Do you want to be fired up in business, and still have energy for the things in life that really matter to you?
It’s time to ditch the overwhelm and accelerate your wealth creation journey.
Today I chat with Tina Marie, the straight-shooting business leader who transformed her life from a struggling working mom to CEO of her own company. In this episode she shares her battle-tested framework for skyrocketing profits and achieving true freedom.
Tina Marie doesn’t hold back in sharing the authentic struggles, hard-won lessons, and innovative strategies that powered her rise. She seamlessly merges practical business acumen with an unwavering embrace of her quirks, flaws, and authentic self. Her raw vulnerability and refreshing truth-bombs will leave you inspired, informed, and entertained.
Whether you’re seeking your first big breakthrough or the missing key to entrepreneurial success, this conversation is a must-listen.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Why Tina Marie walked away from podcasting (00:47)
- The 6-year call centre bootcamp that forged Tina Marie’s skills (04:28)
- How values prioritisation can unlock profits in your business (16:13)
- A 2-step overwhelm-busting revenue boost (25:22)
- Escaping the hustle without losing your sanity (28:18)
- A daily ritual to help you stay positive, focused, and kicking ass (31:38)
- Our roles as entrepreneurs in the economy (45:51)
- Why business is a team sport, even if you’re a solopreneur (51:19)
QUOTES
“The point of the metrics is they’re created because we know that if everything falls within these particular parameters, this is where we make and keep the most amount of money. If it’s below this, we lose money. If it’s above this, we lose money because we’re doing too much, and it’s costing us too much.” – Tina Marie
“You can hustle, hustle, hustle, but there comes a point where things have to change because you burn out – you can’t get to the next level doing the same thing. You know what got you here won’t get you there. And when you don’t know what needs to be done, it’s very hard to have clarity on what to do next.” – Samantha Riley
“The fastest path to cash is always going to be where your greatest skill set is, your natural innate gifts.” – Tina Marie
“It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you keep a clear mind. It’s when you get into that tailspin, it’s when you get into the overwhelm, it’s when you notice the negative things, that nothing happens.” – Samantha Riley
“When we learn how to see through other lenses, we can just keep switching and improve how we see things, and we see so many more opportunities, and so many more ways to solve the problems.” – Tina Marie
“Business is a team sport. And even if you’re at home and you’re a solopreneur, and you’re doing it on your own, it’s still a team sport. You still need the people around you.” – Samantha Riley
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ABOUT TINA MARIE
Tina Marie is a seasoned business consultant who has helped several startups grow into million-dollar businesses within a year and others into multi-million-dollar companies in under three years from their inception.
With over 30 years of experience, Tina’s entrepreneurial and technical journey began at the age of 8 when she started writing programs in BASIC on a RadioShack TRS80. By age 10, she was mowing lawns and babysitting, and by 11, she had a paper route, earning a substantial $65 a month. Her drive and determination were evident from a young age, as she always found ways to make things happen.
Tina’s early work experiences were diverse, from picking crops with migrant workers to working in school cafeterias. At 16, she secured a job at a law office, working as a runner for five local attorneys, which sparked her initial interest in law. Despite receiving a full ride to college, she left the academic world three times, realizing she couldn’t align with its agendas and propaganda.
Instead, Tina sought practical experience and began working in a call center that served tech giants like Intel, Apple, and Adobe. Starting as a technician, she quickly advanced to account management over six years, discovering her knack for optimizing work environments and saving jobs and accounts with her systems.
After the birth of her second daughter, Tina focused on replacing her full-time income from home. Within a year, she leveraged her skills to establish a successful online presence. For the past 16 years, she has been the “secret weapon” behind the growth of numerous companies, all while raising her daughters and balancing family life.
Now, Tina is dedicated to sharing her systems and knowledge with as many entrepreneurs as possible, helping them achieve happiness, fulfillment, and liberation. She believes in working smarter, not harder, and is committed to guiding others to live by this principle.
WHERE TO FIND TINA MARIE
- Website: https://tinamarie.io/
https://www.profitdriversinc.com/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:03
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host Smith Riley. And today I have the beautiful Tina Marie with us who, and we’re going to talk about … look at that face. If you’re watching that, that was pretty funny … the absolutely beautiful and gorgeous Tina Marie, and from the company, Profit Drivers, which she founded. We’re going to talk about how you can build and grow your business faster, cheaper, simpler, get to know the numbers that you need to know in your business, and talk about all of the things that lead to that, which may be right now what you’re not even expecting. So Tina, welcome to the show.
Tina Marie 0:42
Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here and chat with you. It’s been years.
Samantha Riley 0:47
I was gonna say we connected back in 2015. When I published my first book. You invited me on to a podcast that I don’t think you ever actually launched. But we had …
Tina Marie 0:57
I did and I even published it. Yes, I did. And I published it. And then I thought, I don’t want to have to do this regularly. I’m very much, we can just jump right in. I am very much, I had this conversation with somebody earlier. Have you ever been in a hat store and you look at all those hats and you’re like that hat is fabulous, I have to wear it, and then you put it on your head and you’re like, that is not fabulous anymore. Once it got on my head, that’s so fabulous. And so I’m very much like that with business, I will look at something and go, I want to do that. That sounds fantastic. Looking from the outside in, a lot of things seem amazing. But then when you start to get into it, you see the inner workings and you realise, there’s kind of two components that I evaluate. One of them is that I probably, about three … is the technical aspect of it. Then there’s the emotional investment of it. And then there’s the energy investment of it, which kind of combines the two. There’s also the monetary investment. And sometimes that’s difficult to get to ahead of time, but not as difficult, I think, as the other two. And the emotional and technical aspect of the podcasting without a team, without somebody to lead and guide, when I had to also use my mental energy for everything else. It was too big. It’s a big thing, podcasting, I don’t think a lot of people realise how much goes into getting the right guests, having a great, great topic, being able to schedule everything, but then the editing, intro, the outro, the publishing, making sure that, you know, you want to get views to it. So then you’ve got to market it. There’s so much to go into that. Whereas I just want to have cool conversations with cool people. That’s really, totally. And I did kind of think of the other things and I’m like, Well, I’m smart, I can do these things. It’s easy. Not so easy. And so I gave myself permission to stop. And then I realised that I will be happy to guest speak. I still think about podcasting and maybe doing audiobooks or something like that, because I do like having conversations. But for now I’m really happy just doing the interview. So I did publish it. My intent was there. And your gold was just collecting dust. I apologise.
Samantha Riley 3:28
Beautiful, that there’s just a beautiful lesson right there at the beginning of the episode because you’re right, podcasting is huge. And if I didn’t have a team around me, there’s no way I would still be doing, how I’d be aware of nearly 600 episodes in. But, you know, I do just show up and have these amazing conversations. And I’m so blessed to have an amazing team behind me that does all of that other stuff. And there’s numerous full time team members that just look after this podcast. It’s a huge thing. But you know, as someone that loves talking, this is something that I love to do. And I love to have conversations with smart people as well.
Let’s talk about your business journey. You just said you’ve been in business for 22 years. You are a single mom of four amazing daughters. What came first, business or the necessity to do business to work around being a full, you know, a mum?
Tina Marie 4:28
Business was definitely a means to an end. I was working in a call centre as a technical manager. I’d worked with Apple and Intel first as a technician and then as a technical team lead so I did the troubleshooting work and I taught people how to troubleshoot. I learned how to build networks from the ground up. I did tech support for the Pentagon, for NASA. If they couldn’t get their network working, I help them fix it. I could build the physical servers, I was all, I learned a lot of things. And then I got pregnant, and I had my first daughter. And I had to take her to daycare. And she was vibrant. She was born powerful. She was born an old soul, and independent, but just so full of life. And I would take this vibrant light, and take her to daycare, and it was a good, good people, I thought, but when I picked her up, she was dull.
Samantha Riley 5:37
Oh, my goodness.
Tina Marie
Sorry.
Samantha Riley
Don’t be. Like my heart is just like ripped out of my chest, from one mother to another. Like, you just feel that in the, at a soul level at a cellular level.
Tina Marie 5:59
I couldn’t let that happen anymore. I got pregnant with my second daughter. And so they’re 20 months apart. When my second daughter was born, the call centre was not doing well, competition was increasing overseas. And we were constantly getting threatened to have business taken away and sent somewhere else, which ultimately did happen. And so there were a lot of layoffs. And I said, Please lay me off, lay me off. Let me get unemployment for a few months. And I’m going to go figure out how to make money from home. This was 2002. So 22 years. Yeah. And so I had two babies under two years old. And I had some technical skills. Now I was born nerdy. I was, I had a cousin who was very, very nerdy that my mom and I lived with their family for a while. And they taught, he taught me how to program in basic computer length, computer language on a radio shack, TRS 80, favourite stories, because people can relate to the Pong days. And when we had a hard drive that had 25 kilobytes on a whole drive. And we had these floppy disks that were either that big or that big. And a cassette tape as a backup, like it was, it was crazy. But I was fascinated with computers and technology. From that point, we had Ataris, my mom and I moved a lot. I switched schools 17 times by the time I graduated. So learning how to adapt was something I had to learn throughout my life. I graduated with honours, even under those circumstances, and played sports, which also helped me to learn some good social skills, teamwork skills, but because I was constantly moving around, also working under different leadership, working in different communities. So I was forced into learning how to adjust and pivot kind of quickly and try to thrive under those circumstances because the alternative was to languish and be miserable. So that wasn’t happening. But while we moved a lot, and we had you know, back in the day, we didn’t have mp3 players. We had giant stereos and they had speakers in the back with these cables and the wires, the exposed wire. Audio enthusiasts will, they still have bad tweeters and all everything, but so I learned how to set up the stereo systems and the VCR and we had Atari and then we ended up having Nintendo and they’re just little things but putting things together, organising, setting up a new home constantly. Building, creating, getting things, creating the environment for me to thrive in, has been something I’ve been doing my whole life. So fast forward back to needing to figure out how to earn money from home. The first thing I did was what everybody does on the internet is follow other shiny objects, you know, Don Lapre’s advertising course. SMC selling the catalogue stuff with Tom Bosley, should have got a tissue because I still see my little baby in the carrier just, they’re everything to me. I’m a grandmother too now, by the way. I haven’t …
Samantha Riley 9:41
I did not know that.
Tina Marie 9:44
I don’t talk about, I’m not very active on Facebook anymore. COVID just kind of shut that down. And now I’m just like, very much more focused on what’s right in front of me and concentrated kind of my energy into my direct sphere of influence. But anyway, so I did all these things. There was a company called Melaleuca. It was MLM. I think everybody tries MLM at least once, when they don’t know what to do and how they’re going to do it, and back to the trying hats on and throwing them off, because that’s ugly. I did all of those things very quickly. It’s like, ugly hat, ugly hat, ugly hat. I was like, What am I going to do? And then I thought about some of my natural skill sets in the call centre. I did the technical troubleshooting work, but I also hired, trained, I did scheduling and scheduling for call centre is a big deal. We had 24/7. And we had to cover according to contracts with very big companies that care very much about metrics, and managing the metrics. So I managed all of that. It was like running my own little business. And I was 21 when I started working there. And so I hired, I trained, I scheduled, I coached, I improved. The company attrition rate was about 70, 75%, mine was 30%. And most of my people left because they got promoted. I learned about spreadsheets and tracking. We had, and I tell this story a lot. But people are different people are gonna hear it. So I’m going to tell it again. But the call centre business, so it’s a call centre that had multiple big corporations that it supported. So they outsourced customer support and technical support to the call centre. So we had Apple, Intel excited home. Adobe and Vizio were all under one roof. And so you know, we had contracts, which are, we will answer phone calls, within this set amount of time, we will resolve it within X amount of calls, we will not put customers on hold longer than X amount of things, which means you have to staff very specifically, with some buffer room because the patterns of the calls vary. They’re not perfectly the same. So but we also had to pay attention to the patterns of the calls. When do we have spikes? So can we schedule breaks at that time? Do we have part time people? Do we have full time people? There was a lot to process. But now this was circa 1997, ‘98 through 2002. Let’s see I worked there for six years. So, 1996 to 2002. And the technology for tracking that information wasn’t super great. We use Lucent Technologies. And we had these phone systems. And they gave us most of our data. But the data was on a screen, you have to scroll through all of it. And it was not in a dashboard. Like now we use marketing dashboards. We have Google Data Studio, and we’ve got these pretty pie charts and things like that. They didn’t exist that time. And so what the metrics were was not the kind of report that we got. And so we were managing, you know, they were just like, this is what a lot of companies do. They’re like, this is what I think I should do. I need people here, I need y’all to answer the calls, this is what you’re supposed to do. Do it at the end of the day, tick the boxes, go home, and we get what we get. But what we needed to do was know that when you show up, are you answering the call in the amount of time that you’re supposed to? How many calls is it taking you? Do I have a person that’s continually not there? Which means I’m understaffed, because even though I scheduled them, they’re not there repeatedly? Are you resolving the call? Do I have an agent that resolves the calls within the metrics? Or do I have an agent that five calls later, they’re still not resolved? Because that’s breaking my contract, which means I’m not going to hit my bonuses, which means I may not even get the contractual payment. That’s a big deal. Yeah, people would be threatened with their jobs every few weeks. Was so stressful, and I was tired. So I learned Excel from a nerdy friend, but he wasn’t using it the way I did. He was looking at stuff but I looked at his and I was like, wait a minute, if this can do this, let me try this. So he would dump a report into a spreadsheet and do a little math. But what I did was dump five reports into his spreadsheet. And he taught me how to do formulas. And so I had a summary tab, which was what I would call a marketing dashboard now, that took the five reports that gave me the data with some formulas in it that let me know all of the contractual metrics and I could get that report ready in five minutes. So what used to take hours of scrambling and threatening, I had proactively I just started doing it weekly. And we started managing and improving, there was no more threats, we were just doing really well. Except for the people who didn’t follow the system, who didn’t hire right, who didn’t train, who didn’t manage the data that they were getting. And then they implemented that company wide. And it was a worldwide company. So that was kind of a coup for me, I was young. So back again, to how I work from home. I’ve tried SMC and Melaleuca, all of these things. And part of the thing that I learned too, was customer service. So in that, in the contractual agreement that we had, it was customer satisfaction. They would do surveys. One of the years that I worked for Apple, we got the award for best customer support in, you know, all the industries. So that was great. And what I learned was that I learned things about call control and learned about how to have a conversation to guide whoever’s on the phone to where you want them to go, based on what they want. And again, removing friction points. So to me, everything builds upon itself organically. And a lot of times we don’t sit there and extract the stuff and realise that, as we’re going through life, we’re being handed threads, that we get to create a tapestry with, and a lot of times people just see reds, and they’re just laying around. Whereas a person who’s being smart about it can say, I see this red, you know, what I could do with that red, it would make a beautiful apple or if, you know what I mean? And just finding the purpose for everything that they’ve been given. And so that’s what I tried to do at that point. I was like, I was paid to learn all of these skills. And I’m good at it. What if I found a way to offer it to some of these online business owners? And so we didn’t have Facebook, we had chat rooms, we had teleseminars. And we had email lists. And we had forums, BB forums. And that’s how you can kind of connect with people. And so I was on lots of people’s lists. And I was just like, I’ve made a way of getting known, I would make comments a lot and just kind of be like, Hey, I’m out here, and I’m paying attention to you. And this is what I see. And so I happened to notice this one company that had a really great product, I really liked it. And in the forums, I noticed there was a lot of complaining, a lot of complaining about no support. And I’m like you guys are losing money left and right. I’m just, sorry about that, that should have been not able to happen, because I put it in Do Not Disturb technology. So because I knew about metrics, I know that the point of the metrics is they’re created because we know that if everything falls within these particular parameters, this is where we make and keep the most amount of money. If it’s below this, we lose money. If it’s above this, we lose money because we’re doing too much, and it’s costing us too much. Here’s the sweet spot. That’s what the metrics were, the target metrics, the KPIs, well, different things. But anyway, that we were aiming for was the balance of maximum profitability balanced with customer happiness, which is long term profitability. So I found them and I reached out to them. And I said, You know what? I said, are you aware of this? Like, here’s what I think, this is, I would guess about how many times you sell this product every month based off of what I’m seeing. And what I hear. This is your price point. This is how many people are complaining. So this is roughly the percentage of unhappy people that you have. And it appears that that unhappiness level is increasing. And I would guess it’s because you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know how to handle your customer service. Guess what, and it will only cost you this amount of money, which is probably a lot less than what you’re losing. You should hire me. And they hired me. And so I had replaced my full time income as a technical manager, which wasn’t a lot. But it was still a double minimum wage at the time. I’ve done that within a year and a half from home while still getting to be there with my babies. And that was pretty cool. It was stressful. I’m really glamorising it because I was in pjs and spit up and pee and poop all over me and tired all the time.
It was lonely because I didn’t have my co workers anymore and I loved my co workers and the taco trucks. I’m gonna be honest, I love the taco truck at the workplace, but from there I started. So I learned web design, I learned copywriting, I learned development for a few years, customising WordPress themes was my bread and butter. I’m curious by nature, I want to know and understand everything. I feel like I hire better, because I understand the role of what I’m hiring for, not to their level, but enough to be able to speak to them intelligently and articulately. And also to not have anybody be able to pull the wool over my eyes. One of the companies that I helped to go from zero to a million dollars in sales within a year, while they were hovering around 3,500 a month, and then by the time a year came by, broke a million dollars in sales and had three other products on the market. One of the things was, I told them, your developer is lying to you, he can work faster, he can do better. And if he can, I would be happy, thrilled to find somebody who can, trust me. So also, I’m not everybody’s favourite. Either you love me or hate me, there’s not a lot in between. And there’s plenty that hate me. So, but I don’t know how to turn myself down. And I wouldn’t be happy if I did. So there’s that. But it was that, it was just finding. I find that there are specific pillars of success, starting with priorities and values, values in forming priorities, and priorities in forming what the next task should be, because we know what our values are. And that brings clarity, and a lot of times in business, whether, it doesn’t matter what kind of business it is, coaching, whatever. There’s a, well, what should we do first, or we’ve got this whole list of things to do. And sometimes it’s on a team meeting, what should we do? And sometimes it’s in the day, when you’ve got your personal task list, what should I do? But when you’re running it through a filter of values, which have already informed your priority, that should actually make that process really simple. Well, if this needs this, and this can’t be done without this, or if none of these matter if this isn’t done, this is the thing that needs to get done. But then there’s always the human element of, my brain can’t do that particular task today. That’s okay. Because your priority told you which one of these should be next. And you, you go down the list and you just do what you can according to your mental and physical abilities, environmental tool abilities, social support team abilities, at that time. And you make sure your people are taking care of you, make sure your customers are taking care of you, you make sure you know what matters, and then you measure what matters and then you improve what needs to be improved. And it’s just all very simple. It’s not easy, especially with ADHD that have executive dysfunction, which most do, I agree, you what what you’re supposed to do, but you don’t do it. Which is why you hired the people that, you know, help you with those things or whatever. Simple, not easy, but it’s so fun to me. I was an athlete back in the day, I love to compete. And my, one of my favourite things besides cool conversations with cool people is, I’m competing every day, but I’m not competing against anybody but me. I want to do better than I did yesterday, I want to do better than I did a year ago. And I want to get to the end of the day, going, Yeah, I killed it. Even if I only killed it for two hours. And I slept for 14 of them because I ate too much dairy the day before. In my two hours of killing it, I’m still doing more than most people do. Because I’m putting my brain in overdrive. I’ve maximised my tools, my people, my systems, my money, my energy for those two hours. And I’m okay with that too. Because average people in two hours in two years, sometimes won’t do what I get done in a week. So I have my own measurement. I have my own litmus test. And I like it. It’s just, it’s fun. We’re different. And I love it.
Samantha Riley 24:18
I totally could not agree more with everything you said. Now, you and I know that you can hustle your way in through six figures. You can hustle, hustle, hustle, but there comes a point where things have to change because you burn out, because you can’t get to the next level doing the same thing. You know what got you here won’t get you there. And when you don’t know what the other thing is, it’s very hard to have clarity on what to do. And I see people in this like, tailspin where it’s like, well I’ve hustled to get here, I’ll just keep doing that. But all of a sudden, they’re going nowhere. And they can’t move through that phase. Where do you start? You know, do you go for, well, let’s do one strategic quick win and then move to the value. So at least you’ve got something there. Do you go values first, like, what’s your process?
Tina Marie 25:22
It has to vary by the person and what’s going on in their lives right now and what their resources are. And resources include time and energy. And both of those things are affected by health, mentally and physically. And the older we get, the more volatility there is with all of that. The more intentional management you have to have. What got you there at 14 is not going to get you there at 44. You know, there’s a whole lot more recovery that has to happen, you have to be more intentional about what you put in your body, what you give to your body. So, but one of my pillars is sharpening your saw. And that is a failsafe for plateaus in that, if you’re in the habit of always sharpening your mind, that’s your saw, your skill set, whatever you’re best at, keep studying that, because, so there’s a saying that the best defence is a good offence, don’t even come into my in my zone, right? I’m out there, I’m attacking. You have a sharp saw, when you’re really great at what you do. You can, you’re valuable. And you would think and maybe you’re not good at marketing yourself. But when your light is really bright, it’s hard for people not to see it around you and say, I need you, I need you, I need you. So keeping yourself sharp is one of the first things but also, that means you’re mentally primed, you’re thinking new thoughts. You can’t keep your saw sharp learning the same thing over and over and over again. Because even if you read the same book over and over again, which is not a bad idea if it’s a great book, you’re a new person every time you read it. So you receive it differently every time and I get goosebumps from it, because we have entirely new experiences every time you read something new. And so, when you have those new thoughts, you create new neural networks, you have the capacity to increase your IQ. But more than that, you become a better problem solver. So if your problem is a plateau, you’re better positioned and primed to solve that plateau issue even if you only have yourself and even if you’re diminished capacity, maybe you’re going through a major depressive episode or divorce or lost a child or, you know, all of these things that happen in the human experience, which does impact business. You’re in the process of feeding the thing that gives you the best chance at getting through all the other things, your heart and your mind are the two things but they work in tandem. If you feed one, the other one is going to be like, Let’s go, you know, give me more. So that would be the first step is always sharpening your saw. And then I’m always, when I talk to my customers, my clients, I talk about two things. It’s the fastest path to cash, and it’s the fastest path to freedom. And where those two intersect is the most leveraged place you want to go. So in the hustle and grind, how fast can you make money? But fastest path to freedom means I’m not hustling and grinding, it means I’m not doing something that’s going to take me 100 hours a week or 60 hours a week, it’s not going to put me working with people that will make me miserable. So this negates this being bad when they have to intersect before you make a choice. So if me putting out a new coaching offer, and I’m going to dial everybody I possibly can and have all the conversations I can, but this says okay, but you’ve got four hours a day to do it. But this says I need $10,000 by the end of this week, and this says okay. But you’ve got four hours to do it. Because you also have to be mom or this or you know that after four hours your brain is fried. And it doesn’t matter if you have too many more calls after that, they’re not going to be good. You’re going to ruin your reputation, you’re going to look like an idiot and you’re not going to close the calls. So why don’t you keep yourself super fresh so that the next call day that you do have you’re mega-powered all the way through, increasing your likelihood of conversion, which means the likelihood of success. So these two always have to be taken into account. And the fastest path to cash is always going to be where your greatest skill set is, your natural innate gifts, and you are keeping yourself sharp right? So it’s primed and ready to go, and this one is keeping it under control. And now you have to then, so then you look at price point, well, if I can only talk to 10 people a day, and I need to make $10,000 by the end of the week, and this says, and the likelihood that I’m going to close, you know, 5% 10% 20%, whatever my historical track record is, or a conservative one, if I’ve never put this offer before, conservatively, let’s say I talk to 100 people, and I’m only going to close five of them, I need that five to give me $10,000. Therefore, my price point needs to be 20. Or I mean, 2,000. But I need to build in a buffer. So I’m going to stretch my comfort zone, and I’m gonna make that price point 3,000. In case I only close three people, and then I’ve got 9,000. And I’m really close to it, you know what I mean? So it’s a little bit of math. And it’s, what is my strength and my skill set? And my greatest value? And also what is my breaking burnout point where like, if I do too much of that I’m in prison and I really don’t want to do it anymore? Does that make sense?
Samantha Riley 31:05
100%, it does. For the person that’s listening right now and goes, that 100% makes sense, but they’re in the tail spin. What can they do right now, to change directions, because I find that the people that are in the tail spin, just getting them to slow down and stop so they can go, let’s take a breath to go in the next direction is one of the hardest things to do. What can you say to that person? They’re listening now. And they know that’s them?
Tina Marie 31:38
Yes, I actually do have a process for that. And I have goosebumps again, because I remember all of these conversations, and they come back to me. Now the benefit was I was there to speak this into somebody. So if they have somebody who can help them with this exercise, then they should get that person. And it’s really difficult to do. Because all entrepreneurs are leaders and all leaders are self movers, they take care of themselves, they’re not good at letting people take care of them. So having somebody help them with this is difficult. And doing this exercise, especially for women, is difficult. But you need to count all your goodness, you need to count all the good you’ve put into the world, you need to count every win you can possibly think of. And then you need to look for the patterns of your winds. What is the thing that you can do for everybody? I can have a conversation with anybody for five minutes, and if they’ll open up to me and answer questions, and if I’d be quiet and listen to them, if I look at their micro expressions, if I feel and absorb their energy, and add that to my history, my psyche, I’m working on my psychology degree, but I also just have some innate gifts. If I add all of that in, and I listen to them for five minutes, I can find something wonderful about them. And I have the courage and the desire to tell them everything good that I see about them and say it with such power and conviction that they can’t deny their own goodness. And they take that energy and it stays with them for a long time. I’ll have people say, I just need you to walk around with me all the time. Like I feel so much better after I talk to you. But we can do that for ourselves. And we can also try to find other people that do that because I’m not the only one, there’s lots of people that will do it. But in church we have a hymn and it’s called Count Your Blessings. And it says when upon life’s troubles you are tempest tossed, when you’re feeling, when you are discouraged feeling all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. And I’ve taken that as a practice of counting blessings, and it’s a parallel exercise. And I start with, so I’m an asthmatic. I’ve been hospitalised with pneumonia four times on max levels oxygen, seven to 10 days each time. So I’m very thankful for air in my lungs. I’m thankful to breathe all the way down and take a deep breath and go, that feels good. I’m thankful for all of my limbs. I’m thankful for my eyesight. I’m thankful for so many things. So I started, really micro level, counting blessings. But being in the practice of that, it makes it really difficult to be negative all the time. That tailspin comes from counting what’s wrong. The tailspin always, always only comes from counting what’s wrong. So if your brain won’t focus, ADD people right, on your blessings because what’s wrong is nagging at you, then make it kinetic and get a piece of paper and force yourself to only write what’s good. So maybe you’re getting bombarded with all that negativity. But you’re creating a visual physical representation of what you know is good on that piece of paper. Eventually, practice makes perfect, right? You get better at pushing away the negativity, which means you push away the tailspin and you self correct. The practice will look different for everyone. My mind won’t let me tell myself things that are not true. So I can’t go speak meditations that are BS. My brain is like, No, I’m not. No, that’s not true. I am a millionaire. All the money in the world comes to me. I am, BS, BS, BS, stop lying girl, you know that’s not true, blah, blah, blah, whatever, that kind of thing. You know, that was like 11 years ago, and I was like, This is ridiculous. So I would write my own affirmations. Or I would just instead say, This is what I am. And this is good. And this is enough. And here’s what I’m working on being and I know I can do this, but I’m gonna have to work for it. And I just, but it’s not a big long meditative process. It’s just kind of these quick thoughts. And if that doesn’t work, then I go to where I can find positive things, my Instagram and my Facebook and they’re full of positive affirmations. I have a Gospel Library app, I can listen to conference talks, which there are religious conference talks, I can listen to Scriptures, I can listen to great books, I can go on and I can see a Samantha Riley video, and I can see her loving up on people with our smiley face. And I can remember where Samantha has told me she’s been and the hard things that she’s gone through and see her smile, and know, she just chose to keep going. And I’m going to take some Samantha energy with me today. And I’m like, I’m gonna go because Samantha did it and I want to do it too. I draw energy from everywhere. And when I see negative energy, I shut it off. I don’t watch things that create darkness. I don’t watch murder dramas and things like that. There’s enough darkness in the world. I’ve seen it. I don’t need to see more. I don’t need to feed that energy. I don’t need to feed the suspicious mind and the paranoia. I don’t need that. I need to feed goodness, I need to fuel my body and my mind. And you can’t stop me now. I might cry for four hours in the day. But at least two hours of that day, I’m gonna kick some ass. I’m saying yeah, it’s gonna happen.
Samantha Riley 37:28
Love, love it so much. Gratitude practice is one of the most valuable things ever. It really is so valuable for exactly what you’re saying. I know, I had a big project with the Profitable Coach Summit that we ran recently. And as we were coming into it, I said to my husband, who is my business partner, before we even started, I refuse to get overwhelmed, even though I know there is a million things to do. And as we went through, and there was so many nights where we’re working till midnight, even though we had all the time because it was just, not just was it a big project, but it was the first time and you know, the first time is always hardest. And every point every time I felt myself go, I’m like, No, I’m not gonna get overwhelmed. And just take your breath out. And it’s amazing how much more you can get done when you keep that clear mind. It’s when you get into that tailspin, it’s when you get into the overwhelm, it’s when you notice the negative things, that nothing happens. When you’re able to be grateful, when you’re in that positive space, it’s so much easier just to say, All right, take a breath. What do we need to do? Just let’s follow the next checkpoint on the list. That’s it. So I love that.
Tina Marie 38:45
So I don’t know when it started. I see myself at my other house. So I know it was at least seven years ago, but I feel like it was more like 10 years ago or so that it’s like I could feel negative energy. I’m not a woowoo person. I’m not not a woowoo person, I’m just, all the things on science, on faith, I’m spiritual, I’m all these things. But I do believe that everything is energy and energy passes through us and in as and but I’m also very visual. And so I would just kind of imagine this negative energy in me and just like get it out, just get out, I don’t want you. And also I’m not going to let these negative thoughts, this overwhelm into me. I could feel it build up in my chest and like just get out. And so it’s both an active of an action of putting good things in, but imagining physically putting bad things out like we exhale, and we literally exhale toxins out of the body and inhale good things, good air, things that we need in order to function physically. But I imagine that same process is that I’m taking in goodness and I’m repelling negative things. And I feel like all the aspects, all the different ways that we look, I think different mechanisms work for different people. But I believe that the more of them that we can adapt and modify that work with our mindset, meaning like our minds allow us to believe in that, the more tools that we can have in our toolbox, the better the more that we get in the habit of employing regularly, the more resilient we are. And what you can guarantee is that Yin and Yang is always at work. So however good your good is, equal in proportion, bad is coming. It’s just that there are equal opposites in all things. So of course, if something really great happens, something really bad is gonna happen and balance that out. That doesn’t take away from this. It just means be prepared for it. And sometimes this comes before this, there’s not a, you know, but the more tools that you have, and the more you try to do to make yourself a person prepared for all of those things, and the more that you’re conscious of your abilities to overcome, but also your resources, like your husband, like your team, like your skill sets, the things that you have, like your experience, like you’re just spirit, the essence of Samantha Riley, and who you are. All of those things are your assets and your tools, both to build with but also to defend and protect with. And I think you spoke about awareness earlier. And I think a lot of people, I was not trained to think like that. I learned it through social media. I’m so grateful for people that share random things, because sometimes it’s a random story. When I’m like I see myself in that, thank you for sharing that story. That’s not a business person, is not an influencer. It’s just somebody who shared a story that connected. And they’ll never know that they changed my life forever. You know what I mean? Which is another reason why to your, what you do in your being an influencer, doing it on purpose. I’ve learned that there are certain types of gifts that I give to people. And now I’m working on being very intentional about that. My daughter is almost grown. I’ve only got a 17 and 14 year old left at home. 17 is about to be gone. And then there’s 14 year old. So you know, it’s not their responsibility to fulfil me and make me happy for the rest of my life. So I need to have purpose. And my purpose is to share all the gifts that I’ve been culminating and growing and improving over the years, and finding people to give it to, and also receiving the gifts of other people. It is symbiotic and reciprocity. Reciprocal that’s the word. Everywhere, and when it’s not, it’s hollow and empty and painful. But when it is, it’s fulfilling. And it’s magical. And to me, it’s the fulfilment of humanity. And I’m here for that. I’m here for that.
Samantha Riley 43:14
Totally, totally. Before we started recording, you and I had a great conversation. And I actually wish I had pressed record because the outtakes would have been beautiful. Which I should learn by now to press record as soon as someone tell you…
Tina Marie 43:30
One of them was, I was talking about you. And I said, You’re not normal. And I’m like, in the best way and I love that. Thank you for being a weirdo like me.
Samantha Riley 43:42
Oh my god, I love that. Oh, I mean yes, I am like on the normal to weirdo scale, I am extremely out there. And it’s taken me a long time to learn to just embrace that because like you I’m super nerdy. I love to learn, you know, at school, that’s not cool. Now I’m just, I don’t care.
Tina Marie 44:13
It’s not cool at church either. Isn’t it? No its not, it’s not. I’m still annoying Sunday school teachers at 47. That’s okay.
Samantha Riley 44:18
That is hilarious. That is hilarious. I remember saying to my dance teacher. And just to put this in perspective, it wasn’t when I was a child. It was when I was studying for my, I think my licentiates. So I was like, in my like, close to 40. And I was still asking, like peppering all these questions at her. And I’m like, I’m so sorry. And she’s like, Do you know what I love about you? You ask more questions than anyone I know. Because I have to ask why. Why is that? If I don’t understand why, I can’t get to the next point. That’s why we get along so well. I know. And likewise, there’s definitely a soul sister thing here happening.
One of the things that you were talking about before we jumped into the room was the fact that you love to help people because of the laws of economics and how small business is, you know, I can’t remember who said it was, like I said, I mean, the lifeblood, I knew it was some part of the body. Talk to us a little bit about that, because I feel that when you’re just like doing the do every single day, it can be very easy to forget the importance of what we do in such a bigger picture.
Tina Marie 45:51
It’s kind of a big conversation. And there’s, you know, little bits to break off of it. So I was talking about the lifeblood of the economy, locally, but also globally. Entrepreneurs range from making very little to making a lot, you know, and then there’s the small business aspect of it, which I wish I had the statistics of how much of the economy comes from small business. But the number is huge, but it’s also an answer to grasshopper kind of thing. We are more in terms of how many people there are. And there is always, I don’t want to get political, there’s a very extreme, you know, movement, anti government everywhere, you know, there’s a whole spectrum of where people show up on it. But there’s historical evidence that if you let a government get too big, they will. And they will control people a lot. Now, I don’t, I’m not trying to go overthrow any government. And I also don’t want to be consumed with things I don’t have a lot of control over. But our community of entrepreneurs, small business owners who provide different services, I mean, we are a community and a worldwide community that can help each other through any type of conflict. And we’re very well connected, there’s every type of service, every type of even, even from farmers, through textiles, through manufacturing, and then you know, the brain services, the teams that, all of that, we need each other, and we impact how the world operates. And we feel like we don’t matter. But if you look at like, if you’re in a small town, in the United States, most small towns will have, like a main street and they’ll have small businesses on there. They don’t make a lot of money, they don’t have great profit margins. But they’re what everybody knows in the town, everybody knows their owners, they are big influencers, they make an impact on what kind of programs get had, because they sponsor the programs that happened, they have a huge impact. A lot of times those people, you know, after a couple of decades of serving in the community as a business owner, end up being in the local government. They’re on PTA boards, and parent teacher boards. They’re volunteering in the schools, they’re teaching at the colleges, little different types of programs around business, around AI, around marketing, around whatever. And they don’t feel like, you know, that it matters very much. Or maybe they’re just stay at home moms, or stay at home dads. But what they’re doing is they’re modelling for their children that you can choose and create a path for yourself different than what the institution requires you to do. My children, they’ve all been very different than how I showed up in school. I was very much the institutional girl, please be proud of me. I want to get an A, I’m gonna go to college, I’m going to do all that. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It worked very well for me. A lot of kids these days are not built like that. Their spirits are very much, I want to be a creator and I see creators all around me, and you’re telling me to do these things that I’m not good at, but I’m really good at this. Why do I have to do this again? What’s it? What am I going to do with calculus for the rest of my life? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No, nothing. But algebra, you for sure should learn. Geometry, you for sure should learn. You’ll need algebra and knowing your financial numbers all the time, you need to know algebra for making pricing and marketing decision, that’s an important use for it. Calculus? Give me a break. Nobody’s gonna use that. Unless you’re gonna be an engineer.
Samantha Riley 50:20
I was gonna say my son, my son is an engineer, and I was gonna say …
Tina Marie 50:26
If you’re gonna be an engineer, but by that time, by the time you get to high school, those tendencies have already revealed themselves. And you already see their interest level in it. And you know, where the math fits into it by that age, or you just know that it’s going to because you’ve seen the way their brain works. So by that time, there’s a lot that’s already in, it’s not taken care of. So back to the economy. And the other thing I said, I did not realise that my dog was in here, she’s gonna bark and go nuts. I’m sorry. If I don’t let her out …
Samantha Riley 51:04
It’s all good. It’s completely fine.
Tina Marie 51:11
Anyway, my daughter got home, she’s like, That’s my girl, I need to go see her. So anyway, lifeline of the economy, and we need each other. That’s what I’m saying, oh, and I, I want to have that impact, I want. So I was talking about what I do in my business is help CEOs from top to bottom. I help them with their systems, their teams, their operations, their marketing, and also, you know, mental checks and accountability, because nobody wants to tell the boss, you’re dropping the ball. And it’s your fault. And you’re the bottleneck. And I will do that for them. Again, we’re not always popular with some people. But I need people to do that for me, I really need people to do that for me, and not a lot of people will. So when I find people who will do that, and who are, you know, comfortable being uncomfortable, then I really appreciate them. So to me small business is, and it doesn’t matter if they’re starting an MLM. That’s something we talked about, I don’t know if we did say it on this portion or before, but you have to, you have to acquire business skills. I studied it, I did take business courses, I learned about diversification, that’s business 101. And that comes in play at least once a month in a conversation with somebody, they’re like, Well, what decision should I make? Should I do this? Or should I do that? No, you should do both. You should do this, because this is really easy for you to make money. And it will fund this because this is going to take a long time to grow. But you can make this happen quickly. This will burn you out and not satisfy you. This is stability and will last and will satisfy you, but it’s not going to pay your bills, you’re gonna go broke if you tried to build this. Do them both. Yeah, a lot. There’s not usually an either or it’s, it’s a combination of things. And it’s all experience, but we need each other’s experience. We need the perspectives of people outside of our own market because they think differently. We need, engineers need to talk to artists, need to talk to psychiatrists, sociologists, or anthropologists. We all think differently, we all see the world differently. And when we learn how to see through other lenses, we can just keep, you know, switching and improve how we see things and we see so many more opportunities, and so many more ways to solve the problems. Back to the tailspin is so much easier to get out of it, when you’re able to see all the different ways that you can exit it. Because you’ve intentionally given yourself different viewpoints by talking to people who think differently than you do.
Samantha Riley 54:01
Yeah, absolutely. And the people that are quiet, you know, we do things in business out of habit. And some of those habits aren’t always good. So having someone from the outside looking in saying that’s a friction point, like the story you told earlier, that business owner hadn’t noticed the friction point. Here’s the friction point. Oh my god, how did I miss that? That’s what we need. It’s Yes. Yeah. It’s the body. You’re being the bottleneck. Yeah, I am. All right. So what are we going to do about it? It’s business is a team sport. And even if you’re at home and you’re a solopreneur, and you’re doing it on your own, it’s still a team sport. You still need the people around you that can say, hey, look, you know, there is another way to look at this that have you ever considered this? It’s so important.
Tina Marie 54:49
You can get that from podcasts though. If you don’t know anybody, if you don’t know another business owner, you can get that from podcasts, because they’re, they tell so many different stories. Maybe 10 out of 20 of them, you won’t resonate. Or maybe 10 out of 12, you won’t resonate. But the two that you do, it’s like you were in the room with them, and they were overlooking you and in your business, so you need to spend the time with people who are sharing those stories, because those stories are going to be where you can see yourself in it. And instead of like, because you read a textbook, you’re like, yeah, yeah, I see the application, but that’s not gonna work for me. But then you hear a story, and you’re like, oh, wait, and a lot of times, the story will start with, I didn’t think this was gonna work, or I had no idea that this is gonna happen. And then this happened, and it blew my mind. And you’re like me, too, that blew my mind. And, but you don’t know if you don’t if you don’t go there. So if you have nobody, and then you can afford nothing, listen to business podcasts. And especially when you find a podcast host, who is great at asking questions, or great at getting great hosts, are great guests, who share their stories a lot. And you probably want to have a variety of them that you can go through, and but that goes back to sharpening your saw. And eventually you get to the point where you’re so excited, nothing is going to stop, you know, not your money, not your lack of skills, or whatever. But the consequence, the secondary consequence of listening to all of that is you’re gonna get smarter, your saw’s gonna get sharper, you’re going to get better and faster at doing whatever it is that you do. So if you’ve got nothing but time, if you don’t have enough money to invest in people and teams and resources, go to the people who are teaching for free and sharing their stories for free, because they’ll give you tips that you didn’t even know you needed. They’ll answer questions you didn’t know you had.
Samantha Riley 56:55
Yes, yes. Yeah. Love that so much. Tina Marie, this has just been fabulous. I just love our conversations. I love nerding out with you. For other people that have been listening along and nerding out with us and they want to stay connected with you. Where can they go to find you?
Tina Marie 57:11
Told you I’m so not organised, but it’ll be Tina Marie dot I O. And I will make it probably a Link Tree because I’m not organised. I’m not, I don’t have a marketing funnel. I’m word of mouth for 22 years. But Tina Marie dot I O, and I will change that as it comes. And what they don’t know is somebody should be asking you questions, because you’re amazing. And you’re brilliant. And I would be happy if I had my own podcast to spend another hour just asking you all the questions. That was fun. It was very selfish of me, but it was fun.
Samantha Riley 57:46
Well, you know what, likewise. Thank you so much for coming, sharing your value, dropping your value bombs everywhere. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Tina Marie 57:56
Thank you. Thanks for having me. You’re awesome.
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