​This episode of Small Business Conversations brings us to special guest, Tandee Salter, a native of Columbus, Georgia, who is a certified life and master business success coach. She is the number one Amazon bestselling author of, Inhale Confidence, 21 days of Affirmations for the Millennial Woman and the co- author of bestselling book, 20 Beautiful Women, Volume 2. Tandee holds degrees in paralegal studies, sociology and business administration. While having achieved many things, Tandee is like all of us. She's battled with grief and depression, gone through a divorce and felt unworthy of success. However, she's overcome those obstacles and now uses her education and experience to pour into other women so they can reach their highest potential.

Tandee has been featured on a plethora of platforms including, Huffington Post, Get Out of Your Own Damn Way Podcast, Evolutionary Woman Radio, On the Rise Radio, Essence Magazine, Courageous Woman Magazine, and much more. 

Here are some of the highlights from this episode that you can put to use in your small business today!

Find Your Niche & Be Good At It

I asked Tandee to tell me about the passion of how she got started as a certified life and business master business success coach.

She shared, “I've always had a desire to help other people find the way to do it where it was unique to me and not so much I don't want to say like so much red tape...but allow me to put back into the other women in my own unique way using the knowledge and the experience that I have...I started looking into coaching and I actually ended up getting my own coach to kind of like helped me along the way. And when I met her...it kind of opened doors..it's like, I want to do this. I want to do what you're doing, but in my own way and to help women that need help building their business and balancing their life because to me, you can't build a business if things in your life are all crazy.”

Tandee found someone who was doing something she wanted to mimic but put her own little twist on it and that's why I always tell people, you know, there's a thousand different accountants or a thousand different consultants, but you have to kind of find what your niche is so that you can be successful at it.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

No matter what type of person you are, if you want to be successful, other people will see something of use in what you do. Tandee shared that her first client was a friend! Her friend saw something in her, started referring her and Tandee wanted to keep doing what she was doing, so she pushed herself outside of her comfort zone and started going to networking events and makes those online connections.

Help a Reporter Out

I asked Tandee how she’s appeared in so many awesome magazines and she shared a hot tip. “It's a website called HelpAReporterOut.com. It's help a reporter out and sometimes the reporters go on and put the stories they're working or they'll put a subject they want an expert to give their wisdom or knowledge on.”

And that’s your golden opportunity to offer feedback on current stories and happenings and maybe, just maybe, appear in a magazine or publication.

She responded to an anonymous request for feedback on HelpAReporterOut.com and it turned into a published Essence article. 

“It was asking questions about building a career and when you know it's time to leave a job. I was like, sure, I can talk about this...I got an email first from the reporter that was working on it and we talked and then after the email we scheduled a phone call, so on the phone call we're talking and she's saying she was submitting it to Essence and she will let me know when it was published and I was like OK!


I couldn’t let Tandee leave without sharing her favorite affirmation. 

“One of my favorite affirmations, it's actually the title of the book is I inhale confidence because with every single breath I take I want to take in more confidence and release all doubt, all fear and worry so that I'm confident in myself, my skills, my ability as well as the products and services that I provide to my clients.”

Be sure to check out Tandee’s new book release on Amazon. It's called Confessions of a Broke Entrepreneur. Tandee says, “I just share along my journey where that time I get frustrated when I realized I wasn't making as much money as I wanted to be making in my business and how I had to reevaluate things and also share tips for other entrepreneurs and how they can afford becoming a broke entrepreneur.

​Can you imagine ditching your 9-5 to work at your dream job, with a better office? What if your dream job included a cool boss that you’ve been friends with for awhile. However, only a few months into the position, you realize that sometimes business and friends just don't mix and things don't work out and you part ways with their company. On top of that, your husband just left for a six month deployment with the Air Force and oh, did I mention the three kids at home? What do you do? You go back to a stable position? Right? That's the logical and smart thing to do, right? 

Well, not always. I got a chance to speak to special guest, Shauna Armitage,on my podcast, PKJ Podcast who went through this exact situation and chose a much different path than many would have, put in her shoes.

​Shauna is the founder of ‘Making Moxie,’ a community for female entrepreneurs to share their stories and insights while guiding one another and growing successful businesses. Shauna is also the mother of one boy and two little girls with one on the way. She is making moxie in life and in business so her children will see that they have the power to make an impact with a little grit and a lot of determination. 

Here are the highlights from this week’s episode:

1. Before going into business with a friend, be sure your goals are in alignment.

Shauna shared that one reason that she found herself clashing with her friend/boss, is that they had different ideas about how clients should be treated. Shauna’s more intimate approach wasn’t what her friend’s company wasn’t what her company was interested in, so they eventually ended up parting ways.

“I've never been fired from anything in my life and it came at a really tough time for me.” - Shauna Armitrage

​2. Your passion can be an opportunity to make new friends.

I mentioned during this episode that a lot of times we love our friends for certain aspects. Maybe they're fun or maybe they're hard working or maybe they're outgoing, but if we don't have the same goals and we haven't sat down and really worked everything out you really shouldn’t enter into a partnership. In my business, I get asked often, “Should I start a partnership with my friend because they have more money to contribute than I do right now?” I always advice them to think long-term about that person before making decision.  We always outgrow people at some point, you know? I say that the friends that if we kept all the friends we had in kindergarten, we wouldn't have room to make new friends. 

3. Just because you’re in business doesn’t mean you always have to read business books.

When I asked Shauna what her favorite types of books are, she said she gets asked that A LOT! “I think that people are always expecting some kind of like business book. But the books that I really like to read are more historical fiction. I really like hearing the stories of powerful and inspiring women in history and their lives and what they did. So those are the kinds of things that I like to read when I actually have a few minutes to sit down and read!”

4. Define your own version of success. 

While in Shauna’s shoes, most people would start to look for a 9-5 to fill in the hole that lost dream job created. Shauna catered to her situation which led her to Making Moxie. When asked what her ultimate goal is for her company she said, “The ultimate goal for my company is to make ME successful. And I say that because I feel like I've defined success differently than a lot of people have. [Other coaches and consultants said...] you're not going to be able to scale or you're going to hit that point where you can only take so many one on one client so you're going to be limiting your income. And I kind of sat with that for a little while and I was like, you know what? I'm okay with that because I think we really glorify hitting the six figures or hitting the seven figures or are making all of this money. But to me I don't need to do that. I love the one on one work that I do with my clients. That's very fulfilling to me. It makes me happy and you know, my kids are healthy and happy and we have enough money for vacations and that's what my business is for me, is that it allows me to define success for myself and not trying to follow a model that somebody else says they're successful.”

To hear more from Shauna, find Making Moxie on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook @iammakingmoxie and you can always find her at MakingMoxie.com along with lots of amazing thought leadership from other women who are just doing the damn thing and it's a great place to get  inspired by their stories and their insights on how to grow a business.

Podcaster, business coach, owner of a Facebook group, YouTuber, blogger, mother, traveler, volunteer. Sounds like a lot of titles, right? How does someone manage it all? Do you have to pick just one? In this episode of Small Business Conversations with PKJ, all of those titles belong to our featured guest for today, Samantha Siffring.

Samantha is a business coach and the host of The Badass Mother podcast. She started as a coach after struggling to find her identity after becoming a mother and is now very passionate about helping other moms build businesses from home and balance entrepreneurship with motherhood. She's a mother of three an avid volunteer and a travel lover!

Here’s a quick summary of some of the highlights of this episode and tips you can put to use in your small business today!

​​Monetize your passion

Samantha shared how her love for volunteering led her down the business coach path.It’s very interesting because since she was doing something free of charge, she couldn't see at first that what she was doing for free... people would pay for! She enjoyed volunteering so much that she was taking this free item and not realizing the quality and the gift that she had to now turn it into something that people who want to run a business would pay for.

Repurpose your content

When asked how she manages showing up on so many different platforms. Podcaster, YouTuber, Facebook Lives, the list goes on. She shared her technique with us. “I repurposed a lot of content for different platforms and that's how I'm able to be on so many different ones. So I do a ton of Facebook lives. I interview woman entrepreneurs, mom entrepreneurs Facebook live. I also do trainings on Facebook live, so I just repurpose those, put a beautiful graphic on
and put them onto YouTube to be able to reach a new audience over there.”

Get a new perspective

During our interview, Samantha shared that she was podcast junkie for years and loved that they help her take in a lot of information, especially as an on the go mom. While she always dreamed of having her own podcast, she hated her voice.

“I always hated my voice on recording and that there is no way that I am going to record my voice and then have to edit this and put it together and put it out there. This terrible voice that no one wants to listen to.”

It took comments from a couple of different people about how nice her voice was and soothing and easy on the ears before she took the dive to start her own podcast. It was the different perspective and feedback from other people that helped.

​Automate & Vacay

Travel is something Samantha’s family enjoys and does often. They especially love road trips which makes you wonder, how do you manage travel and business? Her solution? Automate!

By pre-scheduling content to post where it should, she frees up her time to enjoy vacations with the family. “I can set things up to be automated while I'm gone. So I'm still really active on social media or on my podcast even if I don't have Internet access. All of those things are still running without me by planning ahead and scheduling a little bit.”

Invest In Help

When you start a business, you're trying to do everything. I put emphasis on this next point for all of my clients who are just starting their entrepreneurial journey. You cannot be the person trying to own a restaurant, while doing accounting, while doing your marketing, while doing operations while you're doing human resources. You will ultimately burnout and fail. Spend a little money. Get that accountant that can do it five times as fast as you'll ever be able to do it. The more you outsource tasks you're not really passionate about, the better you can do at what you truly enjoy and succeed.

If you’d like to connect with Samantha, you can visit her website tbhcoach.com or her Facebook
group: Online Business Building Mamas.