is your what is your what is your cycle even
• 29:54
  look like for that, right? I know other people that are wanting to step away
• 29:58
  from their CEO job, let their brothers and their sisters and take over the company,
• 30:02
  and I coach them on their exit strategy, right? So their item for success is
• 30:07
  to have the business stay and grow without them being there, right? Then you have
• 30:11
  people that are, I just want to work part-time and cover my mortgage, right? And
• 30:15
  how do I do that on a long-term scale? So we talk about contract levels
• 30:20
  and like how does that work? And how do you increase your prices every year
• 30:24
  and be comfortable with those conversations? Like all the stuff. But for me, if I
• 30:29
  know what your top three goals are, and it's something that I think I can
• 30:33
  help you transition through, I'm gonna come up and lean in heavy and possibly bring
• 30:37
  in other people that I know that can help leverage that quickly for them. But
• 30:42
  it really just depends on what their personal goals are.
• 30:45
  Okay, and this is this is where like the true advisor in you comes out
• 30:48
  too, because it's really easy to say, I'll I'll use an example that you specifically
• 30:51
  said no, that you don't do this. So like you get in you gained a
• 30:54
  hundred followers, great, that's awesome, right? But that's not really the goal. The goal is
• 30:57
  to grow. So it's not the follower count, it's the revenue in the bank or
• 31:00
  the profit, more likely, right?
• 31:02
  Correct. Correct.
• 31:04
  That understanding of the overarching business, how do you enter that conversation with a new
• 31:08
  client? Is it, hey, welcome to the show and tell me about everything going on?
• 31:13
  Or how do you how do you approach that initial conversation about goals?
• 31:17
  So two years ago, I would say that was easier to do and have those
• 31:21
  conversations up front right now. And I hate even saying this, but there's a big
• 31:26
  trust issue going on, I think, with all the AI and all the coaches that
• 31:31
  are coming out of the woodwork and all the things. But what I'm finding right
• 31:35
  now is working is, and I I truly believe this, is leading with trust. So
• 31:40
  I'll start off with a smaller package and we'll have a smaller goal. And I
• 31:45
  get an inside look at the organization. Okay. So I know who the players are,
• 31:49
  I know where their weaknesses are. I know a little bit about the employees and
• 31:54
  the personalities we're dealing with and levels of training on a corporate level that they
• 31:59
  might have, right? And then it could also be like, how are you gaining people?
• 32:03
  Are you turning people over all the time? Like all of those things that are
• 32:08
  go on inside of business. That's what I would do for my clients in my
• 32:13
  old job, right? I would always look at the inside and be like, I can
• 32:17
  help here and here, and this guy can hip help here, right? So I apply
• 32:22
  that to the same business model that I have now. But it's really focused on
• 32:27
  once you build trust with them, you become that advisor, right? And they start to
• 32:31
  say, okay, our contract is ending. Here's something. We've had this much growth, whatever the
• 32:36
  percentage is. We've we fixed A, B, and C, and we are seeing a return.
• 32:41
  I love to see. Four, five, and six get done in the next six months.
• 32:45
  Here's my proposal for that. Let me know if you're interested in moving forward. And
• 32:50
  we can, you know, and that always seems to continuously build. But at the same
• 32:55
  time, it's also building me and my skills because I'm thinking differently about right now.
• 32:59
  I have four retained clients that I've, they're all different industries, and it's really keeping
• 33:04
  my mind sharp. What works for one is not going to work for this one.
• 33:09
  So I've got to get really creative on this. And it's keeping me and my
• 33:13
  skills kind of honed in on the growth strategies, which I'm kind of a dork
• 33:18
  and I just lean into with that stuff. I mean, I definitely am a a
• 33:23
  thinker when it comes to that, you know. But when when you're looking at people,
• 33:27
  this is their livelihood, this is what's paying for colleges. It's not a joke. It's
• 33:32
  very, very serious. And if we can get from A to B to C quickly.
• 33:37
  why not pull the trigger and and have them, you know, so it's it just
• 33:41
  builds relationships. It's just building loyalty. And then I have customers that I've worked with
• 33:46
  that I they go through like a a a a five session co coaching class
• 33:51
  on LinkedIn and they're all excited and they don't do the lift every day. They
• 33:55
  don't they don't use the they stop. And it's those bad habits creeping in. And
• 34:00
  it doesn't happen often, but that bothers me because They've paid me a a fee
• 34:05
  to coach and they're not using and again, I'm not gonna do it for you.
• 34:09
  You have to do the lifting. And they don't do it. And then I see
• 34:14
  I can just see that they're not. but that's out of my control, right? I
• 34:19
  can't I can't force that. I can try to lead to water.
• 34:23
  Right. I don't know T, dare I say this is sounding a little sophisticated at
• 34:27
  this point. I like it.
• 34:29
  No no no no. We're staying scrappy. We're staying scrappy.
• 34:34
  All let me hit you with some blinding round scrappy versus sophisticated. all
• 34:37
  jeez. Okay.
• 34:38
  right. Early days, the hustle days, working three shifts, three pagers, whatever. What was your
• 34:43
  version of like a ramen noodle dinner?
• 34:46
  my god, we didn't even eat ramen in Detroit. we were mac and cheese people.
• 34:48
  I didn't even find ramen until I got to New York. We didn't do that.
• 34:51
  Okay. What kind of macage are you doing? A craft? Are you doing a Velveeta?
• 34:57
  What are we doing?
• 34:59
  it was Velveeta with maybe like some, you know, a little spice added to it.
• 35:03
  Right. More flavor on top. All right. Not bad. how do you feel about websites
• 35:08
  that are.net?
• 35:09
  I don't. I don't Ha ha
• 35:18
  all right, still in the hustle time period. do you ever use two dryer sheets
• 35:22
  that would have been previously used instead of using one new dryer sheet?
• 35:26
  No, and my husband will attest to this. I put four to six in every
• 35:29
  load and I need fresh. Ever yeah, I'm a snuggle girl. Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:33
  Okay. Okay. have you ever ran out of bowls and used a Tupperware as a
• 35:38
  bowl?
• 35:39
  Yeah. I absolutely and then you get the lid, it's easy. Just yeah. Absolutely.
• 35:46
  all right. ever play the credit card timing game where you wait till tomorrow to
• 35:50
  charge something because that's next month's statement?
• 35:53
  Back in the day, you betcha. And I would put them in my wallet in
• 35:57
  order of the of the date of when things would be due. so I kept
• 36:01
  rotating it. Now I just my husband takes care of all of it and I
• 36:05
  just get the points to fly on my MX.
• 36:08
  Right ship some golf clubs with you, I get it. Have you ever gotten a
• 36:13
  review from a family member?
• 36:15
  Yeah. Yeah, they half half of them worked for me. That was back when they
• 36:18
  the the reviews on the website were going. Yeah. They weren't
• 36:21
  Okay.
• 36:22
  they weren't unkind, but there were hidden words in there that I knew had meaning.
• 36:26
  You know? Yeah.
• 36:27
  That's a family review if I've ever heard one. All right, take me inside the
• 36:32
  office. How many monitors do you use today?
• 36:35
  One ginormous one? Ginormous. And my husband's
• 36:37
  One J numbers. Okay.
• 36:39
  a techie, remember. I can't change the battery and the clicker for the television.
• 36:42
  Yeah.
• 36:43
  But he does all of the gigawatts. So I've got my mic, I've got my
• 36:46
  cameras, I've got all the things, I've got my phone st everything is him. Yeah.
• 36:49
  But one ginormous
• 36:50
  Okay. It looks like a
• 36:52
  screen. It's it's big.
• 36:53
  it looks like a pretty nice setup. Everything's pretty clean and organized. Do you have
• 36:56
  a docking station or are there just wires going everywhere in the back?
• 37:00
  no, it's a docking. He's IT. He everything is tied together. It's very, yeah. Very
• 37:04
  neat.
• 37:05
  It's pretty good. Any business cards currently on the desk?
• 37:08
  Yes.
• 37:10
  There we go. There we go. Okay.
• 37:12
  Are those are my to dos today.
• 37:15
  Any ridiculous lighting where you've got you know, a lamp on a bar stool?
• 37:18
  No, keep it boring. I just have my paintings up. Yeah, no. Mm-mm. My palm
• 37:22
  trees out front. That's it. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:24
  Okay. What's the most unique There you go. Gotta have the palm trees next to
• 37:29
  the golf cart right in the front there. what is the most unique thing in
• 37:34
  your office? Any trinkets, any stories?
• 37:36
  unique thing in my well I've got nail polish I've got all kinds of stuff
• 37:39
  but
• 37:40
  Yeah.
• 37:42
  I have a bean bag yeah I have a huge bean bag in the corner
• 37:45
  and my dog of 10 pounds sleeps on it that's her office
• 37:49
  Okay.
• 37:50
  it was given to us from the the couch company that we bought our sofa
• 37:54
  from and it was l it it's so big and so heavy we shoved it
• 37:59
  in the corner and that's her office chair. It's purple by the way purple
• 38:04
  Okay. If she comes up in the middle of a meeting, she whatever, she barks,
• 38:07
  she shows up on screen. Do you say, so sorry about that? You say, Hey,
• 38:11
  like that's just our director of HR making noise in the back.
• 38:15
  Yeah, she's the she's the nap s my my chief nap officer. That's what I
• 38:17
  call her. I actually
• 38:18
  Ha ha ha.
• 38:20
  did a post on LinkedIn about it the other day.
• 38:22
  That's pretty good. Okay. take me inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too
• 38:31
  many?
• 38:32
  my God, there's thousands of them in there that are still
• 38:34
  Ha ha.
• 38:35
  and they're all from from the technology, right? So yeah, people emails get ready immediately.
• 38:39
  Client emails are red flag, but there is a whole folder of blah that's still
• 38:45
  in there. Yeah.
• 38:47
  Okay. Okay. do you ever send any emails that are just the subject line, nothing
• 38:52
  in the body?
• 38:53
  No. I at least say hi in the email or something.
• 38:57
  Okay. do you ever email that we can do something when it's everybody knows it's
• 39:03
  just you that's doing it?
• 39:06
  I do say we a lot because people know that I have partners, so I
• 39:09
  do say we a lot and it it may just be me, but I do
• 39:12
  say we a lot.
• 39:13
  Okay. What is the first time during the day that you allow yourself to look
• 39:18
  at your email?
• 39:20
  well I get up at five every day whether I want to or not. I
• 39:23
  have a self self clock and that's probably the first time I touch my phone
• 39:27
  and I check things. But I've got clients
• 39:29
  Right away. First thing.
• 39:30
  that are in Cali, so by the time I go to bed they are they're
• 39:33
  communicating in the evenings my way. So Yeah.
• 39:36
  Okay. All right. What is the morning routine?
• 39:41
  Up at five, cup of coffee. I watch my Bravo shows
• 39:45
  Ha ha ha.
• 39:46
  that I record, and I start to put my strategy plan together for the week
• 39:51
  two weeks ahead of where I'm at now. So I don't live real time. I
• 39:57
  and that's from corporate. I'm always at least a quarter ahead for marketing and other
• 40:03
  people's marketing. so then I start, I'm usually in here by like seven thirty, eight
• 40:09
  o'clock. starting to do work for myself before I go live with client work.
• 40:15
  Pretty good. It's pretty good. I like the live in two weeks of the future.
• 40:16
  Yeah, that's good though.
• 40:17
  Yeah, I'm very strict. Very strict.
• 40:19
  It keeps you moving in the right direction. how many phone numbers do you have?
• 40:24
  One and I've had it for since two thousands, the day my feet hit New
• 40:27
  York. One phone number.
• 40:29
  Okay. Okay. Does your phone currently have any cracks or screen issues?
• 40:35
  No, it's good actually. It's good. But I baby it. So yeah.
• 40:40
  Hey, but it's if it's working, it's working.
• 40:42
  It is.
• 40:43
  if somebody's trying to schedule a meeting with you, is it, hey, sure, I'm I'm
• 40:46
  free later this week, or are you sending a calendar invite or calendar link, excuse
• 40:49
  me? Yeah.
• 40:50
  I send the calendar invite. Yeah. And I have three, depending on if it's someone
• 40:54
  I really want to talk to, or maybe I know they're gonna ask me for
• 40:58
  a free favor that's booked for four months. No, I'm kidding. I I don't do
• 41:02
  that. I'm just kidding. Maybe. Not at all.
• 41:05
  I'm in the same boat. I got fifteen minute highly available, fifteen minute not at
• 41:07
  all available, and then that goes in each increment. You gotta protect your time. Did
• 41:09
  Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yes.
• 41:16
  you ever get sassy with Chat GPT or Claude or anything?
• 41:18
  every day. I challenge it like it's it's a cousin that I can't stand. I
• 41:22
  challenge it like crazy. As a matter of fact, I was I got in an
• 41:26
  argument with it the other day and it it said, don't use that tone with
• 41:30
  me.
• 41:31
  Yeah.
• 41:33
  So I think it's learning
• 41:34
  Our man.
• 41:35
  me a little. It's it's definitely learning my scrappiness. I
• 41:37
  Getting back talk from the AI.
• 41:39
  know.
• 41:40
  A hundred percent scrappy. Tina, Ruark, Baker, just call her tea, everybody. Thank you so
• 41:44
  much for coming on. One thousand percent
• 41:47
  thanks for having me.
• 41:48
  scrappy. This is fantastic.
• 41:51
  Thank you, I love it. I love you to death, Jack Attack, and thanks for
• 41:54
  this time. It's great.
• 41:56
  Of course. anything you want the folks out there to know, anything you want promote.
• 42:01
  yeah, I'll send you a link to my community that I'm working on and it's
• 42:05
  only business owners. Most of us are entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. and it's really just talking about
• 42:09
  revenue. Nobody's allowed to sell. We just talk about what's working and not working to
• 42:14
  grow our businesses. So I'll send you that link for Rev Lab.
• 42:18
  Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on T. I appreciate it. It's always
• 42:20
  Thank you.
• 42:21
  a pleasure talking with you.
• 42:22
  Thank you. And I hopefully we'll see you when I come back into Charlotte. I'd
• 42:24
  love that.
• 42:25
  Definitely. Yeah. Give me a shout. Thanks everybody. Stay data driven.