Episode 51: Focus on the Person, with Tara-Nicholle Nelson

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is the Founder and CEO of Transformational Consumer Insights, Inc., a data, insight, and strategy firm. TCI helps brands understand, reach, and engage Transformational Consumers: a hyper-growth segment of consumers that view all of life as a series of campaigns to change their behavior in order to live healthier, wealthier, wiser lives.

Formerly, Tara was the first and only VP, Marketing for MyFitnessPal, now part of Under Armour Connected Fitness. Over 160 million people worldwide use Under Armour Connected Fitness apps to get an around-the-clock view of their food and fitness activities.

In Tara’s first year on the job, MyFitnessPal grew from 45 million to 100 million users, drove a 22 percent increase in user engagement, and went from raising an $18 million Series A to the acquisition by Under Armour for $475 million.

Tara created the Transformational Consumer Insights framework in 2012, and has continued to develop it throughout a career of working with the biggest brands in consumer tech to reach and engage hundreds of millions of consumers by helping them make the difficult behavior changes they struggle with as they aspire to live healthier, wealthier, and wiser lives.

Tara’s exuberant belief that business can be a powerful, transformational force for humanity and her team’s deep expertise in predictive data science, neuropsychology, behavioral economics, content marketing, brand, and digital strategy powers TCI’s approach and offerings.

Tara has developed and executed integrated marketing, content, PR and social media strategies that achieved the traffic, brand, PR, niche marketing, business development and revenue objectives of behavior-focused digital companies like HGTV, Eventbrite, ING Direct, Chegg, Lookout Mobile Security, ModCloth, and real estate search engine Trulia.com.

Tara holds a Master’s degree in Psychology and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Tara is the Board President of City Slicker Farms, a non-profit community farming and food security organization in West Oakland.

Episode 42: Why Marketing and Sales Must Coexist, with Kendra Lee

In spite of starting her career in accounting, failing IBM’s entry level sales exam, being given a territory that had never bought anything, and being told she couldn't sell without an engineering background, Kendra Lee entered the sales profession and proved those naysayers wrong. She turned her knowledge of numbers into her own approach to lead generation taking her to the top 1% of sales professionals in each IT company she sold for. She founded KLA Group, a sales and marketing agency, to consult, train and Do it For You so others, too, could beat the odds in sales and marketing and get more customers.

Under Kendra’s direction, her organization has assisted entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, marketers, and salespeople for over 20 years in penetrating SMB markets in just 12 weeks, increasing referrals more than 328% in just 7 weeks, and multiplying new client acquisition more than 31% year over year.

Kendra is the author of the award-winning books “The Sales Magnet” and “Selling Against the Goal.”

Episode 40: How to do #Hashtags Right, with Lee Caraher

Today we’re going to talk about #Hashtags. How do you use them -- and how do you use them well?