IAM1378 – Founder Helps Black Entrepreneurs through Financial Bootcamps

Tara is the Founder and Chairwoman of Impact Profit, which is a nonprofit dedicated to making entrepreneurship more accessible to Black Founders. Tara has been a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for over a decade and founded Impact Profit to use her skill set to do some good in the world. She received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and her master's in Accounting and MBA from Northeastern University. She's a New Jersey native but currently resides in Washington, DC.

• CEO Story: Every business is created for a bigger purpose. In the case of Tara, losing that human perspective in a career path does not fulfill her passion while working in the big corporate firms, which ended up hopping around. She longs for human interaction while helping small entrepreneurs with their finances. She believes she can fill the gap, that's why Impact Profit was founded.
• Business Service: Entrepreneur support organization for early-stage black founders. Offering boot camps for free with an emphasis on small businesses.
• Secret Sauce: Possessing the right skill set and leadership to run the organization.
• CEO Hack: Book mention; What happen to You? by Oprah & Dr. Bruce Perry ( childhood trauma & routine stress can change our brains and impact us as adults)
• CEO Nugget: Go to therapy or find a safe and supportive community – people that you can go to on what you’re going through.
• CEO Defined: Strategy and risk management. Without a solid strategy, you are not going to have a long-lasting financially sound business.

Website: impactprofit.org

Instagram: impactprofit

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Transcription

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00:22 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. Tara Spruill-Jones of Impact Profit. Tara, it's great to have you on the show.

00:59 – Tara S

Oh, Thanks. I'm so glad to be here.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Tara so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Tara is the founder and chairwoman of Impact Profit, which is a nonprofit dedicated to making entrepreneurship more accessible to Black founders. Tara has been a certified public accountant for over a decade and founded Impact Profit to use her skillsets to do some good in the world.

She received her undergrad degree from Cornell University and her master's in accounting and MBA from Northeastern University. She is a New Jersey native but currently resides in Washington, D.C. Tara, appreciates you for all the work you're doing. Of course, I appreciate the time you're taking today. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:41 – Tara S

I am ready.

01:43 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started when I called your CEO story.

01:52 – Tara S

Sure. So, you know, I think that my path has a lot of twists and turns, but the ultimate reason why I started Impact Profit is because the work that I was doing as a CPA was incredibly unfulfilling. So for a little bit of context, I worked in the high network space for the majority of my career, And that was not what I envisioned when I signed up for the profession. I became an accountant on a whim because I volunteered with VITA. And that's an IRS-sponsored program. It stands for volunteer income tax assistance, where you prepare tax returns for low to moderate-income families.

And I remember having such amazing conversations with my clients in that experience, because you are preparing to return and they're sitting right in front of you, so you've got time, and they've just given you their financial records. And so it's kind of an intimate setting and you get to chatting. And it was such a rewarding experience and an enjoyable experience. And at the time I was working at a job in IT that I hated. And so I thought, okay, this is it. I'm supposed to be an accountant. And so I quit that job. I went to get my master's and my MBA And then I started working in Big 4. And so if you're not familiar with the accounting profession, the big 4 just refers to the 4 largest public accounting firms by revenue and size.

And so when I got this job in Big 4, the clients that I was working with were not at all the clients that I saw at VITA. No low income, no moderate income, no intimate conversations. There were barely any black people. It was just work, billable hours all the time. And so I, I spent years bouncing around within firms and job hopping, just trying to find of place that was somewhat tolerable. If we fast forward to the pandemic, I just got to a point where I could not take the incongruence between the work that I was doing and what was truly important to me.

In all those years bouncing around, I would volunteer on the side, teaching financial literacy to individuals, and then I would teach accounting basics to entrepreneurs. And so on the one hand, in my work life, I was in a profession dealing with the 1% and people who were largely unaffected by the pandemic. And then on the other hand, in my volunteer life doing work that was meaningful to me, I was working with people who had a negative net worth and who could at best just hope to get by. And, you know, people in that category were people that look like me.

So here we are In the pandemic, the world is on fire, and I decided, you know, if I'm going down, I'm going to go down fighting for the people that I care about, and so I quit my job. I went out onto my own, and I worked with small and micro businesses. Now, by sheer nature of me being a black woman, those were largely my clientele, which is great. However, I quickly realized that these businesses needed far more guidance than I anticipated. So when you're working with large companies, there's adequate staff, there are systems, procedures, and strategy, and there's enough money to pay you.

And these things just don't exist in the same way with a business that's smaller or just starting out. And then when you couple these sorts of growing pains with the barriers that black founders face regarding entrepreneurship, like lack of proper funding, historically being excluded from participating in capitalism, and lack of a supportive network. It just makes it that much more difficult to be successful. And so I created Impact Profit to kind of help fill in the gap. I do believe that entrepreneurship is a pathway to wealth. And if we can get our businesses to be financially sound for the long term, then we can get to the wealth creation. So that's, you know, her roundabout way of why I started Impact Profit.

06:37 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much and sharing that. And so I know you touched on a little bit about how you're serving your clients. Could you go through a little bit more on how you're making that Impact with Impact Profit and serving the clients you work with?

06:48 – Tara S

Sure. So we're basically an entrepreneur support organization for early-stage black founders. We have 3 main offerings and the biggest one is a 4 week financial focus boot camp. It's called the Profit Lab. And there we teach you a little more than the basics of business finance. There are 3 main sections of that. First, we go over decision-making. So your money mindset, like your beliefs around money, then your money team, so who you might need to work with or seek guidance from? The second part is financing.

So we go over funding, types of funding available where you might get it, and then we go into revenue models. And That's basically how your business is going to be bringing in revenue and the considerations around that. Then we go over all the data stuff. That's the accounting process, what you need to know there, managing cash flow, and then going over financial statements. So what you should be looking for when you look at a financial statement. And then go over some cues that will help you know whether that statement is accurate and whether you should be relying on it.

The second thing we do is that we offer business grants. In order to be eligible to apply for a grant, you do have to first go through the profit lab, because we believe that combining the education along with the resources is really going to be the most impactful way to serve our community. The third thing that we are working on is implementing co-working, office hours, and fireside chats with successful entrepreneurs, and just really looking to create a sort of community and help our founders build networks. Everything that we offer is free and we do place a particular emphasis on small businesses.

08:36 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. And do you feel like that's part of what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for the organization itself or a combination of both. But do you think that bringing those worlds together, so to speak, under one organization is what you feel kind of such a part of makes you unique?

08:50 – Tara S

You know what? I think that I am the secret sauce. So the nonprofit space, especially in terms of leadership, is pretty white. And so you have all these organizations where the leadership looks nothing like the demographic they serve. And I think that's dangerous because then you have decisions that are being made without consulting the people that are most impacted by those decisions, right? And I am a black entrepreneur serving other black entrepreneurs. I know what we're going through and what our needs are.

I'm also running an organization that has a financial education focus. I'm a CPA and I've been a financial educator for many years. And so my skill set and my background align pretty well with what I'm doing. I think that all of my past experiences have happened so that I could create impact profit and do a good job with it. I mean, I can't think of a better person to run impact profit other than myself.

09:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:09 – Tara S

I am going to recommend the book, What Happened to You by Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry. So they explore the ways in which childhood trauma and even routine stress change our brains and impact us as adults. And so, you know, here we are going along living life and we think that we're reacting to situations in the present as they happen, but actually, our brains are pulling from something that happened in the past because we store connections based on our experiences.

It's really fascinating stuff And for anyone that has business anxiety or booming thoughts, you find your business experience very stressful, it could be something that you need to explore. And I think this book is a great introduction to that.

11:00 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I love that. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It's something I might say that you might tell your favorite client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:15 – Tara S

I would say if at all possible, and this relates to what we were just talking about, go to therapy or find a safe and supportive community. And I'm gonna give these 2 options because I know that therapy isn't accessible to everyone. And you don't have to go to therapy just to have a therapeutic experience. I mean, I have really seen and experienced how our past comes up in the way that we run our businesses. And this is especially true with finances. Whether we want to admit it or not, money is emotional.

And you are going to find that you're going to be bringing up your beliefs about money, your self-worth, your identity, what have you good and bad from your personal life into your business. And I'll be the first to tell you that your accountant or your bookkeeper, they are not equipped with the ability to help you unearth these sorts of deep-rooted beliefs around money. So if you can, find yourself a good therapist or find yourself a safe and supportive community, people that you can talk to about what you're going through because we don't live in a vacuum. And being an entrepreneur can feel pretty isolating. You need to have someone else in your corner.

12:37 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that. I'm going to emphasize again what you said. You don't have to go to therapy to have a therapeutic experience. Because I think whether you have that opportunity to go to therapy, that's phenomenal. And that's great, obviously, but I think many times we believe that's the only way to have conversations, to be aware, or just to unwind and talk about things we may not be aware of.

I also love the community aspect. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Tara, what is Tara Wiss is being a CEO of MeetU.

13:13 – Tara S

Two things, strategy, and risk management. I think that is the ultimate role of a CEO. You're the one steering the ship and you have to routinely take risks where the outcome of those risks is better than inaction. Even in terms of business finance, the numbers are a representation of your strategy. And yes, there are outliers, but without a solid strategy, you are not going to have a long-lasting, financially sound business. It's got to start with strategy first, and then you incorporate the risk management.

13:55 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:10 – Tara S

Sure. So the last thing I would say is to be authentic. Find out who you are and then find a way to like yourself. You can try to conform and cut out the pieces of yourself that make you who you truly are in order to fit into what you believe other people want you to be. But the pain of turning yourself into a jigsaw puzzle is never going to go away. To find your missing pieces and put yourself back together because that's all that there is, and there is nothing better than being you. That is in life and that is in business.

I have seen people create businesses that are successful monetarily, but they are miserable because it is not related to who they are. It doesn't even align with who, you know, with what they believe in. So as best as you can, and I know it's difficult, but be yourself. And if you want to find me, you can go to Instagram and follow me at Impact Profit. Or if you want to learn more about what Impact Profit does, you can go to our website, which is www.impactprofit.org.

15:28 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And to make that even easier, we're gonna have the links and information that show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you to find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And I absolutely love, love, love that last point that you left us with. I often say, that if you run your own race, you can't lose, and right in line with that being authentic.

But I love that jigsaw puzzle kind of metaphor analogy as well, too because I think once we try to figure out what those pieces are to put them in place, we realize our jigsaw puzzle is in alignment with who we are. We don't have to choose either or can I make a lot of money or can I, you know, follow my passion? You could choose both and you can really do some phenomenal things. So thank you so much for trailblazing and reminding us of that today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:09 – Tara S

Thank you. This has been wonderful.

16:12 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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