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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: It's Toronto's podcast on the Canada's podcast network.
[00:22] SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Phil Bliss, a business visionally. Welcome to stop, think, focus, execute. I'd like to introduce you to Tuesday,
[00:34] SPEAKER_01: Johnson McDonald, great friend of mine and president of TAF resources. Tuesday, why don't you give everyone a quick profile of who you are in your business and a bit more about time?
[00:47] SPEAKER_00: I'm a Haudenosaunee woman from the Mohawk Nation, Goof Klan. I started TAF resource about 15 years ago, now 16 years ago, and we are an event management firm that specializes with Indigenous events.
[01:01] SPEAKER_00: So 95% of our clientele, which we call partners, have an Indigenous focus. They're either Indigenous people themselves or their designing programs targeted to go to the Indigenous people.
[01:17] SPEAKER_01: And I might as well say that 15 years ago, we began working together and I helped you planning out TAF resources. I can remember the chemistry at that particular time, and we're talking about stop, think, focus, execute. So maybe you can explain the stop and think piece behind TAF resources.
[01:36] SPEAKER_00: I needed a job. And looking at really wanting to do my own thing, and then looking at what the skills that I had, what could I bring to the table, what was the knowledge, what was the skills.
[01:50] SPEAKER_00: I stopped and refocused on where I really wanted to go, which surprised me to some degree, because I have a policy background, and we had a lot of policy and research components that was our forefront when we started, but very quickly changed that focus.
[02:06] SPEAKER_00: And started to really focus in the event management side of things.
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can explain a little bit more about how TAF has grown, how you move from that stop and think to the focus and execute of the first say five years of the business.
[02:22] SPEAKER_00: Well, the first stop was acknowledging that I knew nothing about business. I came from policy background, not for profit.
[02:30] SPEAKER_00: The thing was find somebody who knows something about business, focus it. And execute hire him. And then some of the other pieces, I guess it's just been, I'm different person.
[02:48] SPEAKER_01: You are.
[02:48] SPEAKER_00: I don't really different from who I was when I started 15 years ago. And that's because of the stop, think, focus, and execute. And it got turned on me internally, really quickly, even in the business applications, right?
[03:01] SPEAKER_00: There's been pivotal points in the business over the last 15 years where things weren't going.
[03:07] SPEAKER_00: So explain a couple of those points.
[03:09] SPEAKER_00: Well, the first point, I guess when I started the business, as you know, I had three business partners and very quickly within six months, I was on my own.
[03:16] SPEAKER_00: And so it wasn't a really pivotal stop, think, focus.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So that was really when I got involved with it.
[03:22] SPEAKER_00: It was pivotal then for me to decide am I going to go back to work for somebody else or am I going to do this?
[03:30] SPEAKER_00: For me at that point, it was a lot of paranoia and a lot of fear.
[03:34] SPEAKER_00: Can I do this on my own and my smart enough? So many people are expecting me to fail. At least that was in my head, right?
[03:40] SPEAKER_00: And so then my stubbornness came out. Where I would say I started to focus on, I'm not failing.
[03:47] SPEAKER_00: This is not an often start to focus. Where do I want to go? What's the vision for 10, 15 years down the road?
[03:56] SPEAKER_00: And that's where the event management stuff came in.
[03:58] SPEAKER_01: But you know, in terms of the focus side of it, you stripped away so much of the stuff that we had in the plan 15 years ago.
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that's happened over a period of time because the business as it is today was not the business as we wrote up 15 years ago.
[04:16] SPEAKER_00: When I stopped and I really started to focus on what it was that I was doing and what I wanted to do.
[04:21] SPEAKER_00: It was a matter of where I could stand out. The event management side seemed to be that. And so I started to educate myself.
[04:29] SPEAKER_00: I remember attending my first association meeting way back when in my head I was going, oh my God, I really don't know what I'm doing.
[04:40] SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand the science behind meeting planning. I understood how to put the agenda together, but there's far more to meeting planning than just that.
[04:50] SPEAKER_01: A few years ago, you came up with this thing called the Meeting Scouts.
[04:53] SPEAKER_01: Yes. I got to believe I was a stop think time to deal with competition. I prefer in your words versus my words.
[05:01] SPEAKER_00: The Meeting Scout is not a new program. It's basically hotel site selections.
[05:07] SPEAKER_00: Lots of companies, big and small, very gigantic companies do nothing but hotel site selection.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: But what I see was an opportunity in the marketplace. No one was focusing on the Aboriginal market.
[05:20] SPEAKER_00: No one was understanding that market and how much opportunity there was.
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: And so I put a cultural lens on it. When you look at our logo, it's a white wolf.
[05:31] SPEAKER_01: I know it well.
[05:31] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. A couple of reasons for that is that the wolf are responsible to go ahead of the pack and look for dangers, looks for sleeping places, nice places to rest and that kind of a thing.
[05:42] SPEAKER_00: And I come from the Wolf Clan too, right? But it took a while, even that because I launched it.
[05:46] SPEAKER_00: And then I had to stop, rethink and refocus because I was running into some really unique challenges as I was going to do myself calls and trying to recruit people into the program.
[05:58] SPEAKER_00: And I probably took it out of market for about a year to just refocus again and get it right.
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: And get it right.
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: I mean that's all bound by stop and think really. If you don't think strongly enough, the focus and execution just doesn't pay off.
[06:13] SPEAKER_01: What is a couple of other key moments in the last decade or so where you've hit something and you've had to sort of stop and think about it?
[06:23] SPEAKER_00: I was at my 10 year mark and the business was okay but I wasn't able to get it over a certain hump.
[06:32] SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't that I didn't understand how to do strategic planning. So I had to stop and really look to see what that was.
[06:41] SPEAKER_00: I took a really intense training session. It was focused more on me and overcoming like as an indigenous woman who has lived in communities, I have lived through a lot of the social hills that we understand that many of us do in our communities.
[06:57] SPEAKER_00: And carrying those around it really impacts your psyche, it impacts your personality, it impacts your belief in yourself. And it was holding me back.
[07:09] SPEAKER_00: You know that saying that they say, fake it to you make it. I was doing a lot of that, a lot of faking it to you make it.
[07:16] SPEAKER_00: So now that has all changed for me.
[07:20] SPEAKER_01: What's happened in the last three or four years to the business?
[07:25] SPEAKER_00: One we've probably tripled our revenue base. In the last four years.
[07:29] SPEAKER_00: In the last four years. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. We're really successful. Like from what I defined success and what it was that was important to me.
[07:39] SPEAKER_00: Very successful. It's really cool. I gotta tell you it's really cool and people will introduce me and say this Tuesday, Johnson McDonald's cheese from tap.
[07:46] SPEAKER_00: These artists and people say, oh, your Tuesday from tap, we've heard a tap. And I'm going, yes, that's fantastic.
[07:54] SPEAKER_00: So even the company is known ahead of me as the individual, right? So which is really good, I think.
[08:00] SPEAKER_01: That's great branding. If you move tap to that, because it was always Tuesday's company, now it's tap.
[08:06] SPEAKER_00: I have people that are coming to me because they've learned the reputation of some of that is just pure branding, right?
[08:13] SPEAKER_01: But also the reputation of our delivery style. Being a successful entrepreneurial woman now. In terms of stop, focus, execute.
[08:21] SPEAKER_01: Give them a few gems that they should consider in that thought process. Well, they're gems and I don't know who knows.
[08:27] SPEAKER_00: But for me, it really felt like it really was a matter of what was it that I wanted. And I had to define that really clearly for myself.
[08:37] SPEAKER_00: Really focusing in on what does that mean? What am I willing to give up? What am I not willing to give up?
[08:44] SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where we started to chip off some of the other pieces, right? Definitely sacrifices, right? That you make.
[08:51] SPEAKER_00: As well, it was a dead-fying passion. I mean, I'm not going to lie, there was paranoia in there.
[08:57] SPEAKER_01: I would hope so. Healthy paranoia is a good thing.
[09:00] SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, because it keeps you on your toes, right?
[09:02] SPEAKER_01: Well, Tuesday, I'm going to thank you for coming. Thank you.
[09:06] SPEAKER_01: It really is great to see where you began and realizing how far you've come in the last 15 years. It's awesome.
[09:14] SPEAKER_01: And thank you for watching. Stop, think, focus, execute. I'm Phil Bliss. See you next time.
