I speak to Nicole Tamarin, artist, instructor and entrepreneur, about the business of art and the art of business.

• Trade shows and doing your homework to research the industry
• Truly understanding the market
• Artists get to a point where they should work on art and not business, ie. working with an agent
• Collaborations
• The business of licensing
• Products are also a service industry
• Teaching art and teaching to the individual. Her amazing journey started with her French teacher.

"...every student has their special mark to make on the world."

One of my favorite topics we discuss is constructive criticism. It's all about the communication and timing when giving feedback to an artist. Pointers should be given with tact and purpose at the appropriate points in a project.

Plus, I have heard this many times from successful entrepreneurs, that their journey is seen as an instant success from others. Often, it is not instant, it was a slow and steady process, so it can be maintained. This is often not seen by the average onlooker, but known to the entrepreneur.

Links: Website, Instagram, Facebook

About Nicole:
Nicole is a left-brained creative who's practicality tends to win over passion until the one day it didn't.  She had a true lightbulb moment where she could see so clearly where she was meant to be and how she was meant to get there which ultimately allowed her to push play on this artistic career that she will forever be grateful for.  Nicole creates traditional watercolor art designed for use by the stationery, gift, and home décor markets.  Her work is sold at retailers nationally on products such as quilting fabric, hard and soft home items, wall art and seasonal décor, as well as internationally on her first love, greeting cards, which she has been fortunate enough to have published over 500 designs including three signature lines.

Founder of News Generation, Susan Apgood and I speak about defining media relations in today's environment. 

• How can businesses pitch themselves to perspective agencies
• Selecting clients to work with
• Content is key, but at what cost will it take to be found in an ever changing landscape
• TV and Radio still hold major clout with consumers
• Earning media placement
• Press releases, pitches and press kits and how pages full of information have turned into snippets
• Financial literacy is key to understanding the bigger picture, success, growth and acquisition
• Grit is the word of the year

"Grit makes you better on those bad days" and they often "...define bad days as learning experiences."

We also discuss being a Professor in business at American University's Kogod School of Business. Susan brings real world experience to the classroom, and students bring her new perspectives with fresh eyes. The combination is what ignites a classroom full of inquiry and knowledge.

Links:  Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn News Generation, LinkedIn Susan

About Susan:
When she was 27 years old, Susan founded the media relations firm News Generation. Now, more than 23 years later, Susan and her team are going strong - helping everyday to get clients' news out to those who need to hear it. She teaches Business at American University and is a mentor for women business owners. News Generation is a media relations firm specializing in getting your message heard in news programming on television and radio. They earn media placements for your organization - whether it's an association, non-profit, government agency, or corporation.

This episode if full of inspiration as I talk with Melanie Griffin, Founder of Spread Your Sunshine.  From inspirational products to resources, Spread Your Sunshine is here to brighten the world. As an attorney and entrepreneur, Melanie and I converse about many topics including:

• Gratitude
• Authenticity
• With only 24 hours in a day, what is an entrepreneur to do
• Goal setting and accountability partners
• Mentorship
• It is OK to stay in your 9 - 5 and have a side hustle
• Recovering from perfectionism
• Failure is going to happen, embrace it

Snippets of advice like: 

1. Do one thing, do it well, finish it, and then move on to the next project. A more difficult concept for serial multitaskers and entrepreneurs with "racing minds."
2. Failure and success are muscles, how have you flexed yours?
3. Looking to start a business? Many of us get stuck on what is that business. Think about what you love to do or are passionate about, and then try to monetize. By looking through a different lens, clarity can be found. 

"Spread Your Sunshine builds confidence through inspirational keynote speaking, small business consulting, celebratory products, and a soon-to-be-launched podcast and social media show. All of their products and services mentor and cheer the community on in abandoning perfection and the fear of “failure” to tackle big challenges and create the change we wish to see in the world."

Melanie's Links: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Spread Your Sunshine Links: Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter 

About Melanie:
Melanie Griffin is a Business Litigation and Employment Law Attorney at Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick who is a Past President of the Central Florida Association for Women Lawyers and The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division and the President-Elect of the Hillsborough Association for Women Lawyers. She has been recognized by Super Lawyers the past 11 consecutive years and Best Lawyers in America the past 5 consecutive years.  As a result of her leadership, she has received numerous accolades and awards, including The Florida Bar Most Productive Young Lawyer Award, Tampa Bay Business Journal BusinessWoman of the Year, Angie Joseph Excellence in Mentorship Award, The Florida Bar YLD Outstanding Woman Lawyer of Achievement Award, The Florida Bar Solo & Small Firm Section Mentor of the Year Award, and the Florida State University College of Law Alumni Association Service Award.  

In 2017, she founded Spread Your Sunshine to effect positive change through mentorship and building confidence in others. An inspirational speaker in high demand, Melanie has appeared on national and international stages, including for Fortune 500 companies, one of The Big Four, the ALFA International Client Seminar, the US/Canada KNOW Women Summit, Women Empower X Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., the American Bar Association, the New York Bar Association, The Florida Bar, and the Florida Association for Women Lawyers.

Nicole Dillon has over 10 years of experience in the event management and marketing world, Nicole has worked with companies from the Guggenheim Museum, FUJFILM, WebMD, to startups and tech brands.

In 2013 she decided to start Women Who Brunch, a community for women to learn and connect with each other over arguably the best meal of the week... brunch!

While seeing a need for more women empowerment, she combined her event and marketing skills and now has a community of over 10,000 across the U.S.

We talk about:

• reinventing networking
• building small communities for women enrichment & empowerment
• collaboration over competition
• strategies for social media: show up consistently, provide resources, keep your audience engaged
• grow your email marketing list, because social media is not forever
• podcasts are the new blogs
• the power of icebreakers and storytelling
• FOMO

People want to be inspired and connected, and building a community contributes to help others achieve their goals.

Nicole has hosted speakers for brunch from companies like Google, GM, TIME Inc, to Authors and Youtube Celebrities; in addition to interviewing women entrepreneurs for her podcast the 'Brunch and Learn Podcast'.

Links:  Website, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter,  Brunch & Learn Podcast

Jennifer Kipphut has been a bartender, a Coppertone sample girl, a child protective investigator, a social worker and a management consultant.  At 39,  she finally figured out what she wanted to be when she grew up and now she is a personal trainer and nutrition coach.   We talk about three f words: fear, failure and fortitude.  Keep in mind, "people who accomplish the most in life are the ones who fail the most."

Health and wellness has always been a part of her life in one way or another.  She truly loves the role she plays in her clients' lives.  She loves seeing their transformations, and she is not talking about body composition,  she loves watching their confidence grow as they find their own inner athlete!  As a personal and small group trainer,  she specializes in working primarily with women who are interested in embracing their bodies and building physical strength and mental fortitude. Her goal is to make personal training and fitness accessible to everyone. Exercise just isn't about movement it's about testing your limits and breaking down the wall of "cant's." This isn't about vanity, this is about confidence and growing.

We talk taking risks, knowing when to move on, extending grace, and about her philanthropic involvement with rare blood disorders.  We all have this fight in us, and Jen gets us motivated to keep on fighting.

Links: Website/Facebook, Jen's Fundraising Page

As a commercial photographer and product stylist, Shay’s clients span the globe (brands like Sugarfina, Pure Fiji, Truffle bags and Simplified Planner to name a few). But she is most well known for inadvertently kickstarting the "styled stock" industry with the creation of the SC Stockshop in 2013 which supplied beautiful stock imagery tailored specifically to female business owners. Today, powerhouse female entrepreneurs like Marie Forleo, Jenna Kutcher and thousands of others know and love her Social Squares Membership where she puts her years of work as a commercial stylist and photographer into a monthly subscription that supplies elevated brand imagery + visual marketing education for female-owned online brands. 

Thinking about starting a product or service: reach out to friends, family, connections and loose connections to get feedback. Because feedback is everything! I talk to Shay about her journey of starting a company, a membership and maintaining a fabulous work-life balance. She saw an opportunity to help small businesses and she seized it!

We talk about these wonderful concepts to help your business:

• customers/clients have pain points and your company can help alleviate them
• membership churn
• putting in as much effort on retaining as attaining new customers
• understand  the customer journey - how your membership product will get them where they want and need to be, essentially paint a picture of how your company will help them reach their goals
• how work can "swell" to fill the time and avoid that by working smarter and more efficient
• achieving flexibility with work time and maintaining a healthy personal life, while still running a successful and demanding business
• the 16 hour work week
• how to 80/20 your business
• find your niche
• always find creative ways to stay connected to your customer, especially in the memberships business
• social media is "renting" but newsletters are "owning"
• always ask yourself "does this scale?"

A favorite quote from the episode "some great ideas are born out of the limitations that you have in your business."

Links: Weekly Instagram Action Plan + 10 free SS images
How to Double Your Income By Working Less (80/20 Guide)
Social Squares Styled Stock Membership: www.socialsquares.com
@socialsquares on Instagram // @shaycochrane on Instagram

Building a business can be the most challenging experience, yet the most rewarding. I talk with Brent Kraus of the enormously hip, creative and ever-evolving Ella Bing. He runs the show in this family business and has his toe more than dipped in, Ecommerce, retail and wholesale.  What started as a business building bow ties by the hands of his mom and dad has turned into a venture that now also adds to the repertoire outsourcing product production and bringing in microbrands to their storefronts.

We talk so many things (as product is my love):

• Outsourcing, private labeling, microbrands
• Not trying to compete on price with mega brands
• Margins, margins, margins and extending as many revenue branches as possible and in line with the brand
• Cost of customer acquisition
• Don't be afraid of Etsy
• Social media strategy and the "popularity contest"
• Family business (there is the love, but there are also unique challenges)
• It all comes down to marketing budgets (and how much can you risk to get eyes on your brand)

We also talk about the immediate and direct feedback he receives in store to continue building the brand and bringing in the best products to suit his customers. Online reviews can take awhile to receive and are harder to obtain. The capabilities of testing new product with in store customers is key.

Tip: If you are thinking about starting a brick and mortar, know the industry, know the product.
Tip: Pivot or don't exist. You have to pivot during these trying retail times.

Links: Website, Instagram, Twitter, Unofficial Mascot Mimi, Beer and Bow Ties Fundraiser

Ella Bing is a family owned business based in Tampa, Florida specializing in both cloth and wood bow ties, as well as other male fashion and lifestyle accessories. They run retail stores, an ecommerce site and a very fun string of social media pages.  The company was founded after the loss of Brent Kraus’ brother, Matthew. The Kraus family honors Matthew's fun spirited personality and love of fashion with handmade custom bow ties, much like Matthew himself would have worn. Ella Bing’s work is centered around quality, presentation, attention to detail and customer service.

Ella Bing organizes a well known fundraiser, Beer and Bow Ties every year for the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay. While they realize that a bow tie might not save a life, they hope that it can at least help someone in need. 

Entrepreneurs may face in their lifetime deciding to or having to:
sell the business, close the doors (possibly in a rush), sunset the business

I am super passionate about the mental health of recovering entrepreneurs. The interesting thing about entrepreneurs is, you can recover and get over one business and then move on to another. However, it is important to take the time to recover, grieve and reflect on your business that once was.

We become so attached to our businesses. I recommend 4 things to do when you are looking at the next steps after closing or selling a business:

1. take time for yourself
2. be open about the things you accomplished (don't get stuck on failures) focus on all of the good that came out of it for you, customers and employees
3. be easy on yourself (as we can all be our harshest critic)
4. your next steps don't have to be forever steps, they may just be pebbles to a bigger stone

It took a lot of grit and grace to start a business, now take that grit and grace to step back from the closure or sale and heal, and eventually be able to jump back in again to whatever adventure you will be embarking on next.

Links: Website, Instagram, Newsletter