Tina Wells: “No one looked like me”

Hello and welcome to another episode of My Rejection Story. I’m so excited to be joined by Tina Wells today. Tina is an entrepreneur, a bestselling author, speaker, and brand builder who believes that work -life harmony is the key to elevating your life. She’s all about straight talk, strong drinks, short emails, and helping you find your superpower. She is not about comparisons, band -aid fixes, bullshit, the word moist, or that hustle game.

I’m so excited for today’s conversation and particularly to dive into some of what Tina writes in her best -selling book, The Elevation Approach. So my first question for you, Tina, is can you tell me about a time in your life where you felt rejected?

Tina (01:43)
gosh, Alice. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I have to make an update to my intro. I used to be all about strong drinks. I feel like now in my mid forties, I’m all about really delicious mocktails. So, has Here we are, right? And so this is such a good question to start with, right? The beginning of my rejection story. And I feel like for me, that was five years ago.

Alice Draper (01:55)
Sober Era,

Tina (02:12)
When I realized that agency world was changing, you know, I had successfully run my own marketing agency since I was 16 years old. So it’s 24 years of a career. And I realized that I was kind of being rejected in a way of like,

the agency world is changing and I’m either gonna get with the changes or I’m gonna have to do something different. And it was partially an industry rejection in my mind and partially me rejecting the change, right? And really having to sit with myself. And this was a, we’re gonna sum it up in two words, but for the listener, I want them to know this was almost a year of me going through this rejection, really deeply feeling it.

really going through what I consider to be my first bout of depression right? And really understanding like there was a massive change coming to my life. And so I just realized like when I think about the word rejection, right? Sometimes it’s this idea that it’s just not a fit. And what I realized was something that had fit perfectly or at least felt that way for 24 years was no longer a fit in my life. And I didn’t know what was coming.

I had only known what had been and I just really sat, I think, in that year, 2019, in like a deep place of rejection.

Alice Draper (03:35)
Your agency, I’m sure, is something you’d put so much into. So I think it’s probably very hard to kind of rationalize that and reflect to know that this this change is needed because

It’s not like you’re decided, I don’t want to become a doctor, or I don’t want to buy this house or something. It’s something that you played a very active role in building. what I want to know is what did it take for you to actually realize this? Because I’m sure you didn’t straight away know that this is the next step.

Tina (04:04)
No. No, I, if you’ve read my book, The Elevation Approach,

There are so many different exercises and tools in the book, but they all ask you to really become very present with yourself, to ask yourself those really tough questions. And what I realized is I was moving so fast. And I think so many of us do the same thing, right? We’re on an express train, we’re on the treadmill, we’re on the hamster wheel, that to really get to the answers you’re even asking about, you have to step off. And I think that that was my first step was just to say, pause.

How am I feeling? How does this feel? Where am I feeling it in my body? Am I trying to rationalize something that no longer makes sense, right? But the first step to even starting to contemplate any of this was just stop, right? And so I really had to take a pause. And I think it’s really hard for us to take a pause. I don’t think that life always allows us a pause, you know, but I think…

What we all know is we get to a place we call burnout. If we don’t pause before that, right, then we eventually just run out of steam. And so I was in that place of completely, like I was out of energy. So it was like a pause that wasn’t as intentional as I feel I take pauses now. I’m very intentional about when I need to pause, but then I was not. And I feel like it just was almost like a crisis where I was forced into it.

Alice Draper (05:28)
Is this when you got that seven figure contract to the big corporate clients and then your hair started falling out? You describe yourself as crawling to the finish line, which is so visual.

Tina (05:39)
That was about seven years prior, right? When I really felt like I’d come to the mountaintop. And so, you know, I talk in the book about different points of burnout, right? So first starting at 16, I think my first burnout was around 27, right? When I went on my first proper vacation and my laptop wasn’t invited, that story is in the book.

Alice Draper (05:42)
Okay, yeah.

on.

Tina (06:01)
And then what I really realized was I went into a management program, personal management, right, where I could manage the stress, but I really wasn’t dealing with it. I was like band -aiding it. And so when you look at that stretch, I was really building my business from 27 to 32. And that, know, at 32 was that big seven -figure client. And boy, I thought I had managed my stress. And I realized in that moment I hadn’t.

And isn’t it fascinating, right? That it’s another seven year stretch and then the big one hits, right? So I do very much believe in cycles and I believe in the cyclical nature of things. you know, also the older we get, I think when we’re younger, we can take the hits a bit easier, right? But as you’re, you know, so think about that for me at 39, like if I had that hit again at 46, it’s going to hurt more, right? I’m not going to bounce back the way I bounced back in

Alice Draper (06:29)
Yeah.

Tina (06:55)
my 20s, 27 or 32. And so I was also realizing, okay, I need another way. And that’s really, you know, when I started writing the elevation approach, because I was like, this can’t be a thing where every seven years I’m in crisis, and then I figure out a way to deal with the crisis, right? I need a way to constantly be asking myself these questions. So it’s not like when I’m in crisis that I then for the first time say, am I happy? Am I doing the thing I should be doing? Right? We don’t want to always have to crisis manage our lives and our career.

years.

Alice Draper (07:25)
Yeah, yeah, I love that so much. And in the Elevation approach, you advocate for work -life harmony over work -life balance. For listeners who have never picked up a copy of the Elevation approach, could you briefly tell them just a brief synopsis? I know there’s a four -step protocol, which I’m going to dive into, but yeah, just kind of briefly, who’s the book for?

Tina (07:46)
Yes. So, okay, so let’s first talk about why am I talking about work -life harmony over balance. So in my burnout, what I realized was I was trying to get into balance. And in the periods of my life where I was doing a ton of work, I was then adding a ton of play. And if you think about a scale, think about putting a ton of work on the scale and then to balance it out, you’re putting a ton of play. Well, what if I don’t want to just keep adding and adding and adding, right? Harmony, the concept of work -life harmony is imagine your life is a dinner plate.

Alice Draper (08:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Tina (08:16)
that plate are all of the things that you love, all right, the perfect meal that works together. You know when you add a flavor and the flavor doesn’t work, right? It doesn’t mean that your plate is full of veggies and full of like, right, your plate might have a big old piece of protein and smaller, right, but it works for you. And that’s really the heart of the elevation approach is harmony. It means that there are seasons where you’re going to be doing a lot of work and you may not be able to add.

as much play, right? But you add that little sweet something that just completes the meal, right? So it doesn’t mean that because you have half your plate full of veggies, the other half is gonna be a big piece of cheesecake, right? Like that doesn’t make sense. Harmony is about how do the things in our life work together? And so I really felt like…

Alice Draper (08:55)
Yeah.

Tina (09:00)
We need to ask a different question. And then as I always, I love a framework and I need to really channel my thoughts in the way I can constantly be creating. Like I designed a framework that really works for me. And so what I realized is, there are four steps, preparation, inspiration, recreation, and transformation.

So I realized I was stuck in a cycle of preparation, right, which is all the stuff we do to get going on a big project or idea, inspiration, socializing that, getting people to help us. And then I go back to preparation. So I was in this weird cycle of preparing, getting excited with other people, preparing, but I was never doing the thing. And so what I was missing was recreation. And recreation is important because it is an intentional pause, right, of work.

And it just lets things settle. found that when I take a proper

recreation, ideas come to me or solutions come to me that I never even thought of, right? And they seem to appear out of nowhere. Literally where you’re like, you know, finish a stretching class or finish yoga or finish a walk and you go back and you’re like, here’s a fresh perspective, right? And then what was possible was transformation. My ideas started hitting, right? I was able to, so think about the example you gave from 2012 where I got so burnt out with a seven figure.

project, right? Fast forward to my launches at Target, I launched two seven figure brands within the same year and I didn’t burn out, right? Because I learned how to manage a flow and I could anticipate and say, okay, I’m going into a season where a lot is gonna be required of me, what do I need, right? So pre -scheduling, dinner with friends, family vacation, I knew how to manage that, right? Because I knew what was coming and that’s the elevation approach. It’s not saying…

stop working so hard, right? It’s saying, we all want to do work we love. And I think sometimes One of the things I realized is many people do love the jobs and careers they have, right? And we can also burn out from things we love. We’re not just burnt out because our job is taxing, we don’t really like our job. We can be burnt out because we’re so excited about what we’re doing. And so this is just method to help you manage that.

Alice Draper (10:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I love it so much and I think that it is very different to what a lot of the mainstream advice is. And something I want to touch on is also kind of, there’s a lot of stuff I guess in the wellness space that’s quite anti -hustle culture. So it’ll be like, you shouldn’t hustle. And I think it comes from a very good place because of this very capitalist driven society where we always feel like we have to be on the move. But in turn, the message can be,

Tina (11:43)
Yep.

Alice Draper (11:46)
don’t work too hard. If you’re working too hard, something is wrong. Like if you are on your laptop until nighttime, something’s wrong. But in so many of my conversations with very great, successful, interesting people, it’s been those periods of working really hard that have helped them make a seismic shift in a very positive way in their life, whether it was starting their business or getting the book out or whatever it is. So I love that you talk about, you know, this period of recreation.

Tina (11:47)
Thank

Alice Draper (12:12)
the period of transformation that it doesn’t all need to be happening at once. What I’m also, and I want to ask you about is that I think that the recreation aspect is hard for many of us because we feel like something’s wrong. Why am I not being productive? Why am I not bringing in stuff to society? So when you talk about recreation, do you talk about taking extended holidays or are you talking about implementing it into your day -to -day life? What does that look like?

Tina (12:41)
Yeah, so in full disclosure, it is the hardest thing for me too. I have come to really love it. I had to test it out myself. And when I saw the effects in my own career, that’s when it became something that I absolutely 100 % had to do. And so in the book, I give many different exercises and activities and ways you can get yourself into recreation. But I want to just say it starts with 15 minutes.

I certainly don’t expect if you’re new to my work or new to the book that you jump in wholeheartedly and plan a big vacation. I wouldn’t even suggest that because you want to make sure that you’re managing recreation properly. Start with 15 minutes at three o ‘clock or whatever midday looks like for you, doing something completely not related to work. Even if it’s like scrolling X, even if it’s like 15 minutes with your favorite gossip magazine, just do something that brings you pure joy.

15 minutes and that is not connected to work. And measure how you feel.

and measure your productivity, right? Did you complete those things on your list, all of that? You know, there was a part of my career when I was doing a lot of business with Asia. So I had to figure out a way to sustain my energy from like 8 a in the morning to at least 9 or 10 p at night, right? And that recreation break, I would take about an hour, sometimes I got up to an hour and a half. It really fueled me. And the second part of my day when I needed to also, you know, sustain sometimes a two hour Zoom meeting

partners in Asia. And so I think you build that muscle. Recreation is a muscle you’re going to start to learn about. You’re going to learn how to build that muscle. And then once you do it, you’re going to work up to, you know, I just came back from two weeks and a holiday and…

I was doing like medical testing and all kinds of things that were really, really rejuvenating. But no way would I have been prepared to do something like that years ago. You know, it just wouldn’t have been, I wouldn’t have been comfortable. I would have been stressed. wouldn’t have been counterproductive. And so what’s great about recreation is you can just test it and you can start to figure out what works for you, how to incorporate it and what you like to do. It could be cooking. There just like so many things. And final example I’ll give and I give this in the book is I say like,

watch how children play and just watch how committed they are to playing. It’s just fun. It’s joyful, right? They’re in it. They’re fully present in their play. And I think that that’s just a great example for us.

Alice Draper (15:01)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, trying to connect with that inner child. As you were talking about it, it makes me think, I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of reels and TikToks where people talk about creating a dope, I think it’s a dopamine menu. So like.

Tina (15:15)
Yeah.

Alice Draper (15:26)
throughout the day you do things that just bring you joy, whether it’s like cooking that nice meal or making that really nice fancy coffee or sitting in the sun with your coffee. And some of the TikToks were like, this is what I do to stop myself from doom scrolling. So what I wanted to ask you about is that I think that I’ve noticed with myself and I think many people probably can relate is that those breaks can be energizing or depleting depending on what I do.

If I sit and scroll TikTok, I don’t feel energized. I feel like, you know, I didn’t step away from the screen. But if I go and walk on the treadmill while reading a book, I feel like kind of a more kind of recalibrated and set for the next part of the day. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, like what those sorts of things that you do are

Tina (15:56)
Hahaha

Yeah, it’s, you know, I am a media person, right? Of media marketing and pop culture has really been my career and it’s something I enjoy immensely. I’m also like a self -proclaimed product junkie. And so I, I mean, I spent a few years, several years making my own products, a big retail. I’m always going to be surprised and delighted by a new product. And I really love female founded brands. I love BIPOC founded brands.

And so what really kind of excites me is what like yesterday I was just boarding a flight from Madrid and happened to be reading I love my iPad Pro. I’m always reading the news today stumbled on Vogue stumbled on a female designer I’d never heard of and it’s just like the excitement of like seeing her pieces and seeing the creativity and and You know, I’d read a story About her travels in Europe and I’m like first of all, I love reading stories about people traveling I love to travel so I love to read about what people do when they travel their habits all that’s super interesting to me and then I

I stumbled on a brand and that to me, I was like so happy. It fueled my day, right? But it was so many different themes that I think are important to me, right? Seeing the expression of someone else’s creativity really does fuel me. Seeing the beautiful end result of that product and their creative process is exciting. Being able to choose to invest my money and I always say it’s important to spend your values, right? So if I make a

purchase that I feel like is aligned with my personal values, that feels really good. You know, and I think when you think about kind of the doom scrolling culture sometimes, it gets you in this place if you’re looking at something, you’re buying things. It’s so out of alignment. I think we don’t even stop and think about why does this not.

have the payoff we think it’s gonna have, right? Because in a way we’re sometimes consuming things that just aren’t aligned with how we actually want to participate, right? And it almost feels like, I don’t know, like…

we don’t have a choice, right? We just get stuck in this thing, right? And so I think whatever you choose to do, do something that’s aligned with your values, right? If you want to be outside more, get outside, get 15 minutes of fresh air. So you’re right. think there are activities we can do that really either bring us more agency, like energy and refuel us, or they kind of deplete us even more.

Alice Draper (18:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that so much. Get in touch with your values, know what the thing is. And I think that the thing that fuels us can sometimes take a little bit more work than the thing that doesn’t fuel us. It’s very automatic to just start scrolling, whereas going outside may mean going outside.

Tina (18:46)
Yes.

And

It’s growl at this point and if something is feeling like no, no, no up up up, right and I get to like like the woman who’s like doing her medical tourism that is a really fun thing to watch on on tik -tok, know or female founders who I’m Actually working with tik -tok right now as a mentor and a coach to 15 female founders who are part of their sore program and These are women who built businesses on tik -tok who hadn’t really grown

Alice Draper (19:02)
Yeah. Time to move body.

Yeah.

Tina (19:27)
businesses before and this tool has just allowed them to do something really special and so that’s that’s exciting right so every tool can have good and bad it’s just really figuring out you know how is this in service to what I need right now

Alice Draper (19:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think I’ve learned so much through TikTok. So like definitely I think there’s some huge, huge upsides. I think it’s just about being intentional. So the inspiration part of your book is also very interesting to me, because I’m very much a like see it to be it person. I find that I really kind of do my best work when there’s people around me who I’m hugely inspired by. And so it’s quite important to me to try and find those people and work. And…

Tina (19:46)
Me too!

Alice Draper (20:07)
Something I was thinking about as I was reading that is I grew up in post -apartheid South Africa. So lot of my friends who are black talked about how they didn’t see people who looked like them who were teachers or doctors or in like professions that they wanted to be. So that came with challenges, whether it was kind of assimilating to whiteness, but also like a lot of imposter syndrome and entering that space. So what I wanted to know from you is,

I guess, I guess it’s two questions. I’ll start with the first, which is for anyone who’s struggling to find people who inspire them, like is there, do you have any advice there? kind of, cause I think that that is also part of like self -rejecting. It’s very easy to self -reject when we don’t see people who look like us or come from the same background or whatever doing the things we want to do. Cause you’ll say, well, you know, XYZ people like me can’t do XYZ.

Tina (21:06)
Yeah, so first, you know, I started in 1996 and there was no one who looked like me doing what I was doing, right?

I came from a really supportive background. I’m the oldest of six children. My parents were incredibly supportive, you know, and I think their support and that kind of family platform really helped me early on know I could do whatever I wanted to do before I even saw that reflected to me. But what I did see were like films, TV, they were, like I got to see black people in business, you know, and so I would say now in

2024, we have this amazing technology that allows us to find what we’re looking for in a way that didn’t exist for so much of my career. And I think that it’s all about being intentional and just searching for it. So you may not see it.

reflected in your culture, but I don’t know. I feel like things have changed so much where intentionally looking is important, but first it’s the idea of this is what I want to do, right? So whether you’re religious or spiritual saying like, this is who I want to become, you know, show me, show me, guide me, guide me, right? And they always say, you know, the saying when the, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, right? And so.

Alice Draper (22:28)
Yeah.

Tina (22:29)
I love that saying because it’s just a great reminder of like, when you’re ready, ask for the guidance that you need, right? And it’ll miraculously show up, it’s so like the way we live in this very interconnected world, we’re at the literally at our fingertips, right? We’re a Google, a search engine search away from finding the thing we need.

to me is what’s most exciting about the time we live in, right? That there are solutions available. And I remember in business,

that, you know, parts of my life where that was not the case, right? I mean, this is going way back, guys, like 25 years back, but like, there was a time when you couldn’t update your own website, right? Where you needed to invest in something called a content management system. And for someone to build that system is minimally like $25 ,000, right? It was really almost impossible to update your own website, right? There was a barrier. Now there are places that make it so easy to start your own website and start your own business. And so,

Alice Draper (23:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tina (23:30)
You know, I’m always grateful for that. I’m grateful for that evolution and how we’re moving to a place where more information is really available to us. And so it’s really, I think, having a process to access the information that is available, right? So it’s the removing the idea that something’s not possible is super important.

Alice Draper (24:37)
Yeah, this is fantastic. So removing that idea, from what you said, I kind of take pick up two main themes, which is one, think community is very important. And you mentioned you had a very supportive family structure. I know not everyone has that, but I think finding that supportive community is like the cornerstone. And then the other being that you need to be really intentional about looking for it and knowing what you’re looking for. Because I think that we can leave that to like the defaults, like our subconscious.

like they’re just gonna come and you sort of need to go out there and find them. But I wanna hear more about your story because you said when you started, there was no one that looked like you. So what was your journey to building your agency and like were there kind of mental blocks you had to overcome in terms of self doubts and questioning whether you could do it?

Tina (25:26)
Well, this is what’s interesting. when I, it’s funny, when I say there was no one who looked like me, right, your listener might be thinking, she meant there were no black women doing what she was doing. No, there were like no entrepreneurs, right? Like in a way, being a teen entrepreneur. And I always remind people, I started in 1996. We didn’t even know who Mark Zuckerberg was then.

Alice Draper (25:39)
You

Yeah.

Tina (25:50)
Right? So there was not a frame of understanding this weird, right? Like people would apologize to my parents and say, I’m so sorry, Tina’s so smart, she could have been a doctor or a lawyer. Right? So there was not this like respect for entrepreneurship the way I think we really respect entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial. Like we so respect the impact that great entrepreneurs have had on us, our world, our society that didn’t exist in 1996. And I remember

Alice Draper (26:02)
Yeah.

Tina (26:18)
Probably around 2010, right? So this is what 14 years now I’ve been in business Where I get invited into something called the Young Entrepreneurs Council and it was the first time in my life I felt like I have my people Right. We’re all doing the thing and they were the it was literally like the moment of like there’s a tribe I’m included there people just like me right so it took me 14 years, right? That’s a long time to find my

Alice Draper (26:33)
Ow.

That’s so long! Sorry!

Tina (26:48)
You know, and still like, and that was 14 years of getting a lot of press, getting a lot of media, right? So was getting a lot of external validation at the time of who I was. I mean, this was already, yeah, this was, it took me.

five years after I had a cover story in O Magazine to find my people, right? So I still wanna make that clear. It was very, very validated in my career from the time I was like 18 years old, I was getting pressed, right? So the outside world was signaling, we love you and what you’re doing. And I still hadn’t found my people. And so that is why community is so important to me. I’m actually starting my own community called Founders Circle where I want it to be…

like a cost that’s affordable for founders to find community, be able to get advice from someone like me where we can come in, ask questions, and be a community to each other because I also feel like…

We went through like a super community place and now we’re at another place of saying, okay, we all did the big communities, now what’s really important to us again, right? It’s a restating of values and it’s a way I feel like I can give back because it was being in community that really saved me so many times as a founder, know, finding friend tours and a friend tour is always important. I think mentors,

can be important. think I like the idea of sponsors more than mentors because mentors, means like you and I are in a long -term relationship. What if we don’t want a long -term relationship? Right? A sponsor is like, you can do one really specific thing that can help me immensely right now. I need that. Right? Or I think about people where I’m in their communities where they’re like super like 10 steps above where I am right now. And I get this much access to their time that really like saves me 10 steps. Right? Those communities are

Alice Draper (28:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tina (28:40)
really exciting. But I think as a founder, you’ll never not need to be as a community. I think as humans will never not need community, right? I think we’re very much designed to be in community. And to your point, you your family of origin may not be the most supportive community for you. That’s, you know, that’s okay. We live in a time where we can find people who are interested. Like I was really watching, I was watching something the other day and this woman was part of like a cookbook club that got together and I was like,

Alice Draper (29:08)
Yeah.

Tina (29:10)
I need to join a cookbook club. I have a beautiful studio office. can host a cookbook club. Like in my mind, I was like, yes, I need to join or make a cookbook club, right? And it’s like, has nothing to do with work, but I’m like, that I just was watching it. I was like, yes, that seems like something I should be into.

Alice Draper (29:11)
You

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that so much. And especially kind of when you break down the different people you seek in your community. So the friend tours, I’ve never heard that term before, but which I love, I want you to define it. And then finding those mentors. I mean, for me, we’re connected because Hala Taha introduced us. For me, finding those people has always been always like so pivotal, but it’s hard. It’s not easy. It’s not like you can just…

get someone who’s 10 steps ahead of you to be your friend. So two questions. One, what is a friends’ whore and how do you find mentors?

Tina (29:59)
No.

Yeah, so friend tours are literally as the word sounds, they’re your friends and you can mentor each other about certain things, right? There are people who are at the same life stage and I think those people are so important, they’re peers, right? Because they hold you accountable to your crap, right? Sometimes mentors are so far removed and they’re busy and doing the thing that they get on the phone with you and it’s all inspo and all go get them and like friend tours are like, what are you talking about? No.

Alice Draper (30:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tina (30:34)
Absolutely not. You should be doing better here. You should be doing better. Right, there’s an accountability. And I love front tours where we’re not in the same industry, right? But that they can help me with their industry. I can help them with my industry. And it’s just this open communication and sharing, but there’s something to having people who are in your life stage.

Alice Draper (30:56)
Yeah.

Tina (30:56)
That’s just super important and I think very validating in a community sense of like, get you, I see you, I am where you are. And that to me is incredibly important. And then the second question, sorry, remind me your second question.

Alice Draper (31:11)
So my second question is how do you find mentors?

Tina (31:14)
Yeah, you know, so I’m not so big on finding mentors. So I’m not the, you know, and the reason I say that, so sponsors, yes, I love sponsors. And here’s the thing, to anyone who is seeking something from anyone else, period, do not send this person a 10 paragraph email. They do not have time.

Alice Draper (31:17)
Or sponsors, think you’re alright with sponsors.

Tina (31:36)
There’s no time for that, right? Be very clear. And they open it and they’re like, I gotta get back to this later. I don’t even know what this is. I have to get back to it later, right? Being really clear, really concise. Hi, saw you here. Love that blah, blah, blah. Could you help me do this? I’d be so grateful, right? People love wins. I love a win. I love a quick win. I love being able to help someone know I can do it.

And no, I can check it off the list, right? If I’ve got a 10 paragraph, I can’t even check off reading the email off the list, even more to understand what the need is, right? I do believe in general, we want to be helpful. You know, anyone who has accomplished something or any of us that you look up to, like we’re only here by the grace of other people helping us. So I want to be helpful, but I also need to be an incredibly good steward of my time.

Alice Draper (32:27)
Yeah.

Tina (32:27)
And I can either spend 30 minutes to read and understand your request, not even knowing if I can do the thing, or I can spend that 30 minutes maybe helping five people do other things. And so you’ve got to think about it through that perspective. Make it easy for someone to help you.

Alice Draper (32:42)
Yeah, yeah.

Tina (32:42)
Be really clear about what you’re asking and instead of asking someone for a long term commitment of time over a series of months and years, say, hi, I saw you’re on the board of X, Y, and Z. I’m really trying to get into this conference. Could you help me? Like, just a quick there. And I found that like asking for help very strategically and very specific ways has really helped me in my career.

you know, emails and tons of attachments. doesn’t, we’re dumping, right? We’re just dumping stuff on someone else. We’re not making it easier for them to help us.

Alice Draper (33:15)
Yeah.

This is such important advice and mentorship or general support from community sponsors has helped me immensely. So I am a huge advocate for it. But something that I think a lot of people make a mistake with is asking not even just long things, but very broad questions. If you’re asking like, how do I do X, Y, Z? And now you’re staring at this being like, need to.

Tina (33:43)
Mm -hmm.

Alice Draper (33:47)
like explain the whole process. Like someone who’s busy is not going to do that. They’re also not going to answer a question that you can Google. If you’re asking like a yes, no question, like they just have to say yes. Like if you’re saying, Hey, I saw you had like Adam Grant on your podcast. Does he accept pictures? Like, I don’t know, like something very specific or like, do you have his email address or something that would be like very quick for them to answer.

I believe there’s also like a reciprocity. I don’t know, there’s a bias, there’s a certain word, but once someone’s engaged with you once, they may be more likely to engage with you in the future. So getting that very short, easy to answer question initially may mean that you can establish a relationship down the line because they may respond to other things in the future. But yeah, make it as easy as possible.

Tina (34:40)
Make it as smart as possible. Don’t ask for someone’s email address when you can just Google or do a better investigator, right? And I also have a rule personally where I make introductions that benefit both parties. And it’s really important to me that do not email me and say, can you connect me to some? The normal answer is no.

Alice Draper (34:44)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Tina (35:04)
And I just don’t send someone to someone not checking with that person that they’re interested. And that doesn’t mean that like…

If we’re in two different age levels or two different career levels, the intro isn’t warranted. There are tons of intros that are warranted, right? There are younger people who are doing incredibly exciting, vibrant work where I’m like, wow, these two people getting to know each other is gonna benefit both, right? So I do believe that that intergenerational play is really important. That intergenerational connection has been so critical to my career. I can’t tell you how much I’ve called on girlfriends who are maybe a decade older.

and they’ve seen more in career and can really help me navigate and

they will call me and say, you’re my young girlfriend. How do I do this? What makeup do I wear? I’m taking engagement photos, right? And so it’s fun. It’s really fun. And we’re helping each other in ways that are just so, it feels light, right? And that’s the feeling you want is you want to feel additive. And I’m definitely not saying, if you’re younger, you’re only taking, no. There’s a way where it’s a reciprocal or a reciprocated relationship. And yes, to your point, that’s what you’re looking for.

But I really, have a rule that it’s my ask three before me. I used to have a rule in my agency because I really want, it was important to me to train people to work smarter, not harder. I always say I really don’t care about hard work. don’t.

Alice Draper (36:23)
Thank you.

Tina (36:32)
I’m not moved by someone saying I worked really hard. I want you to work really smart, right? Because it’s my personal philosophy that we own as much of our own time as possible. And if you dedicate even 10 minutes more to something that should not take that time, that’s time away from you rejuvenating, doing the things you want to do, right? So if you’re sitting there saying, don’t have time for recreation, well, how are you managing the time you have, right? Are you managing it correctly? And I found a lot of times, like,

If you just retooled a few things, you’d have that extra time, right? So same for that other person. Don’t ask someone to give you something that you could come up with on your own. Ask for the thing that’s gonna unlock the next step because that’s not the best use of their time. To answer something you could Google, it’s not, right? Like, and let’s use the app. And grand example, the example is not to say, you give me his email address? He’s a professor, you can find that, right? The question would be, I see you’re someone who was successful in getting him.

on your podcast, can you tell me one thing that led to him being open to it? Right? That’s the key to unlock it. It’s like the how, it’s not just the what. We can find what all over the internet, right? And the key is in the thinking. And then you become that person that’s like, wow, this person asked me a really smart question. I like how they think. I want to talk to that person, right? Not someone dumping their job on you or someone they don’t know via email. Like, don’t be that person.

Alice Draper (37:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. On to me.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. And I guess I I was thinking kind of along the lines of making it as simple as possible. I know I had someone reach out to me who is a podcaster and she just asked how I got some of the guests that I have. So I just forward her the pitch that I had sent to that particular guest that she was interested in, because that was very easy for me. It didn’t take much for me to just click forward.

And I know that I kind of stall on tasks, so sometimes I’ll be like, I don’t want to write this whole paragraph, but doing something like that, I’m very open to sharing pictures and stuff with people in my community. I, sorry, she was.

Tina (38:40)
was going say you reminded me of something I used to do in the busiest part of my career when I was getting the most press. And day after day, I was constantly getting emails from mentoring. What I did…

is I scripted an email and the email basically said, I’m so sorry, I can’t answer every email personally and I’m not able to do what you’re asking, but here’s what I want to share with you. Here are my top five business books. Here are some clear tips and everyone would get that. And I can’t tell you the amount of people that would write me back and say, this was the most helpful thing you could have done for me was give me this. And it was scripted. I had it. It was ready to go. If I couldn’t personally engage and you know, it’s a reminder to me that I kind of need to do that again.

Alice Draper (39:10)
Yeah.

It’s awesome, just take a more advanced guy Kawasaki has an AI chat of himself that he sends where you can ask him stuff on AI. Like, you know, if there’s anything you want to know that, and then AI will come up with his answers and the various books and podcasts and stuff he’s done.

Tina (39:38)
Guy is amazing. I’ve been interviewed by him. Of course he would have that because that’s just how amazing he is.

Alice Draper (39:43)
I actually looked at the interview you did with him. So I know we’re kind of nearing the end, so I want to quickly ask you a little bit about your professional rejections. Have you first, I want to talk about your book publishing. What was your relationship with getting books out there into the world? Because you’ve written over a dozen books. Were those 20? my goodness.

Tina (40:05)
22 at this point. 22.

Alice Draper (40:09)
That’s funny to hear. I thought it was like 15 or something. So those first book deals, what was your journey with getting your books written and published in the world?

Tina (40:22)
Yeah, I’ll talk about the first one.

was the time, this was 2007, I had started doing some research with a client on this new emerging consumer called a tween. And I was just fascinated by tweens and what they were doing. at the same time, I also had another client who I was representing a book and it was a book for targeting teenagers produced by a marketing company similar to mine at the time, the editor. She was like, hey, you do the same thing this company does that we bought this book from, you should write a book.

time for this, even though I had a degree in journalism, didn’t have the time. So fast forward back to this focus group about tweens. A mom approached me and said, hey, what do you think I should do? My daughter’s 10. She’s reading Gossip Girl. I’m happy she’s reading, but this isn’t the most age -appropriate content for her. And as most entrepreneurs will tell you, sometimes we hear of a problem and we really want to find a solution. I thought, I love to write. I’m a marketer. I would love to write something healthy and good for girls.

let’s try this. And I started writing Mackenzie Blue and

I called that editor and said, who are the top agents you buy from? Found an agent that way, right? Asking the right question. Who are you purchasing books from? Right? Not just like who are agents you love. She could love an agent and hasn’t bought a book from that person in years, right? They’re just a lovely person. I wanted to know who was really selling the best books. And so I partnered with that agent. And that was really my first time in my career. I’d had a lot of rejection, right? And my agent would say, these are the loveliest rejection notes, right? Like we’d love a

Tina Well series, not this one. And I even got rejected at first by my publisher, Harper. And they thought it was too complicated. know, a 12 -year -old girl who wants to be a singer or songwriter do all these things. They were like, it’s too complicated.

You know, my background is marketing, Packaging matters. Presentation matters. If I could really say anything to your audience, like, that is what has propelled me in my career for almost 30 years, is always really presenting and wanting to be really clear about my visuals, my message. I really believe that good design, good quality design evokes emotion. People respond to that in a different way, right? They’re not just responding from their head.

as happens with this proposal, I designed it to look like a seventh grade girl’s composition book. So handwritten notes everywhere. It was a very, very cool book proposal. And so the same publisher rejected it. The actual publisher was in the editor’s office one day who had rejected it. And she picked it up and she said, what is this? This is so cool. And she said, it’s this complicated thing, Mackenzie Blue. It’s too complicated, too much going on. We passed. And the publisher said,

I’m interested, bring her in, let’s ask her some questions. You know, so I go in to meet with them and they’re like literally 16 people around a table and me and my agent and I spent about an hour and a half just answering their questions. Boom, boom, boom. Had an answer for everything and my agent gets a call.

you know, about two hours later and she’s like, almost fell out of my seat. They offered you a massive deal, you know, and it’s really, and that kind of came from someone saying no first, right? It came from rejection, but what are my keys? one presentation matters, right? I was really prepared for the assignment and my proposal spoke for me when I was not in the room to speak for myself, right? It spoke for me enough to get me the audition, right? The second thing is when I got the audition, I was prepared for it, right?

Answering questions for an hour and a half is super tough, right? But people are choosing to make an investment or deciding if they’re going to make an investment of their time, their talent, their resources into you. I needed to prove that I was worth time, talent, resources to make this book go, right? In the series, it wasn’t just a book. They were committing to four book series. And then I think the final thing is like…

Alice Draper (44:01)
Yeah.

Tina (44:20)
being really present and really showing up, right? So it’s not just how I answered, it was how engaged, you could tell genuinely I loved what I was pitching, right? And that is how I feel about anything I’m doing at the moment is I am fully in love with what I am doing at that moment. that, people pick up on that. They pick up on that authenticity of you truly, you’re not just doing a thing, you’re not just pitching the next thing, and in that moment in my life, and I still feel that way, right? 20 plus years later, I’m still writing for tween girls because I genuinely

genuinely love writing for this age group, right? And you could sense that. And people want to be in partnership with that energy, with someone who is so passionate about what they’re doing.

Alice Draper (45:02)
love that so, so much. I think it’s such a wonderful way to kind of close the conversation. But, and I wish we had more time to jump into kind of you writing between girls, because I feel like it’s such a different thing to what you’re doing in other areas of your business. But really, what I take away from this, and I think it’s just a great piece of advice for anyone listening, is that when someone says no to you, that doesn’t mean necessarily that the product is, you know, if you’ve accumulated a lot of rejections for a book, it doesn’t necessarily mean the product is bad, but it…

could mean that needs to be repackaged. So it could mean that you need to change some things about the book. Maybe you need to go through another round of edits, of re -bring something to the forward that was down in the middle. And I think, like thinking really strategic likely at your rejections is not just like a process of, I’ve got these rejections, I must keep sending it out to get more and eventually it’ll get accepted. But it can also be like, actually, maybe I need to change some things, repackage them some things, tweak it and like.

go back and you know, I love the story that you got an acceptance from a previous rejection.

Tina (46:06)
Well, and I think one point I want to make before we close is I wasn’t wrong. Right? I was ahead of the curve. I’ve spent so much of my career ahead of the curve. The tween I was seeing was in real life, right? I was doing research in focus groups, but culture, right? And marketing had yet to catch up to this new customer and who she was becoming. Right? What I needed to do better was communicate my perspective and why.

Alice Draper (46:12)
Yeah.

You

Yeah.

Tina (46:36)
So the sell through was my ability to communicate why my perspective was correct. If you had only been used to a child, a girl as a child and you didn’t understand, no, there’s this new emerging girl called a tween. She’s in between being a teenager and a child. She’s doing this and doing that. And when I really started to talk to you, what happens? People start to say,

Alice Draper (46:36)
Mmm.

Tina (46:57)
I think my daughter’s going through that. Right? So it’s a validation of a perspective. But if you hold a perspective and you can’t validate and can’t explain to someone why those are your values, then you really need to think about, are they your values? Right? Because as founders, as entrepreneurs, we should be able to very clearly communicate our why.

Alice Draper (47:17)
Yeah, yeah. It’s so fantastic. Thank you so much, Tina. And thank you so much for your time today. And yeah, we need to get our hands on some of those tween books. if you’re listening, you can also get a copy of The Elevation Approach and all of her books on Amazon and anywhere else. And I’m also giving away copies. So to listen to who subscribes, just email screenshots to media at hustlingwriters .com. Thank you so much, Tina.

Tina (47:22)
Thank you.

Ha

Thanks, Alice.

Thank you. All right,