June 4, 2025 • 52 mins
Ep. 86: Want to start consulting? Here’s how one mom made it work (and what she’s learned)
In this episode of All Figured Out, I sat down with Tiffany Rosik—tech executive turned founder of TGR Management Consulting—to hear the story behind her leap into self-employment. We talk about what made her walk away from a high-paying job, how she actually launched her consulting firm (step-by-step), and how she thinks about freedom and flexibility as a working parent.
We also dive into her bold advice for navigating pregnancy at work, plus why she thinks more moms should coach their kids’ sports teams (even if you know nothing about the sport—yep, she said it!).
You’ll learn how to:
- Know if consulting is right for you (and when it’s not)
- Start getting clients even without a perfect pitch
- Build your own “board of directors” when making a major career move
- Frame your career pause (like maternity leave) in a powerful way
Related episodes:
- Ep. 35: My journey from corporate ladders to the entrepreneurial jungle gym – Spotify or Apple
- Ep. 54: Leaving a career she loved, raising TWINS and starting a business with Mackenzie Forge – Spotify or Apple
- Ep. 61: The VA revolution: parents leaving the 9 to 5 to make more as a virtual assistant with Sasha Eburne – Spotify or Apple
About the guest:
Tiffany Rosik is the founder and CEO of TGR Management Consulting, where she specializes in technology project rescues and operations strategy. After two decades in healthcare tech, she pivoted to consulting with the help of her personal “board of directors.” Tiffany is also the author of That’s Not the Help I Need: Real Talk for Women About Winning at Work—a must-read for women navigating ambition, family, and fairness in the workplace.
Grab her book That’s Not the Help I Need on Amazon or follow Tiffany on Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also sign up for her once-a-month newsletter at tiffanyrosik.com.
About Andrea Barr, host of All Figured Out:
Andrea Barr is a certified career and life coach who helps ambitious parents take charge of their careers and lives with strategy, intention, and freedom. She rejects the idea that success requires sacrifice—showing parents how to create more time, flexibility, and fulfillment without burnout. Through her coaching, workshops, and podcast, All Figured Out, Andrea shares the strategies and mindset shifts parents need to design careers that fit their lives—so they can thrive at work and at home.
Connect with Andrea via Instagram here or her website here.
If you’re job searching, you need to visit The Resume Shop by Andrea Bar
Shop beautiful, customizable, and plug-and-play resumes so you can start landing those dream job interviews.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome back to the All Figured Out Podcast.
My name is Andrea Barr. Thanks for joining me again this
week. Today I bring you Tiffany
Rossak, who is a really incredible woman.
She is the founder and CEO of TGR Management Consulting, and
she's had a really interesting career both on the tech side,
project management and many other roles.
(00:21):
And now she has actually pivotedto having her own consulting
company. So recently I've been working
with a lot of different clients who are actually toying with the
idea of creating more flexibility for themselves and
their family by going out and being a consultant themself,
whether that is through freelance work, project based
work, or consulting. So I actually dive really deep
(00:43):
in this episode into how and whyTiffany made the decision to
leave her big study corporate job and go into consulting and
how exactly she did that. I asked the really nitty gritty
details that I personally wantedto know and wanted to know on
behalf of all of you, because I know there's people out there
listening who want to make a jump like this, but you just, it
(01:04):
probably feels really daunting and you just don't know how.
Tiffany is also the author of a new book that's called That's
Not the Help I need real Talk for women about winning at work.
She is really, really big on mentoring the next generation of
women. And she is just she shared some
really cool practical tips. And one of the tips that she
actually talks about or one of the pieces of wisdom she shares
(01:27):
is around how and when to tell your workplace that you're
pregnant. So she she's just a wealth of
knowledge. I think you're going to really
enjoy this conversation, even talk about her grandma, who at
one point was in a bit of a scuffle on the baseball diamond.
Like we go all over the place, but Tiffany is incredible and I
know you're going to enjoy this episode.
(01:47):
And if this sparks a little firewithin you that makes you
realize that you want to make a career change yourself just like
Tiffany did, then reach out. I do 20 minute phone calls or
Zoom calls just to get to know one another.
And we can just chat about whereyou're at and what your big
goals are, where you want to go,and we can see if there's a way
that I can help you out there. So without further ado, Tiffany
(02:08):
Rosik, you're listening to the All Figured Out Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrea Barr. I'm a career coach for parents,
mom of two, and a self-proclaimed expert at
winging it. After 10 years in the corporate
world, two major career pivots, and navigating life with kids,
I've learned one thing. No parent has it all figured
(02:30):
out, and that's OK. Here, we're all about growing
personally and professionally while keeping family time
sacred. You'll get practical tips,
career strategies, and musings on life, plus guest experts to
help us fill in the gaps. So grab a coffee or hide in your
car piece of me time. We're about to figure out this
work, life and parenting stuff out together.
(02:53):
Tiffany Rossett, thank you so much for joining me on the All
Figured Out podcast. Well, thanks for having me,
Andrea. It's great to be here.
It's so good to have you. And this is we were chatting a
bit before this, that this is a really long time coming.
Talk about I was telling Tiffanythat this was like that
situation where there's that person that you continue
canceling on and you you were that person.
(03:16):
And I will say that there is some solace in knowing that I'm
canceling on a fellow mom who's just, you know, and I know you
have two teenage boys. So I, I will apologize on air as
well. Thank.
And no, I will say thank you so much for your patience with me
and re recording this and women helping women, you know, moms
helping moms. Absolutely no.
(03:37):
And it was no big thing because every time I would get the
notice, hey, I need to shift or move, I'm like, yeah, no
problem. I've got, I've got other things
I can slot in. It's not like I was sitting
around with nothing to do, right?
We were laughing about that, howlike, no mom is ever like, oh,
shoot, unless it's like massage that gets cancelled or something
like that. But like, no one's really that
(03:58):
upset about plants being kept up.
So thank you for your grace. We have a jam packed episode.
There's so much that we're goingto cover today, including your
career story, your experience going from working in, you know,
big, big tech industry, leaving that industry, what that was
like to be leaving, to make thatcareer decision, starting your
(04:20):
own consulting firm. I've got a lot of questions
about that because I am working with so many people right now
who are contemplating going in being their own consultant and
just, you know, so many questions, so many questions.
So we're going to go in that andyou have a book and you, the
book was spurred from a passion for mentoring other women in the
workplace, which is so beautiful.
(04:41):
And I know you have a lot to sayon that topic.
And in addition to that, it is International Women's Month,
Women's History Month. Sorry, International Women's Day
will be coming up soon. This will be released a bit
after International Women's Day.So we're going to hear about
your grandma, Grandma Millie, right?
Grandma Millie. Millie, apparently she goes
(05:02):
viral on the social media. So we're going to hear about
Graham Miller. So that is what to expect.
So let's start with your order, your origin story, your your
Spiderman origin story. I want to hear.
Well, Fast forward to when you were working in tech and tell me
what was the, what was, what washappening in your world when you
(05:24):
were deciding, making the decision to transfer transition
out of the company that you wereworking for and into consulting?
Sure, I'm happy to tell the story.
So I, I like to tell folks that I, I grew up on the software
side of, of healthcare technology.
So a lot of the things that we have is monitored conveniences
today, you may or may not remember having to do them in
(05:44):
paper. So everything from, you know,
your electronic medical records to automated claims to be
prescribing. So your prescriptions
automatically going to the pharmacy, the interaction
between the systems to get your X-rays and your Mris digitally.
I did a lot of those things and worked for those companies in
the back end making sure that wedigitize a lot of that and
(06:07):
connected the technologies between the systems.
And at one point in my career, Iended up working for a large
consulting company. So one of the, what I would say
the big 5 consulting companies And you know consulting is
different when you work for a big, big, big company like that
because all of your time is expected to be billable to a
(06:30):
client, Hmm. Whereas you can think, if you
work in a in a more typical company, there's unproductive
time, right? There's maybe, maybe you get 4
hours or five hours of truly productive time of day, but some
of the rest of it is throw away time if you will.
And so consulting generally speaking, they are expecting you
(06:54):
to work about a 4045 hour work week and they really truly want
40 hours at that time to be billable to the client.
That's a lot. It is a lot.
So, so you know, you hear the stories about how exhausting it
is to be on the consulting side and, and I didn't have to fly
anywhere per se. There are some consultant
(07:14):
organizations where they're dispatching you and you are on
site, you're on the plane Monday, Friday, whatever it is.
And, and it, it can be that muchmore exhausting.
But that was not my case when I was working for this particular
company. I was hired in to do program
management and I ended up movinginto some business development
(07:35):
specifically on the healthcare side because of my healthcare
background. And, you know, the organization
reached a point, we were about 18 months in or two years in and
they reached a point where they just decided they didn't have
the, the organizational fortitude to, to wait for that
business to develop. You know, there were, they were
(07:56):
looking for clients that were going to spend at least
$1,000,000 in, in IT services with, with our organization.
And those relationships don't turn up overnight, right?
You've got to be in there pounding the pavement building
rapport, right? It's a lot.
There's a lot of grassroots stuff and they just decided they
didn't want to wait any longer for it and they were going to
(08:17):
close the division that I was working in.
And, and they were, they were nice about it.
They said, hey, look, we'd love to have you in another part of
your organization, finance, oil and gas, electric, right.
So any other industry I, I probably, I could have picked my
move my way into, but I didn't know anything about those.
(08:38):
And so when I sat down and I said, OK, well I'm going to have
to start over, you have to buildrapport.
You've got to find contacts, you've got to learn the
industry. That's just really felt daunting
to me. And you know, at the time I was
seeing my kids at that time wereprobably 8 and 10 years old.
(09:01):
So we were, we were starting to hit sort of the meat of of the
kids where they were moving intosports and after school
activities. And there was just a lot of
logistical stuff. And so I just couldn't see
myself trying to build a new line of business for this other
company and putting in all that time and effort to do it.
So the company ultimately made adecision when I said no, I
(09:23):
wasn't going to move anywhere else.
I wasn't going to move into a different line of business.
I knew that I was going to put myself on a layoff list that was
coming and um, and sure enough it did.
But, but the way I looked at it is, look, they made a decision
about them and I made a decisionabout me and, and, and that's a
really hard decision to make, but it, it ultimately was what
(09:46):
led me to start my own consulting company as well.
That's really cool. I like the way that you phrase
that and maybe you've used that line a couple times, but like,
that's so good. You know, they made a decision
about them. I made a decision about me and
how much power is in that? Like so much power, right?
And it's not to say that the it's hard.
(10:06):
There's like this, there's this push pull between we want
organizations to be people first.
We want them to like really takecare of their human beings,
which they should. We all know they also need to
turn a profit and they need to do what's best for them.
It's like relationships when youknow, when you're like dating
and the person's like, I don't know, I don't think this is like
fully right. You don't want to push the
person to marry you, right. If they're not feeling like it's
(10:29):
so it's, it is so interesting, like you said, to make that
decision and and take the power back.
It sounded like in that decisionwhere you could have been like,
well, I'm not really sure. Like, well, maybe, maybe, maybe
not, Maybe you will. And then get blindsided, you
know, like not really give them like a really firm decision as
to what you need and what you want for your family.
And then getting blindsided by being laid off or not thinking
(10:54):
through that. Like, OK, if I say no to this
opportunity, I'll probably be ina layoff list.
It sounded like you were fully well aware of that and you
weren't, you know, weren't beingnaive to that fact.
So I mean, that's such a cool, such a cool part of your story.
And now tell me about the transition into the consulting
role. Did it feel like, I don't know
how to ask this question? Like did it feel like you were
(11:14):
like, OK, I'll just do consulting?
Or was there like an excitement in you to like go and do the
consulting versus going and looking for another job?
So my first choice was not to toopen up my own company and start
my own consulting business. That was something that I ended
up being being talked into, if you will.
(11:35):
So I did start out creating my resume, updating it, looking for
jobs. And you know, there's an
exhaustion in doing that. For me it was I couldn't even
get through and finish reading ajob description on the post that
I would potentially want to apply for before I was
completely bored. I'm like, OK, no, I'm not.
I don't wanna do this. So, so I, I, I was, I ended up
(12:01):
having a series of conversationsand lunches or drinks or
whatever it is with, with the, with three people that
ultimately I, I refer to as my, my board of directors.
And it was these three people that separately were encouraging
me to go out on my own and do myown.
You know, as a matter of fact, one woman just said she's like,
(12:22):
well, why wouldn't you do that? Like, why couldn't you do this
on your own? Like, and I'm like, I don't
know, I don't know how to do this.
I don't know, like, where do I start?
And, and so that's where these three people kind of came in and
how I call them my board of directors.
I had one gentleman who was excellent at business
development. You know, he kind of walked me
through how do I set up a business?
What things should I be thinkingabout?
And then, you know, another, another woman, she was, she had
(12:44):
done a lot of businesses. She'd, she'd stood up and, and
took down a number of businesses, sold businesses.
So she kind of coached me through a couple of those
aspects of it. And then I had another woman who
was heavily focused on operations and, and honestly,
she just was a great cheerleaderin the early days to help me
figure out, OK, how would I position?
What kind of services am I goingto offer?
(13:04):
And you know, who would I even call first?
So, so between those three people, that's really where,
where this this sort of bubbled up.
And I'm like, alright, well, I guess I'm going to hang my
shingle and I'm going to call myself a consultant.
And then from there, you know, you can evolve further after
that because some lot of people and they say, oh, I want to do
my own consulting. They just want to be themselves,
(13:25):
you know, just a single shingle out there selling yourself into
a business. But as I got into it, I realized
that I actually wanted to be bigger than just me.
And so from there, we we kind ofcharted course and redirected a
little bit to get into a team, kind of a team aspect.
From a financial perspective, isthere exponentially more
(13:49):
opportunity financially when youdo bring on a team?
And do you believe that there's a true correlation between the
more people you have, the more money you can make as a
consultant? It depends.
Um, and I know that's not a helpful answer for people out
there, but I think it depends onthe services that you're
offering and how you're positioning it.
(14:11):
The work that we do, we do a lotof, we call IT services, it's a
lot of project management. So our, our sweet spot is in
technology rescue. So these are technology
installations that have gone awry as well as helping
companies marry the tactic technology to the operations.
So think about, you know, your CRM, your ERP's, your HRIS
(14:35):
tools, these are these are backbones to any organization
and of a lot of times they're not functioning, they're not
optimized. They want to just RIP it out and
replace it. And so that's the other service
that we provide. OK, well, let's talk about what
does that look like? How much does that impact your
organization? And are you better off pulling
it out and putting something newin, or are you?
(14:57):
Or is it better for you to thinkabout how you can adjust your
operations to make better use ofthe technology that you're
paying for already? Hmm.
So, so can you make more if you have more people?
I think it goes, it comes back to what is it you're doing?
How big is the company you're selling into?
Because that makes a big difference on on what your
(15:20):
margin, you know, the money thatyou can make and how many people
you could really bring in into their organizations.
Right. That's a good point.
That's a really good point. I think that's that's such a
genius. I mean, not knowing too much
about the technology side, but having worked on projects where
I would have been one of your stakeholders because I was
bringing in L&D software into, you know, large organization I
worked for. Why have you?
I was kind of on the other side knowing how much money is spent
(15:45):
on contracts in software and howpoorly if somebody, something
does not get integrated properly, like how much money
you're throwing down the drain. Like I know you're talking
probably millions. The people have integrated like
a million dollar, $2,000,000, five, $10 billion technology
project that's going awry. And what a, what a great
(16:05):
position that you put yourself in where you're like, OK, I'm
going to help you either protector like rectify this investment
that you've made. How the hell did you come up
with that, though? How did you realize that that
could be your niche, given that you're by trade a project
manager? Like I want to know exactly how
you figured that out. Because I know there's people
listening who want to do consulting, but they're like,
(16:25):
but I can do 100 things like what would I?
How would I market myself? Well, so I would go back to
those Java descriptions I couldn't finish reading and say
there are always those tasks andthose job descriptions that I
just didn't like. I don't want to do that.
And and for me, what I really loved about the work that I was
doing was I liked the rescue aspect of it.
(16:46):
I liked the big thinking strategy.
And then I like charting the course and setting the path and
getting, you know, if you think of it as like a train, right,
All right, trains off the track.So how do I get the train back
on the tracks? Then he set the cars up and you
and then you just kind of kind of pushed along and then
eventually it kind of picks up its own speed and, and and
finishes the job, right. That's the part that I enjoyed.
(17:09):
Did I? I don't enjoy the part of
project management. I don't enjoy is all of the very
detailed project planning, scheduling, umm, all the kind of
needy, gritty type things. That's just not for me.
I mean, I have people on my teamthat love that.
They're all about it. Great.
(17:29):
That's for you. It's not for me.
Not I love that you that you took what you actually wanted to
do and built a business out of that, because I do believe that
though, yes, you should be looking at like what does the
market demand or want or need? That's but that's that of
course, makes sense. But you're going to do so much
better in your career in building a new business if you
(17:51):
love the work that you're doing,because people are going to feel
that energy. Like I feel like even just
knowing you for very short time,I'm like, yeah, you seem like
someone that could just like sort out an issue.
And I'm sure you you could do a timeline, but I don't I'm
totally with you on that. When I think about project
management, like if I were to see a job description with
project management in right now and it's like kick off and
(18:12):
manage timelines and budgets, I'm like, Oh my good God, that
is no no longer for me. I can do it.
I'm not good at it and it doesn't light me up, but I can
tell that like the work that youdo, you're like, Oh yeah, let me
get in there. Let me get my hands dirty on
like all your issues and your problems.
Yeah, absolutely. And so so that that's really
where it starts like, OK, what is it I love to do?
And if I had to write a job description for my perfect job,
(18:34):
what would it look like? And that's ultimately what I
went out and tried to find in the marketplace.
And I've been, you know, you've met alluded to it.
We've all been apart enough of organizations where projects
have gone just inside out and, and, and so every business can
probably look at themselves if they're being honest right now
(18:55):
and go, yeah, we've been trying to do that for 2 1/2 years.
It's not going well. Yes.
Oh gosh, we've all. Yeah, I've been there.
I've been there. So now tell me last question on
this. How does one get clients?
So when you want to become a consultant, you're an expert in
what you do. It lights you up.
(19:16):
You're like, if I know my niche,I'm really pumped to give this a
go. How is somebody putting
themselves out there to go and land those big contracts?
It is that is the hardest part of my job.
But you have to, you know, you have to think about it as you
want to fail fast, right? You want to take imperfect
action and you want to fail fast.
(19:37):
So what do I mean by those two things?
Well, I will when I first started, you know, my sales
pitch wasn't perfect, my missionvision values, right, The deck
that, you know, I didn't have a pretty slide deck.
I just had a few words, but but I got out there with it, right?
I took it out there. In some cases they're like,
yeah, this isn't us. It doesn't work for us, right?
(19:58):
So then I started to fail fast, right?
If I can get to know in the first meeting, great, I can move
on. I can spend my time moving on
and you and you really have to be comfortable in hearing no,
but recognizing that it's not necessarily a personal no, just
like you as a consumer, right. When you, when you're
interviewing somebody to come and do something, work on your
(20:20):
house or maybe another vendor, you're like, yeah, it's just no,
none of what you said appeals tome right now.
It's not personal. It's just you're not ready to
buy, OK. So you're so you take that as
information and be like, OK, would you ask questions around
like why? You know, why?
Why aren't you wanting to buy? Yeah.
And I think a lot of the a lot of the people that I was coming
(20:42):
in contact with were, were pretty open about that.
They were like, yeah, your services, you seem too small.
Yeah, You know, in some cases itwas like, this is you haven't
done a whole lot of this. So I'm going to go with the guy
that I know, like, OK, go to theguy.
You know, at some point, at somepoint I might be the guy, you
know, as far as finding clients,how do you, how do you go about
(21:05):
that? You know, I tried, I've tried a
lot of different things and it really comes back down to my
network and my relationships. I mean, I've, I've, I do social
media posting, the business doesposting.
We've done, we've done lead Gen.we've done newsletters, right?
We've done, we've done a lot of the more common things and all
(21:28):
that really does is help get my name out there.
It doesn't actually lead to any sales.
There are some leads that have been in my pipeline for a number
of years. And, and, and these are the,
these are really, really choice opportunities that have that
I've been, I've been building rapport around for, for, for
that long. But there are always other
(21:50):
opportunities that come your waythat maybe they're not exactly
how you would craft them, but they're close enough to where
you can have money coming in. Yes.
Continue building rapport. How you wait for that, that
meaty, perfect one that you're lining up in your sights down
(22:13):
the line. Yes, OK, there's so many
takeaways from everything you said around leaving your, your
big, you know, your big corporate job, finding a board
of directors to really help you navigate the decision to go into
consulting, which I love. I love that nugget.
I love finding like the the specific people for each area
of, you know, building a business.
I think that's genius, whether those are your friends or you're
(22:34):
hiring them or whomever and thengetting into work that you
actually enjoy. Another big take away for me.
And then and then just start doing the thing failing fast.
I think that's a huge that's youshould be.
So for those who are listening, who are wanting to get into
consulting, just like go out anddo it.
And then on the whole, you know,business development side, we're
(22:55):
getting super niche nitty grittyhere.
But I liked what you said about not thinking that like, you
know, playing around on social media, doing the newsletter,
That's it's not the BL end all. But what I think it does, and
I've noticed this with my own business, is that it helps
people to know what it is you'reup to.
And so it makes it easier to refer.
I've been noticing that a lot like the people who watch and
(23:15):
consume my, you know, content orwhatever aren't necessarily the
ones who are spending the money,but they're the ones who are out
there advocating on my behalf, which is, which is such a
blessing too. So I love, I just, I love your
story and I love all of that. Now I want to switch gears to
make sure we have enough time. We've got so many other things
we want to talk about. So let's move over into why the
(23:39):
heck did you want to write a book?
I've heard it's very hard. So tell me, what is the origin
story there? So it's a little, it's there's a
couple of variations to it. So I like to, I'd like to tell
people some of the stories that happen on a day-to-day basis.
And I would often say, Oh my gosh, I gotta write a book like
(23:59):
this up. I gotta write a book.
And and so there was one point where where I was out at a happy
hour and I'm and I'm telling some story to a group of friends
and you know, I'm imagined it went something like this is
going in my book. And at one point one of those
friends leaned in and said, alright, when are you going to
(24:20):
stop talking about this book? You're going to write and write
the book. That's all.
I got called out right then and there.
And, you know, few glasses of wine later, all of a sudden I'm
like, you know what? I'm gonna write that book.
And and then then I started putting some wheels in motion
around around riding the book. It was a two year journey to
write it. It was it was very positive for
(24:42):
me, but it is hard. It's time consuming.
And I can tell you, we talked about the Board of directors
that was around me to start the company.
Those friends that called me outthat night about writing this
book are the same friends that when I said, OK, guys, I'm gonna
I'm truly gonna write it. Let's do a writers retreat.
I wanna, I wanna go somewhere and just get some thoughts down.
(25:02):
And they showed up all, you know, all five of them showed up
and they showed up in a big way that that particular weekend
that I scheduled the riders weekend, They brought the wine,
they planned the food and the meals.
And, you know, they warmed the hot tub and they just, they just
took care of everything and let me come in and out of that
weekend as I needed to come in and out of that weekend, which
(25:25):
is such a unique feeling. As a mom, when was the last time
you just had to show up? Like didn't need to do anything.
It was such a weird thing, but but that's what they did for me
in that particular weekend. And then those same folks
continue to show up. Every time I got, I hit, I hit a
stall point in writing the book.Or if I lost my confidence or I
(25:47):
had imposter syndrome or I couldn't make a decision.
They all kind of came to the table at those different points,
whether I needed a happy hour ora round of golf or a
conversation to get on stock, right?
So that really is the story around.
How did the book get created? It was those people that refused
to let me fail. I love that it sounds like so
(26:08):
much of your career and your story has been the people you
surround yourself with. Like you have clearly surrounded
yourself and because you're a great human being too, like you
have surrounded yourself though and really nurtured
relationships in business and your personal life.
So kudos to you. That sounds like that sounds
like fun. I want to do this now.
(26:29):
Is that, is that how you get to have one of those weekends you
do your writers retreat? That's right.
Just tell everybody you're you're writing a book and that's
it. Don't call me.
Yes, and was the fact that you have always been really big into
mentoring younger women, was that a big piece of why you
wanted to write? That's not the help I need.
Real talk for women about winning at work.
(26:50):
It is so, so you'd have these conversations with people and I
felt like I'd had enough conversations with enough women
where we were talking about the same things.
Yes, we were struggling with thesame concepts.
And while in in the book, I talkvery openly about some of the
successes and failures that I had, right?
(27:11):
I just, I just felt that this was a it was more of a
conversation, right? This is this is the advice that
I would give you if you came to me and said, hey, I'm really
struggling with this manager or Oh my gosh, I think I'm going to
be laid off or I'm got laid off or I I want my promotion.
I feel like I'm being passed over for this promotion or I
(27:32):
need to make more. These are the things, little
tips and tools that I would tellyou and I would and I would
share the personal stories of either success or failure in
areas in which I attempted to dothe same thing.
Awesome. How would you how would you give
advice and the given you've written a book on this, I wanna
ask you like just like advice based questions.
So how what advice would you give somebody who is a mom who
(27:55):
has come and gone from a few maternity leaves?
We are, I'm in Canada, a lot of my listeners are in Canada.
So we do have a protected job for between 12 to 18 months if
you want it. And so that those can be big
chunks of time. And I know where, you know, in
America, you can take maybe smaller chunks of time legally.
But so I know that a lot of women have struggles coming back
(28:19):
to work having taken maybe a couple of maternity leaves,
parental leaves. And they're like, but I I still
deserve the promotion. And they want to navigate that
discussion. How would you coach, guide,
mentor somebody in that position?
I actually do talk a little bit about this in the book as well.
Um, it's all about how you frameit, right?
(28:41):
Just because you took a leave from your your 9:00 to 5:00 does
not mean you are not developing skills in the process.
I one of the stories that I do tell in the book is about a
woman that I hired. She'd been out of the workforce
for maybe 12 years while she wasraising kids.
(29:02):
And I remember having a conversation with my vice
president at the time and I said, look, this woman has
amazing technical skill. She's it's right what we need.
But I'm concerned that she hasn't been in an office in, you
know, 12 years. And, and he point blank said to
me, because I didn't have kids at the time, I didn't have kids
(29:22):
at the time anymore. Blake said.
I would never turn down a woman that has had to run the
household business and logisticsand the carpools and the people
and the personalities, um, because they haven't been in a
cubicle in a while. And, and he was so right now
(29:44):
that I'm kind of on the other side of that, right?
I've been, I've been a mom for, you know, 2 teenage boys.
I've been a mom for a little while.
The skills that I've picked up outside of the workplace, I
think, I think help, um, help overall in the workplace, right?
If you've managed the PTA or you've been the Girl Scout troop
(30:07):
leader or the carpool coordinator, right?
Let's let's talk about those skills that you need that you
can pull right out of that, out of that experience and then
drive into your resume or your conversation in your interview
about what you've been doing. Hmm, So going into that
discussion and not saying this is one thing I, I really try to
(30:31):
coach people on as well or give advice on really it's not
coaching is, is talking about talking from their perspective
of what the company, what the manager needs, what the role
needs versus what you need. As much, as easy as it could be
to say my family needs more money, you know, that's really
what's at the crux of it. We, we desire, we need more
money. That's not the motive.
(30:52):
That does not play to the emotions and the motivation of
the person that you're speaking with.
If your manager of the organization of which they work
that and it's harsh, but it's just not how humans work, right?
We always think about what do weneed?
And but when you're doing that negotiation, you don't speak
from your own position. You, you share the value like
this is the value that I have generated and the skills that
(31:14):
I've generated over these 12 years, 18 years, however long
someone might have been out of the workforce.
So I think that's, that's reallyexcellent advice.
I, I need to ask you about the last few chapters of your book.
I know which are about telling aworkplace that you're pregnant
and back story, Tiffany. There have been heartbreaking
(31:38):
discussions I've had recently with clients or potential
clients who have shared every type of situation where it's
gone really well, it's gone really poorly.
They've decided to not tell themwhen taking a job.
They've told them after, you know, all these different
situations that are you'd think the world wouldn't run in a
(31:58):
certain way and sometimes it does.
So what is your advice? Say I am pregnant.
OK, let's do scenario one. I'm pregnant and I work at an
organization that I've been withfor a few years.
Good relationship, things are going well.
When should I tell them that I'mpregnant in your opinion?
This is very opinion based. This is Tiffany as a friend.
(32:20):
So couple things that that I would just I need to understand.
One is, you know, what is your day-to-day like?
Are you sitting in a cubicle? Are you expected to do a lot of
traveling and you know how? Yeah.
How obvious is it going to be that you have not shared this,
and how quickly? Hmm, OK, let's say it's a it's a
(32:42):
remote job because I think that's interesting when you
actually don't necessarily need to tell them because you're not
going to be walking around with a belly.
So remote, fully remote. And yeah, sit at my desk, don't
really have to travel, just humming along.
Yeah, very similar situation to me.
I, I waited as long as I possibly could to, to tell to
(33:03):
tell them. And it was, it was out of fear.
I'll be very honest, I had a wonderful works work
relationship with my direct manager.
The people around me were all super supportive, but it still
was a very personal thing for me.
And so, you know, my personal, my opinion on this one is that
is that no, you shouldn't have to disclose it until you're
(33:25):
really ready. And when you're ready to
disclose it, it should be a joyful thing, right?
Just like, hey, I'm getting married, right?
All the excitement and joy around being around getting
married should be, should be thesame for sharing that you, that
you're pregnant and it really needs to be on your own timeline
because it is about you. So if you, you can foresee that
(33:48):
you're going to have some important doctor's appointments
coming up where you know, you'regoing to be missing some
particular deadlines or you're going to have to be, um, moving
things around and you're lookingfor a little bit of grace.
You might want to give some consideration to your coworkers
and and share and share the why around it because they're
(34:10):
probably going to be happy for you and you may get that grace
that you need because of it. Yes, that's a really good point.
That's a really good point. It's true.
And and I guess it depends on how private of the person you
are, how public, how much do youvalue and respect the opinions
of those around you? Or is it, I've actually talked
(34:30):
to somebody, I think it was a friend maybe, and just was
saying, like, what's going to make you feel good?
Like do you feel like you're harboring a secret and that's
actually causing you more stressin which, like do you want to
just just get it over with and tell them or are you really
superstitious? You know, I know a lot of moms
to be can be really nervous, especially that first time.
And you're going through it and you're like, whoa, I want to
wait as long as possible becauseI'm terrified by every feeling
(34:52):
that I have in my body. So I like I like your diplomatic
answer. Now this is again, what about
the what about the interview process?
What about the person who's going for a job and is pregnant?
I so so I know you're in Canada and the US is a little bit
different. You're not actually even allowed
(35:13):
to ask me about about it in the interview process.
Now you could infer things and Ibut, but if you're, if you're
being interviewed, you can't, it's really hard to change
somebody's opinion if they're going to have a bias like that
anyway. So this is, this is part of the,
the tough skin that you need to have, right?
They if if you walk in and you're pregnant and they decide
(35:36):
they're not going to hire you and, and it's their bias that
they have, then OK, you kind of have to shrug your shoulders and
be like, alright, well, that's not about me because this is
what I want in my life and this isn't changing for you company.
Yeah. So, so I do think that it really
has to be again, it comes back to having being comfortable with
(35:57):
where you're at, especially as you're wherever you're at in
your pregnancy and and you just have to let it go, right?
You can't. I don't, I don't think you need
to disclose it. That's my personal.
You don't need to if you if. If it's not obvious, I don't
think you need to disclose it because it's not a factor in the
job. No, it's not.
If it is obvious, I wouldn't even.
(36:18):
I wouldn't even make mention of it.
I love that. I love that.
What a power move. Yeah, like, you know, why is
this a thing? Yeah, yeah.
If they were. Inside situation it's not
related to. Yeah, great point.
And honestly, I think if I were,if I were painted into a corner,
if I were an interview, if let'ssay, if I'm in an interview at 8
months pregnant and someone's like, well, I see you're 8
(36:41):
months pregnant, you know, what are, what are you thinking about
in terms of your maternity leave?
I think my next question back tothem would be very forward.
Well, let's have that conversation if you really think
I'm a great fit for this job. Yeah, yeah.
Totally. And if they don't like how bold
you are in making that statement, yeah, you might have
done yourself a favor. How would really?
(37:03):
Yeah, I had a client recently inwhich she did she personally
wanted to share it. I don't know, I can't remember
she had the the offer or not. I think they are going to they
were gave her a verbal offer. I forgot the story now, but and
she told him she was pregnant. She was like, I just want you to
know they reacted really poorly and she was like, oh, never
(37:27):
mind. And she's like, yeah, I want
this. And they're like, oh, OK, great.
You know. And she was like, God, I dodged
a bullet there. And it's just there's so there's
so many different situations. So I like that.
I love that opinion. Yeah, that'd be interesting.
Again, laws and rules are all different, but it would be an
interesting scenario where if you they put it down in writing
and you're like, look, since since you put me some put
(37:48):
something in writing for me, I wanna fully be upfront.
This is my situation as well. If they ever send that offer,
that's an interesting conversation about whether or
not they can even do. That Oh totally, totally no.
And our our laws are very similar.
Like you really can't be asking questions like that.
Like planning to have a baby anytime soon is definitely not
going to fly here. Switching gears a bit, Tiffany,
(38:11):
I know that sport is really important to your family and
that, you know, supporting your kids and getting into sport
coaching and everything like that.
How have you made it work being a working mom, having two boys
who are into sport? How do you just how do you like
that is such a big thing that I know so many friends of ours are
(38:31):
going through. How do you make?
How do you make that work personally?
Well, I can tell you the secret that we found to success, we
being my husband and I, is that we've taken on coaching roles
and, and almost every sport you could imagine our boys play.
You know that they're high school, they've had to limit it
(38:52):
a little bit, but they play ice hockey and they play baseball.
So ice hockey. You guys are Canadians or many
of your listeners are Canadians,right?
That's an all consuming sport and practically year round.
So the and the way it's played here in the States is probably
not that much different than it is in Canada.
You know, you, you could play, you could play year round if you
(39:14):
wanted to, but it is. But the typical season is like
August to March or April. So long.
Yeah, so long time. Well, so our secret has been
we've, there are certain aspectsof of those of youth athletics
that we can't control. But we've been able to control
(39:36):
some of it by being coaches and as opposed to being team
managers or, or other other roles on different teams, mainly
because the coaches can control the practice times in a lot of
cases. And I personally, as a woman,
have found that when I say I need time, you know, Tuesdays
(40:00):
and Thursdays at from 4:00 to 6:00 because I'm coaching
hockey, I get a much different reaction than when I say, oh, I
need to leave early on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:30 to go pick
up my son to get him to hockey practice.
Interesting. OK, So it's from the perspective
of the excuse of not the excuse,but like the yeah, the the.
(40:24):
The reason, right? And they're like, oh shit.
Yeah, yeah. It doesn't really matter what
the sport is. Hockey is.
Hockey definitely is an attention getter, particularly
since I'm in San Diego and port down here.
I grew up in Chicago, my husbandgrew up in in Detroit, right.
So, so we've got some, some coldweather ties, but it's
(40:47):
definitely an interesting conversation when, when they're
like, wait, ice hockey? So have you always played like
there are 5 or 6 more questions that come after that and you
forget that they just said that,that, that I've asked for more
time off to go and do hockey things.
And it's the same thing when we would have these tournaments,
right? You would have to leave on a
(41:08):
Friday and then you'd come back late on a Monday kind of a
thing. And, and it was rarely a
problem. And most often when I would get
back in the office, be like, so how the team do this weekend?
Oh, because they were involved. You enrolled other people.
You weren't sneaking around. Yeah.
And they found it interesting. They found it fascinating.
And, and I know a lot of women that maybe listening to this
(41:30):
going, Oh my God, I know it's time to coach.
OK. That was my next question.
Yeah. OK, Time out.
Don't tell me don't have time tocoach because you're already
leaving work early to pick your kids up to take him to the
soccer, baseball, lacrosse, likewhatever location anyway, right.
Or you're coordinating the logistics to have, you know, you
do drop off. He does pick up whatever it is.
(41:51):
So, um, and I think we're at, we're at a point where most
women probably played enough sports growing up.
Let's talk about the skill levelthat's really required to coach
a nine year old. OK, yes, I know.
I'm like, I want to coach basketball, but I'm like, Oh no,
but who am I to coach basketball?
Like I didn't play in universityNana Nana, but I could coach
(42:13):
little basketball. For sure, right?
Yeah. And once you don't know, there's
probably a YouTube video out there to figure out.
And I and I really, I truly think that for most, for most
women, the difference between, you know, a guy coaching and a
woman coaching is the guy doesn't say no.
He just says, yeah, sure, yeah, I could totally do that, no
(42:35):
problem. They probably didn't play
university either. No, you're right.
OK, What's the most outlandish sport that you've coached that
you probably had no business coaching that like you knew
nothing about? Um, let's see, I do, I do find
it funny that I ended up coaching ice hockey.
I never really played growing up, but I, but I played so many
(42:55):
other sports and, and I ultimately picked up the game in
my 20s because, you know, I was just, I was totally burnt on
playing college basketball and Iwas burnt on playing college
golf. And so my husband's like, why
don't you try hockey? And I'm like, sure, why not?
That guy used to play on the pond with the boys.
No problem. So that was that one was that
(43:15):
one was for sure weird, you know, backer like I never played
soccer growing up. It was just one of the few
sports I never never really played.
So yeah, that 1 was definitely having to learn.
So you were like Ted Lasso. You were like reading a book on
soccer. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. Love it.
But again, right, Like what? What is the skill level?
(43:37):
I think my kids were six and seven at the time, right?
The skill level is being able toorganize 6 year olds and a line
to kick a ball. Totally.
And how do you like turn make itinto like some sort of game
revolving around animals? Like there's a crab, there's a
dinosaur. So I looked at it and here's the
other thing too is that is that I could spend my time driving my
kids to all these things, but itwas actually much more enjoyable
(44:00):
for me to get be active with them.
And even though it was them and like 10 other kids, it was still
me being there with them and having the laughs and having,
you know, the fun games and having that totally different
side to you that maybe they don't get to see because you're
always busy, you know, going somewhere, doing something
(44:22):
stressed out about being late. We're not having a snack or
whatever it is. Yeah, and I didn't even think
about the fact that you're dropping them off at the
activity, the practice, the gameis an hour, an hour and a half.
What are you really getting donein that hour?
And yes, you don't need to coachall of the sports, all of the
activities. But if it's once or twice a
week, I feel very inspired. Tiffany, I'm going to, I'm going
(44:45):
to take this away. I'm going to think about this.
Wow. And now tell me about your
family. So we are celebrating Women's
History Month. It is March 2025.
Tell me about Grandma Millie. Millie, tell me about your
family history and how that's also been an inspiration to you
and your mothering life and yourcareer.
(45:05):
So Grandma Millie is my grandmother on my mother's side.
Short little Italian woman. So you know your stereotypical
woman. Put the picture in your mind.
No, no. But she was, um, so forward for
her generation, born in the 1920s, she, she actually played
(45:28):
baseball and that's how she met my grandfather.
She created some kind of a ruckus on the baseball field and
a fight broke out and my grandfather ended up swooping
her up and throwing her in the car going let's go.
What? Yeah.
Yeah. So, So she was, she was, she was
a baseball player. And she was in a fight.
She was in the fight. She instigated it from what I
(45:50):
hear. I don't.
Amazing. And she got scooped out of
there. So she so she was tough, right?
She was one of those women that knew like she knew the rules of
the game and she let the umpiresknow when they when they were
wrong and why she was right. And my grandfather had done a
lot of baseball coaching. So that was an alignment for
them and, and ultimately led to them getting married and, and,
(46:12):
and kids and so on. She had the equivalent of a high
school education, which at the time wasn't surprising, but um,
she did end up having a, she wasa beautician.
She opened up a part time beautysalon in her basement, which was
(46:34):
unique for the time, right? And you're talking about the 40s
and the 50s women didn't work, right.
But she had a salon in the basement of her house and, um,
anyway, so she just, she was just real bigger than life
personality and, and very influential for me as I was, as
I was growing up, a little bit traditional at times.
(46:55):
I can remember arguing with her when, when she was quizzing me,
it's about why I needed a car. She's like boys need cars, not
girls. So I'm still a little bit in
there. Oht there's still a little bit
in there, but but but anytime I talk about Grandma Millie,
there's some Grandma Millie ismsthat that'll slide in and out of
my social media. I think there's a couple Grandma
(47:15):
Millie references in the book. Meantime, I talk about Grandma
Millie on, on social media. Her, her posts usually garner a
lot of attention and I think folks get, get a laugh out of,
out of the relationship that we had.
So as we, as we look here at women's History Month, one of
the things that I'm doing is I've kind of paged back through
(47:36):
and, you know, between myself, my mom and then my grandmother.
So, so between the three of us, grandma had a high school
diploma my and and made sure that my mom got a got a college
degree and I have a masters degree, right.
So three very different educational experiences.
And I can remember coming home from school, I'd always stop by
(47:57):
my grandparents house on my, on my drive back there I was on my
way back to my, my parents houseanyway.
So I'd stopped there. And she wanted to know every
detail about college life. She wanted to know who my
friends were, what parties I went to.
She wanted to see the photos from the, from whatever it was I
was doing and hear the stories and, and the inside jokes and,
and I didn't necessarily recognize it then, but that was
(48:21):
her way of living vicariously. I've been through my experiences
because she didn't get to have that.
I see this like the trend of paying it forward to an an
uplifting the next generation inyou and not to blow smoke up
your ass, but like I really see you like you have two sons of
whom I'm sure you're raising in a beautiful way to be great,
(48:42):
great men in this world. But I can see how you're paying
it forward to the women of whom you have mentored over the years
and the book that you've writtenand really elevating that neck.
And it's been probably not necessarily from like, and now
you think everybody needs a doctor it but but more so from
the perspective of like go out and do work that you love and
ask for what you want and like be that now that next generation
(49:06):
can really be that generation where they're not holding
themselves back in the workforcebecause they're because they're
women. So thanks for doing the good
work. That's such a beautiful, such a
beautiful story. Tiffany.
Why? Why should somebody and who
should be reading your book? Tell us, tell us the the reason
for for reading the book that you've written.
(49:27):
That sounds so beautiful. So the book was really written
for women that are maybe 5 to 8 years into their career.
That was, that was the picture of the person as I was writing
the book. However, I have found that there
is some camaraderie in the stories that I'm telling from
women of all ages. So while if you're, you know, 5
(49:47):
to 5 to 8 years in, you probablyare hitting a lot of these
things for the first time, you may find some of the, the, the
stories and the, the tips and the tools very helpful and very
relevant. I think if you are, um, you
know, even 20 years into, into your position, you may be like,
oh, I haven't tried that yet or nobody ever told me that.
(50:13):
Particularly on performance reviews.
I have always have the great conversations when I talk about
performance reviews because there are some things that I
feel like we never were told or maybe we just didn't know what.
We didn't know not to say that, men.
Like taxes, you're not told how to do a performance review.
Yeah, and not to say that men are are taught any differently.
It's just once you, once somebody gives you a few tips,
(50:36):
you're like, oh, that totally makes sense.
I don't know why no one said this earlier.
So. So that's really the The Who.
And you know what I hope for them to get out of it is just
something that's useful. Now, is everything in my book
going to be useful to you? Is it going to be relevant?
No, probably not. Are you gonna agree with
everything that I say? No, probably not.
But like anything else, there's always a nugget or two that you
(50:59):
can take away from from anything.
For sure. And I mean, nobody's writing in
a book. I mean, I've yet to see in books
that I read about parenting or motherhood, nobody talks about
specifically when should you tell your workplace or stories
around when you should tell themthat you're you're pregnant.
So I think that in and of itself, just the fact that
you're even talking about that, having a position, sharing some
(51:22):
wisdom or advice, I think is phenomenal.
And where can everybody find youget your book if they want to
learn more from you? So the book is called That's Not
the Help I Need Real Talk for Women Winning at Work and you
can buy it on Amazon. You can follow me on LinkedIn.
So professionally, I'm not on LinkedIn socially, I'm out on
(51:43):
Instagram and it's Tiffany Rosick.
And you can also go to my website.
I have Tiffany rossak.com. There's some tidbits out there.
You could also sign up for a newsletter out on my website.
If you're, if you're interested in the newsletter, I'll tell you
that the newsletter is maybe once a month.
And it's one of those things where I, I can appreciate that
(52:05):
we all get too many emails and they're all signed up for too
many things. So I really don't send out a
lot. It's maybe once a month and it's
just tidbits here and there. So I don't feel like I'm going
to spam you forever if you if you sign up for that.
Lovely. Well, thank you so much for
coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure to
chat with you and just get wisdom from somebody a few years
ahead with teenagers. Oh my God, can't even imagine
(52:28):
what that's like. So we really appreciate you
coming on. Well, thank you so much, Andrea.
That's great. It's been great.
Thank you so much for listening and since you made it this far,
please share this episode with afellow parent who you love,
respect, and want to support. And while you're at it, hit me
up on Instagram at All Figured Out.
(52:48):
Andrea, I would love to meet youand hear what you are trying to
figure out these days.
Welcome back to the All Figured Out Podcast.
My name is Andrea Barr. Thanks for joining me again this
week. Today I bring you Tiffany
Rossak, who is a really incredible woman.
She is the founder and CEO of TGR Management Consulting, and
she's had a really interesting career both on the tech side,
project management and many other roles.
(00:21):
And now she has actually pivotedto having her own consulting
company. So recently I've been working
with a lot of different clients who are actually toying with the
idea of creating more flexibility for themselves and
their family by going out and being a consultant themself,
whether that is through freelance work, project based
work, or consulting. So I actually dive really deep
(00:43):
in this episode into how and whyTiffany made the decision to
leave her big study corporate job and go into consulting and
how exactly she did that. I asked the really nitty gritty
details that I personally wantedto know and wanted to know on
behalf of all of you, because I know there's people out there
listening who want to make a jump like this, but you just, it
(01:04):
probably feels really daunting and you just don't know how.
Tiffany is also the author of a new book that's called That's
Not the Help I need real Talk for women about winning at work.
She is really, really big on mentoring the next generation of
women. And she is just she shared some
really cool practical tips. And one of the tips that she
actually talks about or one of the pieces of wisdom she shares
(01:27):
is around how and when to tell your workplace that you're
pregnant. So she she's just a wealth of
knowledge. I think you're going to really
enjoy this conversation, even talk about her grandma, who at
one point was in a bit of a scuffle on the baseball diamond.
Like we go all over the place, but Tiffany is incredible and I
know you're going to enjoy this episode.
(01:47):
And if this sparks a little firewithin you that makes you
realize that you want to make a career change yourself just like
Tiffany did, then reach out. I do 20 minute phone calls or
Zoom calls just to get to know one another.
And we can just chat about whereyou're at and what your big
goals are, where you want to go,and we can see if there's a way
that I can help you out there. So without further ado, Tiffany
(02:08):
Rosik, you're listening to the All Figured Out Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrea Barr. I'm a career coach for parents,
mom of two, and a self-proclaimed expert at
winging it. After 10 years in the corporate
world, two major career pivots, and navigating life with kids,
I've learned one thing. No parent has it all figured
(02:30):
out, and that's OK. Here, we're all about growing
personally and professionally while keeping family time
sacred. You'll get practical tips,
career strategies, and musings on life, plus guest experts to
help us fill in the gaps. So grab a coffee or hide in your
car piece of me time. We're about to figure out this
work, life and parenting stuff out together.
(02:53):
Tiffany Rossett, thank you so much for joining me on the All
Figured Out podcast. Well, thanks for having me,
Andrea. It's great to be here.
It's so good to have you. And this is we were chatting a
bit before this, that this is a really long time coming.
Talk about I was telling Tiffanythat this was like that
situation where there's that person that you continue
canceling on and you you were that person.
(03:16):
And I will say that there is some solace in knowing that I'm
canceling on a fellow mom who's just, you know, and I know you
have two teenage boys. So I, I will apologize on air as
well. Thank.
And no, I will say thank you so much for your patience with me
and re recording this and women helping women, you know, moms
helping moms. Absolutely no.
(03:37):
And it was no big thing because every time I would get the
notice, hey, I need to shift or move, I'm like, yeah, no
problem. I've got, I've got other things
I can slot in. It's not like I was sitting
around with nothing to do, right?
We were laughing about that, howlike, no mom is ever like, oh,
shoot, unless it's like massage that gets cancelled or something
like that. But like, no one's really that
(03:58):
upset about plants being kept up.
So thank you for your grace. We have a jam packed episode.
There's so much that we're goingto cover today, including your
career story, your experience going from working in, you know,
big, big tech industry, leaving that industry, what that was
like to be leaving, to make thatcareer decision, starting your
(04:20):
own consulting firm. I've got a lot of questions
about that because I am working with so many people right now
who are contemplating going in being their own consultant and
just, you know, so many questions, so many questions.
So we're going to go in that andyou have a book and you, the
book was spurred from a passion for mentoring other women in the
workplace, which is so beautiful.
(04:41):
And I know you have a lot to sayon that topic.
And in addition to that, it is International Women's Month,
Women's History Month. Sorry, International Women's Day
will be coming up soon. This will be released a bit
after International Women's Day.So we're going to hear about
your grandma, Grandma Millie, right?
Grandma Millie. Millie, apparently she goes
(05:02):
viral on the social media. So we're going to hear about
Graham Miller. So that is what to expect.
So let's start with your order, your origin story, your your
Spiderman origin story. I want to hear.
Well, Fast forward to when you were working in tech and tell me
what was the, what was, what washappening in your world when you
(05:24):
were deciding, making the decision to transfer transition
out of the company that you wereworking for and into consulting?
Sure, I'm happy to tell the story.
So I, I like to tell folks that I, I grew up on the software
side of, of healthcare technology.
So a lot of the things that we have is monitored conveniences
today, you may or may not remember having to do them in
(05:44):
paper. So everything from, you know,
your electronic medical records to automated claims to be
prescribing. So your prescriptions
automatically going to the pharmacy, the interaction
between the systems to get your X-rays and your Mris digitally.
I did a lot of those things and worked for those companies in
the back end making sure that wedigitize a lot of that and
(06:07):
connected the technologies between the systems.
And at one point in my career, Iended up working for a large
consulting company. So one of the, what I would say
the big 5 consulting companies And you know consulting is
different when you work for a big, big, big company like that
because all of your time is expected to be billable to a
(06:30):
client, Hmm. Whereas you can think, if you
work in a in a more typical company, there's unproductive
time, right? There's maybe, maybe you get 4
hours or five hours of truly productive time of day, but some
of the rest of it is throw away time if you will.
And so consulting generally speaking, they are expecting you
(06:54):
to work about a 4045 hour work week and they really truly want
40 hours at that time to be billable to the client.
That's a lot. It is a lot.
So, so you know, you hear the stories about how exhausting it
is to be on the consulting side and, and I didn't have to fly
anywhere per se. There are some consultant
(07:14):
organizations where they're dispatching you and you are on
site, you're on the plane Monday, Friday, whatever it is.
And, and it, it can be that muchmore exhausting.
But that was not my case when I was working for this particular
company. I was hired in to do program
management and I ended up movinginto some business development
(07:35):
specifically on the healthcare side because of my healthcare
background. And, you know, the organization
reached a point, we were about 18 months in or two years in and
they reached a point where they just decided they didn't have
the, the organizational fortitude to, to wait for that
business to develop. You know, there were, they were
(07:56):
looking for clients that were going to spend at least
$1,000,000 in, in IT services with, with our organization.
And those relationships don't turn up overnight, right?
You've got to be in there pounding the pavement building
rapport, right? It's a lot.
There's a lot of grassroots stuff and they just decided they
didn't want to wait any longer for it and they were going to
(08:17):
close the division that I was working in.
And, and they were, they were nice about it.
They said, hey, look, we'd love to have you in another part of
your organization, finance, oil and gas, electric, right.
So any other industry I, I probably, I could have picked my
move my way into, but I didn't know anything about those.
(08:38):
And so when I sat down and I said, OK, well I'm going to have
to start over, you have to buildrapport.
You've got to find contacts, you've got to learn the
industry. That's just really felt daunting
to me. And you know, at the time I was
seeing my kids at that time wereprobably 8 and 10 years old.
(09:01):
So we were, we were starting to hit sort of the meat of of the
kids where they were moving intosports and after school
activities. And there was just a lot of
logistical stuff. And so I just couldn't see
myself trying to build a new line of business for this other
company and putting in all that time and effort to do it.
So the company ultimately made adecision when I said no, I
(09:23):
wasn't going to move anywhere else.
I wasn't going to move into a different line of business.
I knew that I was going to put myself on a layoff list that was
coming and um, and sure enough it did.
But, but the way I looked at it is, look, they made a decision
about them and I made a decisionabout me and, and, and that's a
really hard decision to make, but it, it ultimately was what
(09:46):
led me to start my own consulting company as well.
That's really cool. I like the way that you phrase
that and maybe you've used that line a couple times, but like,
that's so good. You know, they made a decision
about them. I made a decision about me and
how much power is in that? Like so much power, right?
And it's not to say that the it's hard.
(10:06):
There's like this, there's this push pull between we want
organizations to be people first.
We want them to like really takecare of their human beings,
which they should. We all know they also need to
turn a profit and they need to do what's best for them.
It's like relationships when youknow, when you're like dating
and the person's like, I don't know, I don't think this is like
fully right. You don't want to push the
person to marry you, right. If they're not feeling like it's
(10:29):
so it's, it is so interesting, like you said, to make that
decision and and take the power back.
It sounded like in that decisionwhere you could have been like,
well, I'm not really sure. Like, well, maybe, maybe, maybe
not, Maybe you will. And then get blindsided, you
know, like not really give them like a really firm decision as
to what you need and what you want for your family.
And then getting blindsided by being laid off or not thinking
(10:54):
through that. Like, OK, if I say no to this
opportunity, I'll probably be ina layoff list.
It sounded like you were fully well aware of that and you
weren't, you know, weren't beingnaive to that fact.
So I mean, that's such a cool, such a cool part of your story.
And now tell me about the transition into the consulting
role. Did it feel like, I don't know
how to ask this question? Like did it feel like you were
(11:14):
like, OK, I'll just do consulting?
Or was there like an excitement in you to like go and do the
consulting versus going and looking for another job?
So my first choice was not to toopen up my own company and start
my own consulting business. That was something that I ended
up being being talked into, if you will.
(11:35):
So I did start out creating my resume, updating it, looking for
jobs. And you know, there's an
exhaustion in doing that. For me it was I couldn't even
get through and finish reading ajob description on the post that
I would potentially want to apply for before I was
completely bored. I'm like, OK, no, I'm not.
I don't wanna do this. So, so I, I, I was, I ended up
(12:01):
having a series of conversationsand lunches or drinks or
whatever it is with, with the, with three people that
ultimately I, I refer to as my, my board of directors.
And it was these three people that separately were encouraging
me to go out on my own and do myown.
You know, as a matter of fact, one woman just said she's like,
(12:22):
well, why wouldn't you do that? Like, why couldn't you do this
on your own? Like, and I'm like, I don't
know, I don't know how to do this.
I don't know, like, where do I start?
And, and so that's where these three people kind of came in and
how I call them my board of directors.
I had one gentleman who was excellent at business
development. You know, he kind of walked me
through how do I set up a business?
What things should I be thinkingabout?
And then, you know, another, another woman, she was, she had
(12:44):
done a lot of businesses. She'd, she'd stood up and, and
took down a number of businesses, sold businesses.
So she kind of coached me through a couple of those
aspects of it. And then I had another woman who
was heavily focused on operations and, and honestly,
she just was a great cheerleaderin the early days to help me
figure out, OK, how would I position?
What kind of services am I goingto offer?
(13:04):
And you know, who would I even call first?
So, so between those three people, that's really where,
where this this sort of bubbled up.
And I'm like, alright, well, I guess I'm going to hang my
shingle and I'm going to call myself a consultant.
And then from there, you know, you can evolve further after
that because some lot of people and they say, oh, I want to do
my own consulting. They just want to be themselves,
(13:25):
you know, just a single shingle out there selling yourself into
a business. But as I got into it, I realized
that I actually wanted to be bigger than just me.
And so from there, we we kind ofcharted course and redirected a
little bit to get into a team, kind of a team aspect.
From a financial perspective, isthere exponentially more
(13:49):
opportunity financially when youdo bring on a team?
And do you believe that there's a true correlation between the
more people you have, the more money you can make as a
consultant? It depends.
Um, and I know that's not a helpful answer for people out
there, but I think it depends onthe services that you're
offering and how you're positioning it.
(14:11):
The work that we do, we do a lotof, we call IT services, it's a
lot of project management. So our, our sweet spot is in
technology rescue. So these are technology
installations that have gone awry as well as helping
companies marry the tactic technology to the operations.
So think about, you know, your CRM, your ERP's, your HRIS
(14:35):
tools, these are these are backbones to any organization
and of a lot of times they're not functioning, they're not
optimized. They want to just RIP it out and
replace it. And so that's the other service
that we provide. OK, well, let's talk about what
does that look like? How much does that impact your
organization? And are you better off pulling
it out and putting something newin, or are you?
(14:57):
Or is it better for you to thinkabout how you can adjust your
operations to make better use ofthe technology that you're
paying for already? Hmm.
So, so can you make more if you have more people?
I think it goes, it comes back to what is it you're doing?
How big is the company you're selling into?
Because that makes a big difference on on what your
(15:20):
margin, you know, the money thatyou can make and how many people
you could really bring in into their organizations.
Right. That's a good point.
That's a really good point. I think that's that's such a
genius. I mean, not knowing too much
about the technology side, but having worked on projects where
I would have been one of your stakeholders because I was
bringing in L&D software into, you know, large organization I
worked for. Why have you?
I was kind of on the other side knowing how much money is spent
(15:45):
on contracts in software and howpoorly if somebody, something
does not get integrated properly, like how much money
you're throwing down the drain. Like I know you're talking
probably millions. The people have integrated like
a million dollar, $2,000,000, five, $10 billion technology
project that's going awry. And what a, what a great
(16:05):
position that you put yourself in where you're like, OK, I'm
going to help you either protector like rectify this investment
that you've made. How the hell did you come up
with that, though? How did you realize that that
could be your niche, given that you're by trade a project
manager? Like I want to know exactly how
you figured that out. Because I know there's people
listening who want to do consulting, but they're like,
(16:25):
but I can do 100 things like what would I?
How would I market myself? Well, so I would go back to
those Java descriptions I couldn't finish reading and say
there are always those tasks andthose job descriptions that I
just didn't like. I don't want to do that.
And and for me, what I really loved about the work that I was
doing was I liked the rescue aspect of it.
(16:46):
I liked the big thinking strategy.
And then I like charting the course and setting the path and
getting, you know, if you think of it as like a train, right,
All right, trains off the track.So how do I get the train back
on the tracks? Then he set the cars up and you
and then you just kind of kind of pushed along and then
eventually it kind of picks up its own speed and, and and
finishes the job, right. That's the part that I enjoyed.
(17:09):
Did I? I don't enjoy the part of
project management. I don't enjoy is all of the very
detailed project planning, scheduling, umm, all the kind of
needy, gritty type things. That's just not for me.
I mean, I have people on my teamthat love that.
They're all about it. Great.
(17:29):
That's for you. It's not for me.
Not I love that you that you took what you actually wanted to
do and built a business out of that, because I do believe that
though, yes, you should be looking at like what does the
market demand or want or need? That's but that's that of
course, makes sense. But you're going to do so much
better in your career in building a new business if you
(17:51):
love the work that you're doing,because people are going to feel
that energy. Like I feel like even just
knowing you for very short time,I'm like, yeah, you seem like
someone that could just like sort out an issue.
And I'm sure you you could do a timeline, but I don't I'm
totally with you on that. When I think about project
management, like if I were to see a job description with
project management in right now and it's like kick off and
(18:12):
manage timelines and budgets, I'm like, Oh my good God, that
is no no longer for me. I can do it.
I'm not good at it and it doesn't light me up, but I can
tell that like the work that youdo, you're like, Oh yeah, let me
get in there. Let me get my hands dirty on
like all your issues and your problems.
Yeah, absolutely. And so so that that's really
where it starts like, OK, what is it I love to do?
And if I had to write a job description for my perfect job,
(18:34):
what would it look like? And that's ultimately what I
went out and tried to find in the marketplace.
And I've been, you know, you've met alluded to it.
We've all been apart enough of organizations where projects
have gone just inside out and, and, and so every business can
probably look at themselves if they're being honest right now
(18:55):
and go, yeah, we've been trying to do that for 2 1/2 years.
It's not going well. Yes.
Oh gosh, we've all. Yeah, I've been there.
I've been there. So now tell me last question on
this. How does one get clients?
So when you want to become a consultant, you're an expert in
what you do. It lights you up.
(19:16):
You're like, if I know my niche,I'm really pumped to give this a
go. How is somebody putting
themselves out there to go and land those big contracts?
It is that is the hardest part of my job.
But you have to, you know, you have to think about it as you
want to fail fast, right? You want to take imperfect
action and you want to fail fast.
(19:37):
So what do I mean by those two things?
Well, I will when I first started, you know, my sales
pitch wasn't perfect, my missionvision values, right, The deck
that, you know, I didn't have a pretty slide deck.
I just had a few words, but but I got out there with it, right?
I took it out there. In some cases they're like,
yeah, this isn't us. It doesn't work for us, right?
(19:58):
So then I started to fail fast, right?
If I can get to know in the first meeting, great, I can move
on. I can spend my time moving on
and you and you really have to be comfortable in hearing no,
but recognizing that it's not necessarily a personal no, just
like you as a consumer, right. When you, when you're
interviewing somebody to come and do something, work on your
(20:20):
house or maybe another vendor, you're like, yeah, it's just no,
none of what you said appeals tome right now.
It's not personal. It's just you're not ready to
buy, OK. So you're so you take that as
information and be like, OK, would you ask questions around
like why? You know, why?
Why aren't you wanting to buy? Yeah.
And I think a lot of the a lot of the people that I was coming
(20:42):
in contact with were, were pretty open about that.
They were like, yeah, your services, you seem too small.
Yeah, You know, in some cases itwas like, this is you haven't
done a whole lot of this. So I'm going to go with the guy
that I know, like, OK, go to theguy.
You know, at some point, at somepoint I might be the guy, you
know, as far as finding clients,how do you, how do you go about
(21:05):
that? You know, I tried, I've tried a
lot of different things and it really comes back down to my
network and my relationships. I mean, I've, I've, I do social
media posting, the business doesposting.
We've done, we've done lead Gen.we've done newsletters, right?
We've done, we've done a lot of the more common things and all
(21:28):
that really does is help get my name out there.
It doesn't actually lead to any sales.
There are some leads that have been in my pipeline for a number
of years. And, and, and these are the,
these are really, really choice opportunities that have that
I've been, I've been building rapport around for, for, for
that long. But there are always other
(21:50):
opportunities that come your waythat maybe they're not exactly
how you would craft them, but they're close enough to where
you can have money coming in. Yes.
Continue building rapport. How you wait for that, that
meaty, perfect one that you're lining up in your sights down
(22:13):
the line. Yes, OK, there's so many
takeaways from everything you said around leaving your, your
big, you know, your big corporate job, finding a board
of directors to really help you navigate the decision to go into
consulting, which I love. I love that nugget.
I love finding like the the specific people for each area
of, you know, building a business.
I think that's genius, whether those are your friends or you're
(22:34):
hiring them or whomever and thengetting into work that you
actually enjoy. Another big take away for me.
And then and then just start doing the thing failing fast.
I think that's a huge that's youshould be.
So for those who are listening, who are wanting to get into
consulting, just like go out anddo it.
And then on the whole, you know,business development side, we're
(22:55):
getting super niche nitty grittyhere.
But I liked what you said about not thinking that like, you
know, playing around on social media, doing the newsletter,
That's it's not the BL end all. But what I think it does, and
I've noticed this with my own business, is that it helps
people to know what it is you'reup to.
And so it makes it easier to refer.
I've been noticing that a lot like the people who watch and
(23:15):
consume my, you know, content orwhatever aren't necessarily the
ones who are spending the money,but they're the ones who are out
there advocating on my behalf, which is, which is such a
blessing too. So I love, I just, I love your
story and I love all of that. Now I want to switch gears to
make sure we have enough time. We've got so many other things
we want to talk about. So let's move over into why the
(23:39):
heck did you want to write a book?
I've heard it's very hard. So tell me, what is the origin
story there? So it's a little, it's there's a
couple of variations to it. So I like to, I'd like to tell
people some of the stories that happen on a day-to-day basis.
And I would often say, Oh my gosh, I gotta write a book like
(23:59):
this up. I gotta write a book.
And and so there was one point where where I was out at a happy
hour and I'm and I'm telling some story to a group of friends
and you know, I'm imagined it went something like this is
going in my book. And at one point one of those
friends leaned in and said, alright, when are you going to
(24:20):
stop talking about this book? You're going to write and write
the book. That's all.
I got called out right then and there.
And, you know, few glasses of wine later, all of a sudden I'm
like, you know what? I'm gonna write that book.
And and then then I started putting some wheels in motion
around around riding the book. It was a two year journey to
write it. It was it was very positive for
(24:42):
me, but it is hard. It's time consuming.
And I can tell you, we talked about the Board of directors
that was around me to start the company.
Those friends that called me outthat night about writing this
book are the same friends that when I said, OK, guys, I'm gonna
I'm truly gonna write it. Let's do a writers retreat.
I wanna, I wanna go somewhere and just get some thoughts down.
(25:02):
And they showed up all, you know, all five of them showed up
and they showed up in a big way that that particular weekend
that I scheduled the riders weekend, They brought the wine,
they planned the food and the meals.
And, you know, they warmed the hot tub and they just, they just
took care of everything and let me come in and out of that
weekend as I needed to come in and out of that weekend, which
(25:25):
is such a unique feeling. As a mom, when was the last time
you just had to show up? Like didn't need to do anything.
It was such a weird thing, but but that's what they did for me
in that particular weekend. And then those same folks
continue to show up. Every time I got, I hit, I hit a
stall point in writing the book.Or if I lost my confidence or I
(25:47):
had imposter syndrome or I couldn't make a decision.
They all kind of came to the table at those different points,
whether I needed a happy hour ora round of golf or a
conversation to get on stock, right?
So that really is the story around.
How did the book get created? It was those people that refused
to let me fail. I love that it sounds like so
(26:08):
much of your career and your story has been the people you
surround yourself with. Like you have clearly surrounded
yourself and because you're a great human being too, like you
have surrounded yourself though and really nurtured
relationships in business and your personal life.
So kudos to you. That sounds like that sounds
like fun. I want to do this now.
(26:29):
Is that, is that how you get to have one of those weekends you
do your writers retreat? That's right.
Just tell everybody you're you're writing a book and that's
it. Don't call me.
Yes, and was the fact that you have always been really big into
mentoring younger women, was that a big piece of why you
wanted to write? That's not the help I need.
Real talk for women about winning at work.
(26:50):
It is so, so you'd have these conversations with people and I
felt like I'd had enough conversations with enough women
where we were talking about the same things.
Yes, we were struggling with thesame concepts.
And while in in the book, I talkvery openly about some of the
successes and failures that I had, right?
(27:11):
I just, I just felt that this was a it was more of a
conversation, right? This is this is the advice that
I would give you if you came to me and said, hey, I'm really
struggling with this manager or Oh my gosh, I think I'm going to
be laid off or I'm got laid off or I I want my promotion.
I feel like I'm being passed over for this promotion or I
(27:32):
need to make more. These are the things, little
tips and tools that I would tellyou and I would and I would
share the personal stories of either success or failure in
areas in which I attempted to dothe same thing.
Awesome. How would you how would you give
advice and the given you've written a book on this, I wanna
ask you like just like advice based questions.
So how what advice would you give somebody who is a mom who
(27:55):
has come and gone from a few maternity leaves?
We are, I'm in Canada, a lot of my listeners are in Canada.
So we do have a protected job for between 12 to 18 months if
you want it. And so that those can be big
chunks of time. And I know where, you know, in
America, you can take maybe smaller chunks of time legally.
But so I know that a lot of women have struggles coming back
(28:19):
to work having taken maybe a couple of maternity leaves,
parental leaves. And they're like, but I I still
deserve the promotion. And they want to navigate that
discussion. How would you coach, guide,
mentor somebody in that position?
I actually do talk a little bit about this in the book as well.
Um, it's all about how you frameit, right?
(28:41):
Just because you took a leave from your your 9:00 to 5:00 does
not mean you are not developing skills in the process.
I one of the stories that I do tell in the book is about a
woman that I hired. She'd been out of the workforce
for maybe 12 years while she wasraising kids.
(29:02):
And I remember having a conversation with my vice
president at the time and I said, look, this woman has
amazing technical skill. She's it's right what we need.
But I'm concerned that she hasn't been in an office in, you
know, 12 years. And, and he point blank said to
me, because I didn't have kids at the time, I didn't have kids
(29:22):
at the time anymore. Blake said.
I would never turn down a woman that has had to run the
household business and logisticsand the carpools and the people
and the personalities, um, because they haven't been in a
cubicle in a while. And, and he was so right now
(29:44):
that I'm kind of on the other side of that, right?
I've been, I've been a mom for, you know, 2 teenage boys.
I've been a mom for a little while.
The skills that I've picked up outside of the workplace, I
think, I think help, um, help overall in the workplace, right?
If you've managed the PTA or you've been the Girl Scout troop
(30:07):
leader or the carpool coordinator, right?
Let's let's talk about those skills that you need that you
can pull right out of that, out of that experience and then
drive into your resume or your conversation in your interview
about what you've been doing. Hmm, So going into that
discussion and not saying this is one thing I, I really try to
(30:31):
coach people on as well or give advice on really it's not
coaching is, is talking about talking from their perspective
of what the company, what the manager needs, what the role
needs versus what you need. As much, as easy as it could be
to say my family needs more money, you know, that's really
what's at the crux of it. We, we desire, we need more
money. That's not the motive.
(30:52):
That does not play to the emotions and the motivation of
the person that you're speaking with.
If your manager of the organization of which they work
that and it's harsh, but it's just not how humans work, right?
We always think about what do weneed?
And but when you're doing that negotiation, you don't speak
from your own position. You, you share the value like
this is the value that I have generated and the skills that
(31:14):
I've generated over these 12 years, 18 years, however long
someone might have been out of the workforce.
So I think that's, that's reallyexcellent advice.
I, I need to ask you about the last few chapters of your book.
I know which are about telling aworkplace that you're pregnant
and back story, Tiffany. There have been heartbreaking
(31:38):
discussions I've had recently with clients or potential
clients who have shared every type of situation where it's
gone really well, it's gone really poorly.
They've decided to not tell themwhen taking a job.
They've told them after, you know, all these different
situations that are you'd think the world wouldn't run in a
(31:58):
certain way and sometimes it does.
So what is your advice? Say I am pregnant.
OK, let's do scenario one. I'm pregnant and I work at an
organization that I've been withfor a few years.
Good relationship, things are going well.
When should I tell them that I'mpregnant in your opinion?
This is very opinion based. This is Tiffany as a friend.
(32:20):
So couple things that that I would just I need to understand.
One is, you know, what is your day-to-day like?
Are you sitting in a cubicle? Are you expected to do a lot of
traveling and you know how? Yeah.
How obvious is it going to be that you have not shared this,
and how quickly? Hmm, OK, let's say it's a it's a
(32:42):
remote job because I think that's interesting when you
actually don't necessarily need to tell them because you're not
going to be walking around with a belly.
So remote, fully remote. And yeah, sit at my desk, don't
really have to travel, just humming along.
Yeah, very similar situation to me.
I, I waited as long as I possibly could to, to tell to
(33:03):
tell them. And it was, it was out of fear.
I'll be very honest, I had a wonderful works work
relationship with my direct manager.
The people around me were all super supportive, but it still
was a very personal thing for me.
And so, you know, my personal, my opinion on this one is that
is that no, you shouldn't have to disclose it until you're
(33:25):
really ready. And when you're ready to
disclose it, it should be a joyful thing, right?
Just like, hey, I'm getting married, right?
All the excitement and joy around being around getting
married should be, should be thesame for sharing that you, that
you're pregnant and it really needs to be on your own timeline
because it is about you. So if you, you can foresee that
(33:48):
you're going to have some important doctor's appointments
coming up where you know, you'regoing to be missing some
particular deadlines or you're going to have to be, um, moving
things around and you're lookingfor a little bit of grace.
You might want to give some consideration to your coworkers
and and share and share the why around it because they're
(34:10):
probably going to be happy for you and you may get that grace
that you need because of it. Yes, that's a really good point.
That's a really good point. It's true.
And and I guess it depends on how private of the person you
are, how public, how much do youvalue and respect the opinions
of those around you? Or is it, I've actually talked
(34:30):
to somebody, I think it was a friend maybe, and just was
saying, like, what's going to make you feel good?
Like do you feel like you're harboring a secret and that's
actually causing you more stressin which, like do you want to
just just get it over with and tell them or are you really
superstitious? You know, I know a lot of moms
to be can be really nervous, especially that first time.
And you're going through it and you're like, whoa, I want to
wait as long as possible becauseI'm terrified by every feeling
(34:52):
that I have in my body. So I like I like your diplomatic
answer. Now this is again, what about
the what about the interview process?
What about the person who's going for a job and is pregnant?
I so so I know you're in Canada and the US is a little bit
different. You're not actually even allowed
(35:13):
to ask me about about it in the interview process.
Now you could infer things and Ibut, but if you're, if you're
being interviewed, you can't, it's really hard to change
somebody's opinion if they're going to have a bias like that
anyway. So this is, this is part of the,
the tough skin that you need to have, right?
They if if you walk in and you're pregnant and they decide
(35:36):
they're not going to hire you and, and it's their bias that
they have, then OK, you kind of have to shrug your shoulders and
be like, alright, well, that's not about me because this is
what I want in my life and this isn't changing for you company.
Yeah. So, so I do think that it really
has to be again, it comes back to having being comfortable with
(35:57):
where you're at, especially as you're wherever you're at in
your pregnancy and and you just have to let it go, right?
You can't. I don't, I don't think you need
to disclose it. That's my personal.
You don't need to if you if. If it's not obvious, I don't
think you need to disclose it because it's not a factor in the
job. No, it's not.
If it is obvious, I wouldn't even.
(36:18):
I wouldn't even make mention of it.
I love that. I love that.
What a power move. Yeah, like, you know, why is
this a thing? Yeah, yeah.
If they were. Inside situation it's not
related to. Yeah, great point.
And honestly, I think if I were,if I were painted into a corner,
if I were an interview, if let'ssay, if I'm in an interview at 8
months pregnant and someone's like, well, I see you're 8
(36:41):
months pregnant, you know, what are, what are you thinking about
in terms of your maternity leave?
I think my next question back tothem would be very forward.
Well, let's have that conversation if you really think
I'm a great fit for this job. Yeah, yeah.
Totally. And if they don't like how bold
you are in making that statement, yeah, you might have
done yourself a favor. How would really?
(37:03):
Yeah, I had a client recently inwhich she did she personally
wanted to share it. I don't know, I can't remember
she had the the offer or not. I think they are going to they
were gave her a verbal offer. I forgot the story now, but and
she told him she was pregnant. She was like, I just want you to
know they reacted really poorly and she was like, oh, never
(37:27):
mind. And she's like, yeah, I want
this. And they're like, oh, OK, great.
You know. And she was like, God, I dodged
a bullet there. And it's just there's so there's
so many different situations. So I like that.
I love that opinion. Yeah, that'd be interesting.
Again, laws and rules are all different, but it would be an
interesting scenario where if you they put it down in writing
and you're like, look, since since you put me some put
(37:48):
something in writing for me, I wanna fully be upfront.
This is my situation as well. If they ever send that offer,
that's an interesting conversation about whether or
not they can even do. That Oh totally, totally no.
And our our laws are very similar.
Like you really can't be asking questions like that.
Like planning to have a baby anytime soon is definitely not
going to fly here. Switching gears a bit, Tiffany,
(38:11):
I know that sport is really important to your family and
that, you know, supporting your kids and getting into sport
coaching and everything like that.
How have you made it work being a working mom, having two boys
who are into sport? How do you just how do you like
that is such a big thing that I know so many friends of ours are
(38:31):
going through. How do you make?
How do you make that work personally?
Well, I can tell you the secret that we found to success, we
being my husband and I, is that we've taken on coaching roles
and, and almost every sport you could imagine our boys play.
You know that they're high school, they've had to limit it
(38:52):
a little bit, but they play ice hockey and they play baseball.
So ice hockey. You guys are Canadians or many
of your listeners are Canadians,right?
That's an all consuming sport and practically year round.
So the and the way it's played here in the States is probably
not that much different than it is in Canada.
You know, you, you could play, you could play year round if you
(39:14):
wanted to, but it is. But the typical season is like
August to March or April. So long.
Yeah, so long time. Well, so our secret has been
we've, there are certain aspectsof of those of youth athletics
that we can't control. But we've been able to control
(39:36):
some of it by being coaches and as opposed to being team
managers or, or other other roles on different teams, mainly
because the coaches can control the practice times in a lot of
cases. And I personally, as a woman,
have found that when I say I need time, you know, Tuesdays
(40:00):
and Thursdays at from 4:00 to 6:00 because I'm coaching
hockey, I get a much different reaction than when I say, oh, I
need to leave early on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:30 to go pick
up my son to get him to hockey practice.
Interesting. OK, So it's from the perspective
of the excuse of not the excuse,but like the yeah, the the.
(40:24):
The reason, right? And they're like, oh shit.
Yeah, yeah. It doesn't really matter what
the sport is. Hockey is.
Hockey definitely is an attention getter, particularly
since I'm in San Diego and port down here.
I grew up in Chicago, my husbandgrew up in in Detroit, right.
So, so we've got some, some coldweather ties, but it's
(40:47):
definitely an interesting conversation when, when they're
like, wait, ice hockey? So have you always played like
there are 5 or 6 more questions that come after that and you
forget that they just said that,that, that I've asked for more
time off to go and do hockey things.
And it's the same thing when we would have these tournaments,
right? You would have to leave on a
(41:08):
Friday and then you'd come back late on a Monday kind of a
thing. And, and it was rarely a
problem. And most often when I would get
back in the office, be like, so how the team do this weekend?
Oh, because they were involved. You enrolled other people.
You weren't sneaking around. Yeah.
And they found it interesting. They found it fascinating.
And, and I know a lot of women that maybe listening to this
(41:30):
going, Oh my God, I know it's time to coach.
OK. That was my next question.
Yeah. OK, Time out.
Don't tell me don't have time tocoach because you're already
leaving work early to pick your kids up to take him to the
soccer, baseball, lacrosse, likewhatever location anyway, right.
Or you're coordinating the logistics to have, you know, you
do drop off. He does pick up whatever it is.
(41:51):
So, um, and I think we're at, we're at a point where most
women probably played enough sports growing up.
Let's talk about the skill levelthat's really required to coach
a nine year old. OK, yes, I know.
I'm like, I want to coach basketball, but I'm like, Oh no,
but who am I to coach basketball?
Like I didn't play in universityNana Nana, but I could coach
(42:13):
little basketball. For sure, right?
Yeah. And once you don't know, there's
probably a YouTube video out there to figure out.
And I and I really, I truly think that for most, for most
women, the difference between, you know, a guy coaching and a
woman coaching is the guy doesn't say no.
He just says, yeah, sure, yeah, I could totally do that, no
(42:35):
problem. They probably didn't play
university either. No, you're right.
OK, What's the most outlandish sport that you've coached that
you probably had no business coaching that like you knew
nothing about? Um, let's see, I do, I do find
it funny that I ended up coaching ice hockey.
I never really played growing up, but I, but I played so many
(42:55):
other sports and, and I ultimately picked up the game in
my 20s because, you know, I was just, I was totally burnt on
playing college basketball and Iwas burnt on playing college
golf. And so my husband's like, why
don't you try hockey? And I'm like, sure, why not?
That guy used to play on the pond with the boys.
No problem. So that was that one was that
(43:15):
one was for sure weird, you know, backer like I never played
soccer growing up. It was just one of the few
sports I never never really played.
So yeah, that 1 was definitely having to learn.
So you were like Ted Lasso. You were like reading a book on
soccer. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. Love it.
But again, right, Like what? What is the skill level?
(43:37):
I think my kids were six and seven at the time, right?
The skill level is being able toorganize 6 year olds and a line
to kick a ball. Totally.
And how do you like turn make itinto like some sort of game
revolving around animals? Like there's a crab, there's a
dinosaur. So I looked at it and here's the
other thing too is that is that I could spend my time driving my
kids to all these things, but itwas actually much more enjoyable
(44:00):
for me to get be active with them.
And even though it was them and like 10 other kids, it was still
me being there with them and having the laughs and having,
you know, the fun games and having that totally different
side to you that maybe they don't get to see because you're
always busy, you know, going somewhere, doing something
(44:22):
stressed out about being late. We're not having a snack or
whatever it is. Yeah, and I didn't even think
about the fact that you're dropping them off at the
activity, the practice, the gameis an hour, an hour and a half.
What are you really getting donein that hour?
And yes, you don't need to coachall of the sports, all of the
activities. But if it's once or twice a
week, I feel very inspired. Tiffany, I'm going to, I'm going
(44:45):
to take this away. I'm going to think about this.
Wow. And now tell me about your
family. So we are celebrating Women's
History Month. It is March 2025.
Tell me about Grandma Millie. Millie, tell me about your
family history and how that's also been an inspiration to you
and your mothering life and yourcareer.
(45:05):
So Grandma Millie is my grandmother on my mother's side.
Short little Italian woman. So you know your stereotypical
woman. Put the picture in your mind.
No, no. But she was, um, so forward for
her generation, born in the 1920s, she, she actually played
(45:28):
baseball and that's how she met my grandfather.
She created some kind of a ruckus on the baseball field and
a fight broke out and my grandfather ended up swooping
her up and throwing her in the car going let's go.
What? Yeah.
Yeah. So, So she was, she was, she was
a baseball player. And she was in a fight.
She was in the fight. She instigated it from what I
(45:50):
hear. I don't.
Amazing. And she got scooped out of
there. So she so she was tough, right?
She was one of those women that knew like she knew the rules of
the game and she let the umpiresknow when they when they were
wrong and why she was right. And my grandfather had done a
lot of baseball coaching. So that was an alignment for
them and, and ultimately led to them getting married and, and,
(46:12):
and kids and so on. She had the equivalent of a high
school education, which at the time wasn't surprising, but um,
she did end up having a, she wasa beautician.
She opened up a part time beautysalon in her basement, which was
(46:34):
unique for the time, right? And you're talking about the 40s
and the 50s women didn't work, right.
But she had a salon in the basement of her house and, um,
anyway, so she just, she was just real bigger than life
personality and, and very influential for me as I was, as
I was growing up, a little bit traditional at times.
(46:55):
I can remember arguing with her when, when she was quizzing me,
it's about why I needed a car. She's like boys need cars, not
girls. So I'm still a little bit in
there. Oht there's still a little bit
in there, but but but anytime I talk about Grandma Millie,
there's some Grandma Millie ismsthat that'll slide in and out of
my social media. I think there's a couple Grandma
(47:15):
Millie references in the book. Meantime, I talk about Grandma
Millie on, on social media. Her, her posts usually garner a
lot of attention and I think folks get, get a laugh out of,
out of the relationship that we had.
So as we, as we look here at women's History Month, one of
the things that I'm doing is I've kind of paged back through
(47:36):
and, you know, between myself, my mom and then my grandmother.
So, so between the three of us, grandma had a high school
diploma my and and made sure that my mom got a got a college
degree and I have a masters degree, right.
So three very different educational experiences.
And I can remember coming home from school, I'd always stop by
(47:57):
my grandparents house on my, on my drive back there I was on my
way back to my, my parents houseanyway.
So I'd stopped there. And she wanted to know every
detail about college life. She wanted to know who my
friends were, what parties I went to.
She wanted to see the photos from the, from whatever it was I
was doing and hear the stories and, and the inside jokes and,
and I didn't necessarily recognize it then, but that was
(48:21):
her way of living vicariously. I've been through my experiences
because she didn't get to have that.
I see this like the trend of paying it forward to an an
uplifting the next generation inyou and not to blow smoke up
your ass, but like I really see you like you have two sons of
whom I'm sure you're raising in a beautiful way to be great,
(48:42):
great men in this world. But I can see how you're paying
it forward to the women of whom you have mentored over the years
and the book that you've writtenand really elevating that neck.
And it's been probably not necessarily from like, and now
you think everybody needs a doctor it but but more so from
the perspective of like go out and do work that you love and
ask for what you want and like be that now that next generation
(49:06):
can really be that generation where they're not holding
themselves back in the workforcebecause they're because they're
women. So thanks for doing the good
work. That's such a beautiful, such a
beautiful story. Tiffany.
Why? Why should somebody and who
should be reading your book? Tell us, tell us the the reason
for for reading the book that you've written.
(49:27):
That sounds so beautiful. So the book was really written
for women that are maybe 5 to 8 years into their career.
That was, that was the picture of the person as I was writing
the book. However, I have found that there
is some camaraderie in the stories that I'm telling from
women of all ages. So while if you're, you know, 5
(49:47):
to 5 to 8 years in, you probablyare hitting a lot of these
things for the first time, you may find some of the, the, the
stories and the, the tips and the tools very helpful and very
relevant. I think if you are, um, you
know, even 20 years into, into your position, you may be like,
oh, I haven't tried that yet or nobody ever told me that.
(50:13):
Particularly on performance reviews.
I have always have the great conversations when I talk about
performance reviews because there are some things that I
feel like we never were told or maybe we just didn't know what.
We didn't know not to say that, men.
Like taxes, you're not told how to do a performance review.
Yeah, and not to say that men are are taught any differently.
It's just once you, once somebody gives you a few tips,
(50:36):
you're like, oh, that totally makes sense.
I don't know why no one said this earlier.
So. So that's really the The Who.
And you know what I hope for them to get out of it is just
something that's useful. Now, is everything in my book
going to be useful to you? Is it going to be relevant?
No, probably not. Are you gonna agree with
everything that I say? No, probably not.
But like anything else, there's always a nugget or two that you
(50:59):
can take away from from anything.
For sure. And I mean, nobody's writing in
a book. I mean, I've yet to see in books
that I read about parenting or motherhood, nobody talks about
specifically when should you tell your workplace or stories
around when you should tell themthat you're you're pregnant.
So I think that in and of itself, just the fact that
you're even talking about that, having a position, sharing some
(51:22):
wisdom or advice, I think is phenomenal.
And where can everybody find youget your book if they want to
learn more from you? So the book is called That's Not
the Help I Need Real Talk for Women Winning at Work and you
can buy it on Amazon. You can follow me on LinkedIn.
So professionally, I'm not on LinkedIn socially, I'm out on
(51:43):
Instagram and it's Tiffany Rosick.
And you can also go to my website.
I have Tiffany rossak.com. There's some tidbits out there.
You could also sign up for a newsletter out on my website.
If you're, if you're interested in the newsletter, I'll tell you
that the newsletter is maybe once a month.
And it's one of those things where I, I can appreciate that
(52:05):
we all get too many emails and they're all signed up for too
many things. So I really don't send out a
lot. It's maybe once a month and it's
just tidbits here and there. So I don't feel like I'm going
to spam you forever if you if you sign up for that.
Lovely. Well, thank you so much for
coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure to
chat with you and just get wisdom from somebody a few years
ahead with teenagers. Oh my God, can't even imagine
(52:28):
what that's like. So we really appreciate you
coming on. Well, thank you so much, Andrea.
That's great. It's been great.
Thank you so much for listening and since you made it this far,
please share this episode with afellow parent who you love,
respect, and want to support. And while you're at it, hit me
up on Instagram at All Figured Out.
(52:48):
Andrea, I would love to meet youand hear what you are trying to
figure out these days.
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