"With careful planning, efficient systems and processes, and some outsourcing, you can have a successful and profitable business working minimal hours."
Tanya Goodall Smith is a highly sought-after branding expert and founder of WorkStory Creative. She’s worked with 100’s of International Personal, Fashion, and Tech brands, including GUESS, HP, Wolfgang Puck, Project Runway, and The Life Coach School, to develop and improve their brand assets. She served on the board of the National Association of Women Business Owners and was a finalist in the Maria Sharapova Women’s Entrepreneur program. She has a degree in Visual Communications from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and her expertise has been featured in dozens of leading industry publications around the globe.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us today. Please introduce yourself to our readers. They want to know you, some of the background story to bring some context to your interview.
Tanya Goodall Smith: Hi! I’m the owner of a branding and visual communications agency located in the Pacific Northwest. Over the last 20 years, I’ve worked with 100’s of internationally renowned entertainment, fashion, and tech brands, including GUESS, HP, Project Runway, and The Life Coach School, to develop and improve their brand assets. My current clients are personal brands and service providers who are ready to take their brand image to a professional level. I help them develop an authentic visual identity across all mediums with the Brand Attraction Method.
I was a pioneering developer of personal branding photography and teach dozens of photographers around the world in a Business of Branding Photography course at workstoryeducation.com. I’m also a mentor for the global photography education site SLR Lounge and have had 100’s of articles published in their magazine with millions of viewers.
You are a successful entrepreneur, so we’d like your view point, do you believe entrepreneurs are born or made? Explain.
Tanya Goodall Smith: I believe anyone can be an entrepreneur. Some people may have a personality type and drive that make them more suited to it, but launching a business is something anyone can do, especially in the times we live in. There are so many opportunities! I believe the environment a person is raised in could also play a part. My parents had “side hustles” before the term existed and that definitely influenced me.
“If a job doesn’t exist, create it for yourself” is one thing they taught me. I had an interest in being my own boss as a young person, but taking the leap out of employment was not easy and came with some hard and long lessons. I don’t necessarily think I was “born” an entrepreneur. I made it happen.
If you were asked to describe yourself as an entrepreneur in a few words, what would you say?
Tanya Goodall Smith: I’m curious, a big picture thinker, creative, and driven by the desire for time freedom, and flexibility. Some might describe me as being lazy. I call it being efficient.
Tell us about what your company does and how did it change over the years?
Tanya Goodall Smith: My current clients are personal brands and 1 to 3 person service providers who are ready to take their brand image to a professional level. I help them develop an authentic visual identity across all mediums. We create brand strategy, messaging, brand identity, websites, photos, videos, social media templates. Basically, anything needed to make a brand look and sound cohesive and awesome!
My agency evolves every few years. I started out as a freelancer working for international brands. It was exciting and the projects were fun, but I realized I preferred working intimately with one or two owners. I also wanted to work with people more aligned with my values and be able to bless them with my experience and knowledge of effective branding.
At first, I only offered graphic design but soon realized many of these personal brands also needed help creating the assets needed for proper design. That’s when I added copywriting, photography, and video to the mix. I have a small team of creatives that make the magic happen. Storytelling and “showing” are a huge part of what we do. People like to get a preview of the service they are potentially buying, especially when business is happing online and there’s no physical storefront to browse.
Thank you for all that. Now for the main focus of this interview. With close to 11.000 new businesses registered daily in the US, what must an entrepreneur assume when starting a business?
Tanya Goodall Smith: #1. Assume it’s going to cost more time and money than you imagined to start and grow your business. Knowing your cost of doing business is important but it can be difficult to estimate those costs when you’re just starting out. Getting funding is not as easy as some make it sound and you’ll likely have to bootstrap it or get a loan.
#2. Assume you’re going to fail. Say what? According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of U.S. small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of their fifth year, roughly 50% have faltered. After 10 years, only around a third of businesses have survived. I don’t say this to discourage you, just so you know what you’re getting into.
#3. It won’t be easy. There will be setbacks. Sleepless nights. Sacrifices. Criticism and doubt from those closest to you. Is your “why” strong enough to withstand the hard times until you’ve gotten through to the other side?
#4. Your relationships may suffer. Entrepreneur divorce rates are known to be higher than usual. If you aren’t careful to set boundaries around work and prioritize giving time and attention to those you love most, the consequences may be unsalvageable. Many entrepreneurs start their ventures with the intention of being able to spend more time with family and end up destroying theirs in the process. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
#5. To succeed, you must fail. I’ve had many failed business ideas, marketing attempts, offers, product launches. And I learned from every one of them. If you can see your failures as part of the journey and not give up, you’ll be resilient enough to pivot and keep going.
Did you make any wrong assumptions before starting a business that you ended up paying dearly for?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Yes. I had no idea how much it would actually cost to run my business. I also didn’t know much about numbers, taxes, how to charge for profit, I started out charging the same hourly rate I was making as an employee and soon realized my take home from that was going to be minimal to nothing. There are so many hidden costs to running a business!
I also assumed clients would just flock to me and see the value of what I offered. I had no idea I would end up spending the majority of my time marketing and selling. If you don’t have clients/customers, you don’t have a business.
If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what advice would you give yourself and why? Explain
Tanya Goodall Smith: I would find a mentor or coach. I could have accelerated the growth and profitability of my business tenfold if I had made this investment early on. I also wish I had known about free resources like SCORE and the SBA. It wasn’t until I joined a business networking organization years after I started my business that I learned about these resources. Connections with peers are invaluable.
What is the worst advice you received regarding running a business and what lesson would you like others to learn from your experience?
Tanya Goodall Smith: I’ve always been taught not to go into debt. While I prefer to have as little as possible, you can’t start a business without the tools you need to do the job or some investment in marketing and sometimes a loan or line of credit is necessary to get started. I utilized some credit to get started and I’m so glad I did. Just make sure you know the terms and you’re confident you’ll be able to pay it back in time.
In your opinion, how has COVID-19 changed what entrepreneurs should assume before starting a business? What hasn’t changed?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Having some way to do your business (or at least part of it) virtually is huge. I had to pivot some of the ways I do business in order to avoid as much contact as possible. I’ve switched most meetings to video conferencing, which has actually saved me a lot of time and gas (hurray for the environment) and added more services that don’t require my team to show up in person. Of course, great customer service has not changed and we still offer the same outcome for our clients.
Some services still have to be done in person (photography and video) but we do as much of the prep work as we can virtually. Be prepared to adapt!
What is a common myth about entrepreneurship that aspiring entrepreneurs and would-be business owners believe in? What advice would you give them?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Many assume you have to hustle and nearly work yourself to death to succeed. Parents (moms especially) think they don’t have time to launch their own business or that they would somehow take away from their family. This doesn’t have to be the case. With careful planning, efficient systems and processes, and some outsourcing, you can have a successful and profitable business working minimal hours.
What traits, qualities, and assumptions do you believe are most important to have before starting a business?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Resiliency, drive, focus, curiosity, confidence, willingness to learn, ability to make decisions quickly. Some or all of those traits will help you. Don’t assume you have to be an outgoing, larger than life, extrovert to be successful. There’s a business type and model out there for anyone who wants it badly enough, no matter their personality.
How can aspiring leaders prepare themselves for the future challenges of entrepreneurship? Are there any books, websites, or even movies to learn from?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Cultivating productive habits will prepare you for succeeding in any area of your life. I love the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s about making small changes in your habits that can make a huge impact on your behavior and results. Also, managing your thoughts in general and your mindset around money has been totally transformational for me. The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo is fantastic for learning about how your thoughts drive your results and the book ‘Secrets of the Millionaire Mind’ by T. Harv Eker is insightful and motivating for improving your ideas and removing your blocks around money.
You have shared quite a bit of your wisdom and our readers thank you for your generosity but would also love to know: If you could choose any job other than being an entrepreneur, what would it be?
Tanya Goodall Smith: If I didn’t need to actually make money (LOL) I would love to be a film historian. I love movies. I analyze and study them. How fun would it be to do that for a living?
Thank you so much for your time, I believe I speak for all of our readers when I say that this has been incredibly insightful. We do have one more question: If you could add anyone to Mount Rushmore, but not a politician, who would it be; why?
Tanya Goodall Smith: Probably Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Without her, it would be very difficult for me, as a woman, to be a business owner. Women in the united states could not get a loan without the co-signature of a male relative until 1988! So many more freedoms for women have been established since then to help me and all women have financial independence and opportunity. She played a large part in that.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Tanya Goodall Smith for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Tanya Goodall Smith or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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