Cash Flow, Ego, and the Real Cost of Scaling with Tara Proskiw

Jeff: [00:00:07] Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner’s Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way. This isn’t about a polished success story on the Company “About Us” page; it’s about the real story behind the business—the pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you’ll sit down with the owners who’ve been in the trenches, built something meaningful, and lived to tell the tale. Whether you’re starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there’s a seat at the Owner’s Roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights. We’re here at the Owner’s Roundtable with Tara. And Tara, why don’t you tell us about your companies?

Tara: [00:01:13] Thank you. I’m excited to be here. So my name is Tara, and I’m the owner of three companies: Towne & Countree Kitchens, Towne Renovations, and Redl Kitchens in downtown Edmonton.

Jeff: [00:01:24] Awesome. Must be a very busy lady, running three different operations.

Tara: [00:01:29] Yeah, for sure. However, the services are shared, so Redl Kitchens uses the Towne & Countree warehouse and the delivery team. And so, although it’s separate entities, it’s more of a market share strategy versus three distinct entities. And then the renovation division services the clients of the cabinetry company. So different, but the same.

Jeff: [00:01:57] That’s interesting. One of the things I always wonder about, especially when I talk to entrepreneurs that have kind of become serial entrepreneurs, how did you decide not to just have one brand, to have multiple brands? What was the key decision that made you decide, ah, I think more than one front is the way to go.

Tara: [00:02:14] So our cabinetry supplier, Decor Cabinets out of Manitoba, Towne & Countree’s main supplier, they are magical and wonderful and they don’t do a lot of really curated custom. So we were on the hunt for years for a luxury brand. You know, kind of to that 1 or 2% of the population that just really wants whatever they want and can afford to have. And so I knew of Redl Kitchens for a long time because previous to Towne & Countree, I worked at a countertop company for a long time. So I knew of Redl, and it just worked out that I had reached out to them to see if we could carry their brand, and they were actually looking to get rid of their corporate store. So I knew that there could be some pretty good magic by being able to sell wonderful custom line, but not super custom, to add to their clientele base. And it was great. And then Redl can sell through Towne & Countree as well. So kind of a calculated play in the market but an opportunity as well. And then on the renovation side, we just saw that our clients, if their project was small, they were not getting the service and the price fairness that they should have had. A lot of renovations companies, they have a lot of overhead.

Tara: [00:03:43] So they don’t either want the small jobs or they’re going to overcharge for them. And it kind of was to protect the cabinetry side. A good cabinet installer is like a unicorn and you need to keep them very happy. And so when contractors didn’t maintain the schedules that they said that they were going to, and then I’m disrupting the cabinetry installer schedule, they’ll leave. They’ll go somewhere else. They want to make a set dollar per day. And they want to be busy. And so it was really a, “see a need fill a need.” And my husband is actually quite handy. So we started the renovation division. You know he was the first and then we added and then it’s grown. So releasing the needs of our clients and listening to our clients and their frustrations. And if we did refer to a contractor, they might take that business elsewhere and go to a different cabinet company. So it was protecting our own clientele.

Jeff: [00:04:38] It makes a lot of sense, and I think understanding how different aspects of your business connect with different kinds of customers, having those different brands allows you to customize a little bit more, as opposed to trying to fit everything under one umbrella. You can feel like you’re contorting yourself when you’re trying to market. So that makes a lot of sense.

Tara: [00:04:56] Yeah, and it’s heartbreaking to see really good people that you connect with leave to go somewhere else. I do want to, for the majority of people, be able to provide them value and a safe place to invest their time and money.

Jeff: [00:05:11] Makes a lot of sense. We kind of got off on a bit of a tangent just because I was curious, but I want to back the bus up a little bit and talk about how you got into this in the first place. I think you started out earlier in your career as a pre-qualified business owner, and you already knew how to do everything. That’s how you started out or did you start somewhere else?

Tara: [00:05:29] So my first career I was a court stenographer, so I was the lady who would type really fast and transcribe in shorthand. That was really cool. And I traveled the Arctic and had some neat experiences. But I knew that that wasn’t the job for me. And then, ironically enough, those skills are not very transferable into the regular workforce, so I had to start from scratch. I started in an accounts payable position and then got introduced to a company that I was at for over 11 years, in countertop sales. And I grew from part-time in the showroom to taking over as the first female branch manager in year seven. So I do have a passion for behind the scenes problem solving. I would say I’m an operational person and I’ve always been a workaholic, so I had a pretty severe fear of my livelihood and my mental health being tied to either my next manager or my next boss. If a company sells, do they retain you? Worrying about getting older and not having maybe people see my value, and so I don’t think it was ever a goal for me to own a business, let alone three. But fear took me to one of my opportunities. And really, business ownership is a process. So if you have an accountant and a lawyer, you pay them to do the work. They’ll draft it, you sign the paperwork and boom, now you’re a business owner. So I had a really great mentor in the person that I bought the businesses from. He wanted out. He was late 60s and wanted a succession plan. And I wanted to see if I was smart enough to be able to do it. And, you know, if you have a couple of bad experiences with leadership, it’s a pretty easy way to have the courage to try to do something that you wouldn’t necessarily think you want to do.

Jeff: [00:07:22] What was the biggest learning curve? First, from when you went from court stenographer to manager? And then I’ll ask you about what was the biggest switch from manager to owner. But let’s start with what were the skills that you didn’t know you were going to need, and you had to find out going from stenographer to manager?

Tara: [00:07:38] So one of the superpowers, I think, that I got from being a court stenographer is the ability to retain information. And I’ve always had a pretty good sniff for if people are BSing me. So I can retain a lot of what people have told me in the past. And I think in leadership, there needs to be a trust factor from both sides. I need to have… work with people who are honest and, you know, little white lies, whatever. Like that’s a human condition. But fundamentally, you know, are you a person of your word? What I didn’t have any skills in was financial statements, and that was not good. If it’s all emotion, I’m a very empathetic, people person, meaning I don’t always love to be around people, but I support my employees with my whole being. Carrying people who shouldn’t be in the seats that they had and not looking at how that was impacting my financial statements. You know, it was just about the end.

Jeff: [00:08:38] Yeah, especially for someone when somebody that comes in and takes over an existing operation. I know that’s something that I struggled with initially. How did you deal with kind of making peace with having to make some changes on the staff team, and kind of what was the final straw where you’re like, okay, something’s got to change around here?

Tara: [00:08:58] So the final straw really was I have a very aggressive vendor take-back and Trump and talking about tariffs. Although our products were not impacted, so much of our business is retail homeowners and people are not going to invest in their homes if the market is unstable. And so even though my cabinetry is all made in Canada, we were still quoting, quoting, quoting, but the sales were not maturing or materializing from those quotes. So you add aggressive vendor take-back, a soft sale, and too much overhead and it becomes very clear, very fast that changes have to be made. But the tell was there in the financials for a long time. I just didn’t want to do the hard work of letting people go. In hindsight, I should have done it a long time ago.

Jeff: [00:09:56] Can always be tough because you feel people… that you want to support people and always be there for your team, but at a certain point, you have to make sure the right people are in the right seats on the bus, and that you have just enough people to make it to get there.

Tara: [00:10:09] And the reality is, I kept people for a while, but once they were gone, I could see that they were actually actively looking for other work. So I put way more into the heart side, like they must have also known that they were not in the right seat, or it wasn’t the work that they wanted to do or were called to do. So, really good. Like peeled the layers of my whatever lens I’m looking through. I should not be making assumptions on what I think other people want or need. It’s not my job.

Jeff: [00:10:39] As people come into ownership and being the one responsible, I think that’s one of the toughest things, is being able to make peace with the idea that somebody’s going to be great at something, they’re just not necessarily in the right seat with your company, or they might be doing and you’re doing them a disservice by letting them sit in that seat for an extended period of time.

Tara: [00:10:56] Well, and if I look at just one person and their role, and I’m not protecting the entity of, let’s say, the 34 people that I am also supporting, you know, where are you shining your flashlight? My coach says that. Like, notice what you’re noticing, and where you’re shining your flashlight. So if I’m only looking there and not, you know, making that beam wider to see all of the other people who need me to show up and have a healthy company, you know? So I think it’s maturing and getting through some of those hard situations. I will never go back. I will never allow myself to be so tied up on my own doing in other people’s stories. There’s so many more chapters than we kind of know.

Jeff: [00:11:40] Yeah, it’s hard to know what’s going on in the rest of somebody else’s life. We only see them for a certain period of each day. Yeah, in the end, it’s… I mean, it’s a deal that they make. As owners, you’re providing money to them. They’re trading you for their labor. But it’s got to work for both sides. And so going from being a general manager to being the owner, what was the thing that you were like, oh, like as a manager, you thought you had all of the knowledge and the levers. What did you find out when it was… you’re the one with the keys at the end of the day?

Tara: [00:12:12] I learned about a little beast called the ego. I think that there’s this really unique and odd ego transaction that, like, I’m the owner of. But really, your clients all own you, and the accountant owns, and CRA owns you, and, like, it’s not… I think that there needs to be coaching and therapy. And if people want to go from an employee to an owner, there needs to be mandatory education. That or coaches or something so that we know what we’re going into because, you know, all of the books behind me, like I’m an avid reader, they typically have an optimistic lens. There’s not a lot of books that are like, whoa, this is what’s going to happen to you in the first five years when you owe big money to whoever you bought the company from. And so that was huge. And then the fear and the anxiety and even resentment, my situation was unique that the owner stayed inside the company. So I technically owned the company, but he stayed on. We’re in our four and a half years of my owning and he’s just retiring now. So then the roller coaster journey of I’m trying to do things the way that my brain says will be appealing. That’s not where he would go. And so you have some of this as well. So who are your people who can support you? If I were to complain to my husband, who never wanted us to do this in the first place, I am now stressing the relationship that I should have at home. And we also work together. So I do think so wholeheartedly that there should be some education moments in place for people so that they can not maybe go too far down the rabbit hole of whether it’s anxiety or depression or fear or ego. And what do we do in a downed economy? You know, what is our cash flow? How much can we absorb? For how long do we have too many people? Do we not? I think I have a PhD in all of the things that I should not have done, because I didn’t know any different. Yeah.

Jeff: [00:14:44] I mean, that’s one of the things when we get into business, everybody looks to the owner like you’re the expert in absolutely everything, and you can’t really know everything. You have to take the self-assessment. You talked about ego of, okay, what am I actually good at? And what should I be getting somebody else to do? That’s a bit of a pill to swallow, especially when you come in and your chest is puffed out and you’re like, you have… the first thing you have to do is, what am I bad at? Beat yourself up a little bit so you know what you shouldn’t be doing.

Tara: [00:15:12] And what are my blind spots? Just because I’m good at operations, if I’m not good at calling clients to pay their bill, which one’s better? They’re just different. So I think every entrepreneur should have a coach. I’ve had multiple, I have different coaches for different things. I cannot be, let’s say, a peak athlete, a business athlete if I don’t know what my blind spots are or I’m not leaning on people who… they easily do what I’m not comfortable doing. Or can help guide me.

Jeff: [00:15:48] Well as a coach for some I endorse that people should have coaches. I know that benefited me a lot when I was getting started in business. But I think one of the things that you mentioned that a lot of people don’t think about before they become an owner is the isolation that comes with it. Like, who do you talk to about your problems? Because if you talk to your staff about your concern over cashflow, they start getting a little twitchy about, oh, am I going to have a paycheck? Being in business with your spouse, having run a company with my wife, I have a unique appreciation for what are the rules for what happens at work, and are we talking about that at home? Or… we used to have very specific rules about when you can and can’t talk about business because it does bleed over into your relationship. How have you dealt with that?

Tara: [00:16:35] So we’ve been married 20 years now. We’ve worked together for like 19. I probably made him feel very isolated because he just needed to verbally vent and it’s done. He got it out. I’m a processor, so I’m going to take every little nugget that I hear, and then I’m going to overanalyze it to death in the middle of the night. And then… like it doesn’t work well. So we’ve had some really good conversations. We talked about a rule: no talking about work after 7 p.m. Because my brain needs to start winding down. I would try not to talk about work on the weekend. Or I didn’t want to hear from him. I was okay to talk about work on the weekend, so it wasn’t very balanced. But shortly after I signed the paperwork, I joined WPO, which is called the Women’s Presidents Organization, and they’re all women entrepreneurs of a certain revenue per year to be in the room. And then I recently joined tech. I’m newly in a Mastery of Mind program with Stacey Berger. I am actively trying to hone my brain, to look at things in a different way and let the small stuff, just… like it’s just white noise. Otherwise, there’s no way that I will live to the ripe age of being able to enjoy, hopefully, financial success. It just, you know, I had shingles twice at 35 before I came to Towne & Countree. I’ve had intestinal surgery. Stress does really horrible things to the body. And as I’m getting smarter and older, I’m looking at how… healthspan versus lifespan and how I can mitigate some of those risks.

Jeff: [00:18:16] How do you approach dealing with stress in your role? I mean, I’m sure you’re a very busy person running three companies. How do you find time for yourself and to help process some of that stress that comes along with that?

Tara: [00:18:28] So I’ve kind of become a bit remote. Like once… I’m good all day long. I’m an early bird and I’m early to bed. So once I get home from work, I have kids, I’ve got a husband, I’ve got six pets. I just want simple. I think over the years I’ve learned to lean on my team and empower them. Like micromanaging is not anything that an owner should be doing. So I’ve just learned techniques over the years, and then I do a lot of inner thoughts. Like how did I show up today? I do intention setting in the morning and I do gratitude work at night. Who was I? Who was Tara? Did she show up today? Was she kind? Was she acting as a CEO and, you know, assertive but not aggressive? And am I proud of myself? And then everything else is extra. If you like me, that’s extra because I like myself. It just allows me to breathe and not think too deeply in the minutia of all of the different jobs. Because running a business, you’re going to have errors. What’s the percentage of errors that’s tolerable and then manage above and below it. And our clients are all reasonably affluential. So there are expectations for performance. And then basically everything I do is based off my core values. So, it’s pretty difficult for me to lose myself. It just gets hard when circumstances beyond my control jump in. And that’s a part of doing business. So maybe reasonable expectations.

Jeff: [00:20:09] One of the things that I’ve always struggled with is knowing when it’s done. When I can go home at the end of the day. Is that something that you struggle with as well?

Tara: [00:20:18] My email does not ping on my phone. I have to go in and intentionally look at my email, which I do like far too much, and I’ve become annoying like my children, and my phone is on silent almost all of the time. I can’t handle the stress of what was that ping? Who was that? A lot of my stress went away stopping watching the news. And so if I am… and I don’t want to be ignorant to current events, but I don’t want it to control… if I go to work and my energy or my vibration is one of fear, that doesn’t, it’s not helpful to anyone. So by setting my intentions, controlling what I see and hear has allowed me to shut things off. I’ve also found the courage to let clients know that we might not be the right person for them, or the right company for them. If they’re overly aggressive, my personality does not work with like bullying-type or condescending. My brain can’t compute it. So by being very careful with how we interact with clients, we have attracted the kind of clients who are typically quite thankful for our services, which helps.

Jeff: [00:21:37] That’s an interesting point of knowing who your customer is and being willing to turn those away who aren’t your customer. How has that affected your business, taking that approach?

Tara: [00:21:46] Well, it’s released so much stress for me because I think I would naturally try to fix people. So past friends. Oh, that client is pretty spicy. Let me just pour on the charm or whatever, and I’ll try to fix them. You think about a magnet. I want to work with people who are attracted to us, not flipping the magnet and then, you know, you’re just there’s no alignment possible because we’re not on the same… again is energy or frequency or thought processes. So, it’s great. I’ve learned to appreciate what we do, why we do it a certain way. And if that doesn’t work for people, they have free choice. But so do I. I can get interviewed for a job, but I can also interview to find out if you’re the client that we will do well with.

Jeff: [00:22:37] Makes a lot of sense. It reminds me. You’ve probably heard the quote, the customer’s always right, but the part most people leave out is the rest of that quote is in matters of taste. There the customer is always right and being able to decide what they want. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always right.

Tara: [00:22:51] Correct. And some people again, super successful in their chosen fields. They don’t know what they don’t know, but they have such conviction for the way that they think, that they think that they know. And so again, I’m okay to have clarifying conversations about, I’m very sure that you’re very successful in your role. We’ve done this so many times now, we know why that request that you have doesn’t work. And here’s why. And so, no, I’m not doing it like that.

Jeff: [00:23:24] Yeah. Something you said earlier that I thought was really interesting was you said as part of the transition process when you took over, that the old owner has been around for four years. That’s a long time frame to kind of work together. How did that look? Did you have regular meetings or they were there more as an advisor or how did the transition work?

Tara: [00:23:43] So Greg Adams was the owner that I bought from. And we’ve been, you know, good mates for a long time. But he’s a kitchen designer. I’m not. Like I can make a spreadsheet sing with, you know, with programming, but you know, I can’t design a kitchen. So we came at business from different lenses. The first six months, I would say, was probably quite lovely, because I would have maybe been open to more of the advisory role, but as I was so deeply in it, I didn’t really want or respect his feedback because it didn’t align with what I was wanting. Or maybe I had to learn those lessons myself. Kind of like a parent relationship. My teenagers don’t listen to me at all. You could come in Jeff, and be like, hey, Charlie, do this and she’ll be like, oh, that’s a great idea. I said it for the last ten years, and it’s like, eww. So it was reasonably stressful for a year or two, and then we both were able to get to a place of just gratitude and appreciation for each other. So it was very challenging. When I sell Towne & Countree, I will not do the same. I will not stay on. That will be written in, that, you know, you’ve got keys to the city. I will make sure that the legal agreement is protecting me, but I will not do that to that next person or have those feelings myself either.

Jeff: [00:25:08] Yeah. I mean, sometimes a little bit of overlap while you’re training is helpful. I remember the first time I did a… bought a business. The owner said they were going to stick around for a month, and they were there for like four days. And, it was not quite the transition that I had expected. And I had, admittedly had to learn a few of my own lessons. But that transition piece is always tough.

Tara: [00:25:33] I already have an exit plan. Like my COO, my intention is to sell to him in ten years, and his intention is to take it from me. So our circumstance is unique if that were to materialize. There would definitely have to be an overlap if it was an external person. But I want to remove my ego from the equation. I’ve done my work. It’s yours now. It’s healthy. Pay me and I’ll move on to whatever my next adventure is.

Jeff: [00:25:58] Yeah, well, that’s fair enough. I know that you have probably one of the few people that have read as many management books as I have. I know you’re an avid reader of different types of management books. What’s one that really sticks out in your mind that you’d recommend to people, and what did you take out of it that personally helped you?

Tara: [00:26:16] The real recent one that I really liked was The Gap and The Gain. I think it might be Dan Sullivan, but I can’t remember. It relates to the coaching I’m going through. If we just look at what we’re missing or the gap, we’re not measuring the gains and celebrating them and the momentum or the compounding improvements with our teams and with ourselves. So, I very much am trying to take that next few moments and look back at where I was or where the team was, or where I thought we were, and where are we now? What were those learnings? I don’t need to spend too much time there. I don’t want to get caught up in the what ifs and maybes, but celebrating the gains in how mentally I’m stronger or the team is stronger or empowered. And I do really like Atomic Habits. I think that is… those small incremental changes, given the time and the patience, can really reap the benefits.

Jeff: [00:27:21] Yeah, yeah. Atomic Habits. I’ve been a big proponent of that one for a long time too. It’s a great book.

Tara: [00:27:28] Yeah. A lot of the books, there’s so many similarities there. Just people change the words and I’m kind of like, man, like, I’ve read this 400 times now in just in different books or, you know. And what I’ve really, really learned is just because you read a book, doesn’t mean that you’re smarter. It’s… you have to take the time to implement the learnings to see what works and what doesn’t work. There was one year around this time, actually, I read like 11 leadership books over the Christmas break and I’m like, wow, you’re addicted to reading. It’s just a distraction. If I’m not implementing the learnings, it’s… I could have read a, you know, spicy romance novel or a horror and had enjoyment. A lot of business books are pretty dry.

Jeff: [00:28:17] Yeah, there certainly are some that could use a little bit more colour. So if you could travel back in time to before you started your business and be like, okay, look, here’s what you need to know before you get into this. What would you be going back in time to tell yourself?

Tara: [00:28:31] Well, last week it might have been, “don’t do that.” I would have forced myself to learn more about what a healthy business looks like. And I actually made the payment schedule for my vendor take-back. And so I have like monthly payments. And then I have two large sums per year. Well, I didn’t know any better, but my one large sum is December 31st. People are not buying cabinets typically in December. And so you have like two payrolls that need to be covered plus a large sum of money. Like, I should have paid a professional to review it and to look for the gaps. I was just like, well, I’m just going to figure this out myself. So I would have gotten more education on protecting myself and my mental health with understanding a balance sheet and a cash flow statement.

Jeff: [00:29:27] It’s funny you mention a cash flow statement, because it’s amazing to me how many people pretend that they can read those and really find out later how much they need to understand what goes on in a cash flow statement between the PNL and the balance sheet. Because it really is the magic report that tells you where your money went.

Tara: [00:29:43] Well and… but it’s not even just the numbers, it’s what it represents. If your organization, like mine, if I was carrying too many people, I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t… I don’t want to. I would, I would myself, as the owner, find ways to cancel my management meetings because I didn’t want the mirror that is reflected on those financial statements mirrored back at me. But I was absolutely the person who should have been paying the most attention.

Jeff: [00:30:14] Yeah. It’s… One of the things I had to learn, and tell me what how you learned this, was like the cash flow management between the difference between what’s on your profit and loss. How much money did I make and how much money is in my bank account? And balancing like inventory and the flow back and forth. Was that something that ever caught you flat footed and maybe we bought too much inventory or kind of thing?

Tara: [00:30:36] We’re lean on inventory, but I’ve learned over the years, if I have too much money in my bank account, that means that we’re not doing enough work because I should be paying my cabinetry suppliers every week. That was more prevalent when I was the GM because obviously with my vendor take-back, you know, I’m moving cash out the door really fast. A lot of times it’s inverse of what I think it should be. So shortly after I bought the company, I went through a program called Bold Leadership with Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, which then got me to a program called Growth Catalyst out of Mount Royal University in Calgary. And it was like a seven-month business bootcamp. And they talked a lot about scaling. Grow big. Grow, grow, grow, grow. Well, I had no idea the cash burden that growth brings. So then all of these, it was kind of a perfect storm of challenges because the growth was successful. But then I had too many employees. Like even on the renovation side. So then I was scared because if I don’t have enough employees, how am I going to do this future work? Well, if the future work didn’t come as fast as I needed it to, you know, you hear all these things about how much money it costs to let people go. And so I’m like, okay, well no. Like we’ll just keep them like so. And so is a really good guy. Like we’ll just ride it out. But it’s not as everything you read says. And scaling if it’s not profitable, is one of the dumbest things that you can do in my opinion. Right? We just blew ourselves apart for the last six months. Did, let’s say, $2 or $3 million more in business and are actually behind? How much is ego? How much is smart? What are all of the things that we can do? Like why grow to grow?

Jeff: [00:32:40] Growing broke, I think, is the term where you’re… there’s more sales, but you’re not necessarily making the margin to make it sustainable, kind of thing.

Tara: [00:32:49] And that’s where like, who is my ideal client? How am I doing? If you look at marketing, well, you could spend $20,000 a month on SEO. For what? I could buy cabinets Edmonton. Do they want Ikea? Like who? What kind of cabinetry do they want? So you almost need like a masters in all of these different divisions or ways to invest money to know what to do. But, you know, obviously, we need to grow. We need to like, I hired a CFO, I hired a COO. I needed somebody else looking after my money. So that was smart. However, that comes with a price tag. So, you know, all of these things. It’s like an ever-evolving roller coaster. You just want to, you know, like reduce the peaks and valleys more.

Jeff: [00:33:45] What would you have done differently than the way it went?

Tara: [00:33:49] Find the safe place to talk. Well, therapy, I think, is really important. To have an outlet with someone who is trained to listen is super important and I think should be normalized. I think we all need a business coach. There’s so many business coaches, and so it’s like, who resonates with you? One of the things that I found, because I’m a high achiever, I always got the pats on the back. Whoa, Tara, you’ve gotten so much done since I saw you 30 days ago. But it’s not like, whoa, Tara, you got distracted over here, and you just went and read 15 books that you should have actually been implementing that book. Or going into a coaches meeting, here’s my financial statements. Let’s talk about those. So it has to be more than just emotion and, you know, kind of ego stroking or empathy or whatever. And it’s, what is your potential? I realizing at 45 that I’m more unique than I knew. I knew that my family doesn’t get it. My mom and my sister and my brother, not entrepreneurs. They think I’m insane, so I can’t rely on them to nurture me. If I call my mom and I had a bad day, she can’t change the topic fast enough, or oh, sorry, gotta go, the baseball game’s on. You know, she doesn’t want to talk to me. And it’s not that she doesn’t love me. It’s she doesn’t understand and it stresses her out. So who are your people? Who is your client? And do you have a good lawyer and do you have a good accountant? Those are really important.

Jeff: [00:35:29] I think you raised a good point, and it is hard to talk to people who haven’t been in the entrepreneur’s chair. What do you think it is that changes the way you think about the world compared to, I guess, everybody else, for lack of a better term? Like how do you think the world looks differently to you than it maybe looks to your mom, for example?

Tara: [00:35:48] So I see opportunities everywhere. Every time I get pissed off by a trade or a service experience, I’m like, you know what, I’m just going to start this business and I’m going to take over and I’m going to buy you out. Like, you’re not nice. So I would very easily be labeled a Karen, even though I’m not aggressive or rude. I have high expectations. So, I see opportunities and a lot of people see just negative. And I can’t really be around negative people. It’s almost like I’m allergic. I get a pit in my stomach. I’m like, oh, I got, you know, I gotta get away from you. I can’t. Anybody who has a dark cloud over their head, I’m out. And that’s where you talk to me about, like, how do I have quiet? I have to control who’s around me. I need to recharge my battery. I need to spend the time internally or spiritually or nurturing my brain. I can’t really exist in public very well for long periods of time.

Jeff: [00:36:55] Being aware of who’s around you and how that’s influencing, how your experience with the world, I think, is something that is important to be aware of, for sure.

Tara: [00:37:04] It is, but it’s also further isolating.

Jeff: [00:37:07] Yeah. Trying to find your people that you resonate with, that charge you up, I think, is especially hard for sure.

Tara: [00:37:13] And like, couple stuff. My husband is unique. I’m unique. I don’t always like spouses of my friends. And so like it’s really interesting to have, let’s say, my high-functioning brain. You know, where do I fit? That’s the I think that the hardest part is maybe not feeling like you fit in. And maybe like just learning, I don’t care. Like I’m doing what I want to do. And I’m learning. This Mastery of Mind program is amazing because it’s not about anybody else. It’s about what are my goals? What are my visions? Who am I? Who do I want to be? Right?

Jeff: [00:37:52] To choose your own adventure. And you get to choose. Totally.

Tara: [00:37:55] Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah, totally. You’re picking which section of the game you want to play in. Yeah.

Jeff: [00:38:02] That’s totally right. I love the piece where you’re saying, like, if you find somebody that’s not doing a good job, you just want to start a company and do it. It’s that willingness to not accept things that are broken. You’re like, well, that’s broken, but I’m going to fix it. Yeah.

Tara: [00:38:16] My husband sent me a meme one time, like super excited, that’s like, I’ve wanted this since lunchtime and it’s all I can think about. I have started so many businesses in my head per day because I’m like, that sucked, I don’t want to wait on hold for 45… like, I’m going to start a bank. I’m gonna have live people answering the phone. I’m not going to start a bank. But, you know, there’s just so much mediocrity and average and it just sucks the life out of me. And then I turn it into a, it’s an opportunity. And so I have to really control those conversations with my employee. Like I could see them, hey, I have an idea. They would, like, shrink into themselves and be like, oh my God, you just had 400 yesterday.

Jeff: [00:39:03] It’s too much. Yeah.

Tara: [00:39:05] And that was probably one of the bigger things I should have added when you asked me that question earlier, is control how much comes out of your mouth as a new business owner with your team.

Jeff: [00:39:17] Yeah. Because the way you think about the world may be a little bit overwhelming for some of your team.

Tara: [00:39:23] Yeah. And what is their age? What is their personality type? Do they like change? Do they… I love change. I could change processes multiple times a day. A lot of my teammates do not. Absolutely not. And it creates a fight or flight. Like I’ve created a lot of visual stress and probably emotional stress, just being myself.

Jeff: [00:39:45] I mean, that’s part of your role as the head is to be the disrupter, to create new ways to do that. But it’s getting everybody on board can take a bit of a challenge.

Tara: [00:39:54] But even spending enough time in it to do a risk analysis on it before it leaves my mouth.

Jeff: [00:40:00] Yeah. Yeah, having that internal dialogue.

Tara: [00:40:03] They might have done that. Totally. Yeah, I have, like I have a whole filter system of things now in place before it goes from my brain to my mouth.

Jeff: [00:40:12] We’ve talked about so many things today and there’s like so many threads I want to pull on, but I want to be respectful of your time. We’ll maybe have to have you back again and get it into some more of those threads, but really appreciate you making the time to come on the podcast and share with all the listeners your experiences as an entrepreneur. Anything else you’d like to add to leave them with a piece of advice?

Tara: [00:40:33] If you have a desire to be your own boss, do it and just invest some time and energy and money into setting yourself up for success. And I would love to see more women business owners visible and creating more of that disruption in the industry. I think we have a lot to offer, and there are a lot more resources available to support us doing these things. So yeah, no, I appreciate the platform that you’re opening up to allow people to to talk about the inner workings. Not all of them are glamorous. And I’d love to be a guest again if there’s threads. This is my world. I bounce around ideas and topics and thrive in that. So I appreciate you riding the journey with me as well.

Jeff: [00:41:19] Thank you so much for the great discussion. And yeah, we’ll make sure to have you back again soon and pull on some more of those threads. Thanks, Tara.

Tara: [00:41:26] Love it. Thank you.