Rise from the Ashes: Tara Stubbins' Journey from Collapse to Multimillionaire

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is one who has led a comeback story that shows that success is not just about talent, but it's about having the right systems in place. Her name is Tara Stubbins, and after having a business that was taken in $750,000 a month and watching it collected to only $25,000 a month and facing foreclosure and uncertainty, Tara was able to rebuild, and now she's leading two multimillion dollar companies. And she has been a decade behind the scenes supporting the biggest people in the entertainment and business, such as Drake, Lady Gaga, Xander Burley, Richard Branson, Meg Jagger, and Elon Musk. I wonder who that is. Tara now uses her skills to help athletes, creators, and entrepreneurs to be able to build businesses and scale without burnout. So we're going to be talking to Tara about everything that she's up to and her experiences and you know her story and what she's gonna be up to. Tara. It's actually Tara. I've been calling her Tara. I'm just so used to that. Sorry about that. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Sure. So you kind of summed it up in that uh amazing intro, but I'm Tara and I'm the founder of two companies. One is Take It Easy Group, which is a fractional chief of staff business where we support high net worth and high-profile creators and athletes who have a business idea and they just need help getting it out of their head and out into the world. I also want run Wildcard, which is a talent incubator and management company, also for creatives and musicians who are trying to get ahead in their creative endeavors, and they just need a little extra help and help and business skills to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Well, I know you went from 750,000 and recurring income per month to 25,000 and you were facing uncertainty and foreclosure. When did when did you reach the point of where you decided you had to stop trying to save the old version of your business and start to rebuild?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, um, so to answer that question, let me take you back a little bit. So my kind of journey into entrepreneurship was never quite linear. I don't know if really anyone's journey into entrepreneurship is linear, but I fell into it uh by accident. And so early on in my career, I like to say I chased rock stars around the world. So I was a personal assistant out on the road for many big names, such as The Rolling Stones in McJugger, Lady Gaga, and uh Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nickelback, a whole bunch of others. And out on the road, I did that for about 10 years. And I had this kind of big aha moment where I just thought, you know, there's gotta be more to life than chasing one rock star around the world. And I just wanted to be able to help more than one crazy rock star at a time. And so I decided to come off the road and, you know, in air quotes, open up my own business. And I say air quotes because I didn't know I was opening up a business. I just had that crazy dream that I wanted to help more than one crazy rock star. And I fell into running the homes of high-profile, high-net worth individuals in Toronto, where I'm from and where I lived at the time. Uh, just because that was kind of my network that I had already created around me being out on the road. And I didn't know what I was doing. I had zero business background at all. I this was in 2007, where there was very little resources out there for entrepreneurs. Uh, like now, you know, we have tons of podcasts and um co-working spaces and you know, a lot of incubators, and there's just a lot more resources than there was back then and almost 20 years ago. And so I kind of had no idea what I was doing, but built this business by accident. And as I was building it, I realized that there was other people out there like me who didn't really know what they were doing and kind of was craving the resources. And when the first co-working space opened up in Toronto, I was probably the second person to join. I was so excited to be around other people like me. I had kind of finally found my tribe of people, if you will. And I could see that they were having these same kind of problems uh that I was having, where they didn't know the right questions to ask for business. They didn't know who to turn to, they didn't know really strategies. And a lot of us were having trouble getting over what I like to say that kind of hump of success. And so I thought, well, if I'm gonna learn this, I'm gonna learn this with everyone else, and I'm going to just dive in and help my friends at the time. And, you know, so I offered my services for free so I could learn as well, and ended up growing the second business, which was a fractional executive assistant business where I supported founders of startups and small businesses who needed that strategic support and were, I like to say, accidental CEOs like me. And that business scaled quite quickly to the point where you mentioned uh we were making about 750K MRR. Uh, it scaled to that point within about three to four years, so massive growth. And the biggest problem was I still didn't really know what I was doing. And I was taking the lessons that I thought I had learned from the very successful people that I was supporting, uh, the very kind of famous and successful people, and putting it towards my own business. So that was, I could see that they would set a goal, a number, and then they would go after that goal. And I was like, okay, sure, I'll do that. I'll set a goal, a number, and go after that. So I would say to my team, hey, let's get 50 new clients this quarter. That sounds like fun. And we would go out and we would do it. And the problem was is that we had zero foundation to hold those 50 new clients. Our hiring plan was can you start tomorrow and pass a background check? The people we were bringing in didn't necessarily fit who we could actually service. They were just kind of a number that we could check the box to try and get to the 50 people. And instead of the business being even built on a shaky foundation, it was built on no foundation at all. And so that started to crumble very quickly until it basically blew up and within a matter of about three months. And we fell to uh, as you mentioned, about 20, 25 K MRR. And I had actually taken out to try and sustain the business and the rapid growth a ton of personal guaranteed loans, which were associated with my house. And that was why I was looking at foreclosure and personal bankruptcy, because I made all these horrible business decisions. Um, in my defense, I didn't know what I was doing, but that is no excuse really to you know making these horrible business decisions. So when that happened, I didn't just kind of to get back to your question, I didn't just turn around and say, okay, I'm gonna kind of start a new business. I um blamed everybody around me at first but myself when that business failed. Uh, you know, of course it wasn't my fault. I blamed my co-worker who or my co-founder who was also a friend of mine who that friendship blew up. Um, you know, of course it was her fault. I blamed the clients uh that, you know, had a horrible time, but they were just being picky. I blamed the staff that we had hired. I just blamed everyone. And so when I first the business first, as I said, kind of blew up. I thought, well, I'm just gonna go prove myself and I'm just gonna create, since it's everyone else's fault, I'm just gonna recreate this exact same business, but do it better this time without them. And so I that's what I attempted. I attempted to start the exact same business. Well, that wasn't going to happen because the you know, market had changed, uh, had a horrible reputation out there. So that wasn't helping, um, had no money to try and get off the ground. And again, still wasn't understanding that I had to build a foundation first. So that really didn't work. And uh for any listeners out there who have been through really hard times, you probably know that, you know, there's some days where you just can't even get out of bed, that the kind of pressure of life and what are you going to do, it's really hard to kind of uh figure out what to do and even get out of bed and brush your teeth or do kind of the basic human things that you need to do throughout the day. And so I was doing that, uh, but I had zero idea what I was actually doing. There was no direction. And then I decided for some reason, and I wish I knew why, that okay, well, I'm going to have to have a different audience. I probably decided it because I knew that the audience I was going after wasn't a good fit. And probably the reason why the business, one of the big reasons why the business blew up in the first place. So I decided, hey, I'm gonna go after this different audience. And what audience do I know best? It is high-profile, high net worth individuals because that was my background and that is what I've been used to working with for a very long time, despite the kind of few years that I kind of took a hiatus and went and worked with founders. And so I set out in the world, hey, I'm gonna do this, but I was really scared to make that pivot. And so I had kind of one foot into the let's work with high-profile, high net worth individuals. And I had the other foot in, let's just maybe work with founders as well. And, you know, just kind of let's see where the money is coming from. And by doing that, I was confusing the audience, I was confusing myself. No one actually knew what I was selling, I had no idea what I was selling. Uh, and so as you can probably understand, the business, that part of the business didn't go very well. And until I got kind of real with myself and figured out, hey, I need to kind of jump to what I'm going to do with two feet fully into it or pick another direction. There was some times and some days that I thought, hey, I maybe should just go work for a corporation. Maybe that would be me, except I feel like I'm very unhirable as a since I've been an entrepreneur for so long. Um, but I just kind of thought, I gotta do this, or like that's kind of the end of my business career. So I did it. I jumped fully into uh saying, you know, we work with, as I said at the beginning, uh, you know, high-profile creators and athletes who have a business idea and need help launching it. And as soon as I did that, it's crazy how the doors started opening to the people who actually needed it. So it wasn't just a, hey, I'm just gonna do this decision. There was a lot in it that kind of led to what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Well, what do you feel like um the LA performers such as the people you work with, understand about business that most people miss?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

There's a couple of things. So uh, and these are great uh takeaways that I've been able to reflect on uh while building, while rebuilding my businesses. And so that would be well, at first I thought that it was, you know, they they set a goal and they go after the goal. And that's true. Uh, they do understand that goals are very important. Um, but I believe that elite performers really understand that the right goals at the right time are important. And that was the nuance that I didn't understand fully when I was building my first company. You can't say, hey, I'm gonna go get 50 clients this quarter without saying, hey, my goal is going to be to figure out what the hiring plan or pipeline or whatever should look like. Or if you're building a product, it can't be I'm gonna sell a million dollars worth of this product when you haven't even figured out what the label is going to look like on the product. And that's kind of what what I learned the very hard way. Um, the other thing is is that I've noticed is that they have a very intense uh system for visualizing their goals and thinking that, or not even really thinking, just that that's going to be their goal and they're going to get it no matter what. It's almost this crazy idea that no one else is going to achieve it. They're the only ones on earth that can achieve it, and nothing's going to stop them. So why are they even not going to try? And when I kind of looked at that at the very beginning, I thought a lot, probably like a lot of other people, that, you know, oh, you just kind of do a vision board and, you know, look at those pictures of that, you know, really nice house that you finally want to live in, or that beach vacation you want to take, or whatever it is. But there's a lot more to visualizing your goal and really kind of living in that visualization than just sticking some pictures on your computer screensaver or on your bathroom mirror or whatever it is. And then the third thing that I really kind of took away from being surrounded by these really elite performers is that they have this idea that working hard is just a thing that they have to do. Like they don't even question it. You don't hear them talking about work-life balance or about sacrifices that they've had to make for their goals. They just do it and they don't waste time thinking, like, oh, if I can shave off a couple of hours here, then maybe I can do, you know, watch another episode on Netflix or whatever it is. They're just constantly focused on their goal, their vision, and what they want to do, that the conversation of work-life balance or what sacrifices they had to make don't even really come into play.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Well, I know you talk about how systems are the difference between struggle and scale. So, what are the biggest systems that creators and entrepreneurs need to be able to truly grow?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah, I think that really depends on what you are building and growing. Uh, you know, there's a lot of AI tools and productivity apps and, you know, things that can help you build systems. Uh, there's a lot of, you know, ads out there and a lot of podcasts like these that will say, you know, oh, use this system over this system or, you know, whatever it is. But I'm a true believer in everybody is unique. And depending on what you are building and how you process things and what stage of what you're building is in, is kind of the conversation you should be having with yourself of what systems you should have. But everything should have a system. And by systems, I don't mean, you know, an automated system or um, you know, a very complicated workflow. But again, going back to me not building that foundation before I had, before I tried to go after massive business growth, I had no systems in place. As I said, there was no hiring plan, there was no pipeline for who was our ideal client. Um, there was no uh foundation for collecting, you know, the proper invoices or seeing who paid when. It was just kind of a panic at the end of the month if somebody, if we needed more money, always somebody late with payments. So those are kind of high-level examples of systems. Um, but it also goes back to I get asked the question a lot do, you know, people usually read a book on, you know, Elon Musk, who we mentioned, or very famous entrepreneurs or celebrities. And a lot of times they talk about their morning routines or their habits to success. And then people come to me and say, well, you know, this successful person in this book that I read uh wakes up at two o'clock in the morning, they, you know, cold plunge, they, you know, do a round or like an hour of yoga, then they meditate, then they read for an hour, then like all of these things. And I've been trying to do this and I haven't seen, you know, my bottom line grow at all. I'm still in the red or whatever it is. And it's like, well, you can't copy that person's morning routine and think that you are going to be successful. And you can't copy the exact systems that you know, some creator or online coach or whoever it is online is pushing so they can make some money off of it and think that you're going to be successful following those.

unknown 23:19

But

SPEAKER_01 23:20

But I truly believe is one, you need a system and to figure out what works for you, the simpler the better. The you know, there's so many productivity tools, as I said, and and different apps and people telling you all these different things, and you can overcomplicate it. But just understanding that, like a simple system to get you from A to B and understanding that that is building the foundation for whatever unique business you are building is really the key to uh running a and creating a truly successful business.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Well, I know many entrepreneurs like you were just talking about, uh believe you know the key to success is working harder, but you say infrastructure is uh instead of hustle is the is the key to success. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah, again, going back to having that foundation, so understanding that you know I could work 18 hours a day, but I can work 18 hours a day on the wrong things. So again, going back to my business uh failure, I was working 18 hours a day on bringing in those 50 new clients a quarter, but I wasn't working 18 hours a day on building that hiring pipeline, on building the structures that needed to be in place to sustain the 50 new clients a day or a quarter. So the infrastructure is something that a lot of people will skip because it's not, you know, fun. It's kind of boring if you don't have a systems mind. If you are a creator, you want to go out there in the world and create. Um, if you're a founder, you're really excited to bring this idea that you have to life. And, you know, going and thinking, oh, I have to create an SOP for, you know, a new admin hire that I need to hire eventually to be able to take some, you know, tasks off my plate so I can grow. You're not thinking about that. You're just diving in and getting things done. And so being able to step back and think, you know, if you're building a house, you're not going to all of a sudden go and start decorating inside, which is the fun part, before you even pour the foundation or build the outside walls, which to some might be fun, but to a lot of creators isn't the fun part. So yeah, being able to kind of understand, you know, what is the structure that's going to hold up this business? And sure, please go work 18 hours a day if that's what drives you and that's and you're really passionate about it. I'm not here to tell you otherwise, but just make sure that you're working hard on the right goals at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Yeah, I'm really excited about Wildcard, which I'm building, which is my talent incubator and management company. Uh, that started out of uh a couple of clients actually who came through our chief of staff company who had friends that wanted to come and get help, but they weren't at the level that could afford our services yet. And because of my very uh you know extreme lessons that I had learned during my business failure, I knew and I have a very strong opinion on you know the very specific people that are coming into Take It Easy group and who we work with. Before I would work with anybody and everyone, and now it is this very specific niche of people. And these clients that we had helped kept begging me to help their friends. And I knew that through Take It Easy, I just couldn't do it. You know, I've been down that road before, but they had amazing ideas and an amazing story. And so I took it away and I thought about it and I realized that there were a lot of other people, creators out there who people were not giving a chance because they hadn't proven themselves in the marketplace yet, but they still had this amazing story. So to get represented by a management company or a talent agency, you usually have to have a lot of followers already or a lot of money to be able to put down to pay for some services. And these creators didn't have that. And so I created wildcards so we could actually service this group of people that couldn't necessarily fall into take it easy group. And really, it's where my impact uh lies because I get to give back to some people doing some amazing work out in the world. A lot of them are college athletes. Um, a lot of them are, you know, faith-based creators or fitness creators who are really trying to give back to their own communities. And for me to be able to say, hey, I've kind of started this wing that really gives impact back rather than take it easy group, which is really cool and fun, but it's just, you know, a whole bunch of celebrities who, you know, they already have their things figured out. So they don't necessarily have as much impact as really helping what I like to call the untapped talent of the world. So I'm super excited for Wildcard. It's launched, uh, but we're growing it and kind of figuring out the details of how we can really get this uh group of untapped talent roster out into the world doing even more amazing things.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to, throw out your contact info.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Sure. So I can be found uh mostly I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, uh Tara Stubbins, uh Tara with two R's. Um hopefully you can put those in the show notes. You can also find me on Instagram, Tara.wildcard, and wildcard is spelt without the vowels. So W L D C R D. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn is a good place to find me and also take itasygroup.com.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

All right. Well, close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Sure. I think what's really important, and I kind of touched on it a little bit, is to really be your own unique person. I think there's a lot of times out in the world where social media will, you know, tell us that being a business owner, founder, entrepreneur is kind of easy or glamorous, and we kind of chase that dream. Uh, it's not, uh, it's a lot of hard work. Or we see a lot of founders on social media who are in podcasts who are living uh a very kind of quote unquote work-life balance, again, glamorous life. And I find that pretty kind of fake news. Um, so just you know, make sure that what the dream that you're chasing is the dream that you want to chase. Um, and that will really help you get through those really tough times as an entrepreneur and a founder. And also don't be scared to pivot. I was really scared to pivot because I had put all of my identity into my first business. And I was actually talking to an Olympic athlete the other day who pivoted his sport of choice twice. He's on his third sport because he thought that that was the one that was going to win him the Olympic gold. And he said, pivoting wasn't even a thing that I thought twice about. I just knew that as a tennis player, I wasn't gonna win gold. I tried it. So I'm gonna pivot to track and field. Well, I wasn't gonna win there, so I'm gonna pivot to bobsledding, like a massive pivot. But that kind of Olympic athlete mindset, they're not scared of the pivot. And successful entrepreneurs aren't scared of the pivot either. So if you're going through some really hard times, think, you know, do I keep pushing through this or do I pivot to uh something else that can get me to my goal faster and more successfully?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

All right, take it easygroup.com. Please check out everything that Tyra's up to and check her out on LinkedIn and Instagram and follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible because Tyra has some good knowledge about starting over and rebuilding the right way. And also, if you haven't done so, please visit www.curveball337.com and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Tara, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.