Helping women step into the unknown: Tara Wilson

Tara Wilson’s latest venture, Fierce Lab, aims to give women insight and information in a variety of business and life areas. Owned by her agency, Fierce Lab offers networking, conferences and an app.

The 1997 graduate was named Harbert College’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018. In this podcast, she outlines the thinking behind Fierce Lab and discusses how hard work and innovation have shaped her career.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess.

Currie Dyess:

Today's guest is Miss Tara Wilson. Tara founded the Tara Wilson Agency as an experiential marketing agency to create emotional connections between their clients' brands and consumers. For almost a decade, she has helped business giants like Samsung, Nike, and ESPN redefine brand engagement.

Sarah Gascon:

She recently launched the Fierce Lab app as an addition to her Fierce Lab event series, both of which aim to provide women with inspiration, tools, and community needed to reach their full potential.

Currie Dyess:

Tara, War Eagle, and welcome to the show.

Tara Wilson:

War Eagle. Thanks for inviting me to join you.

Currie Dyess:

No, it's our pleasure. Why don't we just jump right in? What is experiential marketing?

Tara Wilson:

So experiential marketing is when a corporation is looking to get their product or service in the hands of their consumer in an immersive way. I often describe it as if you've ever been to a music festival or a sporting event. And I'll say, this is kind of more the lowest common denominator, but let's say that you see someone on the concourse, the football game, and they're like, "Hey, come over and spin the and register for a credit card with X, Y, Z credit card company."

              That, like at the lowest common denominator, is experiential marketing. They're trying to treat you to an experience, to then have a conversation with you so that you can touch and feel their product and interact with them as a brand. Experiential marketing has kind of become all the rage pre-COVID because brands were recognizing that consumers wanted that interaction and that face-to-face dialogue and engagement with a brand. It's no longer a one-sided conversation. And it's very much about how the two can merge and talk.

              Now that was all pre-2020. And then since 2020 has happened, the experiential marketing world has really shifted. We've had to go from having in-person experiences to figuring out how to engage with consumers in a virtual environment. But in general, experiential is about getting that product or service in front of that consumer in that engaging, authentic, hands-on type of approach.

Sarah Gascon:

How did you all pivot from the pre-COVID or the pre-2020 experience to now?

Tara Wilson:

Yeah, that's a great question. So it happened overnight. I mean, I believe it was either a Wednesday or a Thursday in March when the NBA said we're shutting down and then it was like a domino effect. I'm sure many people remember it. But in the experiential world, we went from having multiple activations booked and ready to go. I mean, we were coming up on South by Southwest. There were a lot of spring events about to happen, and overnight they all shuttered, stopped, halted.

              And so in those early days, we didn't know what was happening. If you recall it was, "This is going to be a two-week period. Everybody's going to stay home and we're just going to kind of wait it out." And then it led to, "Well, we're going to hang on a few more weeks." And before you knew it, you were in the middle of June and you were still not doing anything in person.

              What happened for my agency, in particular, was we immediately took what we could and shifted it to a virtual environment. And then there was just a lot more let's just wait and see, because it was so abrupt and the unknown was vast. Many of our clients really just reined in their spending and marketing, especially experiential marketing was a really easy place to pull the reins in. So there was that initial wait and see, let's hold on.

              But there were some clients that really couldn't wait and see. We do a lot of work with Samsung, and specifically in their training and development world where we're training their field sales team on how to go out and sell their new products. And so we really had to figure out how to pivot and do all of that virtually instead of doing it in person with 750 to 1,250 people.

Sarah Gascon:

What does the future look like for you now? It seems like it's still pretty difficult to project what's going to occur.

Tara Wilson:

Yeah, it is. And that's what makes being an entrepreneur, and especially in experiential marketing, have its challenges. So for us, we are seeing a lot shorter lead times for things. Our clients are making decisions much closer to the deadline because it is very much a wait and see what's going to happen. I mean the vaccine came out, so people were very optimistic. Corporations were sort of dipping a toe back into in-person experiences. Then this summer we were hit by the Delta variant. So everybody kind of pulled back, ranged back in said, "Nope, we're still going to stick with virtual." And then in the fall, we sort of felt like we were coming through it. And now we have the new variant that's come out that was just announced over Thanksgiving weekend. And so we're kind of back to let's pause and dip our toe into the water.

              So the timelines are compressed. And I would say the biggest thing we've seen is that in-person is no longer the foregone conclusion. So we really are leveraging this hybrid model, some in-person and a lot of virtual attendees combined.

Currie Dyess:

So what inspired you to be an entrepreneur and what has been the key to your success?

Tara Wilson:

That's a great question. I've always been entrepreneurial, even as a child. I taught dance lessons in the basement of my home to make extra money to be able to go to Europe one year between Christmas and New Year for a school activity. So it's always just kind of been in my blood. I'm constantly looking for that new, next opportunity, and I'm very personally motivated by not being mediocre. So I'm constantly trying to figure out like what's going to make me better as an entrepreneur. And by trying not to be mediocre, I tend to push the boundaries, and I tend to take more risks, I'm not saying that other entrepreneurs would, but maybe people who aren't entrepreneurial are not taking as many risks. And I think I'm motivated by that just desire to be better than I was the day before.

              So is that the secret to my success? I don't know. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an entrepreneur who is not moving the finish line. And so to say that I recognize my successes right in this moment, that wouldn't be a very accurate statement because I keep moving the finish line of what success is and what is that point at which I've achieved it.

Sarah Gascon:

So you just recently launched the new app. Why don't you let our listeners know a little bit more about it?

Tara Wilson:

We just launched the app called Fierce Lab. But let me take a step back and tell you a bit about what Fierce Lab is. So as an experiential marketing agency, we focus specifically on marketing to women. At the end of 2018, our team was evaluating what we were going to do in the coming year, in 2019. And kind of born out of our strategy session was this desire to create our own event experiences for women specifically around four key pillars, that being career development, mental health, self care, financial intelligence, and risk taking, like I was just discussing.

              We had seen through our research and our work with our clients, that women were really hungry for content around those four areas, and we weren't finding a place that it existed. So we said, "If it doesn't exist, let's create it." So we launched in 2019 this concept of Fierce Lab, and we launched it as a live in-person experience. Then in the fall of '19, we launched our podcast. And then by 2020, like we've just discussed, the pandemic hit. And so we really had to reevaluate how do we provide our tools and our resources and our community to women. And we have spent 2020 focused on creating an app that allows women to connect and gather, and connect to the resources that we create.

              And so we just launched that here in December of 2020. It's an on-demand app that any woman, or man actually, can access. We've created a tremendous amount of content around the four pillars, everything from articles to interactive checklists, interactive guides. We have video content, audio content. However, a person likes to we're creating that content for them so that she can level up and own her fears.

Sarah Gascon:

Yeah, it seems like there's a big push for minorities, women, special groups that don't necessarily have some of the resources that other groups have. So I think this is an important path you're creating, opportunities for a lot of women that don't necessarily know that they could do some of the things that they could do, or do things that you've done that have helped you become successful.

Tara Wilson:

You know, when I think about and visualized what I wanted Fierce Lab to be, and what I heard from other women and what they wanted Fierce Lab to become for them, there was this sort of rallying cry around the concept that sometimes it can feel like everybody else has it figured out, and you as the woman are the only one that doesn't.

               And the truth is that no one has it all figured out. The truth is we're all just winging it. Some are just better at it than others, or better at masking the chaos that goes on behind the scenes as we're trying to figure out where we're headed in life. And specifically, we found that there were a lot of resources for women who were looking to leave their job, or start a side hustle, or become an influencer or blogger.

              But we were finding that the women who were looking to develop and grow their careers, but not weren't necessarily seeing themselves in the C-suite either, they were sort of being left behind. There was no one that was speaking to her and teaching her about financial intelligence and financial literacy, and how to take risks. Because you can take risks and not ever become an entrepreneur. And so we really kind of hone in on creating that content for women that may not normally have avenues to pursue it.

Currie Dyess:

We were curious. Whenever we were reading about Fierce Lab, we were reading about the Tara Wilson agency. Those both seem like pretty full-time gigs. How do you balance that?

Tara Wilson:

Well, that's a great question. Thankfully Fierce Lab is owned by the agency, so our team does focus on it collectively. Additionally, as I said a little bit earlier, things have certainly changed and shifted in the experiential world. So perhaps this focus that we've given to Fierce Lab, and specifically to the app has come out of the fact that we've sort of pivoted to a degree. We've got a little more time on our hands, as our clients aren't activating in person, to be able to focus on what was initially a passion project and has really developed into a full-blown client agency, if you will. We treat Fierce Lab as a client and we carve out time and resources for it, just like we would do for Samsung or Nike or any of our other clients that we work with.

Sarah Gascon:

What have been some of the biggest challenges with the Fierce Lab or your agency? What have been the biggest challenges recently?

Tara Wilson:

Yeah, so I think as an entrepreneur challenges come like probably in four areas. Some of us feel those challenges across all four, and some of us have several of those shored up and don't. But I kind of break it down into, there are challenges between strategy, people, marketing, and finance.

              Those are kind of the four key areas that as an entrepreneur I focus on. You have to work on shoring all four of those up. What I've discovered over time is that it's not an even playing field. You'll go through periods where you've got the people side really shored up, but perhaps you're not as clear on your strategy piece. Or maybe you've got really great strategy, but your financial piece isn't as firm as you would like for it to be.

              So certainly during COVID, I would say a challenge for us was the fact that 60% of our business fell off overnight. So you have the financial challenge that comes with sort of regrouping and rebuilding. But the positive to that is we've had an opportunity to really focus in on our strategy, hone in and be super clear on who we are, what we do and how we do it, and who we do it for. So the challenges ebb and flow, and that's where we are now.

Currie Dyess:

You interact with some really powerful, really impressive people, obviously successful in their own right, on marketing with these brands. We get a lot of questions about networking and how do you meet these people? So what is your advice for somebody who's just getting started to maybe place themselves in the presence of someone who's already successful, someone like yourself, and learn from them whenever you don't have much to offer?

Tara Wilson:

Yeah. No, that's a really great question. As you guys know, I come to Auburn a lot and speak to a lot of the students at the college of business. And I always share that LinkedIn is my favorite resource for networking and connecting in. I call it the art of the drip. I learned a long time ago how important it is to stay in front of people that you admire, that you want their advice and guidance. So for me, I utilize LinkedIn to build connections, to connect with people. And one of the ways that I'll do it initially, especially if it's somebody that I can't get an introduction to and I don't want to just cold request to link in with, is I'll start following them. I'm seeing what they're talking about. I'm trying to engage with them. I'm looking to contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way.

              It annoys me to no end when someone sends me a cold LinkedIn request and it's like, "Hey Tara, I thought we could link in and help one another, add some value by sharing what we know." I mean, it's like such a vague request. And I'm like, "You don't know anything about me and you don't know anything about what value you could add to me. And you certainly haven't given me any perspective on what that value is."

              So I much prefer to follow people and engage in their conversations, and sometimes I have to follow people a really long time before I find anything meaningful that I can contribute. And other people it's within a few short weeks that I'm like, "Oh, hey, I saw this article," or "Do you know this person?" And I might connect them.

              So that's tip number one, is to spend meaningful and valuable time on LinkedIn and trying to be a resource for people. Stop thinking about what you can get from them and start thinking about what you give to them. I think that's really important.

              I also mentioned the art of the drip. So back in the day, when people used to mail actual things from the post office, right, or read a newspaper, people would, I especially, would clip articles from magazines and newspapers. And then if it was somebody that I was trying to engage with, I would mail it to them. To be honest, I still do some of that. But I just do it in an electronic way. So I read the Wall Street Journal every morning and I'm constantly scanning it for what I need to know. But I'm also, maybe even subconsciously in the back of my mind, thinking about who do I know that these articles could be valuable for that I could share them with? And then try and stay in front of them in that regard.

              Another tip that I would give about dripping on people is if you finally do make a connection with someone that you admire, and you're asking for their advice and guidance, first and foremost, go overly prepared to that meeting. Know what you want to get out of the meeting. So come at it with like maybe three to five key questions that you want to ask, and make sure that those questions are questions that you can't just Google and read.

              I'll never forget the designer Tom Ford was giving an interview and he cut the interview short because the interviewer, the journalist, basically was repeating questions that he had already answered and stated publicly. It was so impactful to me. His point was, do your research, do your homework.

              So when you're meeting with someone that you want to know, I would definitely say, make sure they haven't answered these questions somewhere else publicly that you can get to, and let them know this is my intent for the meeting, and this is what I want out of it. And be mindful of their time. And then finally, after they've given you that information and you've left that meeting, and maybe you've asked for advice and guidance, follow up and let them know what you did with the conversation that you had.

              Don't pester them. Don't send them this litany of an email, but just let them know your advice was valuable. Here's how I took it. Here's how I implemented it. And this was the result. And then six months later update them again. And six more months, update them again. And if it's appropriate, do it in a shorter amount of time. But that is the art of the drip, because when people help you and when people connect with you, they want to know that you listened. And especially if you're asking for their advice, they want to know that you took it. And if you didn't take it, they want to know what you did instead of it. So that's my tip there. Clearly I'm passionate about networking.

Sarah Gascon:

No, that's really helpful.

Currie Dyess:

Exceptional, yeah.

Sarah Gascon:

Yeah. It's really helpful for our students. I know that undergraduate students, sometimes they have a difficult time writing an email to a professor asking for assistance or help, and they don't really necessarily know how to navigate those waters. I think you could probably apply the same principles and rules that you just explained here to school. So that's very helpful. And we appreciate that.

Tara Wilson:

Being short and concise. I realize I gave a long-winded answer there, so ironic that I would share that. But in an email, being short and concise. You know, people's eyes glaze over if it's much more than five sentences. I'm really big on using bullet points, especially if it's a cold outreach, or I'm asking for something specific. I want it to be clear and concise when they open it, what it is that I need, and what's the next step.

              One of my tricks of the trade, maybe it's Sales 101, is if I'm asking someone for a meeting, I always give them two to three meeting time options. I don't just say, "Can we get together and meet?" I say, "Can we get together? Here are a few dates that work for me. How does this work for your schedule?"

Sarah Gascon:

Let's bring it back a little bit to what you've discussed about yourself. You talk about how you move your goal posts or the finish line. Do you have certain expectations of yourself and they evolve and change over time? Not all the time are your expectations the same as your team. So my question is, are they actually different? And if they are different, how are they different? And what are your expectations of yourself on a personal level and a professional level? And what are those of your team?

Tara Wilson:

Well, first of all, I don't see a difference between my personal and my professional. I think for me that's part of being an entrepreneur. Yes, I have a personal life, but I tend to find that those two blend together, high achiever personally, try and be a high achiever professionally as well.

              My job as a leader is to set the vision for my team. And if I'm not doing a good job of articulating what the vision is, then my team can be adrift. And so it's always very valuable to me when I see this misalignment, it's clear to me that I haven't done a very good job of anchoring the vision. And I'm a big fan of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. He's written a book of called Masters of Scale in partnership with June Cohen who produces his podcast.

              He talks about that you have to beat the drum. I can't recall the entrepreneur that he's referring to, but the conversation is about that as entrepreneurs we sometimes might feel as if we're repeating ourselves over and over and over, and like surely this is getting old. But the truth is when you set your mission and you set your vision, you have to share it, and it has to be almost at the cadence of a drum beat. Because people are not listening all the time to us as much as we'd like to think. That was really a helpful analogy that I read from his book, was when you're sharing your mission to think of it like a steady drum beat.

Currie Dyess:

One of the things that you mentioned earlier was how you push yourself personally. You like to improve the quality of your own life and make today better than yesterday, right? How do you improve the quality of life of your customers?

Tara Wilson:

That's a great question. So I would put that to through the lens of Fierce Lab. I know that the way we're improving women's lives is we are giving them access to other women's stories in a way that they can link into, in a way that they can see themselves in it, and visualize themselves having the achievements and the accomplishments of the women that they're reading about and learning from.

              I know that that makes women's lives better because it shows that, like I talked about, we're not alone. If you can see it, you can be it. And some of the stories, a lot of the stories we're telling, it's not these big grand achievements. It's the everyday stuff. How a woman navigated a challenging conversation in the work environment. How she called on herself to take on what she perceived to be a risk in having a challenging conversation.

              Or what's so touching is when I hear women talk about, because we talk so much about financial intelligence and owning your money and being informed and educated, we'll have women reach out to us and say, "Because of you and the work that you all are doing through Fierce Lab, I opened up my first investment account." Or, "I went to my boss and asked about setting up a retirement plan and contributing to it for me." Or, "I had that challenging conversation at home with my spouse about my finances."

              That is rewarding. And so in that way, I do think that Fierce Lab is definitely making women's lives better.

Sarah Gascon:

Yeah. It seems like you're opening up a lot of doors that they didn't know they could either knock on and go through, or even know existed. AS you're talking and as we've listened to your podcast, I think a lot of one of my favorite entrepreneurs is Sara Blakely for Spanx. She just seems like she does a lot. She's a mom. She works full time. I mean, she just sold her company. Right? All these amazing things. So she's somebody that I aspire to be like. So for you, what about you? Who inspires you?

Tara Wilson:

Well, I have a lot of favorite female entrepreneurs that I look up to. I actually keep a bulletin board in my closet. It's cut-out photographs of a multitude of powerful women entrepreneurs. Sara Blakely is on that bulletin board. Amber Venz Box, who is founder of what's formerly rewardStyle and now called LTK, is certainly someone that I look up to. She's a Dallas-based entrepreneur.

              But I think for me personally, one of my favorites is Sarah Kauss. Sarah Kauss is the founder of S'well Bottle, and she was a speaker, she was actually our keynote speaker at Fierce Lab Live this fall. I admire Sarah for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, she's bootstrapped her business the whole way. And while she doesn't discuss publicly her financial numbers, if you do a Google search, you'll see that S'well is probably $150 million revenue business, plus. And she still owns that 100%.

              Additionally, Sarah is humble and kind and generous with her time. She's constantly looking to help other entrepreneurs level up and elevate what they're doing. And so really, I look to her. I also like the fact that she's not trying to be a social media influencer with the work that she does. She lets the work of S'well speak for herself. And to me that's very appealing.

Sarah Gascon:

I don't know if we listened to that interview yet with her. You published it online, right?

Tara Wilson:

Yes. So if you want to hear my one-on-one conversation, our fireside chat, you can get that in the Fierce Lab app. It's part of our premium content, as is all of our live content from Fierce Lab Live in October. But yes, there's a one hour one-on-one chat with Sarah and then she takes audience questions. It's really powerful and moving because she's so candid in sharing her experience and her vision for where she's taking the brand. And then really answering women's questions about how they can do it too.

Sarah Gascon:

Yeah. That's powerful.

Currie Dyess:

What did you do to be named the Auburn University Entrepreneur of the Year?

Tara Wilson:

I'm not sure I know.

Sarah Gascon:

That's a lie, Tara.

Tara Wilson:

Well, listen, if I've learned anything in life it's if you don't raise your hand and put yourself out there, you don't get anywhere. And so my publicist at the time suggested that we consider a nomination, and we did, and kind of the rest is history. I mean, my mentors wrote letters and talked about the work that they do with me. Some clients wrote letters and that sort of thing.

              It was a complete surprise that I was honored. But I think the lesson from it has nothing to do with so much being on that list as more about putting yourself in positions to have new opportunities, taking risks. One thing we talk about at Fierce Lab a lot is that as women sometimes we wait for people to tap us on the shoulder and say, "It's your time now. This is for you."

              And the truth is life doesn't work like that. And especially when it comes to our careers and money, people aren't just coming up to you and saying, "Okay, it's your time." You have to put yourself out there and you have to go for it.

              So don't wait for someone to of tap you on the shoulder and say that they recognize all that you've done. We did a podcast with a woman named Lauren Hasson. Lauren has written a book called DevelopHer. It's a playbook for women in tech. But I will tell you it's worth the read even if you're not in the tech industry. One of the things that Lauren talks about is not waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder. She keeps something she calls an Atta Girl journal. She writes down all of her accolades all year long, and at the end of the year, she reviews it.

              But then what's really valuable is she uses that list to then talk with her manager and other leaders within her organization about her accomplishments. She no longer waits for someone to recognize the achievements that she's had. She makes sure that she puts it in front of them at any opportunity that is presented. And she's able to remember what they are because she keeps an ongoing running list. So if you take nothing else away, create an Atta Girl journal for yourself.

Sarah Gascon:

I love that. I love the title of it. I think it's valuable for everybody. Because even if it's not for a promotion, just reflecting on the year and all the amazing things that you've done, and as you stated throughout this interview, there's a lot of highs and a lot of lows, right? Sometimes you have a year full of a lot of lows. So reflecting on some of the positive things is really important to continue to move forward.

Tara Wilson:

Yeah. You know, I have a buddy that once told me really early in my career, in my early twenties, he said, "You know, you have to think like a baseball player. If you strike out in the first inning and you can't be thinking about it when you go back out in the second inning. You've got to have a short-term memory."

              And it's really true. Life is going to knock you down. Things are going to be hard. You have to, of course, pick yourself up, but then you can't focus on what didn't go right. You have to put your blinders on and focus on where you're headed going forward, and forget about what didn't. Don't not learn from it. You want to learn from that. But you have to just have a focus on going forward. And I think that's something, candidly I think it's something I do well. I'm constantly just focused on the future and eventually I'll get there.

Currie Dyess:

So, Tara, what is the future of the Tara Wilson Agency? The future of marketing? What's the future of Fierce Lab?

Tara Wilson:

The future of Fierce Lab is to continue to develop content for women and to start to share even more women's stories. We want to do an even better job of connecting the women in our community to one another, and really giving them the opportunity to share their stories, and create their own resources that they think would be valuable to others. And so right now, while our entire content team takes the podcast that we create, I say it's the tip of the spear, and from there are all other content cascades off of it.

              We will start to get to a point where we have multiple spears. And so it might be a podcast. And then additionally, it'll be other women's stories that are told by one another so that additional content cascades off of that. It's not just us creating, but it's our entire community creating for one another so that each woman can find what she needs to level up and own her fears.

              As far as the Tara Wilson Agency, we continue to thrive in the spaces of working with women. Health and wellness and beauty and sport and technology, tend to be kind of our core areas. We just learn to roll with the punches that is the pandemic that we're in, and create the best possible work that we can for our clients so that they can achieve the goals that they set out. And we're always grateful to be a part of the work that they are doing.

Sarah Gascon:

How can our listeners stay up to date with you and your journey and the journey of your team?

Tara Wilson:

Great question. Yeah. My preferred method is LinkedIn. So I'm Tara Wilson. My maiden name was Meadors. So I'm Tara Wilson on LinkedIn and I prefer to connect there. You can also follow Fierce Lab on LinkedIn. And additionally to find out more about Fierce Lab, it's fierce-lab.com. And those are the areas where you can find me.

Currie Dyess:

Thank you so much.

Sarah Gascon:

 Tara, we really appreciate your time.

Tara Wilson:

War Eagle.

Speaker 1:

Harbert, inspiring business.