S4E5 – Tara Newman – How to earn 30% – 40% profit with a small business

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Key Timecodes

• (01:27) – Show intro and background history
• (02:48) – Deeper into her background history
• (05:06) – Understanding her business model
• (07:36) – Deeper into her background history and business numbers
• (09:17) – How to learn from failures and grow from them
• (12:39) – How to be productive with today’s distractions
• (17:51) – Deeper into her business strategies
• (21:52) – A bit about her book
• (24:26) – How business owners can build a healthy company
• (27:41) – What other types of business models does she have experience with?
• (31:03) – How to start a business to achieve financial freedom
• (34:37) – A key takeaway from the guest
• (39:51) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (40:31) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (43:07) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Intro

Hey. This is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast in building businesses, increasing wealth, and achieving financial freedom. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go.

[00:00:17.680] – Sean

What if you could keep 30 to 40 % of your revenues and put right into your pocket? Well, this seems to be a big problem with a lot of small business owners is they don’t have a lot of money left over at the end of the month. Well, my next guest is a consultant and coach who helps businesses keep more profits. In fact, we jumped into the raw numbers, which include if your business is making less than a million dollars a year, she can help you keep between 30 and 40 %. And if you have a business that’s making more than a million a year, she can help you keep around 20 %. Those are some big numbers to put away. She also talks about, and this is where a lot of the lessons learned came from, she and her husband built a business in the 2000s, and it actually went bankrupt right around the time of the recession. So since then, she’s applied a lot of what she learned into this new consulting business. And I tell you what, a lot of stuff she talks about on this episode, it’s really impressive. I know it can help you if you’re looking to start a business, maybe you have a small business, or maybe you’re trying to scale up a business. This will help you put more money in your pocket. Let’s get into it. Please welcome Tara Newman. Tara, welcome to the show.

[00:01:27.930] – Tara

Hey, Sean, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

[00:01:30.890] – Sean

Thank you for joining me. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us a little bit about your background?

[00:01:35.500] – Tara

Oh, my background. Okay. So first of all, what I do is I like to say I help small business owners keep 40 to 50 % of their revenue. And that’s a big claim. I will say it’s for service-based businesses, typically under a million dollars. However, if we get much over that or more complicated, I keep about 20 % to 30 %. So everything that I do is about helping business owners keep the hard money that they’re making so they can pay themselves like the experts that they are. My background itself is in industrial organizational psychology, which is an absolute mouthful. But if you watch Billions, think Wendy Rhodes, that is Wendy’s character. Or if you are on LinkedIn and you’re an Adam Grant fan, his background is in industrial organizational psychology as well. It’s basically the psychology of human behavior at work and in business. And after spending probably 20 years in a corporate environment, in human resources, in executive coaching, in performance management, I decided to start my own business. So for the last nine years, I have been running a business focused on really helping small business owners thrive.

[00:02:48.270] – Sean

Awesome. Thank you for the backstory and the context in which we were doing previously. Appreciate the connection there to Billions. As soon as you said Wendy Rose, I’m like, oh, I know the personality type. This is awesome. Let’s dive right into what you do for customers. I’ve seen some of the topics on your website. I took some notes. I want to get right into it. You place a high focus on helping people. This sounds like it could be entrepreneurs, but really anybody. You help them get a lot of debt and enjoy financial freedom. Could you talk about that a little bit?

[00:03:18.730] – Tara

So really, for business owners, I put a strong focus on what’s the exit strategy? What are you building and what do you hope to have after you build it? Because so many small business owners look at their businesses and think that they’re saleable, think that they’re worth something. And in a lot of times, they’re really not. And they’re certainly not worth as much as you’re going to think they’re worth. So it’s really for me about helping them create a strategy where they’re using the profit in their business to invest in other cash generating assets. If they sell their business, amazing. But if they don’t, they’ve built wealth and they’ve used their small business to build wealth in other ways so that they’re okay. Because the one thing that I hear from business owners today, entrepreneurs, whatever you might call yourself, freelancers, solopreneur, basically anybody who’s got a phone and an app thinks that they can sustain earning income independent of an employer. That is the goal, earn income independent of an employer, set your own schedule, live with more time, freedom, more financial freedom. And the Internet makes it look really easy, and they make it look like the barrier to entry is really low.

[00:04:30.280] – Tara

And unfortunately, it’s not. So a lot of times I do wind up getting people who come to me who are like, I wish somebody would have told me that I was going to take on this amount of debt. That’s really close to my heart because when my husband and I started our first business in 2005, we didn’t know either. We didn’t understand how much money it actually takes to start and grow and run and sustain a business. And after five years of some of the worst financial times we had ever seen, including the Great Recession, we wound up having to declare bankruptcy and start over.

[00:05:06.750] – Sean

What business model was that that you started?

[00:05:09.570] – Tara

It was complicated. It was a manufacturing business, actually. So it was really complicated. It was a multiple six-figure startup that we didn’t really… We just didn’t really… We were great operators at the time. My husband manufacturing operations, me, business operations. And we really didn’t understand the financial component, the capital intensity that was going to be needed. And neither one of us was great at the time at selling and sales. We really failed because we were great at delivering, which was working. A lot of times meant that my husband specifically was working in the business, but we were not good at bringing in new sales, which is obviously needed to keep the business going.

[00:05:52.440] – Sean

Got it. And what did you manufacture?

[00:05:54.280] – Tara

Rotationally molded plastic parts, if that is of any interest to anyone. Think of like mannequins, rock climbing holds. Sometimes they’re making furniture out of plastic and resin. My husband is a super geek.

[00:06:09.160] – Sean

Wow. Okay. Yeah, I have to drill into this a little further. How did you come into that?

[00:06:14.370] – Tara

So both my husband and I come from small business owner families. His dad had owned a business, my dad owned a business. My dad manufactured bronze sculpture. It’s another fun one for you, like life-size monuments and things like that. And my husband’s father manufactured autoclaves and sterilizers for hospitals and research facilities. My husband left working for his dad and went out into the great world of manufacturing, of which there is a lot where I live. And he wound up working for somebody who was rotationally molding plastic parts. They wound up leaving the area to go manufacture and do their business elsewhere. And he decided to stay and give it a shot.

[00:06:55.720] – Sean

What would be a good example of a customer that was buying from you?

[00:06:59.040] – Tara

So customers that were buying from us, we wound up being in some cases like a third tier. So the end user was like a Gap or Nordstrom or companies that would use mannequins. And then the intermediary, our customer was the person who was procuring the visual assets for a store. And then we would be the ones who are providing the manufactured components in that store.

[00:07:28.460] – Sean

Got you.

[00:07:29.200] – Tara

A lot of sometimes the store displays, even when you see Christmas store displays, those are made out of rotationally molded plastic.

[00:07:36.610] – Sean

Interesting. You fast forward to today where malls, I think of malls, are they sustaining? Well, in my area, I’m inin the Milwaukee area, some have shut down completely. You think about maybe it was a blessing in disguise to get out of it early and restart.

[00:07:54.470] – Tara

So what was starting to happen and what was really problematic for us was that as the recession started coming into play in 2008, they started offshoring and sending things to China to be manufactured. So that was a really big hit. So we lost one of our biggest clients. And then our sales skills weren’t where they were to then go in and really backfill that loss.

[00:08:15.680] – Sean

Got you. So that ended up being a bankruptcy, unfortunately. But let’s move into what you did have. Did you go work for a large corporate after?

[00:08:25.420] – Tara

So my husband went back to working for somebody else. I had always been staying at my job because I was providing the salary and the benefits and all those things that people are like, I’m starting a business don’t think about, especially health benefits. We’re not portable yet. We’re not in a place where benefits are still largely tied to our jobs unless we go to the exchanges. So I was working for the benefits. And then in 2014, I decided that I was going to start my own business. And I never thought I’d have the opportunity. I thought with bankruptcy in my background and with that failure, I really didn’t know how this would be viable or feasible for me to do, but it’s really worked out.

[00:09:08.780] – Sean

Got you. And your husband, did he go work for a large corporate or startAnother business?

[00:09:11.940] – Tara

So he wound up buying his father’s business. So he is back working for himself again as well.

[00:09:17.510] – Sean

Awesome. Thank you for the details there. The reason I asked some of those questions is we do have customers that I know that have had business failures in the past, which is totally okay. We fail forward and we fail fast. That’s the term I’ve used with my close circle. Get out there, try things, and you fail, that’s fine. You learn something. You’re always going to extract information. Now let’s apply it forward. That a painful experience that has helped you start your own, it sounds like this is a consulting business. It’s just you. Is that correct?

[00:09:48.270] – Tara

Correct. And neither my husband or I would be where we are right now if it wasn’t for that bankruptcy. And oddly, we knew going through it, it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to us, even though it stunk really bad. It’s painful. It was terrible. It was painfully terrible and horrible. And I don’t advise to anybody. I always joke around with my clients. I’m like, listen, I went bankrupt, so you don’t have to. And I’m literally going to teach you every single thing I learned and have mastered since then to make sure that you don’t. But I know that over the last year, many of the people in my audience and many other small businesses in different communities have been considering going back and getting a job. And I always say you got to put your oxygen mask on. Business ownership is about staying alive to fight the next day.

[00:10:31.470] – Sean

Let’s talk through that a little bit. There are people who hit points in their business where they reach discouragement. And it feels like every door they try to open, it gets slammed shut on them. This door, slammed shut. That door, I can’t move anything forward, nothing’s working. It almost feels like the universe is pointing in the direction to shut the business down. How do you coach people or talk to people through situations like that?

[00:10:55.740] – Tara

So first of all, it’s the time of year where business owners are really taking stock and they’re staring down the face of the sum of their failures of the year. That’s just how a business owner’s brain works. It’s the end of the year. Maybe there were goals that you didn’t hit. You’re feeling disappointed. Business owners are way harder on themselves than they should be. There’s actually success there, even though they don’t see it. It’s really about understanding and zooming out and looking at a big picture because we’re in the day-to-day, especially if you’re a solopreneur or have a smaller team, you’re really in the day-to-day and you need to step back, you need to zoom out, and you need to really look at through a critical lens, not self-critical, but through a critical lens, okay, what did work? What progress did I make? What steps did I take? What did I learn? What am I proud of? I was at a recent conference and they started off with, what were your wins? And everybody just… It’s a bad year for that conversation. It really is. It’s been a slog of a year for so many people.

[00:11:59.050] – Tara

Coming up with wins was like watching people just chew glass. And at the end, people were coming up to me and they’re like, oh, man, that was really hard. I wish they didn’t focus on wins and blah, blah, blah. And as a coach, I understand the psychology of that. Let’s focus on the positive. Let’s focus on the good. But wins right now might feel like a bit of a rub. So what I really encourage everybody to look at is like, what are you proud of? What have you survived? What did you learn? What failure can you celebrate? Because if my story tells you anything, there is no success without failure.

[00:12:37.110] – Sean

Right. That’s awesome. Here’s another good one. It’s related to productivity. And I see this a lot. You probably, because you’re a coach, you probably see this more than me. But I see a lot of business owners, they’re busy, but they’re doing work that doesn’t produce results. We’ll get into a grind. I think we all get caught up in those moments. You start doing something, you’re busy, and then the day goes by and you reflect like, what did I actually do that benefits the business? I was busy, but was I doing net benefit work?

[00:13:09.230] – Tara

I mean, gosh, especially today with social media and the level of distractions that we have. And I think people are really out of capacity in general and tired. And I don’t think good decisions happen when you feel like you’re out of capacity and you’re tired. And the one thing we can’t make more of is our time. So I really encourage everybody, one, to do a time study, open up Toggle, open up Time Doctor, whatever app that you might prefer, and just track your time and see where are you actually spending your time and how is that contributing to a result. And I think this is actually where we have to reverse engineer how we spend our time so that we are productive because people are not aiming for the right result. So are you aiming for Internet phantom? Are you aiming for followers and likes and comments on your posts? Are you aiming for revenue? Because none of those things, all those things are vanity, even the revenue. And somebody’s going to be like, What are you talking about, Tara? That that revenue is vanity. Well, it doesn’t matter how much you make, it matters how much you keep.

[00:14:15.530] – Tara

So that would be profitability. So if you’re looking at what do I need to do so that I’m profitable, then you can start to understand how you can be allocating your time better. And this is like that whole concept around leading indicators and lagging indicators. So profitability is a lagging indicator. Sometimes you don’t know if you were profitable until the end of the month, until the end of the quarter, and ultimately to the end of the year. And not just profitable, but cash in the bank. So when your accountant says to you, Congratulations, you were profitable, and you’re like, Where’s my money? That doesn’t actually work. If the end goal is dollars in the bank account, what are the steps that you need to take? What are the leading indicators that you do on a regular daily, weekly, monthly basis so that you know that the cash profit is going to be in your bank account at the end of the month, quarter in the year? And those are the things that you should be focusing on, prioritizing.

[00:15:13.060] – Sean

This is a pertinent conversation I wanted to have with you because some of the topics were almost getting into a wound in my own personal life. And I said I want to be transparent here a little bit. So I actually bootstrap Tykr for about three years, went full-time finally in May of 2023. And over the duration of five or six months flat, was not able to scale the business up anymore, doing everything I can regarding getting content out, whether it’s more YouTube videos. We get a lot of customers from YouTube, a lot of leads. People are looking to invest. They want to learn how to do it efficiently, so they go to YouTube. That’s a hot place to go. Tiktok a little bit too, but I’m not, I haven’t figured out that algorithm yet. But anyway, and I got discouraged. I’m like, we’re not the needle. I had to take a step back and be like, okay, number one, what are you doing? If you keep doing, I love this saying, you probably heard it before, is you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you keep getting what you always got. I realized most of my time was spent on content generation and all these gurus out there to talk about, put up more content, put up more content.

[00:16:20.010] – Sean

Put up more content. Like someone with initials, GV, I think everybody knows what I’m talking about. It’s like.

[00:16:25.070] – Tara

Okay, that’s- Or A-H.

[00:16:26.970] – Sean

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Sure, some of what they’re talking about is right, but I have to call BS on a lot of it, be like, I’m doing nothing that’s sales-related. Given my business, I don’t sell directly to people to bring them on us more through affiliates or channel partners or being on podcasts. I’m like, Sean, you have to be on more podcasts. You have to do more webinars collaboratively with other people. You have to be talking to more businesses. Were you doing any of that the last five months? No. It’s like the self-reflection of like, Oh, okay, I see my wrong. Then another thing is, this is an exciting point, is we are a web app today, and the majority of consumers out there do not use websites. People are not sitting at the bus stop or waiting for an Uber or waiting for their sitting on what everybody uses an app. And we’ve been hard at work with a mobile app for a year and a half. Fortunately, going live in the next two months or less, super excited about that. But it’s like, yeah, you don’t have one of the right sales and two, the right platform, time to make changes.

[00:17:32.830] – Sean

So hearing you say some of these things like that correction, like you need to correct your behavior.

[00:17:39.190] – Tara

Yeah. Listen, it’s easy to get into a loop. It’s in your own head and not be able to break out of it and to see something from a different perspective.

[00:17:50.320] – Sean

Right on. Now let’s dive into the tactical aspects of your business. We’ve got a lot of analytical people in our audience that’s like, Okay, so how do I do this or how would you do this? Let’s say somebody has a business that they could be an agency, maybe it’s just them. They’re generating 200, 300, 1,000 in revenue, but then they’re paying contractors, they’re hustling like crazy, and then they’re paying themselves $50,000. This scenario is probably similar to what you’re dealing with. You see a lot of money going out the door, but very little going to their pockets. What would you do? What would you say to them?

[00:18:30.310] – Tara

Sure. So first things first. When anybody is looking at starting a business, they need to reverse engineer the business based on how much they want to be paying themselves. That’s where it’s like, what is the goal? Is the goal to be internet famous? Is the goal to have tons of revenue to brag about? Or is the goal to put food on the table for your family, pay for maybe a college education for a kid or some sports stuff, go on a luxury vacation? People tell me they want to put in pools. What is the goal of this business? And for most of the people that I work with that would be in this agency scenario, they’re coming out of a corporate job where they’re making a lot of money. I mean, for the love of Pete right now, I’ve got friends jumping jobs for 30 % increases, making multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if you want to leave that environment, that’s fine. Can you make multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars on your own? Absolutely, yes. But you have to plan for that. And it’s obviously not going to happen overnight. And so you have to plan for that.

[00:19:34.910] – Tara

You have to reverse engineer it. And as a matter of fact, I actually have a free calculator on my website, which I’ll give you at the end that you can go to and you put in your personal expenses and it will reverse engineer your revenue for you. So then when you look at what revenue you need to get to, let’s say 300,000 in revenue, do you have the offers and the services that will get you to $300,000 in revenue? And I will tell you the number one bottleneck that comes up is pricing, especially with agencies. They don’t understand how to price the contractors that they have delivering the service so that they actually make money. And they’re afraid to charge the price points that would be required for them to be able to pay themselves more than the $50,000 a year. So it becomes really sticky. Either they’re going to be stuck having to do all the work themselves, which is not a bad scenario, it is what it is. But if you want to have people delivering the work, you’re going to have to be at a different price point. Things cost money. That is my mantra.

[00:20:39.550] – Tara

People get done doing my revenue goal calculator, and their biggest takeaway is like, oh, my gosh, things cost money. I’m like, yeah, they do. Right now they cost a lot of money.

[00:20:50.620] – Sean

A lot. A lot more than 10 years ago. Yes.

[00:20:54.680] – Tara

I.

[00:20:56.070] – Sean

Brought up the agency example because I was in that position where I had an agency through the late 2000s, and I can’t recall revenues if we got a closer to 300 a year, and I was making next to nothing because I was paying employees, I was paying contractors, everything that was coming in. It’s going right back out the door to something else. I was paying myself last, and I could not wait to get out of the business. I went through a merger. But it was years later. I read a really good book in this. You may have read it too. It’s Profit First by Mike McAllagher, Bowits.

[00:21:30.720] – Tara

I’m a profit first certified consultant. Did you know that?

[00:21:35.230] – Sean

I could get a hint of what you’re teaching is very in line with… I did not know you were a consultant for him. Yeah. Great book about essentially teaching yourself the discipline to pay yourself first. You are the lifeblood of the business you have to pay yourself. I love it. So maybe tell the audience a little bit about the book and what you teach regarding that concept.

[00:21:59.300] – Tara

Sure. Prophet First is a book written by Mike McAllowitz. He is an author in the business space. And basically what he’s saying with Prophet First is that we have to pay ourselves first. And he’s created a system in that book that I find very simple to implement in other people’s businesses, which is why I’m a certified consultant for him. And really it’s about retraining our behavior. So a lot of people, some people that are might have heard of profit first and they think bank accounts or they think percentages because those are parts of the system where you have specific percentages for profit, for paying yourself, for your taxes, for your operating expenses. And it’s the envelope system where they go into different bank accounts like you would an envelope. Like if you had a granny who used to carry around her, shredded envelopes for budgeting. And everybody thinks that it’s about bank accounts and percentages, but it’s really about behavior. And it’s about training yourself to pay yourself first, to profit first, to then have enough first taxes to pay your taxes. And then with what is left over, you use to operate your business.

[00:23:13.010] – Tara

So it forces constraint. And in the example of an agency, one of the best ways that you can do that is by learning how to productize and systematize what you offer. And so to take the labor out of the delivery so you need less people to deliver it and so that it is as repeatable as it can be. So even though it might seem custom to your client, there’s very little of it on the back end that would be customized, like maybe 20 % would be customized. So we have an offer in our business that is a fractional COO offer where we come in and we help people establish their processes, their systems. We are a certified partner for monday. Com. We use Monday to create workflows and automations. Now, 80 % of how we operate in that offer is productized. It is a system in my business to make it easier to lift and easier to deliver on our end while still maintaining high quality results for our clients. And that’s really the seesaw that you’re going to be playing on in that example.

[00:24:26.240] – Sean

I love the example, the agency, and I’ll speak to this for a second because the people I’ve seen run successful agencies do exactly what you just said. They will productize, they will systematize the model. I made the mistake in the 2000s. It was a job shop, which means we would bring in a project, whether it’s building a software application or a website. We did some video work too, but you’d produce the project or deliver it. Then what happens to the revenue from that project? Oh, it goes away. What do you have to do? You got to go hunt for another project. Whereas successful agencies, what I’ve seen them do is create a service offering that provides value month over month, which means you can generate revenue like a SaaS business, monthly plans. So, for example, I know a woman in my area, she’s doing a great job. And sure, they’ll build websites, but they’ll do marketing campaigns ongoing. So you get the website with the campaign to campaign is like the flagship product because you pay, whether it’s a thousand, $5,000, 10,000 a month, depending on what’s all included. But then you get the new website with it or the new app or whatever.

[00:25:36.810] – Sean

The thing is that’s like a little value add. And she’s been able to scale that business, I think, to maybe 10-15 full-time employeesshe’s not contract, just full-time employees, not contractors, full-time employees. And she’s got systems in place so she can travel part of the year and do it. It’s like, yeah, you did it right. I did it wrong.

[00:25:53.820] – Tara

I think the other part of it is like, so many times business owners, out of desperation, feel like they need to be everything to everyone. And I think that when you can really hone in on what you do for a specific person, it actually… That is a part of the productization because you’re really… So, for example, I do custom profit assessments and roll out plans for people. But that is what I do. I can do that in my sleep. I’ve spent years honing those skills. That doesn’t mean you’re going to pay less money because it’s easier for me to do. You’re going to pay more money because I can do that thing really quickly and easily that you need done. But by sticking with those things instead of trying to be like everything like, oh, well, they want this or they saw somebody else online doing that. So I’m going to do that too. It just becomes a real drain on the profit of the business.

[00:26:48.020] – Sean

Let’s take a quick commercial break. Do you feel like stock investing is too confusing, too time-consuming, or too risky? It doesn’t have to be. If you ever considered investing on your own but you don’t know where to start, I welcome you to check out Tykr. Tykr guides you through your investment journey by steering you toward safe investments and away from risky investments. There were two main reasons why I created Tykr. Number one, I wanted to remove a lot of emotions from investing. In other words, I wanted a software to make buying and selling decisions for me so I don’t have to. Number two, I wanted to save time. Analyzing stocks can take hours, if not days, and I didn’t want to spend all day looking at the computer. I have other hobbies in life I’d rather be enjoying. If you’re interested, you can get started with a free trial. Visit tikr. Com. That’s T-Y-K-R. Com. Again, tikr. Com. Can you give us an idea of what other business models or types of businesses you work with a lot?

[00:27:47.580] – Tara

Sure. I prefer to be in a model in people’s businesses where they have a model that is low volume, so opposite of what you’re doing. Low volume, high price point, premium price point, like expert-based business where people are going to pay you a lot of money to do what you do really well. And the problem that people actually make with those businesses and the reasons why so many experts aren’t being paid what they should be in small business ownership is because they’re targeting the wrong market. So I see this all the time, especially on the online space where I’m seeing people try and sell something really advanced to a very early stage business owner. Women do this a lot. They try and sell to people who are in their startup phase, when they should really be selling to people who are more established, but they don’t feel confident standing next to somebody who has a more established business and they feel more confident standing next to somebody who they’re maybe 10 steps ahead of instead of one step ahead of. Or in my case, I want to work with people who are on equal footing to me.

[00:28:58.870] – Tara

I want you to be the absolute expert at what you do and stand shoulder to shoulder with me being the absolute expert in what I do. So I’m always looking to elevate instead of falling back because we do have things like YouTube and podcasts and courses and memberships that can be educating the DIY, early stage business owner, startup owner. They’re not necessarily the ones who are at the right stage of business, state of readiness or budget for especially agency work, in my opinion.

[00:29:34.870] – Sean

Now, when you say experts, I want to dive into that a little bit because some of the listeners are there on YouTube here might be like, oh, that’s me. Are you talking about maybe somebody who’s like maybe a performance or high-end consultant for corporate executives or is that a good example?

[00:29:51.500] – Tara

Yeah, that’s a good example. I mean, listen, it’s anybody who has spent a career honing their craft.

[00:29:59.290] – Sean

Okay, sure.

[00:30:00.630] – Tara

Five years, 10 years, 20 years. It’s somebody who is qualified to do what they’re doing. And qualification doesn’t necessarily mean a degree. It could be a certification, it could be years of experience, whatever that is, but they’re qualified. They’re not one step ahead. Because we do see that in the online space a lot where we have people who are one step ahead trying to teach the person the thing they just learned. That’s how we got to where we are today. That’s not necessarily talking about because those people actually do need to sell at a lower price point. So they are going to have to have more volume because they don’t have the credibility and the authority to go and command the larger prices and to deliver work at that level. So it’s the people who are coming out of corporate careers who have all those years of experience and are now just saying, you know what? I’m ready to stop working for somebody else. I want to work for myself. I have all this experience. I think I can do this. But you need to be able to charge what the value is that you’re delivering.

[00:31:03.610] – Sean

Sure. That’s good to know. Before we jump into the rabbit fire round, I have one more question here, which is if somebody’s thinking about starting a business, because I do have a lot of people in my friends circle. There’s people who are in the Tykr community that are like, how do I get into the mode where I can create my own financial freedom, create my own business, whether it’s a service business or product business could be an online product. What advice would you give them?

[00:31:33.140] – Tara

Okay, so first of all, starting your own business, being a business owner does not mean you will have financial freedom. You can just as easily create financial freedom working for somebody else. It’s what you do with the money you’re earning that creates the financial freedom. So I’ve seen plenty of people work in corporate jobs, build tremendous financial freedom for themselves because of how they use their money. And I’ve seen so many business owners fail to ever save a penny for retirement because of how they’ve chosen to spend their money. I feel like that’s a myth that I just want to debunk right out of the gate. Now, I do think that small business ownership has the potential to be your greatest economic play, because in theory, your earning potential is unlimited. However, I don’t often see that happening because people unwilling to maybe charge at the price point that they need to charge at or they avoid sales activity or what have you feels uncomfortable to them. A lot of people going from corporate to their own business, it is a completely different ball game. And there’s a lot that you don’t know that there’s going to be a learning curve for.

[00:32:37.690] – Tara

Two, there’s no guaranteed paycheck and business ownership and entrepreneurship. I just also want to say that. And three, you are a commissioned salesperson. People hate when I say that because they’re like, oh, that’s horrible. And I’m like, well, if you don’t sell, you’re not going to eat. So essentially, while nobody wants to be a commissioned salesperson, you do have to wear that sales hat pretty seriously. So the one thing, if you can agree to my terms that I’ve just laid out and you still want to do this, I always joke around, if I convince more people to not start a business, then I’ve been equally successful as helping those who are running a business and making money. So if you are still with me and you’re like, yes, what’s my first step? Your first step is going to be really probably getting the book profit first and really understanding how to reverse engineer your business. So I worked with a number of startups where we’ve gone through and in the business plan, we’ve mapped out, okay, so this is how much money you’re thinking you’re going to bring in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, year one, year two, year three, where is it going to go?

[00:33:50.530] – Tara

How are you going to allocate it and how are you going to use it? Having that understanding of dollars and what those dollars do for you gives so much clarity and it helps you plan for investments that you may be making. You may change your mind when you see those numbers about what investments you’re going to make. You’re going to make decisions. Like, when I first started my business, I decided that I was not going to pay myself for a period of time because I was going to use that money to invest in my business. But it was an intentional decision. You can pay yourself whatever you want to pay yourself as long as you’re doing that intentionally and you understand why you’re doing that.

[00:34:33.380] – Sean

Great advice. I agree 100 %. There are people I know who are in a great position in a corporate job, and it’s relatively low stress. I know it’s not always the case, but it’s like, why would you leave? You got a great paycheck. You’ve got a 401(k) match benefits. Keep pounding cash into the market and you’re going to be in great position because if you start a business, it’s a whole different journey. You may say, hey, the grass is not on this side.

[00:35:01.540] – Tara

Correct.

[00:35:02.300] – Sean

Yeah.

[00:35:02.970] – Tara

So I think it’s got to be in your DNA. It’s got to be in your blood. I come from a long line of small business owners, and the joke in my family was always that they were unemployed; that’s why they were small business owners. Now we’re seeing people choose to be small business owners because they think it is some statement or fad or- Glamorous. Yeah, glamorous identity, something or whatever. And it’s almost become some in my mind, I’m such an old dog, but I’m like, in my mind, it’s almost become like a sickness, and it does more harm than good. Either way, whether you are working for somebody else or you’re in your own business, the way you build wealth is to do three things: make money, save money, invest money.

[00:35:48.550] – Sean

Yeah, simple. Yeah, right on. Now we could go for hours on that topic. Just one more thing is I think I saw the results of a survey of what kids want to become today. Back in my day when we were both in school, it was like an actress or sports athlete. Now today it’s either influencer or entrepreneur. These words are glamorized when people don’t realize like, Yeah, it’s no walk in the park. Yeah, it can be very fruitful, but the journey getting there, it’s brutal.

[00:36:23.350] – Tara

Yeah, it is. That concerns me greatly. That is that those answers were.

[00:36:29.630] – Sean

Yeah. Well, that’s why the world needs coaches like you to guide people down this path, set expectations, get them on board with profit first.

[00:36:40.520] – Tara

Yeah. Cool. You know what? How you are with your money and whether or not you’re earning an amount of money that allows you to have a livable wage and to thrive as a human being is directly connected to our mental health. And when I hear that influencer response, entrepreneur response from these kids, that’s what really deeply concerns me, is that we have to be protecting our mental health. And it’s a hard road sometimes when you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur.

[00:37:10.870] – Sean

Right on. All right, let’s transition here to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Tara really is. If you can try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less.

[00:37:24.450] – Tara

You ready? Okay. I’m ready.

[00:37:26.910] – Sean

What is your favorite podcast?

[00:37:29.620] – Tara

Okay, so I like listening to Adam Grant or Cal Newport. I love the thought leadership on empathy and productivity and all those things that they talk about. Those are two of my most listens.

[00:37:45.350] – Sean

Right. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:37:48.430] – Tara

Okay, so for my own mental health reasons, I’ve read 26 fiction books since June.

[00:37:54.670] – Sean

Whoa, okay.

[00:37:57.440] – Tara

Because your girl needed to get out of the business book non-fiction space and really fly off into fantasy land. I’m really enjoying the series by Sarah J. Mass, called A Court of Thorn and Roses. There’s five books. And it’s like a mash up between Game of Thrones, hunger games, and like fairies.

[00:38:23.980] – Sean

Can we potentially see a TV series on this in the future?

[00:38:27.400] – Tara

So as obsessed as I am over it, I did Google, and it seems like there may be one coming on Hulu.

[00:38:34.080] – Sean

Really? Hulu? Okay.

[00:38:36.150] – Tara

Yeah. And I’m hoping that is so true because they’re good books.

[00:38:40.250] – Sean

Right in the vein of everything I love. I love Lord of the Rings and Game.

[00:38:44.500] – Tara

Of Thrones. Totally in that gem. Go find it.

[00:38:47.310] – Sean

Sign me up. Cool. All right, next question here. This is a movie question. What is your favorite movie?

[00:38:53.600] – Tara

Favorite movie, I would say I don’t necessarily have a specific favorite movie, but I’ve just bingeed the John Wick movies, and I did really like them. Yes.

[00:39:04.820] – Sean

Thank you to finally hear a woman say she likes the John Wick, because my wife and all of her friends are like, no, that looks like… No, it’s actually good. It’s so good.

[00:39:16.950] – Tara

They were so good.

[00:39:19.040] – Sean

And then you got to direct them towards the third one because that’s got Halle Berry and she’s got her dogs and all the stunts they do with the dogs. It’s incredible.

[00:39:26.570] – Tara

I don’t know who wouldn’t want to be John Wick or in that universe and get to stay at the hotel and hang out with the guy, like the actor, what was he? He was from Deadwood. He was amazing. Yes. I can’t think of his name now.

[00:39:39.360] – Sean

The older gentleman. Yeah. No, that’s awesome. Great answer. In all the years I’ve been doing this, nobody has actually said any of the John Wick films. So, boom, we’ve got it. We can check that box. All right, a few questions here related to business or personal. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:39:58.970] – Tara

For me, it’s any advice that doesn’t have a clear why behind it. So I remember working with a coach once in 2014, and she’s like, You have to have a Facebook group. Just go and open up a Facebook group. But there was no why I should have it or what purpose did it serve or what was the process going to be for this Facebook group. Anything that’s just like, just go do this. That’s like a tactic without a fundamental or principle behind it is not good advice, in my opinion.

[00:40:30.260] – Sean

Love it. It makes perfect sense. All right, flip that equation. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:40:36.070] – Tara

Oh, gosh. All right. So the best advice that I ever received was from a mentor of mine when I was in my early 20s, but she actually gave it to me later in life when I was starting my business. And she said to me, Tara, the problem you always had was your confidence. She says, You need to just go and have a healthy dose of arrogance.

[00:40:55.820] – Tara

Okay. And it was good because that insecurity, that lack of confidence, and hearing her say it in a way that arrogance piece where I was like, ewe, arrogance, who wants to be arrogant? But it really made me think about what would it look like if I was so confident that the thing I feared the most, people thinking I was arrogant, was true?

[00:41:19.950] – Sean

I scoffed at that a little bit, but I can agree with you. There can be a line drawn, not a fine line, but a line drawn between that confidence and arrogance. Unfortunately, some people see it as arrogance, but it’s like, no, this is what I believe. This is what I’m doing, and I’m going to come hell or high water. I’m making this happen.

[00:41:37.980] – Tara

Yeah. So Tony Robbins says that when two people, I’m not a Tony Robbins fan, I always have to preface this one quote, When two people enter a room and there’s rapport, the person who is most certain will influence the other. And to me, certainty is what happens once you’re confident.

[00:41:54.980] – Sean

Yeah, right on. Love it. All right, the last question here, time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:42:04.520] – Tara

So I’m going to go back. I was just having this conversation with somebody, and I’m going to go back to right when our first business was failing. And we were in deep trouble. And my father happened to be a third of a partner in that business. It was a third my husband, third my father, third me. And we did a terrible job at navigating that from having partnership contracts and negotiating the fallout and how that would break up. And I wound up acquiescing on a lot out of fear of damaging my relationship with my dad, out of fear of him not loving me anymore and all of those things. And I think that going back, if I knew what I knew today, I would be able to advocate for myself in a much stronger way and still maintain that relationship without just completely giving over everything and winding up in a lot more financial problems than I was in just even before. I love that.

[00:43:05.960] – Sean

I love that advice. All right, where can the audience reach you?

[00:43:10.680] – Tara

Okay, so if they want to access the free calculator that I have, it’s called the Revenue Goal Calculator. You put in your personal information. It helps you set an appropriate revenue goal for you, like a unique thumbprint, fingerprint. That’s what this calculator is going to help you do. You can go to the boldleadershiprevolution. Com/revenue. If you are interested in hearing my melodious voice on a weekly basis, you can go and find me on your nearest podcast player at the BOLD Money Revolution Podcast.

[00:43:40.460] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Tara.

[00:43:42.630] – Tara

Thanks for having me, Sean. All right.

[00:43:44.600] – Sean

We’ll see you. Hey. Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, please head over to Apple Podcast and leave a five-star review. The more reviews we get, especially five-star reviews, the higher this podcast will rank in Apple. So thanks for doing that. And remember, this show is for entertainment purposes only. If you heard any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please do not buy or sell those stocks based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. We’ll see you.