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My Story
182 Plays1 year ago
With 44 spins around the sun and over 27 working years under my belt, I have so many stories I cannot wait to share with you. In this episode, I reveal my personal journey to date and every lesson I learned at each twist and turn.
We chat about:
- How I ended up on the phone with Grandmaster Flash and Christopher Cross and my days spent interviewing celebrities like Elton John and John Legend
- Why you should never settle for less than you deserve
- Why choosing your brand name is SUPER important (and not all at the same time)
- The loneliness that comes with being a business owner
- How I built FIVE six-figure businesses
- Why I became an entrepreneur in the first place, and how I lost and found myself along the way
And more! This is the most complete version of my story to date that I've ever had the chance to share, so get in and buckle up, let's go on the ride of a lifetime!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'This or More'
00:00:00
Speaker
I remember thinking, don't rock the boat, Tiffany. I remember thinking just smile and nod, Tiffany.
00:00:10
Speaker
If I could go back in time and do that a little differently, I definitely would. Welcome to This or More, a wild entrepreneurial podcast adventure for bold and brave creatives like you. I'm Tiffany Napper, your host, holistic business coach, corporate music industry dropout, a seasoned five-time multi six-figure entrepreneur, yoga instructor, and your go-to gal for heart-to-heart coffee chats.
00:00:35
Speaker
On this show, we're not just here to share stories. We're here to ignite a fire within you and make you realize that the reality you envision is just the tip of the iceberg. You're wildly capable of achieving that reality and so much more.
Living Boldly: Reflections and Courage
00:00:49
Speaker
You'll hear my personal triumphs and failures, along with raw, unfiltered stories of fellow creatives who've paved a path to a bank account that screams cha-ching and a life that is filled with joy.
00:01:01
Speaker
There will be live coaching, actionable tips that you can apply immediately, along with a hearty dose of kick in the pants motivation. So my friends, grab your cup of inspiration, settle in, and let's dive into another inspiring episode of This or More.
00:01:17
Speaker
where to begin, with 44 spins around the sun and 27 working years under my belt. I have so many stories I cannot wait to share with you, and we'll get to all of them in due time, but when I reflect on my life and my journey to date, one theme kept reappearing.
00:01:35
Speaker
And it's the theme of courage and this desire to live boldly and to do things that no one else thought I could or should do, even when it felt hard, even when I felt small, even when I felt like an imposter. Right.
Personal Journey and Life Lessons
00:01:50
Speaker
So in today's episode, we're going to dive deep into my personal journey. I'm going to share the lessons I learned at each juncture.
00:01:57
Speaker
Buckle up because before today, there were many roads, many intersections, and even a few wrong turns. And in the end, I think you'll understand why I'm so passionate about guiding other business owners like you and helping you learn your own life-changing lessons along the way and hopefully saving you from a few of those wrong turns that I made.
Dreams and Inner Voice: Growing Up in Louisiana
00:02:19
Speaker
Okay. So let's speed up. Let me, let me take you through some of the earlier stuff that led to the moment that I decided to quit my job and become an entrepreneur, a term that I really didn't use back then, but obviously I use now. So I was born in a very small town in Ruston, Louisiana, and I never felt like I belonged there.
00:02:40
Speaker
I remember begging, begging my family to move us to Dallas, Texas, because my dad had the potential for taking another job there and it was going to move the family. And I was so excited to get to the big city news flash. It didn't pan out. We never left rest in Louisiana, but I wanted to live in New York city or Paris. There was something deep inside of me that told me that I was made for more.
00:03:04
Speaker
And I never let go of that
College Life and Journalism Challenges
00:03:06
Speaker
desire. So lesson number one, don't ignore your inner voice. As a child, I spent my summers going to Ohio with my grandparents where my memoirs family owns farms. They were farmers. And back then they had pigs and I quickly fell in love with the little baby runts of every litter. I was a sucker for wanting to save the little guys. Guess not much has changed.
00:03:28
Speaker
And I was clearly oblivious to where they were going to end up after I quote unquote saved them, but that's not the point.
00:03:36
Speaker
I became so obsessed with pigs that my mom and dad would eventually move us to a great grandmother's home, other side of the family, but great grandmother's home in Hiko, Louisiana. Now, it's a small town. There's one stop sign. That's it. The house was old. It had sloping floors and an old outhouse on the back before they had plumbing.
00:03:59
Speaker
And a barn. And I was able to have a pig of my own. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. And I wasn't sure if my sister would ever really let me live it down because she was four years older than me. And she was in that process, that stage of life where she was starting to go on some dates and get her driver's license. And that meant she had to learn how to drive down a bunch of old dirt roads. And she had to drive about 20 or 30 minutes into town to get to high school.
00:04:26
Speaker
And yeah, needless to say, she wasn't thrilled with me. But I'm not 100% sure what that chapter of my life taught me, except that pigs can break your heart. They're so loving, so loyal. And my parents really did love me and they were listening and they said, you know, she really wants this thing and we're going to make it happen for her. And, and that was wow. You know, it was a wow moment. Like, wow, my family is going to,
00:04:50
Speaker
Do whatever it takes to give me this thing that I desire. So I think the lesson was for me to be relentless in pursuit of what you want, even when it seems impossible.
Risk-Taking in Career Beginnings
00:05:00
Speaker
Even when it seems impossible. Okay, so fast forward. I went off to college. I majored in journalism.
00:05:06
Speaker
I thought I would chase a fashion magazine dream all the way to New York City, but I happened to graduate the same year as 9-11 and it changed my plans. My dad said, absolutely not. You're not moving to New York City right now. So I settled for another city that had the word new in it, New Orleans.
00:05:24
Speaker
And I didn't have a job and I pulled out the paper every day and circled with a red pen job ads and went on interviews and landed a job as a receptionist at a marketing company, worked my way up a little bit to maybe an assistant of some sort. It was not a good gig.
00:05:41
Speaker
I also landed a bartending job, more on that for another day, and for about two years I worked six or seven days a week, marketing job five days a week, two shifts every weekend as a bartender, saving my pennies so that I could eventually move to New York City and chase that dream. And that was at the age of 23 years old.
00:06:01
Speaker
Unfortunately, the winters and a very young heartbreak left me cold and sad, so I did not last long, just shy of one year before my dad drove up to New York City in the middle of winter, in December, to help me load up my stuff and move back down south to New Orleans.
00:06:18
Speaker
So my lesson there is if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. I know I would have always regretted if I hadn't chased that dream to New York City, so I'm really glad I did, even though it might not have panned out exactly the way I had anticipated.
Thriving at Yamaha: Creative Growth
00:06:32
Speaker
When I got back down to New Orleans this time,
00:06:36
Speaker
I packed up my car and I decided to drive east along I-10, stopping in every major city, dropping off my resume and some writing clips to try to land a journalism job. This was what I said I was going to set out to do and I was determined to do it.
00:06:52
Speaker
I sort of fibbed my way into my first journalism gig. It was actually a role as editor of a Gannett weekly paper. So I had been driving along I-10, right, dropping off resumes. And when I got the call, I didn't exactly know who the call was coming from. And they said, can you be here tomorrow at 8 a.m.? And I figured out this was Pensacola, Florida. And I was in New Orleans about three-ish hours away, probably maybe three and a half, four hours away.
00:07:19
Speaker
And I was like, yep, I'll be there. And I quickly threw some things in the trunk and set my alarm for who knows when early in the morning so that I could get there, pretend like I lived in Pensacola, Florida. I was thrown for another loop when I got there because I thought I was going in for a response that I had submitted for a reporter position for the Pensacola News Journal. But when I got there, I saw on the table this,
00:07:44
Speaker
Buy weekly paper called the pelican which i was familiar with but it was there like weekly alternative paper i was like that's interesting and then the questions got a little bit more bizarre and i was like oh my gosh i'm being interviewed for the role of editor of this weekly paper not for reporter and so.
00:08:02
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Again, probably fibbed my way through that a little bit. I landed the gig and it was a beautiful gig. It was one of the most transformational gigs and moments and pivotal moments in my life, but I definitely fibbed a little to get through it. So my lesson there is don't lie, but if you must, in order to get your foot in the door, lie just a little.
00:08:21
Speaker
And so next step on that journey is Hurricane Ivan hit me and I kept doing the job and I was really unhappy and I was really out of sorts and I didn't have a place to live and I was living with a boyfriend's parents and it got really messy and fast forward and I decided to leave that behind, go back to New Orleans, cross over into the world of public relations. I heard that was the shiny new thing and that maybe there was a little bit more of a work-life balance than what I had been.
00:08:49
Speaker
noticing as editor of this paper. And I landed a role as in PR with the American Cancer Society, another really valid, honorable position, honorable business. And then Hurricane Katrina hit. And once again, my life was disrupted, to say the least.
00:09:07
Speaker
This time I didn't lose my stuff, but I did lose my car and After a couple of years of really just feeling like I've been getting kicked in you know tossed and turned I said you know what there's got to be more to life and I'm at my prime I'm like 27 years old at this point in time, and I said I can be creative. I'm a creative at my core I've got to go chase a creative role so I packed up my things and I moved to Nashville, Tennessee and
00:09:34
Speaker
after a job in the music industry which sounds so cliche now but back then I didn't know what I didn't know and
00:09:42
Speaker
For six months, I pounded the pavement. I went on job interviews. I was determined not to settle. I was determined that this was a turning point in my life, that I would look back on and be grateful for being so bold and so a little bit unreasonable.
Balancing Contractor Role and PR Agency
00:10:00
Speaker
And it did pay off. Six months later, I landed the gig of a lifetime with Yamaha.
00:10:05
Speaker
the music manufacturer, right? So I landed this role doing PR, some creative direction. And again, I didn't have a plan, but there I was, smack dab in the middle of the artist relations department for Yamaha. My very first phone call was to Grandmaster Flash, the founder of hip hop. My second phone call would be with Christopher Cross, right? One of my favorite songs of all time, Sailing.
00:10:33
Speaker
Talk about a gig. I loved it and I was blown away and I was excited and I was young and I was motivated and I was ambitious and I was all the things and I freaking shined in that role and I would ultimately be asked to lead and kick off a video department and I would get to fly around the world interviewing world-class artists like Elton John and Sarah McLaughlin and John Legend and just Jason Mraz and Sarah Bareilles and I could go on and on and on and
00:11:01
Speaker
of all of the people that I had the chance to sit down with and interview and hear their stories and share their stories and man it was a it was a gig it was a gig I would also be asked to well actually I asked if I could launch social media campaigns around what we were doing because it was a time in which Facebook was really growing and I saw this opportunity
00:11:25
Speaker
And then I took it a step further and I said, rather than us hiring a social media agency, why don't we, why don't you let me find an agency that will teach me everything they know? And lo and behold, I did. I found this agency out of LA and I said, here's the deal.
00:11:41
Speaker
You know, I want to launch a Facebook page, but I don't want to just hire you to do it. I want you to teach me what you do and let me learn alongside you. And I don't know, I must have sounded really convincing because they said yes. And I was able to really learn on the job and grow that Facebook page for Yamaha.
00:12:00
Speaker
And it was a, yeah, just a dream come true, right? I worked my butt off, I flexed my creative wings, I met people that I grew up listening to, I wore hats that I never thought I would wear, I really felt like I was on my path. And that lesson there was to younger me, to don't be afraid to start over, don't be afraid to leave it all behind, don't be afraid to do what people think might sound a little crazy, and don't settle for less than what you know is meant for you.
Branding Lessons: PR Agency and Handbag Line
00:12:29
Speaker
My other lesson is set better boundaries and stand up for yourself a little bit more. I would learn that eventually, but I wish I had known it back then. Around three years in of this job, this rollercoaster of an incredible opportunity, I started to get the itch and I was missing New Orleans and I don't really remember what led to that moment. I know I went through another heartbreak around that time, so maybe it was the cusp of the big breakup that sent me back to my roots, but
00:12:59
Speaker
I was just craving New Orleans and I got a job offer and I packed my things up and I had it back down south. And the gig that took me back down there did not pan out. I was very unhappy, very quickly realized this was not the place for me.
00:13:14
Speaker
And Yamaha came back calling and found out that it wasn't working out. And they said, come back, come back. And why don't you come back and work for one week of every month in Nashville? Because at that point I had bought a house in New Orleans. I was like, I can't leave. I just bought a house. They said, okay, come back, work for a week of every month in Nashville and the rest of the time from New Orleans. And I thought this is golden. This was before this was a thing. This was long before the pandemic made it normal or natural for us to work from home.
00:13:44
Speaker
So I was ecstatic to say the least. And I went back and forth for a little while and it didn't take long before we realized that it wasn't really ideal for me or for my boss at the time. And so I said, this isn't working. He said, you're right. It's not working. Okay, I'm going to walk away again.
00:14:03
Speaker
But this time he said, let's put you up as a contractor and you tell me what do you want to work on? What part of the job do you want? And let's just set you up as a contractor. And again, dream come true, right? I got to pick all the parts of the job that I loved, which was all the creative direction work. I got to keep the magazine that I produced twice a year and all the video interviews that I did with the artists.
00:14:27
Speaker
And I got to keep parts of the promo parts with the record label and helping launch these new albums with these really fun bands. And it was just a dream. I ended up doing that for another seven years, bringing my total to Yamaha, my time with Yamaha to 10 years. I joked back then. I still joke to this day. It's my longest relationship to date. And even though it was rocky at times, as they all are, I miss those early days. I miss that team.
00:14:54
Speaker
I miss that creative buzz. So my lesson there is sometimes when you go for what you want, you get even more than you asked for. Okay. So back when I was negotiating the terms with Yamaha, I was also launching my own PR branding agency called bats on strings. Be as in boy bats on strings.
00:15:15
Speaker
And the name was a bit of an inside joke with a movie director who at the time had just hired me to be the unit publicist for his new film starring Rose McGowan. I told you there were going to be some twists and turns on this journey. Okay, bear with me.
00:15:29
Speaker
But I met him at a party in the French Quarter and fast forward, fast forward, here we are. I'll never forget the job was going to pay me $7,000. It felt like a million to me at the time. And at that point, I knew I had to form an LLC because I had to make this official, right? I knew I couldn't just like pocket seven grand. I knew there was more to it than that.
00:15:51
Speaker
I said, okay, I got to fill out this LLC form. There was a little bit of an inside joke with me saying bats on strings instead of dun dun dun when we were watching this movie for research. And so when it came time to scribble down a name, I said bats on strings. Not at all thinking about the longevity, not at all thinking about where I was going to take the business, where I wanted to go with the business. None of that really was crossing my mind.
00:16:16
Speaker
I just thought it was clever and unique and different and memorable and it was and it served its purpose. But my lesson here is think about your brand name and think about where you want to be in five years or ten years and make sure it makes sense. And if it's going to be creative and clever, you know, that's okay too. Granted, you can always rebrand, which I did eventually rebrand.
00:16:38
Speaker
There was a lot of SEO juice that I missed out on in those years because, you know, now you can Google me and you're going to find this some stuff under bats on strings and some stuff under Tiffany Napper. So less than there. Think about your brand name.
Entrepreneurial Chaos and Financial Lessons
00:16:51
Speaker
Think a little bit into the future.
00:16:53
Speaker
I went on quickly to sign a few more big names with that agency as soon as I launched. Grandmaster Flash became one of my very first clients for social media management. Mark Cone, the legendary Mark Cone of Walking in Memphis, became on board for PR and social media management. Went on to represent him for many, many years. Love and adore you, Mark, sending you all my love. Before you knew it, I had five clients and I had an intern and we were off to the races.
00:17:21
Speaker
Okay, now to the messy middle, as if you didn't think there'd already been enough. So just one year into running my PR and branding agency, I got the edge to create some product, and I thought it was gonna be product in collaboration with my artist roster. But around about the same time, I also got wind of this news that NFL was gonna be passing a new stadium approved handbag policy. This was after the Boston Marathon incident.
00:17:49
Speaker
and that our bags were going to need to be tiny and clear to get into NFL games, and I was a rabid Saints fan, still am, and at the time I went to all the games, and I was like, oh no, I ran immediately to grab a tape measure, I ran immediately to my closet, I immediately measured all of my handbags, none of them passed the test, none of them were 4.5 inches by 6.5 inches, and none of them were clear.
00:18:12
Speaker
So a quick Google search sent me down this rabbit hole. I didn't find much. A few things on eBay, a few pieces from China, nothing that really felt like it rocked my boat. So the next thing you know, I was sketching designs on paper and I had messaged this girl who I found on eBay with a couple of other PVC designs and I said, hey, this is gonna sound crazy, but I have an idea.
00:18:38
Speaker
And I have this idea. Here's the sketch. If I gave you this this drawing, could you try to make this purse for me? And basically, I was I was seeing if she would make me a prototype and she said yes. And
00:18:52
Speaker
Again, I was off to the races, this time making clear handbags. And she said, yes, we went back and forth with designs and prototypes between my backyard studio in New Orleans and her home in California. I started test driving them to see how they held up. And I went to a coffee shop to meet up with a friend who ran a big, I guess, influencer campaign or influencer account at the time called iHeartNOLA.
00:19:20
Speaker
And it was the days of using Hipstamatic and it was the days of posting photos of our coffee, okay? So he snapped a photo of our lattes on the table and on that table sat one of my clear handbags.
00:19:33
Speaker
And I only lived about three minutes walking distance from this coffee shop. By the time I got home, I remember Scott had messaged me and he was like, somebody wants to know where they can buy the purse. I was like, Oh crap. Um, I am not ready. I don't know how to sell a product. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I don't know how much it's going to be. And I wasn't ready.
00:19:55
Speaker
Lesson here. First to market is no joke. Don't overthink it, just do it. Really quickly, I figured out how to put up a Shopify account. Really quickly, I set a price. Really quickly, I started selling these bags and we were once again off to the races. Now, the early years of running my handbag line were wild and crazy and exhausting and fun.
00:20:19
Speaker
And I was selected to be part of an entrepreneurial incubator program. I got a mentor. I had to stand on stages and tell my elevator pitch live on the news in an elevator. I had to talk to investors. I also had to learn what it felt like to be belittled when a leader of the company asked me, what's so unique about a handbag idea? What's the big idea? That's not big enough or unique enough to win.
00:20:47
Speaker
And I had to know what it felt like to be asked by the leader if I was going to wear a clear dress to our finale. Yeah, that happened. And so my lesson there was stand up for yourself and stand up for your big ideas. I wish I'd stood up for myself a little bit better back then. I remember being very shell shocked. I remember thinking, don't rock the boat, Tiffany. I remember thinking, just smile and nod, Tiffany.
00:21:18
Speaker
If I could go back in time and do that a little differently, I definitely would. P.S. The winner of that competition ended up being a brewery. So you tell me, is a brewery a more unique or bigger idea than a stadium approved handbag line? I think not, but I digress. Let's jump back into some more positive things. During this season of my career, I also launched a co-working space.
00:21:47
Speaker
It was a lateral business move at the time my team was growing. I needed a better space to ship and receive handbags, something better than my backyard. And when I looked into other co-working spaces in the New Orleans area, there wasn't a lot to choose from and it quickly became very unaffordable for me based on kind of the size of my team.
00:22:09
Speaker
I said, you know what, I could get it. I could just rent a property and turn it into a parking space and, you know, divide up the space to cover the rent. And again, I was off to the races. So I launched the Riverbend Collective and I painted walls and built a photo studio and the team grew and I created a built in hub of people so that I never felt alone. And I really also never had to look that closely in the mirror at the chaos that I was starting to surround myself by.
00:22:41
Speaker
But my lesson here is that this journey can be lonely. So find a tribe, but don't feel like you have to create the hub for them. Right? Just find the tribe. Now I'm going to skip over some details, but let me reestablish some things. So now we are in 2014.
00:22:58
Speaker
I'm three years into my entrepreneurial journey, and I'm now running four businesses, my PR and branding agency called Bats on Strings, a handbag line called Flying Fox, a co-working space called the Riverbend Collective, and a short-term Airbnb property that is also my home. And that got very complicated at times.
00:23:19
Speaker
I was living in such a state of overwhelm that I would book my house and then I would secretly sleep at the co-working space, smuggle in my dog because dogs weren't allowed on property, get up at the crack of dawn to shower and change so that no one knew I had spent the night there. And it wasn't that I was broke. That's the kicker. I was not broke.
00:23:44
Speaker
It's that I didn't know how much money was going and coming, coming and going. And rather than taking the time to figure that out and better understand that, I just lived in this reactionary state of more, more, more. Okay. I'll sell more handbags. Okay. I'll rent my house out. Okay. More, more. What can I grab? What money can I grab today to make sure that I'm okay?
00:24:14
Speaker
And looking back now, I am well aware that it sounds crazy. It's also why I can relate to so many of my clients who come to me with their heads hanging low and shame because they don't know how much money is coming and going every month.
Personal Struggles and Business Coaching
00:24:29
Speaker
I get it, I've been there. My mom was my accountant in those early days and she would say to me, Tiffany, you seem to always have this baseline of about $20,000 in your bank account. Is that intentional or why are you so worried, right? Why are you so stressed? And while I have no idea where I came up with the number 20K, it's possible that I had crunched the numbers and kind of felt like that was a good safety net.
00:24:55
Speaker
But what I did know was that I did not feel confident in numbers. I had believed this story that because I was a creative and because I was a writer that I wasn't good at math and that I couldn't possibly be good at numbers and I couldn't possibly be a good business owner, right? I didn't have a clear understanding of like this, this monthly statement that showed me what was coming in and going out.
00:25:23
Speaker
I knew what we were making, obviously. I sent out every invoice. I wrote every proposal. I knew what my bills were. I knew what I had to pay my staff. And I obviously knew that if I had 20K in my bank account, I felt like I was kind of always okay. I also, side note, grew up in a family where my dad was very clear to me that you did not live outside your means. So luckily in this story and in this equation,
00:25:52
Speaker
I was very responsible and always have been with my money. There's a joke in my family that as I have an older sister and we're very different in a lot of ways and there was a joke in my family that if you gave Tiffany a dollar
00:26:08
Speaker
and one year she would have a dollar and 10. And if you gave my sister a dollar and one year she would have negative 10. It was just a little bit of a joke because I was a saver, right? I'm not bragging. I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just trying to give you some context around how I was able to pull this off. How was I possibly able to run for profitable businesses, six-figure businesses, and not have a clue
00:26:36
Speaker
what my monthly incoming and outgoing really was. So my lesson here for you is not knowing your numbers as a business owner is the equivalent of a pilot flying blindfolded.
00:26:50
Speaker
do not recommend zero out of 10. While you may be able to avoid some obstacles, you're never going to be able to nail that landing. You're definitely not going to feel confident in the cockpit. You need to take the blindfold off and just look at the spreadsheets or get someone who can look and build those spreadsheets for you, okay?
00:27:11
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So I was wearing a lot of hats. I was doing a lot of things. It was around this time in my life. I made some poor choices in my personal life. I married a narcissist who in hindsight also was looking for a green card. I'm going to save that for another podcast episode. It's juicy. It's good. It's a season in my life that I have no regrets around. I
00:27:39
Speaker
1,000% believe that happened to me so that I could look myself in the mirror and do the work that would be needed for me to do to get to where I am today, to lead others, and to be able to say, you know what? I've been there. I've hit rock bottom. I know how to get back up. I can help you too. So we're gonna save that personal story for another day,
00:28:08
Speaker
Around about the same time, a business coach reached out to me. His name is Zach. Hi, Zach. And I didn't even know what a business coach was, but I was tired and I was skipping meals and I was, I'm not going to get emotional. Okay. I was tired. I was skipping meals. I was arguing with my mom.
00:28:32
Speaker
Even though I was on the cover of magazines and newspapers and standing on stages and getting flown to New York to stand on stages, I was lost. I was so lost. So when I say that I believe
00:28:53
Speaker
in the power of support, of finding a mentor or a business coach or an ally.
Mentorship and Personal Growth
00:29:01
Speaker
Those words, they're not just words. I believe in the power of reaching out your hand and asking for help or if someone extends their arm to you, take it.
00:29:17
Speaker
So Zach came into my life and I knew that I was not happy with the person looking back at me in the mirror. And I needed help. And Zach was the very first person to say to me, ironically enough, you should be a business coach. And I remember thinking, Zach, you are crazy. But
00:29:45
Speaker
The truth is, I was running successful businesses on paper. I did somehow seem to have some sort of magic in me. I knew how to be bold, courageous, follow my passion. Because of my PR and branding background, I knew how to sell something. I knew how to market something. I knew how to brand something.
00:30:09
Speaker
So he planted that very first seed for me way back when. And I just laughed it off at the time, but it was a moment that I'll never forget. But Zach also helped me look in the mirror and say, Tiffany, what do you want? What do you want your life to look like? And what do you want your legacy to be? And it was during that season that I knew that I had to scale back. I had to say no to some things in order to be able to say yes to something bigger.
00:30:38
Speaker
So I made the very challenging decision to start separating myself from Yamaha. I made the very challenging decision to close the handbag line. It took about a year, but I did it. I made a very challenging decision to break a lease and close the co-working space, sell everything in it, had a big yard sale and said, I'm packing up my bags and I'm going back to Nashville.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I know I wouldn't have been able to make all of those big, pivotal, challenging decisions if I had not had Zach there. He had my back, right? And he gave me the confidence and
00:31:23
Speaker
And it was just, it was such a big turning point in my life. So I remember saying to Zach, I've gotta go. I've gotta go stretch my wings again. I've gotta get out of this box that I put myself back in. I've got to be free. Freedom is what I wanted when I started this, when I said I'm gonna become an entrepreneur and I'm gonna do my own thing. It wasn't so that I could feel like I had to be the first person in the office every day and the last person to leave.
00:31:52
Speaker
It was because I wanted to be able to take on different projects and work for different people and I wanted to not feel like there was a ceiling above me and I didn't want to have to sit in conference rooms anymore and I didn't want to have to do stupid reports that didn't matter to me. That's why I did this. That's why I became an entrepreneur. So in those moments with Zach, I just had to be really honest with myself and say, what does Tiffany want and what does she need and what's going to help
00:32:21
Speaker
me show up better in this world. And so I closed down some things and I made some big decisions and I said I'm hitting the road. I'm going to go to Nashville. I'm going to get my yoga teaching certificate. I'm going to go through yoga teacher training.
00:32:38
Speaker
because I at that time was also very well aware that I had put my well-being on the back burner for many years. I watched my garden literally shrivel up and die. My yoga practice went by the wayside. All of the things that kind of were probably keeping me steady and balanced for so many years
00:32:58
Speaker
I just accidentally tossed them by the wayside. And, you know, a few years go by and you realize, oh wait, those things mattered to me. And I've got to make them a priority again.
00:33:12
Speaker
And I remember at the time, I started off really small. I started off with, I'm gonna get on my yoga mat every morning. It was yoga with Adrienne on YouTube. I rolled my yoga mat out in my front living room 20 minutes a day. And I was like, let me do this for 30 days. And that became 60 days and that became
00:33:29
Speaker
months, and before you know it, I had almost met one year of getting on my mat every day. It wasn't a long workout every time, but it was a dedication to me. It was a recommitment to myself. So fast forward, I said, I'm gonna go through yoga teacher training, because what does a overachiever do when she feels burned out? She decides to overachieve in the world of wellness. I joke, but also, it's not that funny.
00:33:55
Speaker
Um, but that's what I did. I moved back to Nashville. I thought it was going to be a temporary move. I literally packed up a Fiat. That's what I drove at the time. A little Fiat convertible with whatever it would fit, which was not a lot.
00:34:09
Speaker
And I came to Nashville and I got a little sublease over in 12 South area and I went through yoga teacher training and I, you know, scaled back on my client load so that it was manageable for just me again to do without having to have all these employees and contractors and really kind of downsized everything and thought I'm going to rebuild and I'm going to, I'm going to rebuild in a way that feels good to me. That feels a little bit more in control, right?
00:34:36
Speaker
And I did the whole eat, pray, love thing and I went to Bali and gosh, you know, I went through more heart, heartaches and heartbreaks and, and struggled with what I really wanted to do. I tried on influencer stuff for a little while and that didn't feel good. And I struggled with body image and I struggled with self worth and I.
00:34:56
Speaker
went through a big wellness journey and started paying attention to what I was eating again and became a matcha addict and started sharing my matcha recipes and oh my God on and on and on this. There was probably a few years there in which I was just experimenting, I suppose. So my lesson here is
00:35:17
Speaker
Don't be afraid to jump ship and start anew. Don't be afraid to jump ship and paddle over to a brand new boat. Because sometimes our sunk costs are gonna cost us more in the long run than what is potentially on the other side if we just start anew.
00:35:39
Speaker
Now, gosh, I don't know, 2017, I worked with my second business coach, Kaylee, met some amazing women, went on some more trips, still continue to do PR, continue to do social media management, continue to think, I'm not sure this is right for me, but also did a lot of work on my money mindset, a lot of work on
00:36:03
Speaker
sustainability, successful sustainability, landed my first multi six-figure contract with a client, landed my second six-figure contract with a client, really started to get my groove. And it's funny because the lesson here is the less I cared, the more money I made. The less I kind of cared about whether the client said yes or no, the more they said yes to these
00:36:30
Speaker
bigger numbers.
Pandemic Pivot to Business Coaching
00:36:32
Speaker
And in the past I was like, please, please, please give me $1,000 a month. And now I'm like, it's $20,000 a month, take it or leave it. And they're going, yes. And I was like, wow. Because I knew I was going to over deliver no matter what they said, right? That wasn't the, that was not the question. I knew I was going to blow, blow it out of the water and we did.
00:36:53
Speaker
But I also knew that I was slowly, slowly realizing that I didn't feel nearly as connected to the work as I once did. 2020 rolls around January of 2020 and I signed up for a Reiki session and a life coaching session, two things that were brand new to me and had a little bit of an epiphany and sat in the discomfort, if you will, that
00:37:22
Speaker
Maybe something really big is on the horizon. Maybe something really different is on the horizon. And the lesson here is when you hear that voice, don't ignore her. And even if you don't have a clear picture, even if it's really fuzzy,
00:37:41
Speaker
and not even remotely in focus. Don't stop looking straight ahead. So I sat in that discomfort for a couple of months and the pandemic happened. It's March of 2020 now. I was a member, a founding member of a women's only co-working space in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:38:00
Speaker
And the founder called me up and said, would you be willing to lead a workshop, an online workshop? We've got to shut our doors down. We just opened up. We've got to close down. And I'm trying to come up with ways to keep the community engaged. Could you lead a webinar? And I thought, hmm.
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah, I could do that. And here's a moment. Here's an opportunity for me because obviously now is not the time to teach anybody about PR or branding. That's not what we're dealing with. But now could be a really good time to teach people what it looks like to build a more sustainable, successful business. Here's a really good time to talk about the systems that maybe you don't have in your business that you could be building right now.
00:38:46
Speaker
while the doors are shut and we're in lockdown. Here's a really good time to talk about the mindset components, those what I call toxic dragons that might actually be hindering your success. And we've never really had time to evaluate it because we've been running full speed ahead.
00:39:04
Speaker
So I thought, sure, I'll, I'll lead a webinar. And I threw something together and I led that first webinar and I loved it. I loved every minute of it. It was so intoxicating to me. I realized that both Zach and Kaylee, my previous business coaches who had said to me, you should be a business coach. We're onto something.
00:39:27
Speaker
It really was my calling. And Kathy called me up and she said, it got great response. Would you do it again? And I said, absolutely. And it did it again and again several times in that one week. And pretty quickly, people were asking me, how can I work with you? Do you have a coaching program? What's next? And so I thought, here we go. And we're off. You notice a theme here.
00:39:49
Speaker
And I threw together a group coaching program and I gave it a name and I put up some little announcements and I literally sold the spots with Venmo because I didn't have like Stripe set up. I didn't have my Squarespace website set up to accept payments. I was just using it as a blog at the time. So I thought, I'll just take payments through PayPal or Venmo, no big deal.
00:40:16
Speaker
And God, I think I charged $299 for that six-week program. Set a goal of six clients, got them. Led that first round, and again, loved every minute of it. And we were off. And I really never looked back. Pretty quickly from there, I realized that this was my next path. This was the focus. This was the picture coming into focus.
00:40:46
Speaker
I was meant to be a business coach. I was meant to help other creative business women learn how to scale their businesses, run their businesses, make sure that their businesses didn't put them in second place of their lives. This was what I was meant to do. So my lesson is to embrace the pivot. That word that got such a bad rap. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love you pivot. Embrace the pivot. You never
00:41:16
Speaker
will know what's waiting for you if you are so steadfast, heels stuck in the ground, committed to what's no longer bringing you joy.
Inspiring Conclusion: Pursuing Dreams and Embracing Change
00:41:29
Speaker
Whether it's a business or an offer or a relationship, any of it, okay? Embrace the pivot.
00:41:38
Speaker
So that brings us to today. Here I am three years in as a business coach helping women have $150,000 launches, $70,000 launches, nail lockdown, $84,000 contracts, grow teams, get out of the trenches, find their true calling.
00:41:58
Speaker
Oh my gosh, what a beautiful ride it has been and we are just getting started. Thank you for listening. I hope you know that based on my story, no matter where you are right now, no matter what is going on, this or more
00:42:18
Speaker
is possible. This or more is what's available to you. So if currently you're sitting there and you're making $5,000 a month with your business, this or more is possible for you. $6,000 is just around the bend. If you're sitting here listening and you're also finding yourself running a business that doesn't bring you joy,
00:42:39
Speaker
This or more is waiting for you. A business that brings you even more abundance and more joy. If you're sitting there and you've been sitting on an idea that you haven't brought to light yet, because you're terrified it won't work, but you're pretty successful right now, this or more is waiting for you. You've just got to do the thing. You've got to go fearlessly in pursuit.
00:43:04
Speaker
of the things that light you up that bring you joy. You've got to show the world how courageous and brave and bold and beautiful you and your brilliant ideas are. This or more is waiting for you.
00:43:21
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in today. I would be eternally grateful if you would hit that follow button so we can stay connected and continue on this journey. And bonus points if you share it on Instagram and tag me at Tiffany Napper so that we can recruit more incredible, intuitive, creative, high vibe business owners who are ready for more. I'll see you in the next episode.