Micheal Pacheco 0:00
You’re right. All right. Hey, everyone. And thank you once again for joining us on their markup coach podcast. I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have Tara stand. Tara grew up wanting to be MacGyver didn’t we all? True. That’s spirit, she became an industrial engineer that engineers space to grow your business without becoming another victim of entrepreneur burnout. No paperclip required. It’s important. Tara, welcome to the remarkable coach podcast.
Tara Stand 0:33
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Micheal Pacheco 0:35
So glad to have you. So I’d love to open up the podcast, I just kind of asking our guests to talk a little bit about yourself, and what got you into coaching.
Tara Stand 0:44
Oh, my gosh, I love talking about myself. But it’s always awkward to do so isn’t it. Um, so I’m an industrial engineer, which basically means that I engineer businesses, I look at process and look at process improvement, I look at how to make things easier to get. So it’s all those every time somebody says, work smarter, not harder. And they never tell you how it’s because all of us industrial engineers are recording the secrets of how to do that. That’s really what we learned how to do.
Micheal Pacheco 1:12
Like, that’s very rude. All the secrets and just keep them for yourself.
Tara Stand 1:18
That’s why I recently started my Instagram accounts like so just pushing out secrets of working smarter and not harder. And then I worked for many, many years in a variety of industries, as a consultant in manufacturing, food service industries, tech, green tech, all of those places. And what I really found is that even working in the same industry, so within my career, I’ve had this kind of weird parallel when I’d be working with two different companies that made the same things in the same market. And then, so it could really kind of, in real time, compare and contrast what works in a company and what doesn’t work in a company. And what I noticed after about what I noticed over the length of my 20, some odd year career at this point, is that the thing that makes companies really successful. And what I mean by that is not necessarily their bottom line that that definitely plays into it, but successful in a way that is really effortless, versus a company that is constantly chasing payroll that’s constantly chasing customers that’s constantly chasing all the time is whether or not they were very clear on what they did and what they didn’t do. And that kind of led me in to coaching because I thought if we could just get everybody on the same page of what they do, then their businesses can be successful. And that makes me happy because I want everyone to make money.
Micheal Pacheco 2:49
Nice. So you did consulting in the past, but today, you call yourself a coach. What’s where’s that, where’s the line of delineation there for you.
Tara Stand 3:00
The line of delineation is really where instead of going into a company and actually solving their problems for them, and, and, and really doing most of it for them working one on one hand in hand, my coaching really helps people look at their own businesses and teaches them how to do it themselves. And then getting kind of retail real time feedback. So eventually, they won’t need me, that’s really the goal.
Micheal Pacheco 3:30
Right? Nice. So talk a little bit more about your shift into coaching and doing this. So when you were doing you know, consulting, you said you worked in a variety of industries, you know, and that kind of thing. What What drove this shift specifically into coaching.
Tara Stand 3:54
Um, I mean, much of it was personal, to be honest with you I are I’d already done some coaching with some of my clients, some executive coaching on top of the consulting that I was doing. And then I had some family things that required me to step away from much more intense one on one interactions with with clients. My family, I live in New York, but my family’s in Nebraska and my mom was going through cancer treatment, I needed to be able to kind of go back and forth when when I needed to go back and forth and my kids were getting older, which conversely meant that they needed me more.
Micheal Pacheco 4:34
I have an eight week old baby that terrifies me.
Tara Stand 4:40
Yeah, well, yeah. So it’s it’s actually you go right. This is very intense for the first two years. Yeah. And then they can they can make themselves serial. That’s a huge milestone. In in like your responsibilities and then you Institute parenting hours from you know, so out of parenting hours you don’t parents, they take care of them. smells. And so that is great. And there’s a law you don’t think it’s a law is a trick law, but it is law until we hit about 11 and 12. And then they need you very intensely again.
Micheal Pacheco 5:12
So the law is like the law is like fall spring. It’s still winter. But there’s a nice day and you’re like, Oh, this is beautiful springs here. And then it snows again.
Tara Stand 5:23
It blizzards, it is white out.
Micheal Pacheco 5:29
Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Tara Stand 5:31
Yeah, so that’s really what led me to say that, yes, that’s what led me kind of to switch to more to more coaching, rather than consulting.
Micheal Pacheco 5:40
That seems like an honorable, honorable reason. I think family Family First is definitely something that we believe at boxer. So I think that’s great. Yeah. Who are your who your clients Who’s your ideal client? Who do you work with?
Tara Stand 5:54
So I typically work with businesses that have been in, in their space for two plus years, usually two to five, because that’s when kind of the new wears off, and they’ve got some clients, and they’re, you know, if they’re, if they’ve experienced a lot of growth, and we’ve experienced it, and they’re kind of being overwhelmed with that, and if they haven’t experienced large growth, and they’re kind of at the point of, okay, is this really something that I want to do? Or am I ready just to move on to something else? Typically, they have, it’s either a solo operation up to five employees. And they’re starting to run into kind of those growth problems again, with their employees, if they have them. And if they don’t have them, they’re trying, they’re running into, I need to bring somebody on. And I don’t know how to do that. So that’s typically kind of the sweet spot when somebody starts working with me.
Micheal Pacheco 6:51
And what does a typical engagement look like? Are you kind of month to month? Do you have like a three month program or a six month program, or?
Tara Stand 7:01
Sure, so my, we typically do, as I say, you know, there’s this learning curve that happens anytime you try something new. And so if you don’t give it a shot to work, then it’s it’s never going to work, right. So I typically do an initial three month package, and then once a month after that. So that way, we have time to institute, whatever they need to institute. So the first thing that happens is we kind of do an evaluation of what I call their clarity engines. And then based on that evaluation in the conversation about their goals, and what they want, not just right, because you said it, like family is everything. And so not just their work goals and their profit goals, but also what they want their life to look like. Because if you build a business and you’re you keep going, you keep going, you can’t go to your kids concert, then is that the business that you want? And maybe for some people, that’s yes. And maybe for some people, that’s no, but you should decide upfront, so we can build the business that you want. So after that, we really take a look at kind of individually, what there is, what their needs are and where they’re getting stuck at. And so based on that we build a plan for them after those first three months.
Micheal Pacheco 8:10
Can I just say if if there is if there’s a business owner out there that has kids, and they are you consciously and intentionally opening up their notebook and writing down a plan that says, I want to build a business that does not allow me to go to my kids concert? I don’t ever want to work with that person.
Tara Stand 8:34
With you, I agree with you. But I think that there’s also space, right? I we lose ourselves in parenting sometimes. Yeah. And so there’s space to say, like, I can be a really good parent here. Right? And just be really conscientious about where you’re doing your best parenting and where you’re doing your best working.
Micheal Pacheco 8:55
Yeah, yeah, I like it. You gotta I mean, everyone has different hats that they put on and take off throughout the day, even as, as a business owner, right, especially as a small business owner, you’re doing everything you know, you’re your might be the accountant on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday, you become the marketer. And on Thursday, you’re HR.
Tara Stand 9:18
Exactly, exactly. And so, when the when the when our kids were little when they were, you know, kind of toddler esque, I guess. My husband stayed home with them just because he was much better. It was a much better toddler parents than I could have ever been. And then now that they’re teenagers, I stay available. I’m not home all the time, but it is available. I think a much, much better parent to teenagers.
Micheal Pacheco 9:43
That’s, that’s that’s your plan, too. I mean, this is a little off topic, but I mean, we’re having a conversation so it’s just chat, but that’s our plan. So like with the baby, obviously, like as a man with an eight week old. There’s only so much I can do. I don’t have boobs. I can’t breastfeed like You know, our daughter happens to be breastfeeding. So, in my daughter, or my daughter, my wife is terrified of the toddler stage for me. I went to university in Japan. And when I came back, I had an opportunity to volunteer and then become an assistant, an assistant, a substitute teacher at the International School in Portland, Oregon. And so I was a volunteer and substitute teacher there for pre K through second grade. And so like, I got a lot of experience with toddlers, I quite liked them, I think they’re fun. I’m barely an adult. Just barely qualifying as an adult. So I’m really looking forward to that stage. And my wife is not. So I think we’re going to do something similar, where it’s like, you know, when it’s 234 years old, I’m going to start having a really good time.
Tara Stand 10:55
On it, honestly, they’re great ages, they really are. And I would be remiss if I said that I didn’t miss when my kids were that little, but I’m great like at that stage, and like, I have a great kind of and the best kind of divorced parent, I mean, we’re not divorced, I’m the best endorsement we’re like, I can go in and like have a really fun day with them or like, a couple hours, and then I’m spent, I’m like, You’re so needy all the time. Like, it’s fine. I got
Micheal Pacheco 11:21
I mean, we’ll see. We’ll see how it actually goes. I know obviously as, as a teacher, at a school, you’re, you’re leaving at 3pm, you know, so it’s like you get to go home to a nice, quiet house. So we’ll see how it goes in practice. But in theory, I’m very excited about it.
Tara Stand 11:41
I have a, we have a two year old nephew that we’re actually going to go see this weekend. And I’m super stoked, because he’s in the stage where he’s somewhat independent, and just hilarious. He’s just funny.
Micheal Pacheco 11:54
They’re ridiculous, because they start having ideas, talk more about stuff, there was one kid who would not stop talking about trains. And he was very interested in like, in Shinkansen, and like the Japanese train system, and he wouldn’t stop talking about and he was an expert. Like, he was older than two, but I think he’s like three and a half or something. But anyways, neither here nor there. A little bit about clarity.
Tara Stand 12:29
Yeah, um, so when we talk about clarity, there’s really kind of what I call three clarity engines that you have in your business. And so if one of those engines is off, right, then your business kind of goes around in circles, almost like a cartoon, right? When one of the engines goes off on it a cartoon rocket, it just spins out. And, exactly. And that’s what happens to your business too. And so those three pieces is one that I call, which I call your clarity code, which is really a different way of saying your mission statement. But mission statements tend to be something that people write because they have to or they’re told that they’re supposed to, and then they put it on the shelf, and they forget about it. What I’m talking about is really a mission statement on steroids when I talked about clarity code, and that is something that drives all of the decision making in your business. And so it is, what is the problem that you solve for your customer. So is the one thing that your business is put on earth to do. And so once you have that down, and it can be really simple, right? So it can be you know, if you plan parties, for parents, and you do everything for them, and your your clarity code is we save parents time, then all of your products, all of your services, all of your packaging, all of your marketing gets wrapped up in we save parents time, right? So it’s not about the party planning, right? It’s the benefit, that it’s the gift really, that you’re giving your, your customers or your clients depending on on what industry you’re in. So that’s one, the other one is a little bit different it is so that’s the gift that you give them. The other one is is that that benefit and then what do you bring to your company as the CEO as the founder as the the navigator of your business that nobody else can do? So what’s your secret sauce? And so once you get real clear on what that is, it is much easier to offload things to other people in a way that’s meaningful and not so intimidating because I typically work with entrepreneurs tend to do things because they like doing everything all at once and so off handing things tends to be a little bit scary the first time we do it. So defining that and really dialing it in is helpful. And then the last thing is what value do you bring your customer which is a little bit different than, than What benefit do you bring to them? Okay, so and what I mean by that is the benefit is that we save people time, right. And so that’s what, when I train my employees, I let them know that if we’re not doing that for our customer in our sales calls in our marketing in our customer service stuff, then we’re failing them in some way. And we talk about exactly how their job helps other people helps parents save time, as an example. The other side, the value, then, is that we do that by right, building party products as if we’re following along with this particular example, by building party products, right. So that means that as I move people through this sales and marketing funnel, from the time that they place the order to the time that they’re, that order is fulfilled in some way, right? It can be service to it doesn’t matter if it’s a blood bank, or your consulting or a coach. That means that as I’m tracking my time, which time is money, right? I hate that phrase. But it’s true, right? It’s the only thing we can’t buy more of, in order to be really productive in order to shorten that lead time and be able to service as many customers and clients as we can in a quality way in a way that is true to our company values. That means that we’re focusing on that one thing that we’re delivering to them, right. So those three things, if we’re really clear on what they’re getting the value that they’re getting, the benefit that they’re getting, and to our company, as a CEO or founder, then everything else kind of gets flushed through really quickly, whether that’s decision making, or delivering goods and services to our customers, onboarding new employees, making decisions about you know, I had one customer and one client that she made, she made really delicious saltwater taffy,
like amazing saltwater taffy. And she had gotten, she had not been approached by Starbucks. And she had also had these cute little boutique stores in it, where she lived. And they said, You know what, if you start selling to Starbucks, then we’re not going to carry you anymore. And so she had to really make that decision about, like, Am I selling to Starbucks? Or am I selling to these boutiques? And who am I really for? Well, the question is, then let’s go back to that clarity code statement. Like, are you? Are you the person that? Or are you the product that gives somebody a break in the middle of the day? Or are you the product that you are gifting to someone else? Right, because if you’re gifting it to someone else, then you’re gonna do that at a boutique store, right? So if you’re big, making a product that you’re giving someone else, like Tiffany’s, for example, right? Tiffany’s doesn’t make jewelry for the person who’s buying it for themselves, they make jewelry for somebody who’s giving a gift. Versus if you’re saying I want to get like I’m making this candy to give you a break in the middle of the day, then you’re gonna sell it to Starbucks, because that’s where people are stopping for a brief demo today. So that clarity code, then becomes kind of that one direction that you get to all of your decision making. It makes it goes very, very quickly, instead of getting a lot of my clients end up getting left. I think lots of people do this, too. They get decision paralysis, right. And so it goes back to to that, that thing as well.
Micheal Pacheco 18:32
I love it. I love this a lot. So this is yeah, this is something that we do at boxer and that we’re frankly quite good at is helping with branding and messaging. That’s kind of what your from my position, that’s what I hear is kind of what you’re talking about, right? It’s getting very clear on your message on your branding, like, who are you? What are you doing? So to kind of just recap, the clarity code is like a mission statement on steroids. Right? There’s three parts? What do you bring to your company, as you know, CEO or founder that no one else does? What do you bring to your customer? What benefit do you bring your customer? And then what value do you bring? Do you bring your customer? Can you talk a little bit more about the difference? Differences between the benefit and the value?
Tara Stand 19:15
Sure, and a lot, I mean, not everyone’s gonna find these the same way that I do, but it’s just the way that I delineate it in my own practice. So the benefit is the thing that the your customer is getting, that fulfills a need, right? So when, when, when we drive to the store, right, the benefit that we’re getting when we drive to the store could be to simply get away from our spouse for a few few moments. Right? That’s why I go to Starbucks. I don’t go to Starbucks for the coffee. That’s actually a really great example. So the benefit that I get from Starbucks is a break in my day. I don’t even drink coffee. I don’t even like coffee, but it loves Starbucks because it gives me that island if Use in my day. All right. First is the value that I’m getting from Starbucks or that that that thing, the actual physical thing that I’m getting right? It’s not coaching. It is a whether it’s a pastry or hot tea or something like that. Right. So, when I go the deliverable is I guess that’s another way of saying it. Right? The deliverable is the thing that I’m ordering from Starbucks, but the benefit that I’m getting from that deliverable is that piece in my day. Now, if I were going to Dunkin Donuts was actually this fascinating case study between Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, its mission statements and how they is present in their their life, right? Most people don’t go to Dunkin Donuts, to have kind of a moment of peace in their day, right? That’s just not what Dunkin Donuts is for construction people who are like router like you’re running in and you’re running out to get some caffeine and like, you’re not staying there.
Micheal Pacheco 20:52
sugar and sugar.
Tara Stand 20:54
Yes, sorry. Sorry, sorry. You’re getting some sort of stimulants.
Micheal Pacheco 21:00
But yeah, I mean, I get what you’re saying. Starbucks has a certain atmosphere that that you’ll never find that at Dunkin Donuts. So let’s, let’s circle back, I want to bring it back to the the saving parents time, kind of thing that we were talking about there. So is saying we save parents time is that that’s the benefit then? Correct. So what would the value be in that example?
Tara Stand 21:25
So in that example, the value would be, you know, so if you’re a company that sort of provides box parties, right? And then the the the value or sort of the thing that you’re getting the deliverable is that party box. Okay. It’s the thing with all of the stuff inside.
Micheal Pacheco 21:44
Gotcha. So it’s the actual the actual deliverable, that’s what you’re saying, where it can be, you know, a physical product, or it could be a service, but the value is in the deliverable itself.
Tara Stand 21:53
Exactly. And the reason that we differentiate those two things, is because what’s important to your customer, right is not always the same thing that’s important to you. But your customer is who pays the bills. And so when we talk about things like productivity on the other side, right, you’ve got the marketing, and you’ve got the marketing and sales processes, right, that can be optimized and all of those things, and then you have the back end processes that also have to be optimized. So when you optimize, which is why you have kind of the two things, right? So when you look at the benefit, it’s the optimize the marketing, and the product development, all of those things. When you look at the deliverable, you’re optimizing the back end stuff. And so that way, when I if I am wasting, I don’t want to say wasting your time because I don’t think that anything you do in your business really wastes your time. But when you when you look at where you can reduce the amount of time that you’re spending on something, combining it or eliminate something, eliminate something, then you go back to cut into those two things, what benefit is the customer getting from this? And also what am I provide? Like, what actual vendor by providing them? And if it doesn’t hit either one of those things, and my customer doesn’t care about it? Then why am I spending two hours futzing with my accounting software? Just to get everything to look perfectly? My customers never going to see it? And they don’t care?
Micheal Pacheco 23:19
Love it? I love it. That’s great. Yeah, I think this is, this is something that more business owners need is more and more clarity. And and just understanding the difference between what’s between the service, you provide a specific specifically for coaches, right, the difference between service that you provide, and the benefit that is derived from that service?
Tara Stand 23:47
Right? Absolutely. And for me, right, the service that I provide is like, I make you more productive in your business. But the benefit from that, right, like, because productivity is kind of a crap phrase, I hate it, despite the fact that that’s what I do. But the benefit from that is it opens up your life to more opportunity, you get to have more choice in spending time with your family, or spending time with your hobbies or spending time with your pets or going on vacation or working from anywhere you want. And so what like I like the very real benefit that I give people is the fact that they can just breathe again. Because they don’t care how I do that. Right. Just give me five minutes a piece that I don’t have to think about where my next clients coming from.
Micheal Pacheco 24:34
Nice. Nice. So Tara, well, let’s talk a little bit about what sort of struggles Did you run into when you first started doing this? And how did you? How did you overcome them?
Tara Stand 24:50
Sure. So weirdly enough, the biggest struggle that I had, because the cobblers children have no shoes is the clarity straw. Go because I can do so much, right? Because I, you know, when I look at process of like, Oh, but I can help you with this, I can do this and I can, I will do this. And that’s not realistic because as you know, particularly as a marketer, right, like people just can’t they lose trust after I think it’s, you know, once you give more than 2.5 benefits, the trust starts going down, and then you lose a lot of different things. And so part of it was, for me it just to settle down on exactly what, what that benefit was that I provided for my clients in a really succinct way to drive all of my marketing all of my, all of the content that I’m doing. And honestly, it took me a long time to kind of get there, I was in a very lucky and unusual position of not having to bring in money straightaway. So I just had to be honest with you, I Potter, I have a lot of friends in the entrepreneur space, have a lot of friends in the tech kind of startup space. And so through conversations with them, the conversations with clients of mine, and and then ultimately, I ended up going, I had a wonderful session with she calls herself a visibility specialist to really nail down like that one thing that you want to be seen for in the market. And that, after all, I think had I not done that other work before, that wouldn’t have been super productive. But that’s, that was incredibly productive and kind of the lights clicked on. And I think always, sometimes we need to have somebody step outside of our business because we’re too close to it. Right? We can’t see the forest for the trees sometimes to really give us that. Oh, this is what you do. It’s really clear. I can do it for my clients all the time. And I’m sure you can, too, right? We’re just like, Oh, it’s so obvious. This is what you do. Mind blown.
Micheal Pacheco 27:00
For those for those listening to this podcast, I am nodding emphatically in the video. Frankly, we have the exact same problem. And, you know, the, the metaphor, the cobblers children have no shoes. I use that all the time. I’ve used that on this podcast many times before. Because it’s just so goddamn true. If you today, you know, today, if you go and look at our website, there’s just nothing there. It’s it’s just something that we threw together. Because we needed to have a website, we had to have a place to put podcasts and a contact page and that kind of stuff. But there’s nothing there. And only we’ve been in business doing well for two years plus. And there’s just there’s just no website. I mean, there kinda is but not really we’re just starting to work on that this quarter. So I think that that’s, that’s the whole area of it is I why is that? Let’s talk philosophy now.
Tara Stand 28:00
I’m here for this.
Micheal Pacheco 28:01
What was kids? Why don’t they want their shoes? Why will he make news he should make juice?
Tara Stand 28:09
Because they’re about value added to his family. I think he paid for his children’s shoes,
Micheal Pacheco 28:17
you just get you get so wrapped up in, in serving in serving, right, you get wrapped up in the syrup in service of your clients. And, you know, you just
Tara Stand 28:28
I think that’s exactly it. And I think as as social animals that humans are, we are pre programmed in general to serve other people, and sometimes at our own expense. Right. And so that’s that’s the other side of it as well.
Micheal Pacheco 28:42
Yeah, yeah, they have to I mean, this that’s, that’s true to the extent that when you get on an airplane, they have to remind you to put the oxygen mask on yourself.
Tara Stand 28:55
Exactly. Exactly.
Micheal Pacheco 28:57
Oh, because we’re so pre programmed to help others. That’s funny. Yeah. So I resonate with everything you just said.
Tara Stand 29:09
We had, we just adopted our daughter in February, but her party was this last weekend. And so, you know, we had been some people over to celebrate. And somebody had said, well tell me about these parenting hours and our daughter is she’ll be 16 Very, very soon. So Cassandra is walking by as she goes, parenting hours are great. It means that my parents get to recharge, which means they can give me more time. So really having that like that’s our oxygen mask at our house right is having those parenting hours between the hours of 8pm and 8am. Like you don’t have to go to bed but you can’t say on this floor.
Micheal Pacheco 29:48
I love it. I love it. Yeah, let’s let’s let’s give each other some space.
Tara Stand 29:54
And and so I have time with my partner to you know, kind of reconnect and Which isn’t to say like if they’re in emotional or physical distress, like Sorry, we’re closed.
Micheal Pacheco 30:08
Closed for business. Come come to me tomorrow at 801
You’re like, I don’t know what to tell you.
Tara Stand 30:20
Ask your brother to help.
Micheal Pacheco 30:23
God. It’s terrible. Okay, so we talked about some struggles, we do terrible at doing marketing for yourself and taking care of yourself sometimes. What about some wins talk about some of your big wins that you’ve had in this poll.
Tara Stand 30:39
Um, oh my gosh, every time I really bad at my wins, I think it’s a symptom of the same thing, right? Because I just kind of like we celebrate, and then we move on to the next thing, or at least I do. And then I forget about all the bigger wins.
Micheal Pacheco 30:56
But I write down every, every day, at the end of the day, I’ll write down at least five.
Tara Stand 31:02
That’s so smart. That’s so smart. Actually. Again, the cobblers children have no shoes, I actually have a daily form that helps me do that. Don’t use it myself, I do I get I get good when I get back. So every time my clients have kind of this lightbulb moment of, oh my god, you just changed the way that I think in the world. And shifted my entire understanding. That’s always a big win. For me, I have had clients that in 20 minutes have gone, you know, oh my gosh, and we’ve just created the GPS for my entire business. And I feel so much calmer now. I’ve had clients that could turn around and that have turned around and been able to write off all of their their sales and marketing collateral for the thing that they were launching in a day because like, all of a sudden, they’ve gotten this clarity, I’ve had clients that have struggled to hire Bas, over over the years and taken my VA course and within within 30 days have gone through to two new VAs but been able to very quickly like figure out which ones were going to work and then find one that has just completely revolutionary to the business because they have a process that they can follow. That’s replicatable. And, and really easy. When
Micheal Pacheco 32:26
you say struggled to hire vas, they’ve had difficulty actually hiring a VA, or they’ve had difficulty finding one that works with their business.
Tara Stand 32:36
Well, so why not finding but also finding somebody that works well, like is what they needed, and does the things that they need done in the way that they need them completed? Right, so I guess those those process wins, the ones that say, you know, oh, my gosh, I can finally take a vacation after doing this for two years. I don’t worry about it. You know, that’s, that’s always fun for me. And then I have my larger clients too, that have kind of, you know, wins consummate with their, their, their bottom line, if you will, but I don’t work with those guys anymore. I mean, I like them, but they’re kind of a pain, yes.
Micheal Pacheco 33:18
Why are they paying us.
Tara Stand 33:20
Um, what I love working about with small, like small micro businesses is that there’s not a lot of people in marketing, right? You’ve got, especially in b2b marketing, you’ve got, you got your people that have to say yes, and then you have your people that just can’t say no to the proposal. And once you’re in a company, any change management that you do is much the same way. But the larger the company, the more layers that you have to go through in order to convince people that they can make a change. And if they hate it, they can always go back to the old way. Nothing is stopping them from progressing. But that’s really, that’s really, for me, it’s exhausting. Because I’m like it for me, it’s exhausting. I’d much rather have one person that I talked to, and they say, Yeah, this is great. And we’re gonna do this and then they enact it straightaway. And then they see the big win rather than spending you know, two to three weeks just convincing people that it’s in their best interest to try something new. For so for me, I mean, that’s just my own personality and I am for people not only listening to this, I am a to Puerto Rican woman in engineering who worked mostly in manufacturing for the first eight years of my career. So I did really well and I never I mean, I was really blessed to not face a lot of sexism in in my work, but it does get exhausting for me.
Micheal Pacheco 34:53
Yeah. Sweet, let’s, can you talk a little bit So we talked about struggles at first and then the winds, can you talk about some proper failures sometimes where it just like, things have like gone wrong, and maybe you’ve learned from it and, and changed the way that you, you know, do something
Tara Stand 35:14
earlier is one of my very favorite topics, which is why I named my company failed them. Because we learn through failure. So I think the, the first big failure that I had is that my ex, it was a failure of expectation. And that was that I would quit my job, my consulting job, I worked for a consulting firm for almost nine years, that I would quit my job. And then immediately after taking two months off, that I would simply like, go online and become a coach and everything would be brilliant. And I wouldn’t have to worry about cash flow or anything like that. So obviously, that’s not really how life works. And so, in particular, because I am not, I don’t write down my wins, I’m not really one that’s like, Hey, this is why I’m so wonderful and amazing, which made marketing challenging for me. So I don’t know why I thought I could do that. So that was kind of my first first big failure, it was failure of expectation. So it took me a while to kind of overcome that. And then the second one, I think, was this failure of clarity, right, kind of trying to muddle through without getting my own engines running in the same direction. And that led to really muddled marketing, as you know, in particular, it led to me kind of reinventing the wheel several times. It led to me, you know, so that was kind of the the second one which which stalled progress in my own practice. And then the third one is this failure to recognize who I am as a human being. I enjoy one on one conversation. But I and I enjoy leading large, I’ve spoken at at many conferences, and I teach large workshops and things like that, because I control the front of the room. But I am by nature, an introvert. So after that, I go home and I cuddle and like in my just sort of delve into the comforter and don’t come out for a couple hours. But that means that when I was getting papers, when I was training to sort of pop up and see how I wanted to be visible. In my own practice, like, I don’t know that I’m ever gonna be Facebook girl. And I tried really hard to be the person that I’m not because I’m just I’m not social that I find that kind of social interaction really draining, I’d much rather have one on one conversations. Or to kind of like, or to be like, Hey, this is a thing that you should go check out. And then I like I have no horse in the race, whether or not you check it out, because it’s not tied to my value that way. But it is not that I’m not. Well, I sometimes I’m not friendly, but I try to be friendly most of the time. And it’s not that it’s just again, a failure to recognize like, what is going to work for me, as opposed to somebody else who is much more extroverted. Lee oriented,
Micheal Pacheco 38:24
I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, I can sympathize with that. I think, you know, I’ve had a number of coaches myself over the years. And obviously, we’ve all had mentors, and you get advice from from different people. And, you know, you get, especially when you’re younger, I think you get advice from someone that you really trust and look up to, and you’ve tried to implement it into your own life. But if you don’t have like a really good understanding of who you are, and what works well for you. You know, I’ve certainly made that mistake in the past where I’ve tried to implement something. I’m also an introvert, I, you know, I can go to a party. I’m usually the guy who’s looking at the record collection or hanging out with the dogs every year. My wife hates it. It’s like you always look so miserable. I’m like, I’m not miserable. I’m just the dog.
Tara Stand 39:17
You’re very content in the space that you’re holding. Go
Micheal Pacheco 39:20
away. Yeah, and one on one is always fine. But like Yeah, been a big groups thing is definitely can be exhausting. Where am I going with this? Anyways? Yeah. So
Tara Stand 39:30
in marketing,
Micheal Pacheco 39:33
with mentors or coaches, getting advice from anybody. It’s just as important to understand I think, just to double down on what you’re saying, right? understand who you are, know thyself, figure out what works for you. If it you know, doesn’t work for you then pitch it try something else.
Tara Stand 39:51
Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, probably that was I think we all have these people in our heads about who we want To be right, like these imaginary heroes of ourselves for heroes of ourselves. And just really being able to strip that down into like, I have, I keep lists, sort of historical lists of my life, but like my goals, and I remember reading one was last time I was doing spring cleaning of that I wrote in high school of, you know, I won’t climb Mount Everest, I’m never going to climb Mount Everest. That’s not who I am. Right, the Appalachian Trail and like, well, these are beautiful fantasy versions of myself. Like, I’m just, I’m not that person. First of all, like, I have a connective tissue disorder that would just try me if I wouldn’t even choose to try. But it goes back to really being able to strip down that hero version of ourselves into creating the best real life version of ourselves that we have and work with that.
Micheal Pacheco 40:51
I did get I did get. Tara, is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven’t touched upon yet, I want to be respectful of your time,
Tara Stand 41:00
I would just say, going back to this sort of failure, because it really is one of my very favorite topics. And I think it’s something that we don’t cover often enough. Because so often, we think that failure is the end of something, when in fact, it is simply the first step. And so I will just leave with that idea that if you have failed, or if you feel as if you have failed, then it’s time to evaluate with what went wrong. And what you can improve. And not stop. But just keep going.
Micheal Pacheco 41:32
lot a lot of tears, you’ve got the ultimate clarity code framework, of course, that you mentioned, you would like to offer our viewers and listeners, you talk a
Tara Stand 41:42
little bit about that. Yes. So the optimal, the ultimate clarity come framework course is a very short course you can take it in, in less than an hour, I think of content over over the course of several days in order to build your very own clarity coded this clarity engines that we just talked about. And not only the cool thing about this course and why it’s one of my very favorite is it doesn’t just teach you how to write that like labelled mission statement that’s just going to sit on your shelf. The final module in that course actually teaches you how to use it to make real decisions in your business, and how to kind of supercharge your business in that way. So it’s not just a oh, you should do this and then set it on the corner, it teaches you how to figure out what your secret sauce is, what’s important to you what’s not important to you. So you can throw all of the other trash in all the stuff in the trash that you need to so you can really move forward very quickly in your business.
Micheal Pacheco 42:39
I love that. I think if if I had a penny for every mission statement that was labored over and sweated over and then got left in a file similar to Google Drive and forgotten about I would be a millionaire.
Tara Stand 42:53
Yes. 100% 100%. So it’s I think that’s that’s really the secret sauce to the ultimate clarity code framework that doesn’t just teach you like how to think about it, but also what to do with it and how to use it.
Micheal Pacheco 43:09
A lot it Tara where can our viewers and listeners connect with you online,
Tara Stand 43:14
so they can connect with me at failed fab on Instagram, which is probably the the best place I’m starting to build that up. And then I have failed to found.com as well, which is where my blog lives what I actually updated again, that was a failed. I don’t know that is a failed experiment is an experiment that has not gone as well as I would have hoped. But it is there. And that’s how you can find my all of my other things as well.
Micheal Pacheco 43:41
We’ll get those added into the show notes. Tara. Stan, thank you so much for joining us on there multiple coach podcasts.
Tara Stand 43:48
It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank
Micheal Pacheco 43:50
you. And thank you to our viewers and listeners for joining us again. We’ll see you guys next time. Cheers.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
