welcome to visionaries where we believe your powerful message is the best way to grow your business impact the world and live a meaningful life today we have on tamara zantel tamara how are you i am amazing how are you good good you know i'm so excited to get connected with you um i just knew a little bit about your story before stepping into this and we haven't really met too much but we're in the same business group um tell us why you decided to drop out of corporate and build your own brand ah so i decided to drop out of corporate um to not just build my own brand but to help my daughter at the time she was 16 my 16 year old daughter built her brand she started a business when she was nine years old plant-based skin care we struggled in the beginning um a struggling nine-year-old entrepreneur you know struggling the life of a nine-year-old entrepreneur you have no idea um and i really should say i struggled being her parent manager trying to figure out how to squeeze push um and get her into the rooms and seats at tables in order for her to be recognized as an actual formulator as an artisan at that time um in the skincare world that is you know is well you might not know it's extremely competitive so um i could fill you in on all the stuff that happened before i decided to actually retire but i remember sitting at my desk um looking out the window and i'm like you know this is a really nice place to be i love being here but then i had this feeling this overwhelming feel feeling like but am i going to be here forever like we have the potential to build this amazing brand but i felt but i i'm not giving it a fair shot that was like the first time i had a conversation with myself and i was just honest about not giving zandra which is my daughter's name and also the brand's name a real fair chance to be successful by giving it my undivided attention so i made a decision in that moment and i got up walked down the hall and i told my boss and i was like i think i'm gonna leave in 30 days i have other stuff to do and he was like so are you gonna go sell soap with your daughter yeah that's exactly what i'm gonna do i was like not only soap but lotion and lip balm and a whole bunch of other stuff whatever she wants i'm gonna put my all behind her um just like i put my all behind you and i'm gonna help her build a million dollar brand and that's what i did wow and this is how old was xander at this point she was 16. oh she was 16 by the time you left okay yeah she was so what do you um we were talking before we hit record and this has been now about two and a half years for you what is the road sense dropping out of corporate ben like um it's been a a whirlwind for zandra the brand it it just took off i feel i felt like it was the baby that just needed the attention you know and and we all know that whatever we water grows right so once we started to water it and i i sat down and got really clear about what how i what i could bring to the corporation to support my daughter's dream and then i did that first and then i brought the family in on it and i said listen if we're gonna do this we're all gonna be affected by this process so we need to all be in you know so i have five children so it was like all in so we made like the necessary adjustments and we downsized at the time me and my husband were both um you know working in corporate we also had consultant jobs like we went from two bmws to one family car and you know like we literally changed our life so that we could pour all our resources into building a family business um we gave our children roles um i agreed to not take a salary and just kind of just dig in and do whatever um it was tough but as soon as we started to you know kind of hold hands in a way and work to building the business it just started to pop and it just opportunity after opportunity started to come and it just really was amazing it just really was amazing so i have no regrets yeah that's amazing i'm sorry can we pause for one moment sure uh i've got no lock in my door and my four-year-old i saw you yeah i was like oh my goodness he is he sneaks in when i can't control it that's awesome

thank you uh he's so cute i saw him strolling behind him i know i was trying to put my hands out there like stop just roll with it i guess that's the nature of things i i i had a lock in our la home i could lock him away and he could just scream on the other side of the door right like my dog sydney looking at me through the glass door and she's like are you serious like i can't be in there get out yeah yeah no i understand but that's the joy of working from home and i think everybody understands it it is you know i'm doing live stream all kinds of stuff happens i'm like whatever it is what it is yeah it is well and then you uh you have more kids at home right than just zandra yes um i almost said unfortunately because they're all adults technically i will tell you they're all adults so um my daughter mercedes is um she's the eldest she just turned 27 she's actually married um she lives in kentucky she has she's responsible for my two grand beauties the best little humans in the whole entire world yeah i wasn't really excited about being a grandmother right or nana they called me but then i was like how can i live my life without these people they're so amazing um but she's married and they have their life she's married to a nfl football player so they're fine wow yeah they're fine and then um our oldest boy lj he plays professional football in canada okay but we haven't seen him in a while because he's in canada and they locked down the border which is not fun but it's life our life right now and then um then there's james he is also a professional football player but he's on pause right now um he's going back and forth to uh north carolina but since he's been off work this year he's working to finish his last semester from john kerry university from college which i'm so excited about because he paused because he got drafted and then um now he's home in buffalo while he's doing school virtually and he's actually a fulfillment manager at zandra which is really cool because he started you know in production and doing little things but when he came back home of course you know he got a little taste to living life oh yeah dad and now he came back with like dreams and he wants to start a t-shirt line and do this and so we just empowered him by giving him a larger position and now he has some things that he's in charge of so you can't tell him anything he's like family business yeah totally business and then there's zandra and then josiah he's 19. so he's home and he also he's a production assistant at zandra and um zandra is also here and i'm like whenever you're ready you can go so cool so is that your main business now still or um i think you hinted that you're doing some other projects so what happened is once i left corporate and things started to you know kick off for zandra and we were able to expand and hire and we really started to operate as a company um i i felt like it was it was my opportunity to do what i wanted to do you know like of course i love working for my teenage child however the pay is not great i'm gonna tell you so i was like what do i want to do you know for the first time i was in a position where i could really think about what made me happy and i i was reminded that back in like 2000 2012 i remember saying to i think i was having a conversation with my mother or someone and i was like you know if i ever get to the point where people care about what i think or what i have to say um you know about kid entrepreneurship or the way the role the world the way the world sees kids in business i'm going to um i i'm going to start a movement around that so um i started raising a mogul so raising a mogul is my company that i launched in 2017 and what i do is i work with parents who have children in business so kids that want to start a business or kids that want to or parents that who have a child that wants to start or parents whose kids have been in business but they just don't really understand business or they're looking to grow or expand that business so that's what raise your mobile does so we have a um a community of parents who are really you know we're working to change their mindset around what's really possible when it comes to a child's idea and how that can turn into a full family um legacy in a way oh yeah wow you know i i love that so so much because this is like i i've always been kind of entrepreneurial but i didn't know what was possible until several years ago when i had left my corporate job like you and recognizing the power of entrepreneurship um and the how important it is to learn it at such a young age because then you can have self-reliance you can create more control out of your your career um and have a lot more i feel like there's a lot more opportunity behind it and teaches you so many other skills that real world skills that say a typical education uh kind of robs you from absolutely absolutely well the world teaches us that we only have a few options right it's like uh graduate from high school go to college get a job no get a good job get a good job and now we all know right like what does that even mean anymore so yeah there's like the elite jobs or jobs but who's to say that that's um your child's destiny you know what i mean so i think with many of the parents i work i work with it's or that i just in our community that are exposed to other families doing something different that's the really big thing here it's just all about doing something different and being around other people that are interested in doing something different or at least exploring the idea that there are different things to do um you know i know my parents you know dibbled and dabbled in entrepreneurship we had a candy store when we were little you know my mom always inspired us to have our own and start your own but there's a difference between seeing entrepreneurship and seeing people you know sell stuff out of their trunk or you know see someone you know at the salon and someone's selling cds or whatever like okay that's great that's entrepreneurship right but i'm talking about systems procedures like growing it to the point where it's something that you can actually pass down to the next generation that's not something that many of us see you know we see it we see it out there but many of the families i work with they don't realize that it's a possibility for them and more importantly they don't realize or even consider that it could start with your six-year-old child or your 13-year-old son's amazing experiment or whatever you know what i mean so yeah and one thing i love in thinking about that too is if you think of any business out there it all started with an entrepreneur it all started from that first step um no matter the age of of the person uh or they're in some ways their skill level is just a matter of taking this idea and taking it to market you know and and you know from those people who have entrepreneurial tendencies or are doing activities to try to sell um there is a whole other level of you mentioned the systems and the structure which really i feel like separates those who make it a hobby with some side income or a full-blown career out of it and probably something you had to tackle um when you're like wait a minute i'm you know i'm not making tons of money uh you know like the business is a million dollar brand but maybe you know you were seeing up other opportunities beyond the xander brand to uh to take to market yourself yeah absolutely and we definitely i love that you mentioned hobby because that was a big transition for us when we decided that zandra was going to be a business and it was no longer going to be a hobby so she had nine years old it wasn't until she was about um i would say until she was about 12 then you know the things she wanted and the the way she spoke about her future i was like wait a minute like uh yeah this is this is detailed like this is something you need more really she needed more than me she did more than what i can give her and i and i will say this it hurts me to say it but i will say it all day long now that i've matured into the space i would say that i literally i held my child back i believe i did because my my thinking and my mindset there was at that time i was still looking at her as a child so therefore i wasn't respecting the business for what it could be if that makes any sense you know what i mean so i'm looking at it as a hub so i didn't invest and we know in entrepreneurship you have to invest you can't just lean to your own understanding and say oh this looks great to us this packaging is good we don't need anybody else's opinion you know i was being more for mom and parenting with eagle thinking that we had it all together and we didn't so um at 12 she i enrolled her into the university of buffalo center for entrepreneurial leadership they had a year-long business management program and it was all of course it was only for adults so we had to do a whole lot of a whole lot of stuff to get her old yeah and she graduated actually at the top of her class at 13. that experience changed her as a person and it literally changed her life in the scope of the business that transition was when it was clear business plan we hired a new a company to help us rebrand we re like just tore down the brand the brain actually had a whole different name then it was called azeri's innocence which was a cute name but it was just terrible the whole everything was terrible so but after graduating from there was like okay this is a business let's get this business going and then it just started to expand from there and as we um relaunched we relaunched in 2014 and then 2015 we you know had started to nail the marketing piece and really understanding what we wanted it to stand for and she was um super clear that she wanted um you know it the brand to be social good and i'm sorry is this hey you're fine that's normal oh okay either that or a four-year-old right no yeah she is like but she has to do it so close to me i wanted to go somewhere else in the house um there's a truck outside or something near the house i apologize um i don't even know what i was saying yeah it was the rebranding to to zander yeah figuring out what you want to stand for yeah so yeah so she had to get super clear on what she wanted the company to stand for and then once we nailed that brand story and she um you know our mission our vision our core values all those things once we got all that stuff under control um and it and i say it like it was a big long experience because keep in mind i'm dealing with a teenager so even the rebrand took a whole year because i didn't know there was 58 000 colors of shades of pink you know what i mean and then when you're dealing with a child that wears like hot pink doc martens and she has blue hair my daughter's always been super creative she worked with a designer directly because i was like i don't have time for this like it was stressing me out so everything took forever but it was fine because once it was done it was perfect to her and the brand just exploded you know so um i really think you know that process of going from hobby to real business i learned it so like intimately that's why i feel like i'm effective with helping other parents like i can look at what they're doing and say nope don't waste no time let's get this done you got to fix this fix that if you decide hobby business what's good because businesses invest they invest in the things that they're weak in they invest in looking the part you say you want to be on the shelves of target okay well let's see what they what those brands look like and that's really what our reality was we used to walk target for a year we walked target every now and then and she's like oh i can see my products here i can see them here and then once we did the work she's in 762 targets like who knew that was gonna happen she knew that was gonna happen and it was my job to help her get there yeah wow which perfectly born like um what's what's the word i'm looking for yeah like born out of that was definitely this raising a mogul brand as well well i guess one thing i want to hit on too which is so important to what i do at content supply is this idea of messaging and setting a vision uh out for your brand do you feel like that's something that you need to do it like phase one of the entrepreneurial journey is to set that in place or do you feel like that comes naturally or becomes a better fit later on after you get into business i think it's best to have it in the beginning i think the foundation brand work is super important and it's critical to any brand but do i think it's probably probably one of the hardest parts of building a business yes which is why right because we want to sell stuff we want to make money we don't necessarily understand how this fire or this passion inside of us how it relates to the world or how to get that miss that um message out to people where they care which is where a lot of entrepreneurs are failing you know i talk to parents about this all the time um we just want to say we love it it's what we like and then we put it out it's like okay what's the story behind it like why should people even care and you know what's the message and you know it's all you know it's just i would say yes i think it definitely should be a part of that foundational work and i think the companies that you see or that we think we see appear out of nowhere but they have it all together and then next to you know they're you know on the forbes list or wherever it's like well because they spent three years building a brand they spent two years getting you know building an audience you know and getting building audience around this message and this vision and they're clear where's a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of small businesses come out swinging and they're just happy because they have a great logo or whatever the heck and that's not it that's not all one thing i've definitely seen too you know from the branding perspective which i would say underneath that is like you talked about with zandra um investing in the design into the messaging the vision um businesses can definitely get started without that but you can only grow like what i've seen you know i'll speak from personal experience too is that you can only grow to a certain point until it's like okay when the rubber actually hits the road and i want to go to the next level um you know i need to get really clear on like what in my building here right what do i stand for that's it who am i serving you know and all these things and and so yeah you can make money make sells but a lot of times too in that phase that early phase before branding really kicks in and becomes vital it's usually just relationships alone like you know you're building a relationship based business which every business should be that that way but um i think without like getting ready for the next level um it will kind of keep you stuck i totally agree and i think um we also have we also have to be very clear what type of business which is i feel like what you're saying we want to build because we can sell widgets all day and nobody even knows that we're the widget seller you know what i mean there's all kinds of ads and stuff running rolling around for i mean we don't know why people started buying or whoever started selling the pet rock but it took over right so you know that was a thing you know it was um so absolutely people buy things without a story line you know but i think if we're um passionate about what we do and we're really committed to serving or helping people um you that that peace it just makes more sense to do in the beginning because we get stuck and then the investment sometimes is even greater and then we have to look at it with me i can talk about you know for us personally if i had it started in the beginning with building the brand the right way and really you know talking to my child and getting a feel for you know the impact we wanted to make on the world she would have made her first million dollars before she was 13. much less 16 you know or we would have been able to help feed and clothe and buy books and bikes for girls in malawi starting in 2012 or 2011 maybe instead of in 2014 and 15. so i just think about the time and resources i don't want to say wasted because we grew to where we are which is why i have a story to tell right um but i i my thing is when i talk to my parents it's like okay i want to help you do what we something similar to what we did but in half the time or less and that that of that work has to do with really everything you just said from the beginning that's where we start you know oh yeah oh yeah i i'm so glad you shared that example too because um it does like people don't realize how much money they're actually losing out on um by not focusing on this early on uh let me see oh my camera turned off uh and uh and so by investing that it's only gonna grow you faster but in the right way uh with raising a mogul so going to that brand real quick um talk to me about the vision you have there um and what's uh what's kind of next for you 2020 onward awesome thank you for asking me that yeah mogul is really a movement you know i um i spent this week for example of this movement um we have several programs under raising a mogul and one of them is young mogul prep school it is a it's actually a brand that zandra started when she was 15 and then as she started to be a speaker and travel and get busy she she set it aside um but i picked it back up with raising a mogul and it's a preparatory school for just young moguls just for kids that want to start businesses and grow businesses but it's all about the kids so the kids meet a couple times a month on zoom and they're working on their businesses but i have the amazing opportunity to teach them a lesson a business lesson every single month and um this tuesday we met and it would have been their pep rally because their pep rallies every month and we had a board meeting all of the little kids so i have like four kids on zoom yeah the board meeting because it's like there's young ceos and our board meeting was to discuss their um end of the year marketplace where they're all gonna have an opportunity to present and share everything they've been working on throughout the year and it's also like their graduation and um because this class is our freshman class they're gonna be sophomores and when i tell you spending time with those kids is like the highlight of my month it is the best like it just it's just like the instant reminder of what this what raising a mogul is all about you know because you know first there's tons of opportunities for kids now not when xander started but now to have access to information and pitch competitions and to enroll in classes and this stuff in schools now where you can enroll your kid into an entrepreneurship something right but where raising a mogul fills the gap is you could teach the kids about business all you want but they still have to go home to parents that have no idea what they're talking about right the majority of the parents the kids are all excited about it and then they get home and mom and dad is like what you have to go to college you're going like you're bringing home a math problem then the parents like uh like no we're not that we're not invested in that you can't do that right dream killers right warning

that movement it's you know it starts with the kids idea but and and we're working with the parents but it kind of rounds it out with we have stuff for the kids and stuff for the parents so moving forward um it's all about building our creating opportunities where the the parents with a full family comes together and we work to support each other so we have a live event um well last year we had a live event in atlanta this year we did it virtual but my vision is we'll continue to do live meetups and experiences where the kids can actually be together and see each other because representation matters if i remember how lonely xander was and if you don't see someone else that can't drive either in business you don't even think it's possible like your parent your mom can tell you all the time that this is great we're gonna do this but if you feel they feel lonely in the process it usually doesn't lead to success you know but at the same time the parents need the same thing you know because many of the parents if you you say your four-year-old you know he's gonna be an author or he's gonna start a podcast or start a you know selling you know whatever you know a lot of people are going to be like is he serious you know depending on who your friends are my friends did to me you know what i mean they were like you're crazy let her be every well and there's that and like there's also a stigma with certain people and this idea of entrepreneurship that not everyone thinks that when you're an entrepreneur that you're rich uh i mean i met this couple and i think we're at disneyland and it was like a random day in the week this is last year when disneyland was open we were in la and it was is this older couple we're talking to them and they're like so what do you do for work i'm like oh i brought my business i'm an entrepreneur um just kind of you know that's kind of my regular simplified way to to talk to general public um and they're like oh an entrepreneur huh they kind of like rolled their eyes at it and i haven't really had that happen too much to be honest but um it's because they had a negative association with a son-in-law who was a and entrepreneur he had his own business but not making any money right so it's like here is their daughter you know stepping up and trying to do it so a lot of people whether it's entrepreneurship or maybe even capitalism in business ownership that there's this idea that it's cutthroat you're in it just for the money but but i think that's why it goes back into what we started talking about a little bit ago with this idea of having a vision a message in a way you want to impact the world and sandra you're doing amazing things with obviously raising a mobile you're raising the next generation of entrepreneurs uh and so it's it to me it's a reformatting of how we think about entrepreneurship especially as we are yeah my goal with raising a mogul is to prepare the parents so that when their child because i'm gonna you know just say it that most of our kids are smarter than us like they're not they're not afraid like yes they need to be taught they need to be guided and all that but they have this like this this they don't fear and they they they just have this fire in them when they see something and they want it they're just they just go after it you know so they have things that i complete kids have things in them that i completely admire and the work i do with the parents is like okay do you see how excited your son or daughter is like if you say you want to help them do this i need you to learn how to do it right so it's the idea of becoming a parent manager and being able to separate the two understanding when you have to be this child's mother or father and then understanding when you have to negotiate a deal like a manager you know like you know it's one and then this is the other thing um i wanted to i just lost my train of thought but because the other piece of that is there there are a lot of kids that are um being taken advantage of because it's super cute you know to have a six-year-old with a bakery business or a 13-year-old that is a public speaker or that whatever you know kids kids get a lot of attention right so you have a lot of businesses and people and organizations popping up saying they want to put your kid on a flyer or they want to have a kid panel or whatever but it's like okay well those kids just like you pay the adults you should pay the kids and the parents don't know what to ask they don't even know how to negotiate deals they don't know how to create opportunities for their kids they don't know there's all kinds of things you know they don't know um because they just looking at it as a hobby instead of as a business but for their business they're doing all the things but for their child's business it's just like oh we'll get there yeah it's nice and it's cute and i'm like but the interesting thing i noticed and i've been thinking about this over the last couple weeks it's like if you you say your son or daughter wants to play hockey or wants to dance or be a swimmer like that's so acceptable like if they want to be like an equestrian no is that isn't that what when you ride horses the question what do you make of it i have no idea i don't know yeah that's an expensive sport right it is um then you go all in you buy the dance shoes the hockey puck the pads the football stuff and then you show up five days a week and cheer them on right drop them off the whole thing but when it comes to your child's business it's like oh we'll get to it so it's like why you put all that behind a sport but you won't equally give give equal share to the idea of them starting a business that could actually turn into amazing thing or maybe not maybe they're just going to learn some super awesome skills you know um so it's just really like a mindset shift of about what's normal air quotes and what's not normal for kids yeah wow well what would like kind of like a wrapping up thought that i want to pull specific to raising a mogul what would you tell to uh a parent and a child who is considering building their own business they have an idea and they want to get started you want me to talk to them individually or together i like the idea of together if you're sitting down yes and it should be done together i love this yeah so i would say the first step is a really critical conversation um for the parent to really um first ask appropriate you know the appropriate questions of the child and give them the freedom to really just kind of like brain dump their full idea out you know and this is the hard part for that parent to just kind of sit there and take notes and just listen to your child's heart and the reason why i say that's because many of us parent with ego and the first thing we want to do is either we take over or we tell them why it won't work and that's where creativity gets killed so that would be the first thing having that conversation letting your child speak freely and then you figure out okay what do i have in me that i could do to support this idea this dream and then what don't i have you know so then once you know what you don't have you can go seek that and what you know it and once you you're clear about what you can give and contribute you can make a plan for that so it's really like that initial brainstorming idea creation um but it's really also a a real just honest hard talk like you need to know like you want to sell um pens or make lip gloss or whatever it is or start a youtube channel let's talk about how many hours that's going to take let's do our research and see how is your life going to change how will my life change how will your brother and sister's lives change you know um the time the sacrifice just the real real before we buy anything before we invest in anything before we you know do all the things that's the initial piece and that's usually like a one to two week experience really it's the start of a conversation but as we start to do our research and your child will change his or her mind maybe four or five times which is okay it's normal you um have to kind of get over yourself and let them fly and really think all crazy whether they're gonna it's gonna be dinosaurs and puppies whatever let it go and you'll figure it out right well you reel them back in but our children want to be heard you know and we as parents want to think consider this process starting with this first meeting as us becoming our our child's potential business partner as opposed to i'm parenting this kid that wants to start a business it's like no we're going to do something together and what does that look like and how will that impact our lives together in our entire family yeah wow that's so good what a great thing to end off on but also send off to people who have on visionaries out there entrepreneurs who um who may be a kid themselves or feeling like they need even if you're older and needing to get that buy-in from your parents that kind of validation we feel like sometimes we feel like we sometimes need um i think that's a solid message for that um well this has been amazing uh to connect with you and thank you so much for sharing i'm super inspired uh i've got a for you know my kids are not as old as yours but i've got a four year old at home that i'm like he's i want him to you know be raised into this mogul type um entrepreneur you know i i get so excited for what's possible for these kids he will be because it's a part of who you are so easy working and he's definitely not shy yeah no he's not he walked right into the room and he knows dad's working in his office but but to your point early on i mean there's there's such an incredible silver lining to having something of your own and the fact that like when i came from corporate you know i wasn't seeing him for nine hours a day and now it's like i can see him a little pocket moments throughout the day or maybe i want to linger a little longer and it's just an incredible opportunity to have such easy access to um our family and the life you want yeah yeah sounds incredible it sounds so cliche ish but it's it's simple like at the end of all like i don't need to have you know thousands of thousands of employees in a company you know i work with you know like as long as you can live comfortably like this is my part of my vision is like i want to live a very very comfortable life yeah i want to make lots of money along the way and serve lots of people but it can also be very simple you know i don't have to be on the face of every billboard if that's a thing anymore or you know every single magazine out there you know um if that's not me so i i this is great this is so great so thank you so much for joining and we'll talk to you soon thank you so much for the opportunity bye-bye thanks so much for listening uh once again if you would like to learn more about how you can use your unique message and share with the world through video and create videos that actually are professional and perform bring you money and all of the results and influence that you want to make then i invite you to learn more by going to contentsupply.com thanks again for listening and we'll talk to you very soon

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