What's your story?

Like you, specific events and unique circumstances in my life "primed" me to become the person I am today. What matters is the context we create that enables past events to be fully assessed and understood. Pivotal moments in your life, BOTH positive AND negative, prepared you with insights and experiences that can influence your performance—far beyond what you might expect.

​No matter your circumstances, you were left with the capacity to be extraordinary, to shine brightly in a particular area that matters to you. Have you uncovered that capacity in yourself? 

The stories you tell yourself about your past and current circumstances are relevant to behavioral economics in that they effect your social identity and social norms, which in turn influences your earning capacity. People bust their butts in pursuit of financial freedom and claim to be stopped by external circumstances, like a 'bad boss', a 'toxic workplace' or the infamous 'glass ceiling'. Far more effective to do The Work and gain mental freedom and empowerment in all areas of your life. Money is nothing more than a result, a measurable outcome, and a sign of progress.  

Pop open a few accordions below to read some of my stories.
I hope these examples fuel your curiosity and inspire you to re-examine and reflect on your own stories
...and ask yourself "What if...?"

​Seeing Systems...

The Emergent Power of Possibility
Your life has prepared you for something extraordinary.

If you look back at the pivotal moments in your life, you’ll find you can string them together to make yourself a pearl necklace. I’m not talking happy moments or feel good moments. This is about your life as a Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Allow me to show you how to string your pearls of wisdom.

​Body Science and Business

Our family had a set of World Book Encyclopedias in the front den of our house. My Dad loved science, my Mom was a nurse and our neighbour was a doctor so I was captivated by the book on the science of the human body. I studied it for hours at a time, not by reading but by looking at the pictures. There was a printed page of a skeleton and a series of transparent overlays. Each transparency introduced a different layer of information, a system entirely different from the last: the circulatory system, the organs, the muscles and tendons, and finally the skin. I was spellbound by how it all fit together and how the human body could not function if any layer was missed or impeded.

This experience impacted the way I see business.

Those transparent overlays I studied in grade four taught me to see the world in layers. That’s how I learned to look beneath the surface of workplace problems to examine the inter-dependent components of the business and identify root cause. Deep thinking is something I do quickly and easily because I’ve identified various layers and assembled a toolkit to help me take them apart and put them back together.

The biggest mistake I see smart business owners make is they misdiagnosis symptoms as the problem. When that happens they apply a linear solution to a non-linear problem. For instance, they misdiagnose slumping sales as the problem instead of seeing it as a symptom of a deeper underlying cause. Hiring more salespeople is a linear solution. It implies a straight line between cause and effect. But if sales are declining in response to poor customer service, the owner has invested in recruiting, hiring, training, and still not solved the problem at all.

Business is as complex as the human body. It’s critical that adjustments be made in the appropriate part of the system.

If your rib is out of place you may think, “Hey, I need a chiropractor”. But if muscle tension is what pulled your rib out of alignment, the chiropractor can put it back into position but it will pop out the moment you sneeze. If you fail to diagnose the root cause of the problem, you can get caught in a never-ending loop of chiropractor appoints when five acupuncture treatments would have permanently resolved your discomfort.

The moral of the story is…if your business isn’t performing as well as you’d like, get a proper diagnosis! It will save you time, money, and frustration!

​Hearing Patterns...

Listen for the Rhythm


The next incident sharpened my hearing and expanded my ability to listen to people and organizations.


Dad owned a business called The Brass Hub Inn in Radville, Saskatchewan. With rooms for rent on the upper level, the main floor had a coffee shop, pub, fine dining lounge, and a pinball arcade. As you might imagine, a room full of pinball machines in the 1970’s attracted teenage boys like a magnet. We packed them in like sardines after school and on weekends. The arcade billowed cigarette smoke and was electrically charged with light, sound, testosterone and intense competition.

The business office was directly across from the pinball arcade, concealed behind a large picture mirror that was really one-way glass. From the sanctity of the office, I listened to the clacks and dings of pinball machines for thousands of hours.


One machine in particular captured my interest. A race car track engulfed in a plastic dome covered the entire surface area of a table. Only the steering wheel and controls were accessible outside the dome. Over time I started to differentiate sound patterns between players. High score players had more of a rhythmic sound. It was rather intriguing to me. I found the rhythmic patterns held my attention and were strangely soothing.   


I was deathly shy as a child and avoided the pinball arcade like the plague. One night after the doors were locked and the place was quiet I approached the race car game with a handful of quarters. I wanted to test my theory about rhythm and patterns. Instead of steering the car using eye-hand coordination, like the regular players, I focused on replicating the rhythm I’d heard. The scoreboard went up and up. Soon the high score for the machine began to rise. When I stopped I’d beat the all time record by a mile.    


The next day the regulars were curious as to who the highmark player was. After exhausting their search internally, someone asked me if any new players had rented a hotel room. Not wanting to be found out, I told them nobody had been in recently. It remained an unsolved mystery.   


Early experiences from childhood leave permanent impressions that affect our behaviour and mindset. Although I was unaware of the origin until I started digging into my past for stories, these early lessons shaped my perspective at work. It’s second nature for me to watch and listen for patterns. It helped me be a better retail product merchandiser, grade exotic seafood on the boat, or create order from chaos.


Great work begins by finding the rhythm and flow in the work the business does. In terms of systems archetype and performance DNA, that’s what technicians do.


Effectiveness has a rhythm to it. Whether it’s lead time, production flow, or a sales cycle, timing is everything. There is an underlying pattern and rhythm to any productive workflow. Even creative projects! Once you find the groove it’s easy to ramp up production while keeping quality and efficiency high. Exceeding the optimal limit burns people out, increases risk of injury, or leads to employee turnover. Not striving to find that sweet spot stunts the growth of people, performance, and profit.


Looking beneath the surface to see the network of interconnected systems that makeup the business is the systems archetype of a and performance DNA of manager.   
    
As a result of these early insights, I love work! And I love business. I’ve sold jeans, managed inventory, swabbed decks, graded exotic seafood, skippered a boat, coordinated loading and dangerous goods permits for container ships destined for Japan, negotiated complex property leases, and owned multiple businesses. When I’m in my element I’ll search for the optimal way to maximize load without restricting water flow in the dishwasher. I can’t help myself!

​Intuitive Journey...

Tana was lead to the work of building communities by focusing on individual dreams and strengths of people as a result of pursuing her own dreams. She arrived in British Columbia from Saskatchewan at the age of 19. "I started work as a dive tender and relief skipper on an underwater seafood harvesting boat. From the rough waters of ocean living and the hard life of working the boats, I began to not only fall in love with the ocean, but also the people who work hard and dream of better things both for themselves and their families". Tana believes that building entrepreneurs is a powerful way of building communities.

It was that vision that led her to a management position at the Steveston Harbour Authority, creating systems that helped diverse communities of harbour users thrive. “Our processes took an organization out of chaos and mis-management, and built a financially sustainable, future-focused and people-first system that worked for the community” Tana recalls. It was these early successes with re-structuring and re-vitalizing communities that led Tana to launch out on her own and create a company focused on building up communities of entrepreneurs. Process prevent politics.

Hurricane Winds...

Tana has a unique ability to see possibilities where others only see problems. In 1996, driven by the urgent need for conservation, the federal government declared a mandate for a massive reduction in salmon fishing, including the likelihood of eliminating entire sub-industries (such as gillnetting) on the west coast within two years. This single statement threw the entire west coast fishing community into chaos, fear and confusion. It was like a hurricane wind hitting their boats!

People were losing their livelihoods, many of whom had fished on the coast for generations, had devoted their lives and life savings into this industry and simply didn’t know what to do, or how to respond to this unprecedented and sudden change.

Tana knew she had to do something. And she knew it started with listening to the people. So she launched her own consulting business, and using that as a vehicle, got the funding for, created and staffed a toll-free support service, the Fisheries and Oceans Information Line. Tana listened as 17,535 calls came in and people told their stories of how this 'hurricane wind' was impacting them. People were angry. They were stressful, anxious and sad. Families were breaking up. Whole communities were falling apart. When the president of the Area 'D' Gillnet Association called her and asked in a plaintive voice, “What will I tell my members? What will our members do”? Tana recalls. “It was heart-breaking, but exhilarating at the same time, because as the conversation went on, we slowly began to see possibilities and dream of ways we could turn it around and create something new and different.”

And so that’s what they did. Just like her earlier work at the Steveston Harbour Authority, Tana set about creating structures and systems to help bring people out of chaos and fear, and into order and hope. Her work with fisheries and the fishing communities resulted in new demonstration fisheries, pilot projects for sustainable fishing, programs and services for the fishing communities, and ultimately, her client won the Governor General’s award for Selective and Responsible Fisheries. You can create order and hope out of chaos and confusion.

Something's Missing...

The Triumph & The Downfall

After a successful career making an impact in the fishing industry, and having two children, Tana decided to enter into the world of entrepreneurship in a bigger way. Together with her husband Randy, they founded Premier Building Products Ltd., a manufacturer and distributor of high-end, panelized, custom homes, and Premier Enterprises USA Inc., a general contracting firm based in Washington state. Within three years, their BC company grew from revenue of $50,000, to $1.5 million, and was one of the top 3 finalists for the 2001 BC Export Awards, Exporter of the year.

Then, like the fishermen facing fisheries closures, Tana and Randy experienced their own ‘hurricane winds’ on September 11th, 2001 when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York. The economy experienced a downturn and residential developers in the US (representing 100% of their customer base), ceased building whole subdivisions. The bottom fell out of the market. Despite efforts to re-tool and resurrect their business into new Canadian markets, the business was sold by 2005. “We had taken it as far as we could, but at the end of the day, we had built a business that was totally dependent on ourselves and on the whims of one singular market” Tana explained.
Effective business systems design can shock proof your business.

Cultural Harmony...

Tana continued her work as a consultant and community builder in regional communities throughout British Columbia. Having started her first business at age 18, Tana particularly enjoyed mentoring young entrepreneurs as a way to give back. These pictures are from volunteer events and activities with the Canadian Youth Business foundation, now known as Futurepreneur, the Bradner Entrepreneur Bootcamp, and international students from both Simon Fraser University and Trinity Western University. 

To learn more about our commitment to diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace, visit our Resources section or Food For Thought YouTube channel.

Royal Roads University...

"Maybe it was their youthful influence that inspired me to pursue a long time dream of earning a Master’s degree in Leadership before I turned 50". Regardless of what fuelled the inspiration, Tana has always been a deep thinker, and been able to develop systems, programs, and tools that could bring order, clarity and hope to troubled organizations and hurting communities. By questioning how to make better connections between teams and systems, Tana entered the School of Leadership Studies at Royal Roads University in 2011 where started her Master’s degree, supporting deeper thought and searching for something that could pull all these experiences together. At this higher level, the process she automatically knew how to do when implementing projects became both explainable and teachable.

The E-Myth Influence...

While achieving her Leadership degree, Tana's academic advisor suggested she contact Michael Gerber, the well-known American author of the E-Myth series of business books and founder of E-Myth Worldwide. A mentor and fellow systems thinker, Michael had been teaching business owners to think more like entrepreneurs and to work 'on' their business instead of 'in' their business for decades. Connecting with Michael Gerber was an epiphany for Tana. He was able to inspire the language and structure for what she'd been doing and trying to explain to others for decades. He was the answer and the mentor she was searching for!

Representing Canada on Michael Gerber's global leadership team was that epiphany that led Tana to where she is today, founding the Discovery Centre for Entrepreneurship, achieving Canada Revenue Agency recognition as a private career training organization, and delivering programming for entrepreneurs, business owners, and community organizations.

As a catalyst of business growth for over twenty five years, Tana's had more than 22,000 critical conversations with business leaders about their labour market challenges. She's conducted extensive research and tracked performance trends and behaviour patterns across economic regions for over two decades. She understands barriers to growth, workforce challenges, professional goals, and personal desires. Problems are not personal, they're systemic. Great entrepreneurs learn how to overcome invisible barrier to success by building systems that serve the needs of their customer, employees, suppliers and investors.  

                                                                                                                      The Epiphany
Tana explains, “What I realized was that I had fallen into what Michael calls the trap of the manager. With Premier Building Products, we had only built a business to the manager stage, and not a true entrepreneurial company that could stand the test of time and essentially run on its own.”

The systems and ideas that Michael Gerber taught Tana over the five years they worked together provided enormous insights for saving communities and families from stress and trauma similar to what Tana had felt during the collapse of Premier, and the fishermen and their families felt when fisheries collapsed. "In hindsight", she said, "It's easy to fall prey to misconceptions that you're on top of the world and will live 'happily ever after' when things are going good. The moment you stop creating you've already begun to slide backwards and consume what you worked so hard to create". That's when Tana realized something she'd known in her heart all along. 

                                         Entrepreneurship - taught right - can change lives, elevate families and heal communities.

---

Is now the right time for you to unpack your stories and experiences in a way that reveals your Power Centers, your economic sweet spot? This may not be the right time...and that's okay! (Be compassionate with yourself)

Take the Quiz

When you are ready, we can help you gain clarity about who you are and what matters to you in your work life. At the Discovery Center for Entrepreneurship, mental freedom is a prerequisite to financial freedom. Personal empowerment will help you live fully, work effectively, and courageously carve a new pathway to success. Time is your most valuable resource. Don't waste it.