Mimi MacLean:
Welcome to The Badass CEO Podcast. This is Mimi MacLean. I'm a mom of five, entrepreneur, Columbia Business School grad, CPA and angel investor, and I'm here to share with you my passion for entrepreneurship. Throughout my career, I have met many incredible people who have started businesses, disrupted industries, persevered and turned opportunity into success. In each episode, we will discuss what it takes to become and continue to be a badass CEO, directly from the entrepreneurs who have made it happen. If you're new in your career, dreaming about starting your own business, or already an entrepreneur, The Badass CEO Podcast is for you. I want to give you the drive and tools needed to succeed in following your dreams.

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Mimi MacLean:
Welcome back to The Badass CEO. This is your host, Mimi MacLean. Today we have Tia Graham and she is the founder of Arrive at Happy and a certified Chief Happiness Officer. She has worked with dozens of global companies, such as Goldman Sachs and Hilton Hotels, to elevate their engagement, sales and drive bottom line results. Her next book, Be a Happy Leader, will be published on January 18, 2022. Tia is the host of the Arrive at Happy Leaders Podcast Show, available on Spotify and iTunes. Prior to running Arrive at Happy, she led sales and marketing teams at luxury hotels in the United States and Turkey for brands such as W Hotel, Westin, and The London. Her insights have been featured in national publications like Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, Well+Good, and CNN. As a chief happiness officer, she helps C-suite executives drive productivity and results through utilizing her evidence-based Arrive at Happy business growth program.

Mimi MacLean:
To get your Top 10 Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know, go to thebadassceo.com/tips.

Mimi MacLean:
Okay, Tia, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm super excited to talk to you because I feel like with your company being called Arrive at Happy, we can all use a little happiness right now, especially at the end of the year. We all want to start off 2022 with a lot of happiness. I think that's what our companies need right now. You're the founder of Arrive at Happy, and I've actually never heard of a certified Chief Happiness coach or officer.

Tia Graham:
Officer, yeah.

Mimi MacLean:
Can you tell me about that? Did you create that?

Tia Graham:
No, no. I got certified in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2019 as a Chief Happiness Officer. I decided to go to Scandinavia to do it because the countries come up really high on the World Happiness Report that the United Nations does and the employees and people working in companies in Scandinavian countries are a lot happier than American employees. I wanted to go learn how Danes run their companies really. I went there for a week. There was about 24 of us from 16 different countries all getting certified during this week, learning from CEOs and other experts on how to create really, really happy teams so that the business flourishes. That's what the certification is. You can get it in the United States at Florida International University now.

Mimi MacLean:
That's really cool. Now, I know obviously it's very extensive because you have your company, but was there a main takeaway of what we're doing wrong as Americans?

Tia Graham:
There wasn't one main takeaway, no.

Mimi MacLean:
No, okay.

Tia Graham:
It's multifaceted. I mean, society is so different over there of course. University is free, healthcare is free, so there's a lot less stress on citizens of just how the-

Mimi MacLean:
Making ends meet.

Tia Graham:
High tax. Yeah, everyone has one or two years off for maternity leave, paid. It's very, very different. But in terms of leadership, a lot more autonomy. There's a lot more trust and the organizations are a lot flatter. What I learned is that the C-suite, the executives, when they're looking to make big decisions, it's not like the executive team is all deciding and maybe talk to then the director level. They're actually going to the front lines, the hourly employees, to get information to make decisions. It's less of a this, it's more like we know that all the answers are actually here.

Mimi MacLean:
We make a TV show to do that, right? What was it, Undercover Boss?

Tia Graham:
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Mimi MacLean:
We can't just go and ask our employees, you have to have a TV show to go. Anyway, just an aside, that's what just made me think about that. If you ever watch one of those TV shows, you're like, "Wait, shouldn't they just already be asking all that anyway? Why do we have a TV show about this?"

Tia Graham:
Right, yes. Yes, definitely. Yeah, so I would say autonomy and trust. One other big difference is that there's a lot of constant feedback, both feedback for improvement and positive appreciation, specific positive appreciation, just as a work culture, so that people always are getting accolades and getting motivated by the good stuff and then also learning really quickly, oh, this is what I need to change. That's happening daily, and so it's not like, "Annual review, this is what you need to improve," it's like this ongoing. They also only work, on average, 37 hours a week.

Mimi MacLean:
But as a manager or owner of a company, that's a lot of work to provide a lot of feedback to people, because you're trying to fit in a lot during the day and sometimes just to even slow down to give directions, forget feedback, I would think a lot of entrepreneurs have a problem with that.

Tia Graham:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, it needs to be part of your rhythm, it needs to be intentional, to your point, it needs to be scheduled and ideally delegated so it's not all on a few people's shoulders, but throughout the organization. But yes, yes, it is work, but it's one of the key ways to increase happiness while working, and happiness while working drives sales, productivity, obviously loyalty and retention and customer happiness. Even though it's a lot of work and effort, there's a financial return.

Mimi MacLean:
You decided, you were working in corporate America in the hotel industry, running sales teams at some pretty high profile hotels, what made you decide like, "Okay, I'm going to stop doing the corporate America thing and do my own company."

Tia Graham:
Do my own company, yes. I had the idea for my own company about 12 years ago and the idea was I'm going to start a happiness company and help other people, people working, be happier. I had gotten feedback throughout my life, "How do you stay so happy? Where do you get this positive energy?" and so I realized at a pretty young age I believe I can help other people, but I didn't do anything about it.

Tia Graham:
Fast forward, I am the director of sales and marketing for a beautiful hotel in LA. I have a two-year-old little girl and a three-month-old little girl and I go back to work at this super high pressure, stressful job, managing a big team with a goal of $60 million. All of a sudden, because of that change of life circumstances, I was really struggling with my own happiness. It wasn't the first time that I had been unhappy, but it was definitely the lowest I had felt. I wasn't sure, I sort of thought, "Oh, maybe this my new normal. Maybe I'm not really going to be that happy person anymore," and that was really terrifying. I had this reflection point of like, "Okay, I've always heard about this happiness company," and that's when I started basically researching happiness and I discovered that there's a science of happiness and went down this whole journey over the last five years.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. I mean, that's pretty intimidating and scary to be like, "Okay, I'm giving up my paycheck, my known commodity-

Tia Graham:
Oh, yes. [inaudible 00:08:52].

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, everything.

Tia Graham:
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Mimi MacLean:
Did you just start doing that on the weekends on the side, or were you like, "Okay, I'm going."

Tia Graham:
No, I built it for probably two and a half years on the side. So yeah, evenings, weekend mornings, sometimes doing stuff at my corporate job, little things here and there as I was basically studying and thinking what are the different ways that I could make revenue, what additional certifications and education do I want and need to grow? I had a phenomenal business coach who I worked with for about seven months to really design what the company could be and think about the transition journey. Actually, for my last year at corporate America, before I left full-time to be an entrepreneur, I negotiated that I would take a pay cut and only work part-time as director of sales and marketing, which I didn't think they would go for, but they did. I only went to the hotel three days a week and that gave me more runway to build my company.

Mimi MacLean:
Oh, that's great. Now, I mean, it's super hard when you have an idea and you try to implement it to get clients. How did you do that? What was your first steps to being like, "I'm going to get my first client," and then is it word of mouth or how else did you do that?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, I will say I have a bit of an advantage in that my whole corporate background is sales and marketing. I love sales, I love marketing, I love customers. Basically I looked at, okay, what's going to be my first product that I'm going to sell, and it actually was high end one-on-one coaching. With that, I used my network of friends, colleagues, and just started putting the word out. I thought of, who needs me, and it was female leaders who are moms. That was kind of how I started.

Tia Graham:
Then once I started doing that, I was like, "Okay, I know I don't want to do one-on-one. This isn't all what I want to do." So I was like, "Okay, workshops and I actually want my company to be B2B." I started doing these events and I invited friends, families, clients, colleagues, and did these test runs of events at my friend's studio in Playa Del Ray. I got raving feedback. Once I got that feedback, I had the confidence and the knowledge to then go start selling to corporations. Then that's when I really started scaling my business, doing leadership development and talks and executive retreats.

Mimi MacLean:
The first two things that come to mind when I hear your story is, okay, then I would think most entrepreneurs, at least I would feel this way, is how do you price yourself? I think that's a big thing because everyone wants to underprice themselves.

Tia Graham:
Yes.

Mimi MacLean:
How did you figure out, "Okay, I'm going one-on-one, I'm calling my friends," how did you figure what you were asking to charge?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, I was connected to other coaches in the community and I know what I paid my coach who had been coaching for like 20 years, so I sort of had the low. She was very expensive. I knew though, I was like, "I've been coaching salespeople for 15 years, so even though it's a different type of coaching, I have a lot of coaching experience." With that, I used those two metrics and I started off high just because I think I'd been coaching salespeople for so long, I felt confident in that. When I reflect back on when I started off with corporate, I definitely underpriced myself because I had never done it before. Now, over time, I've definitely increased what I charge to companies and what I charge for conferences and all of that. But I started off just looking at time, effort and value, looking at, okay, this is this size of a company, this is how many people.

Tia Graham:
The other thing that really helped me was pretty early on I became a very active member, and a board member actually, for the National Speakers Association. That's a network of 1,800 professional speakers in the United States.

Mimi MacLean:
Oh, wow.

Tia Graham:
I was a board member with the LA chapter. That, mentors and just learnings and everything. I've gained a lot of information about just the business of speaking, the business of consulting from the National Speakers Association.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. I see you have an evidence-based actual business program, it's called the Arrive at Happy Business Growth Program. Because I think that's another thing, it's like, "Okay. I'm going to charge this. I'm going to have a customer. I know how to do it, but how do I actually quantify it and put it into an actual program with an actual curriculum?" I think that's pretty intimidating as well.

Tia Graham:
Yes.

Mimi MacLean:
Can you talk about a little bit about that and your program?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, sure. After I finish my coaching certification, I studied with a Harvard professor, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who taught positive psychology at Harvard. Once I got a couple certifications from him and then I got a certification in applied neuroscience, I felt very confident. I was like, "Okay, I know a lot about human happiness and being happy at work." Then when I went to Denmark and understood, research based, what leaders can do to drive happiness, I was like, "I have enough to create this program."

Tia Graham:
It's a four-phase process, where the first is analysis and discovery, phase two is where I work with leaders and the leadership transformation, phase three is on with the team members of the teams and the hourly employees, and then phase four is all about creating really, really happy customers with the sales teams and the people that are customer-facing. That's how I created the program, and I will say, sprinkled in with my hotel leadership experience.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. It's pretty much geared towards pretty established companies that they're selling something, product, service.

Tia Graham:
Yeah. I mean, definitely small to medium size companies are the majority of my clients. On the smaller side right now I'm working with a law office that has 25 people, so it's not all really big companies, but yes, it's established in that there's a team.

Mimi MacLean:
Is it now word of mouth or do you advertise? How do you get most of your clients?

Tia Graham:
Yes, it's word of mouth. It's also me, I prospect and I sell my business weekly. I also will get people find me now just by SEO. I'm on a few different sites where people put in motivational speaker and on some of these sites I'm ranked pretty high. Then referrals from other speakers, I work with a couple of speakers bureaus. But I've really grown my business with my network and I would say the majority of this sales have been my efforts, and then now, of course, referrals happening.

Mimi MacLean:
When you say your efforts, is that doing podcasts like this or is it other things that you're doing?

Tia Graham:
Reaching out. I know CEOs of companies or VPs of sales, and I will call people, I will send them videos and reach out and know what's going on with their company and do actual prospecting.

Mimi MacLean:
Cold calling. Yeah, prospecting. Yeah, okay, cool.

Tia Graham:
Yeah, but I don't think it's cold calling because it's people that I have relationships with-

Mimi MacLean:
Relationships with, right.

Tia Graham:
... like executives that I know, yeah.

Mimi MacLean:
Oh, that's great. Okay, so what have you found to be the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur?

Tia Graham:
Probably that it's always, always on my mind, that I think that the mental separation of I have two little kids and-

Mimi MacLean:
It's a third baby.

Tia Graham:
Exactly, and I'm so passionate about it, I'm sure you can appreciate this, and the listeners, it's like I'm maybe too passionate about it sometimes. I think it's creating the mental boundaries. Time boundaries, I'll stop. For example, we were in Maui last week and there was a lot of time I was thinking about Arrive at Happy and I'm like, "Okay, just focus on the waves."

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, just focus on pushing your kid on the swing.

Tia Graham:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so I think that piece, and then the other one, again, because my lens is so sales and marketing, is I always feel like I could be selling more. I think I always wish I had more time, because I know if I had more time, I could grow it even faster. I think it's all also having patience. It's not like, "Okay, this isn't a sprint. They're going to have this company for the next two decades," but I get impatient.

Mimi MacLean:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, totally. Now, have you used social media extensively to help grow your company?

Tia Graham:
Yes, absolutely. The two platforms I use and have used the most have been Instagram and LinkedIn, by far LinkedIn, just because B2B. I've gotten leads and people reaching out and interview requests from LinkedIn. Then I started doing weekly YouTube videos, gosh, maybe like nine months ago, yeah, about a year ago or so. That's another platform that I'm working to grow just because I know it's the number two search engine.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Has that been hard? Do you have any insight about that?

Tia Graham:
It's a slow and steady. I think whereas I was able to grow Instagram pretty quickly and so I saw that feedback of efforts and then you get results back, but I know, and all of the speaker context, everyone's just like, "Stick with YouTube. Keep doing it, be consistent. It's going to pay off, just keep going," because a lot of people quit.

Mimi MacLean:
It takes a little while, yeah.

Tia Graham:
It just takes a long time, exactly.

Mimi MacLean:
Obviously you were just saying you have children and you're an entrepreneur, you're running your own show, what are you doing to keep it balanced? You were saying you're having a hard time mentally, but do you have a morning routine? Is there any kind of insights that you can give as far as like, I don't know, to make your life easier?

Tia Graham:
Yes, yes.

Mimi MacLean:
Any hacks to balancing it all?

Tia Graham:
I use my calendar as my guide and I have some expectations for myself around different areas. Sleep is really, really important to me, so I'm very good at going to bed, making sure that I get seven to eight hours every single night. I'm really, really good at sleep. I also have a goal that I exercise four times a week, and even though I always feel like my to-do list and my work, there's always so much to do, I will make sure that I exercise four days a week because I know it makes me a better mom, entrepreneur. I know it helps my brain, so I do that.

Tia Graham:
I try and eat really healthy too. I don't have an exact morning routine. I sort of go on the flow. For example, if my husband and I stay up watching Saturday night live and having some wine, I'm not like, "Oh, I need to get up at 5:00 AM and exercise," but if I go to bed early, some mornings I will get up and exercise before the kids get up. It's more in a flow of how I'm feeling and what happened the night before also, so I kind of do that.

Tia Graham:
I know my productivity times and I know when I'm at my best. Usually my working hours are some days nine to four, some days nine to two. If I know I need to work a lot more that week for client demands or whatever's going on, book launch stuff, I will go to bed early and I will get up, like I'll set my alarm for 4:45. There's some times, but not all the time, where I will work before my kids come up because my brain stops working at 8:00 PM. There's some people that can work at night, I'm not one of those people. I literally can't function. I will schedule date nights, I will schedule meditation in my calendar. Really, my calendar is like-

Mimi MacLean:
You time block it, is what they say.

Tia Graham:
Time block, exactly. Yes, I will time block it. Perfect example, my mom's visiting right now for a few weeks because she's in Mexico for vacation and she's visiting, so I was like, "I need to have one-on-one time with her." I scheduled, I was like, "Let's go for a walk, Mom," and right before this, I went for a walk with her for an hour. I think it's being intentional.

Tia Graham:
I will say one other thing is I look, and I've done this for years, even the hotel industry, sort of Friday, Saturday, even Sunday, I will be looking at my calendar for the next week and asking myself, "Do I have enough space to execute? Do I have enough space to be present for my husband and kids? Do I have enough space?" because sometimes it'll look crazy and I'll look at it and say, "I need more space," and I'll cancel things or move things so that I don't feel overwhelmed and frantic.

Mimi MacLean:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's good. Okay, this is a really random question, but how do you all your books are either red, orange, yellow, or blue?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, the light's hitting it, but I organize my books by color. They weren't organized like that, but one of my friends said, "You should organize your books by color."

Mimi MacLean:
I understand that, but my books aren't colored like that. I have white books, you know what I mean, black books.

Tia Graham:
I have a lot of happiness books, and happiness books are usually yellow and orange.

Mimi MacLean:
Wow, okay.

Tia Graham:
Yeah. If I look at the top row, because there's blue on the second and white and some black on the bottom.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, "Wait, how does she have so many the rainbow color there?" It's nice looking. My daughter's preschool had them all, but I can understand how kids books are, but with adult books, I'm always amazed when people can do that. I'm going to go home and try doing that when I get home.

Tia Graham:
A bit of a, yeah, joyful feeling.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, very organized and Zen. Okay, so I have a question to ask you. I'm sure you know this stat, but only 1.7% of female entrepreneurs ever reach a million dollars in sales.

Tia Graham:
I learned that stat from you.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. I've been really trying to dive in to figure out why is that, why is it not higher, especially because there's 50% women who are starting companies 50/50. If you were to give one or two reasons why you think might be causing that or what they can be doing differently, what would it be?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, number one, I would say it's mindset. It's so mindset. I know just from my experience of, I will, as soon as I ... I recently just sold the most expensive package experience to this company, and once I sold it, then it's like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to add on another 15K for the next sale." You know? I think so much is mindset. I think it's confidence and I think it's believing in worth and value. I really, really do.

Mimi MacLean:
Well, that's why I was asking you the question about what you charge, because I think women, when they're like, "Okay, I'm going out my own," no matter what it was, if you're a photographer, whatever it is, even if you're a chef charging dinner, like cooking a meal, it's that uncomfortable what is it worth, because everyone wants to undercut themselves. They're afraid to ask.

Tia Graham:
They're afraid to ask, exactly. No, and if I look back, I now, four years in, my confidence level of what I want to charge in. I also, and I think you also were talking about mentors in your book too, right?

Mimi MacLean:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tia Graham:
Feeling like we could do it on our own and it's like, "No, you need to have," and when that's when I talked about the National Speakers Association, people who have been doing it for 20 years and say, "Charge this, do this, this is what this is worth, this is what other people are charging." Yeah, I think the main is mindset and then also I think it's communicating the value. I really think it's communicating value. There's this extremely successful consultant named Alan Weiss, I've learned so much from him on just how to communicate value. It goes back to the confidence of how you communicate that in writing and verbally to prospective clients, that it's not about your time or it's not about, to your point, what the chef of delivers, it's about the value of what that is. [crosstalk 00:24:48].

Mimi MacLean:
What are they getting, no matter what it is. It could be the meal and that it's organic and it's a healthy-

Tia Graham:
Exactly. [inaudible 00:24:53], it's not the steak, or for me, it's not the talk. It's like, what does that do to your organization or what does that do to whatever you're selling, right? From my perspective, those are the two.

Mimi MacLean:
No, those are good ones. I mean, I definitely, I'm not a marketing salesperson and doing Beauty Counter I've learned a lot more about it, but it was eye opening to me when someone made an analogy, like if you're selling a ride on an airplane, you're not selling the ride on the airplane, you're selling the destination. You're selling the Tahiti trip on the beach. It's what you're envisioning them to be when they arrive. It's not like, "Hey, you're sitting in a sardine can with 200 other people in an air, 20,000 feet up." It's what you're going to feel when you get to where you're going. It's the same idea, it's true.

Tia Graham:
Yes, exactly, how lives are going to be changed. Yeah, and it just makes me think, this is something that should be taught to female in high school, of communicating your value, whether you're in corporate America, whether you work at a nonprofit, whether you're an entrepreneur, just knowing those stats, we need to start earlier in eucation, right?

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, just even asking for a raise, right?

Tia Graham:
Exactly.

Mimi MacLean:
I think men in general have no problem going in and asking for a raise, whereas women are afraid to. I'm generalizing obviously.

Tia Graham:
Right, right. No, I mean, think back of this is obviously societal, cultural, there's all these different reasons why. Good thing we're moving in the right direction and I know you're helping people do it faster with this podcast.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, but we want to please and I think a lot of females don't think big enough, they sell themselves short, and I think that's really super important.

Mimi MacLean:
Okay, to end, is there any piece of advice or any words of wisdom, besides the two that you just gave me, of your experience and what you went through? Any I wish I had known this when I started or this is what I would give to somebody starting out, advice?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, yeah. My advice is another piece of advice which has helped me grow fast. A lot of people will say, "Whoa, you're doing things really fast. How are you doing it?" This is a key principle that I used when I was a director of sales and I use it as an entrepreneur. If you want to do something, whether it's write and launch a book or start this, whatever you want to do, find someone who's really successful at that and who's done it, pay them and fast track yourself. When I look back at money I've invested in my business, I don't regret any of the investments and some have been very big investments, but I know and I'm seeing the fruits of it already come back and I know it will continue to. I think a way to go faster is hire experts, hire experts to help you.

Tia Graham:
I would say something I've learned in looking back is there's different people who have given me ideas and even different organizations I'm a part of who have given ideas. There were a few different areas of my business that I basically tried to be too diverse early on. I was like, "I can offer this and I can do this and I can do this." Now, I'm really focused on this is what my business does, it does in this and this, and it's all these really big, high ticket things.

Mimi MacLean:
You want to specialize instead of being the jack of all trades.

Tia Graham:
Exactly. What is the main thing you sell? What is the second? What is the third? Of course when you get bigger with team and everything. But I experimented and launched different things and then was like, "Oh no, I don't really want to do that." When I think back I'm like, "That was a waste of time," not so much a waste of money, but that was a waste of time. That's what I would tell my old self, just focus on one or two and grow those before you start adding more.

Mimi MacLean:
What would you say, to your first point that you were just talking about hiring experts, in what areas have you done that?

Tia Graham:
I've hired experts to help me with speaking early on. For example, I went to a speaking retreat with this woman. Anyway, that was an example. I hired an expert to land me a TEDx Talk, hired an expert to help me write and publish a book. I've hired an expert to tell me to launch my book. I've hired branding experts. I think things that I'm like, "I need to do this and I don't really know." I move very, very fast, so when someone's like, "You could take my online course," and I'm like, "No, no, no."

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, I know. No, I don't want a course. [crosstalk 00:29:15].

Tia Graham:
Yeah. I want someone to tell me. I'm like, "Let's spend a day together. I'll pay you some money and let's just do this." I don't want to [crosstalk 00:29:21].

Mimi MacLean:
Right, because that's what you can do right now, you can buy all these courses. I'm like, "Yeah, but that's me doing it. I need somebody else to do it." If I'm going to spend a thousand dollars, I'd rather put it towards somebody else.

Tia Graham:
Absolutely.

Mimi MacLean:
That's why I was asking you, because I feel like right now you can buy so many courses, which are great. If you need to get your feet wet and be able understand the lingo, but to teach yourself all that info, unless you're on a shoestring budget, it's time.

Tia Graham:
Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah, those are some key ones that come to mind. Even consulting, I do speaking and leadership development and consulting and advising executives is another area. Instead of me figuring it out, I hired someone, I did six calls with this person and basically he's been consulting for 30 years, so why am I going to try and figure it out on my own? Let me just download his brain and be a sponge. I mean, I read a lot of books too and I do self-educate, but I think when I want to move quick on things, it's like find someone, do it, and then get the results faster.

Mimi MacLean:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). What advice would you give to somebody, because I feel like I've hired people sometimes and I think they're the expert and then it winds up being a waste of money, so do you get peer review? Where are you going to validate it to make sure that it's well money spent?

Tia Graham:
Yes, I always ask for phone numbers and contacts of three of their clients, either current clients or recent past clients and I will-

Mimi MacLean:
And they'll give it to you?

Tia Graham:
Yes, and if they don't, I would never work with them. I think that's just because for salespeople I would always do reference checks and I would never hire salespeople without talking to lots of people, so I do that. I also listen very closely for their guaranteed results of what I'm going to have and making sure that there isn't vagueness in what I'm going to walk away with, both knowledge and kind of what we're talking about too, the value of it as well. But yeah, I would say lots of homework. Then even though they maybe have a really fancy website and talk a big talk, I try and tune into my intuition too, what's my gut telling me and how much experience do they have?

Mimi MacLean:
This has been amazing. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you would like to cover?

Tia Graham:
Yeah, the only other thing I would say is that my book, Be a Happy Leader, is coming out January 18 and you can find it on happyleaderbook.com.

Mimi MacLean:
That's exciting.

Tia Graham:
Thank you, yes, and arriveathappy.com has all my information. Yeah, I would say for everyone listening, that for people who are entrepreneurs and people growing their businesses, it's so easy, because I get the trap myself, of just continuously working and drive, go, go, go, go, go, and just the reminder to take care of yourself, of your mind, your body, your personal relationships, and that even though you're taking time away from work and success, that by focusing on those other areas of life, it'll be holistic success. That would be my last one.

Mimi MacLean:
It's true. It clears your head and makes you a better leader and a better entrepreneur and a better business person, because if you're tired and worn out, it doesn't work.

Tia Graham:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Mimi MacLean:
Well, I wish you much success with your launch. That's super exciting. Thank you so much for your time and have a happy, happy new year.

Tia Graham:
You too, thank you so much for having me.

Mimi MacLean:
Thank you for joining us on The Badass CEO. To get your copy of the Top 10 Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know, go to thebadassceo.com/tips. Also, please leave a review as it helps others find us. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them. Email me at mimi@thebadassceo.com. See you next week, and thank you for listening.