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Founder@ Interview
Interview with Tammy Whalen Blake
Credits @ Sarah Lidbury
“REFLECT: what worked well, what didn’t? gather data and feedback. Have the humility to be vulnerable and learn something new. Even if you don’t think you are in a position to invest in the new solutions. RETHINK: what can be improved? who can you work with? what collaborations can you create? can you do it differently and be comfortable with this decision? REBOOT: plan!!! what are you going to do? with who? by when? Be super specific on this. 50% of your time must be planning so you can be effective. .” – Tammy Whalen Blake
Today we feature Tammy Whalen Blake, the founder at Go To Yellow. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I am a personal development leader, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and an unwavering optimist devoted to guiding professionals and business owners to live a balanced yet successful life.
From a young age, my core values have remained consistent making me a natural leader whilst honouring the importance of life outside of the workplace.
As of now, I have launched a successful business without any substantial resources, built systems to run like clockwork, grew an empowered team to achieve the mission, and have the freedom to do more in less time.
These lessons coupled with leveraging my innate abilities have seen many go on to build lasting relationships, start, grow or exit their business or careers, so they can design a fulfilled and purposeful life. What keeps me going every single day is the vision for our future. “I imagine a world of yellow people.
These people are inspired and energised; waking up with eyes beaming just like a child, walking with a bounce in their step, and live with massive joy in their hearts. They are the opposite of what I see all too often; grey people. Hitting the snooze alarm, hating Monday mornings, wishing away the weekday, exhausted and walking with weight on their shoulders”
Discovering this powerful vision led me to build a coaching business to help business owners and professionals, who tend to be grey, to discover their yellow.
I believe the first step with success is BY WORKING ON YOU. Once you fully understand who you are and what you truly want, without societal pressures and expectations, you begin to have success in all areas of your life. Unfortunately, we have not been given the support we need to personally develop. This is the gap in the world that Go To Yellow is on a mission to close – you can achieve success without limitations. It just depends on what success means to you.
My determination sees every client on their journey to yellow achieve their vision – one where settling for mediocrity is not an option because they know they are meant for an extraordinary life!
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A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
My life has not always been amazing. I developed these Yellow Tools to take myself from a basic lifestyle to living with high energy and a determination to succeed as an entrepreneur, a dedicated life partner, world travelling enthusiast and an owner of a strong and high-performing body. I’m happy and purposeful now but it hasn’t always been like this!
I want to share my journey so you get an insight into my personal evolution and where the Yellow Tools have come from.
As a teenager, I lived in a toxic environment, although I didn’t realise that at the time. My Mother was demanding and had high expectations which she did not communicate, and she was incredibly disorganised. This left me feeling stressed in the midst of chaos.
Guilty for being a child wanting to do child-like things, and lacking confidence and self-belief, constantly trying to second guess what was wanted from me. Whatever I did was wrong, and I thought like that for a very long time.
I lived in a city where the energy was extremely negative on lots of levels. Traffic, weather, price increases and being surrounded by a critical and judgemental culture made me feel stressed and unhappy.
Every guy I dated and lived with, left me. I convinced myself “I was not good enough”. Coupled with this, I was working in an average retail job with a degree that I did not use.
A lack of confidence and negative thinking became my norm until my heart was broken for the 3rd time and I knew something had to change.
By working on myself, I realised that I lacked self-belief. I was investing all my energy and time in endless tasks that kept me from achieving my big goals because I could not say no to the demands of others.
As a result of my childhood, I deeply desired to feel accepted, loved and not judged by others. I didn’t realise my habits and behaviours were a problem, nor did I know my previous environment would have an impact on achieving in life.
Deep down I knew that my biography was not my destiny – that I could be anything I wanted to be with some guidance.
Realising this woke me up and I became self-aware for the first time. This revelation launched my goal of personal development and a realisation that I needed to be kind to myself before I could be kind to others. Subsequently, I found more energy and time.
However, I soon realised I did NOT have it all figured out with this one fix. There were more lessons coming my way. Along came my enemy … Self-Sabotage…
Within 6 months I had gained 14lbs; food had become a comfort. Sugar cravings left me low on energy and unmotivated and sleep was hard to come by because I was overthinking everything.
I hit rock bottom! I was stuck in a rut, unable to muster the energy to meet friends or maintain a healthy relationship. Instead, I was dating multiple people to try to feel loved, I was worried about my overall health and finding a fulfilling job.
The fear of transformational change was too much to handle.
I finally realised that toxic people attract more toxicity into their lives. Toxic people attract toxic working environments, relationships, even passing on the bad energy to loved ones!
Until it hits you hard in the face, you just can’t see the ripple effect of negative habits and behaviours.
This left me with two options; remain stuck or change.
If I wanted to create a better life for myself; my career, relationships, finances and my health, I knew I had to do something, before I was severely sick with stress, isolated from the world and in a career that barely covered my living costs.
This was not living!
So every year from 2014 I would set goals to close the gap between where I was and the vision for my life. I would sometimes achieve them, but most of the time I failed as the drive was coming from a very negative place. The place of not feeling good enough is a bad place to start.
But the goals I set myself were too fluffy and unfocused and not enough to drive me forward.
When I discovered the keys to success, my life changed for the better.
Using the YELLOW method allowed me to achieve more than ever before, quicker and more effectively.
I was finding better relationships and fixing broken ones
I achieved my dream role, with a minimum of a 10-year gap of experience compared to my peers. The first 25-year-old in the highly successful team.
An 83% increase in salary over two years.
I turned my finances around and turned red to black; every month!
My physical health was transformed from binge-watching TV on the sofa to 4 gym visits a week; being able to lift double my body weight in just 18 months!
I started applying the increase in strength and energy to grow my knowledge to improve my qualifications in business development,
I lost weight and changed my eating habits. My investment in my health started having an impact on my physical appearance!
I felt comfortable to end a relationship that was not suitable for me, because I knew my worth and subsequently found my soul-mate who amazes me every day; he’s incredible!
Bought a cute cottage all by myself.
Manage my fears to present confidently to audiences of different sizes.
Although I was living my best life, I hit another stumbling block with a redundancy. This didn’t keep me down for long as by then my mindset was so powerful that I realised that everything I learnt could also help me to be resilient in the face of adversity.
This forced upheaval made me face my future so I decided to not only change my career but that I wanted to set up my own business too.
I felt fearless. I felt empowered.
After reflecting on my journey, I realised that I had given myself some powerful tools for positive change. I decided that they needed to be recognised and so my Yellow Tools were born, leading to the conception of ‘Go to Yellow’. I knew that there were so many others that would also benefit from my system.
Today I am blessed for the opportunity of working with like-minded people on their journey to success. We work on the keys and see the transformational results.
The feeling of watching high-achiever realise their desired life fuels my soul, and is the reason I wake up like a child – “eyes beaming, excited for a new day of exploration”
We can all do with that, even once in a while.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
With practical and realistic strategies, delivered through results-driven private and group coaching programs, mastermind groups, seminars, and workshops. The business is based in Bristol but it runs online to allow flexibility and life balance.
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
My success has been a combination of my childhood as previously explained and where I am now in my career.
I was fortunate enough to experience corporate life from the age of 25. This allowed me to understand how businesses operated, how to work with leaders, be bold and brave along with having immense responsibility to perform.
My redundancy allowed me the opportunity to reset and become a new person. One where I leveraged my passions – personal development.
My business has been run by me with a team of 8 freelancers. Funds have always been the biggest challenge to master as I grew the business but with an operational mindset, team building mentality and knowledge in marketing, I was able to empower my team on the vision and mission.
Together, we are awesome! We have an open and trusting environment with diverse minds. This keeps us all on our toes and innovating for success.
The 2 years in business has not been easy – working reduced hours (by choice) taught me to work smarter.
In the process, I have wasted funds that are essential due to too many adverts promoting they have the secret. Whilst I do not regret them, it has allowed me to build a whole new business model that is currently under pilot. Should this be successful, the business will be worth millions in 5 years time.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
To avoid Facebook adverts and American Business Coaches – it is way too distracting in an already distracting world
The power of connecting with start-up businesses and free programs with people such as NatWest accelerator.
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
“Just be you. It will all come together”
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
The number 1 tool I have is a CRM system that connects all my business. This ensures the leads are nurtured and managed. My audience love my systems and processes which is driven by the CRM.
I run most of the CRM with the support of my technical team.
The email marketer helps with the content of which I will create in the system. I personally love the creation side of the business.
We have one social media community manager to build a strong community – she is also responsible for creating social media content and connecting.
We use Canva. iMovie is used by me to create our podcast content, YouTube Buddy to help with descriptions and tags.
We work with a local videographer for professional video content as it requires high-end equipment.
Buzzsprouts is the audio podcast distribution tool.
Nichole is our assistant editor for the Yellow magazine – she manages the relationships, gathers the articles, creates the magazine and shares it. I am the editor who overlooks and approves the final edits.The Yellow Mastermind team is growing – new team members will be announced while we work on our new strategy.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
The power of connecting with start-up businesses and free programs with people such as NatWest accelerator.
Credits @ Sarah Lidbury
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
I couldn’t say one is my favourite as there have been many. The most surprising has been my magazine which was an idea born from nowhere. It has created a community and brought immense awareness to the brand vision and mission.
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
I want to franchise The Yellow Mastermind as this has huge growth potential. It would also change the micro-business world for the better – I am anti-overworking. It is not effective nor healthy. I will change this will a new working model.
The magazine also excites me as it shares positive stories which this world is screaming for.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
REFLECT: what worked well, what didn’t? gather data and feedback. Have the humility to be vulnerable and learn something new. Even if you don’t think you are in a position to invest in the new solutions. RETHINK: what can be improved? who can you work with? what collaborations can you create? can you do it differently and be comfortable with this decision? REBOOT: plan!!! what are you going to do? with who? by when? Be super specific on this. 50% of your time must be planning so you can be effective.
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Go To Yellow”
To learn more about Go To Yellow Visit www.gotoyellow.co.uk
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