Saturn, Marketing, and Nicaragua

What happens when you’re ready to switch gears in your career path? Vicky Winkler is the owner of The Marketing Shop. In this episode of the Talent Empowerment Podcast, Vicky shares everything about her experience working at General Motors, transitioning from a corporate role, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, and the importance of being grateful for what we have.

🎙️Talking Points:

(2:57) How do you empower your career?

(4:59) Vicky’s management style

(6:49) Facing challenges as a business owner

(12:19) Working at General Motors

(23:04) Becoming an entrepreneur

(30:41) Vicky’s experience volunteering in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua

🔗Connect with Vicky:

• Website: http://www.tms.marketing
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickywinkler/
• TMS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMarketingShopOnline/
• TMS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketingshopprint/

🔗Connect with Tom:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/therealtomfinn
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/therealtomfinn/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@therealtomfinn
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealtomfinn/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealtomfinn
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/therealtomfinn‍
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@therealtomfinn

Tom Finn:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. And thanks for tuning into the Talent Empowerment podcast. We're here to help you love your job. We're going to unpack the tools, the tactics of successful humans to guide you towards your own career empowerment. I am your purpose-driven little host, the real Tom Finn. And on the show today, we have my great friend, Vicky Winkler. Vicky, welcome to the show.

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Vicky Winkler:

Thank you for having me, Tom. Very excited to be here.

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Tom Finn:

Okay. And we are fired up to have you as well. If you don't know Vicky, let's take just a second to introduce you to her. She spent 35 years in marketing positions in corporate and nonprofit and education. And of course, as an entrepreneur, Vicky has learned that one of her secret weapons to success is spectacular branding and spectacular graphic design. She's worked in corporate nonprofit education, entrepreneurship, and the biggest turning point in her life. Was in. serving the peace Corps in Nicaragua, which is pretty amazing. We're absolutely going to get to that. And with a career journey that has taken her through all facets of the marketing world, she stresses the philosophy of never having regrets. Have no regrets in your life or your career. I love that. Uh, great way to think about life. So with that in mind, having no regrets, what's made you the happiest in your career?

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Vicky Winkler:

I think that becoming an entrepreneur, I've gone through different things in corporate and working other jobs. And when I became an entrepreneur, it really taught me that you always have options in life. And I am amazed at how many times that I have consulted with others who are going through a career change or unhappy with what they're doing and thinking of. And then we went through COVID and kind of my whole staff sort of looked at me and said, What the heck are we going to do? And I looked at them and I said, we'll always have options. We're always going to figure it out. There's always something you can do with your life to make your life better. And when it comes to your career, there's always options. And so we immediately start to developing plan A, plan B, plan C. And at one point we said, we'll just pack it up and we'll shut the shop down and we'll become dog groomers. whatever we might, whatever we do. And we just decided that we'll do it and we'll make it successful. And so I teach it to everybody I know, everybody who's going through a struggle and just say, listen, remember, you always have options. It's nothing's gonna completely fall apart. It might get kind of ugly, but you'll always have options in your personal life and in your professional life.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, I think the absence of having options is fear. And perhaps it's that fear that people feel when they don't know what to do next and they don't know where to go in their career. How do you suppress the fear side and encourage that, dare I say, empowerment side?

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Vicky Winkler:

I will always say do the next right thing. Whatever is that small little thing, whether it's going through a ton of your emails because you're overwhelmed and you just don't know what's next, you don't know where it's going to take you or like in our business, we're doing a lot of things lately with growth and growth strategy and looking at new clients and new target markets and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming like oh my gosh we have all these wonderful exciting crazy things that we want to do. but where do we focus? And so we just kind of slow down and we say, okay, what's the one next thing that I can do? And whether that's getting, and a lot of times that's getting the group together and saying, let's have a team meeting. And we just, we sit and we talk about what's going on and what is everybody feeling and what are some of the fears, you know, what's happening? You know, there's been times again, going through COVID was one of them when there was a lot of fear in my staff and in me. And as the leader, I had to kind of... Just say, okay, well, we're gonna do this, we're gonna get through it, and what can we do today? What can we do in the next hour, in the next two hours, that we know is going in the right direction, even though we might not be sure, because there's maybe a lot of different directions we can go, but let's choose one, and let's do that next right thing.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, next right thing is a great way to think about the world and a great way to think about your day in terms of being productive and focusing on what's important now. That's one that I took from others, which is what's important now and of course the acronym is WIN. And you can think about your day in that sort of present mindset of how do I act in what's important now as well, which is basically the same way you've said it too. So you've got a team. of graphic designers, different folks with marketing backgrounds that work on your team. How do you manage them? What's your style in terms of delivering for them and having them deliver for you?

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Vicky Winkler:

Well, we try to really be a family, really like a really solid, strong team. We love to try to do things together and we like to be impulsive. And so if somebody says, you know, I live on a lake and so sometimes it's just, it's a beautiful day. Hey, let's just stop what we're doing and let's all go kayaking. Or let's all go out and go for a walk. Or let's sign up for, we work with a lot of nonprofits and so let's sign up for the walk for the alliance. and let's all get team shirts and let's all walk. And so we try to do things that really bring us together because our days can get really stressful. We have deadlines, we have clients, we have calls, we have emails, we have text messages coming in. And so sometimes we need to just drop all that and walk away. And a lot of times, as I mentioned earlier, we'll just stop and say, listen, let's have a team meeting. Let's all just sit down. What's going on with everybody? Maybe one person's struggling, maybe somebody's in the corner and they're doing just fine. But we all need to kind of get together and pull together and decide, okay, hey, what do we need to do here? And so we try to have a casual atmosphere and a work environment. You know, we have a couple of work pets and they always come in and bring some levity to the day. And actually my staff loves that and you know, the dog loves it as well, so.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, that's nice. Always having the right workplace culture is important for productivity, it's important for longevity of the employees, and quite frankly, keeping your employees happy keeps your clients happy. And that's what makes the world go round. So were you always like this, Vicky? Did you always have this kind of inner strength and this poise and this ability to see through the mud? Or were there some times in your earlier days where you struggled?

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Vicky Winkler:

Oh, always, you know, and as a business owner, there's always those ups and downs and always those struggles. And I think that what's kind of caused me to be able to persevere is really just through, is through time and experience and going through things. You know, when a large client says to you, well, we're not gonna pay that hourly rate increase that you're talking about. And it's a big client, you just say, okay. And then you go away and sometimes you, Sometimes you cry, sometimes you scream, and then you just pick yourself back up. And so after going through enough of those things, and I left my career and joined the Peace Corps and lived in a world completely different than what I was used to, but again, it just kind of all teaches you that you can get through anything. And so now when things happen, especially with my business, because things are always happening. One day goes oh just fabulously smoothly and then the next day it completely falls apart. But I'm always in the back of my mind saying it's going to work out because it's always worked out. And I don't know what tomorrow is going to look like and I don't know what the solution to today's problem is. But we're going to get through and we're going to figure it out. And it's really just time and experience of persevering through just lots of ups and downs. The more things you go through and the tougher they are, then it makes those things easier when they do come around and different issues come up. And so, you know, so I say bring it on, you know, because change that we've gone through has resulted in wonderful things on the other end. And I cannot say that there's been a time where we've had a struggle in our business or in my personal life, that what's been on the other end of it has not been more spectacular than where we were.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, beautifully said. And I completely agree. The, I want to share something with you because I think it's the right time to do so when I was younger, I always wanted everything to be easy. I thought that everything being easy meant that I was doing it right. I was doing life right. That everything was easy, whether that's, you know, school when you're younger and sports and friendships and dating and love and family, whatever it is. Right? It was all easy. But then there was nothing on the other side. There was no challenge. And then when I started hitting challenges in my life, I went, whoa, what is this? What is this stuff that we're dealing with? And so I wonder, did you ever go through that where you thought things would be easy and then at some point they just weren't and you had to figure it out?

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Vicky Winkler:

Well, and I think again, too, being as a business owner. go through that where you know you and I see a lot of our clients especially ones that are new startup businesses that they think things are going to go smoothly and maybe because somebody hasn't told them the expectations of being a business owner and I went through that as well in the beginning thinking well you know I'm just going to kind of do this graphic design thing and then I'm going to get clients and I don't I had no plan as to well how am I going to get those clients and what's going to happen. then which I didn't even imagine I never even thought about the fact that I might get too much work and then I won't be able to handle it all and so I kind of went into my business really without a vision of where it was going to be and it's gone to a place where I never thought in the beginning that it would it would grow to where it's at doing the things we're doing and so I think that you just you just kind of get through that and again it's just kind of having the way and it really again it does it makes you stronger makes you better and allows me the opportunity to show the people now who are working for me what it what it takes to be a business owner and the challenges that you might encounter and my daughter as well my 20 year old daughter who is going to be graduating from college in a couple years and I think she sees some of things that go through and probably thinks I'm never going to be a business owner but yeah we'll see what happens.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, the other piece of the pie that people don't really talk about is corporate roles in large organizations take up, for argument's sake, I think it's around 45% of the market and in the US, 55% are business owners. That's about how it plays, if my memory serves me correctly. It's not easy to be in large corporations either. Those can be really difficult. And you actually have worked for... one of the largest well-known organizations in the world, General Motors, and you did some work on a vehicle that I believe is discontinued today. But you did some work on the launch for about 11 years at General Motors on the Saturn vehicle. And for those of you that are over, I would guess, 35 years old, you probably know what a Saturn is. For those that are under 35 years old, you think, I know it's a planet. but it was also a car. Tell us about your experience working at General Motors.

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Vicky Winkler:

Oh gosh. Well, you know, when I was at General Motors, it was, you were a small cog, you know, in this big wheel, and it was a lot of, a lot of meetings and a lot of time spent just kind of negotiating that whole co-worker and large departments. And sometimes it was kind of nice because you were such a small piece. But yet, you knew you had an important role in what you were doing. But sometimes it was easy, and I would see people who would just kind of fade off into the distance there. It was easy to kind of, for people to get overlooked. And I didn't like that part of it too. I felt, I guess, just that impersonal part of just being one person in an apartment. And I saw some people go through some real struggles with that. who were struggling and just kind of being overlooked and not noticed because there you kind of lose a little bit of that individuality you know when you're in this very large corporation but then becoming part of Saturn was kind of a different thing because I was part of the startup marketing team so we were just we were in this big building is big General Motors building and then there was this little department that started to form that was Saturn and there was you know key people that were pulled in to be part of the Saturn team and I was to be part of that and we were this small little group and then all of a sudden we kind of became the laughing stock of the rest of GM because people thought oh this Saturn thing you know it's never going to work and it was so different from what had been done and it I mean granted it didn't work in the long run but I think that a lot of the things that Saturn did have been incorporated into General Motors and you know it was that was where the electric car had first of the Saturn project and so you know obviously electric cars are you know are the way that things are going now so yeah it's a completely different environment being in a large corporation But Saturn was a fun thing. That was an amazing experience. Everything about Saturn was about hitting the target market and looking at who the target market was. And it was really where I learned my whole philosophy. And it's what I teach all my clients. And I have students. I teach marketing classes. And it's always all about specific target markets. And you don't just go out there and say, people will say it in meetings. Well, who are you? trying to market to? Well anybody, anybody who could use my services and it's like well you know let's talk more about that and you know let's narrow that down a little bit more you know and I'll say to my students tell me who your target market is by describing them to me. If you're sitting across the table and having coffee from them what would they look like? What would they talk like? What would they be talking about? What are their daily activities? And it really allows people to personalize and I think that that's really important when you're thinking about your customers is to think about them in a personal manner, you know, what would they be like? You know, would you enjoy having conversation with them? How would you help them? You know, how would you feel about them? And it really helps to just to really solidify what that target audience is for people.

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Tom Finn:

I couldn't agree more. I wanna go back to this idea of large company, small company, because I think it's really important what you hit on. What you said is you have a little more freedom to run a business as an entrepreneur and you get to kind of pick your shots and there's no place to hide at all. In larger companies it can feel a little safer. There's definitely places to hide, but you don't get the rewards. And whether that's just atta boys, atta girls, or it's the financial rewards, or it's just being part of a thriving culture all the time at big companies. What you did though, is you snuck into the secret wing of Saturn and started something that probably felt like a startup in a big corporation. Is that how you would describe it?

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Vicky Winkler:

Oh, for sure. Yeah, everything was from ground up. I was part of the market survey team and we would fly to Louisiana and go to New Orleans and we would drive around and we of course went with research and data, but we were looking for these brand new plots of land that they were going to build Saturn dealerships on. We weren't looking at anything existing. Everything was looked at like this is brand a philosophy of don't do it like anything's been done before. Think completely outside the box. You know this was and it was a very exciting time so everything we were doing and if you remember the Spring Hill ads you know the cars driving down to the Spring Hill facility and in the country and I mean that's what it was too. They built this car factory in the middle of small little Spring Hill Tennessee. There was nothing there and they built this and so it was really exciting because we were doing everything that hadn't been done before. And it was just a really cool time. And yeah, it was coming from working at General Motors there and then going to Saturn, it really did. It felt like a whole new, shiny new thing.

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Tom Finn:

So tell me about the day that Saturn launched and how you felt on that day.

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Vicky Winkler:

Mmm. Gosh, I can still remember it today, watching the first car roll off the line. And see, now, we were talking about crying, and I think I might start crying. It seems crazy, but it was, and I was much younger then too, but all of the work that everybody at Saturn had put into, and just their blood, sweat, tears, their hearts, and watching that first car roll off the line, and people were sobbing, and people were cheering, and it was this physical thing. I mean, I guess you could say it was just a car, but it was so much more than that. You know, people moved down to Spring Hill, Tennessee, and they became part of that community. It became, Saturn was, Saturn became your family. They became your neighbors. You went into work every day, and you worked with Saturn people, and then you went back to wherever you were living, and your next door neighbor was a Saturn person. And so, you know, here we all were, watching that first car roll off the line, and people were hugging, an emotional time but it was you know there was so much hard work and so many hours and long and weekends and hours and during the week and so to see that to see that happen after all of that was just really an amazing and there it was it was this beautiful red car and it was really a cool experience I mean obviously one of the things that has shaped me as I've gone through my career for sure

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Tom Finn:

The reason the Saturn experience is so important is not really about a car, right? It's about innovation in a large organization, building a team that's passionate. And the one thing Saturn was known for was this passionate, we're gonna get it done, gritty team within a huge organization, almost like an ops team that was just gonna come in and. build this thing and make it work no matter what. And I imagine that type of culture was pretty cool to be a part of. And I can tell when you're talking about the car coming off the line, how much that meant to you. It meant that you were in the foxhole with some great people.

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Vicky Winkler:

Absolutely. Nobody ever questioned working hard. Like that person that sits next to me just isn't working as hard as me. They're not as passionate about this. Their heart's not in it. We were a strong team and everybody there. I just felt like, and we didn't mind working late and we would bring work home and we would meet up for coffee and we would be talking about it. But we felt so strongly about what we were doing this joint passion for it, that it wasn't like work. We laughed at work, we had get-togethers, you know, we'd meet at people's desks and we were brainstorming ideas and it was just, it was a really exciting time and the friendships that I made there, I still have today and we have the group Saturn pages where people pull out old little Saturn matchbox cars or other little things that And people post them on the Facebook page and we just kind of keep still in touch and watching what other people are doing in their lives. And boy, it's formed some bonds with people. Even suppliers, I worked with people at the ad agency that I worked with in San Francisco and I'm still friends with them on Facebook and we still keep in touch and we see what everybody's doing. And sometimes people talk about those Saturn days and how that we've never really worked or in a culture that was quite like that again. So it was really unique and it was really something that won't be done again, I think, not in my career. I've had other wonderful experiences in my career, but that was really a unique, one of a kind type of thing.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, I think the lesson here for young people is search for that type of culture that drives you, that makes you feel motivated, that gets you engaged, that makes you feel like you belong to something and that you're passionate and you're purpose driven about the project and the work that you're doing that lifts up every other part of your life as well. And it can be a real game changer for you in your career. When you're a part of a great team, you'll always remember it and you'll always be able to lean on that experience to say. I know what this looks like when it's done the right way. So you try- you transitioned from that team and you started your own company and through that process you became an entrepreneur. How, how was that feeling on that day where you decided to leave these corporate roles behind and start your own businesses?

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Vicky Winkler:

Oh boy, scary for sure. Wondering how am I going to make this work? Coming from, so in between my career from Saturn and then I went to the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and then I came back and I worked for a nonprofit as their marketing director. And it was that job that I left to become an entrepreneur. And I had said to my boss, I said, well, you know, what I'd really like to do is to work at home a couple of days. And you know, this was back you know, quite some time ago. And people didn't quite do it back then, but, and I said, well, I'd like to work a couple days at home and then a couple days in the office. And he said, you know, I just, I just don't think I can do that. You know, he was very old school. He was, he was not at all in the contemporary mindset of allowing that. And I said, well, you know what? Then I think what I'm going to do is, is I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to try to make a, make a do of this on my own, doing this marketing thing. And so he said, okay, all right, well, I understand. We part of ways. As I walked out the door, I thought, what the hell did I just do? How will I ever really make this work? Will I ever be able to make enough income? And again, it was just, I had already given it a lot of thought and, well, I didn't have it all thought through and I didn't have a real secure thought out plan. I was ready to do it and it was of course a wonderful decision to make but at the time it was very scary and again I just had to think to myself you know what somehow this is going to work out and I know I'm a hard worker and I'm going to pour myself into this and I am going to just pull the bandaid off and off I go and I'm going to make this work and it was hard it was a struggle in the beginning and I had a lot to learn and I had a lot of and a lot of people who just I would meet and just say you know what hey let's go to this meeting together what do you think and I think this might help you and I had to be really open to a lot of ideas because I come from corporate work they took care of everything for you. I mean they supply they supplied the cabinets for you they cleaned the bathrooms for you know they took care of the accounting all you had to do is come to work and get a paycheck and they put it right into your direct deposit account well gosh all of a huge change and but again you know that whole that scariness of it has taught me again that you can do this and that no matter how scary things get there's always options and you're always going to make it through and I did and here it is 20 years later love my team love what I'm doing and I just being an entrepreneur it's something I'm always telling people you know and again it's was a great choice for me and it is for a lot of people but I would say be prepared and talk to people get mentors and maybe before you actually jump into it talk to a couple people and just get an idea from some other folks I didn't have anyone else in my life who was an entrepreneur so I had to kind of go into it a little bit blind and so I would say don't go into it blind there's plenty of people out there you can talk to the internet has opened that up and social media so yeah

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Tom Finn:

Lots of people to talk to if you want to start a career in the business that you're in, in a large company and exit that business and start your own thing or a completely different line of work that maybe you didn't think of a few years ago that now is pulling at your heartstrings to, uh, to participate in that particular industry. So Vicki, as you, as you think about your business and we haven't really talked about this, what, what specifically do. you focus on in your marketing companies. So we taught you said, Hey, I really love target markets. I love really understanding the depth of breadth. I like to get really focused on what we do. What is, what's your answer to that? What do you, what is your marketing company look for in your target market?

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Vicky Winkler:

Well, I think that the thing that we focus the most on is branding and having consistent branding. Early on in my career when I had formed the marketing shop and we did graphic design and printing. And so people come to us and maybe they would want a logo, maybe they would want business cards. And as the years have gone by, what we've really started to learn more is that people need more consistency in their message and their branding. And how important it is all of your messages, everything that you say to people, but be consistent. When you've got to make sure that when somebody goes to your website and then somebody goes to your social media and they get a brochure handed to you from an networking meeting or they see an ad in the paper, that they look at all of that and they know that is the same company and that your message is consistent even down to how you answer the phone and how your staff answers the phone and how they conduct themselves in meetings. All of that needs to be consistent. In fact, about a year ago, we formed a separate division of our company called Stillwater Branding and Design that now we flow all of our initial branding and rebranding clients through that first before then they become actually marketing shop clients because we felt so strongly about the branding message and how, so I read the statistic just the other day that the average attention span of a human being is 8.25 seconds. goldfish is nine seconds. So the goldfish have got it on us and so

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Tom Finn:

I'm sorry, Vicki. I'm sorry. What did you say? I wasn't listening. Hahaha, gotcha.

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Vicky Winkler:

Oh boy. So yeah, so and people who are on social media, it's three to five seconds. So we only have. maybe eight seconds to get someone's attention. So we need to make sure that it's solid, that it's right, that it's on brand, and that you, people need to know what you do in, okay? Eight seconds. You don't get nine, the goldfish, you know, if you're talking to a goldfish, you've got nine, but we're probably not. So again, just important to really make sure you hone in on what is your mission, what do you wanna say to people, you know, in that, in those few seconds that you have their attention.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, I think that puts a lot of pressure on people to come up with what the answer is in eight seconds. I think there's a lot of pressure on marketers these days in the market to help brands figure that out. Because there's just more noise in the market than there was 20 or 30 years ago. It's the advent of the Internet, it's social media, it's busier lives, it's post-COVID lifestyles. All of those things are important. But eight seconds, boy. That's quick that you've got to get your point across. Well said. So I want to go to this idea of the Peace Corps and the work that you did. And I know how important that was in your life. And I want to kind of get under the hood here for a minute. So tell me about that point in your life, why you made that decision. And for those, perhaps, that don't know what the Peace Corps' goals are as an organization.

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Vicky Winkler:

Sure. While I was working in corporate, I was at Saturn at the time, and I had just gotten to a point in my life personally that I felt like I needed to do more, that I had actually done some volunteer work, and I just felt like there was something greater out there for me than just kind of working in this corporate environment, going in every day, and I liked my job and I liked my coworkers, but I just felt like I needed more meaning. So it might sound a little cliche, but that was really why. I did it and so you know sold my house packed my things up put things into storage and off I went to Nicaragua where I was a small business consultant and I have to say I got more personally out of that experience and I felt like I gave back to the individuals that I served even though it's you know that it's kind of hard to quantify especially after you leave country and you really often say you know you probably made more of an impact than you realize but the impact on me was so powerful and when I came back to the states and I kind of looked around at everything that America has to offer us and how how grateful we need to be for and how grateful I felt for everything that I did have knowing that there was people living in other countries that lived on very little. But what was really impactful for me was that the people that I met in Nicaragua were the happiest people that I've ever come across. And so this I had family living next to me at one point. There was four of the children shared a twin size bed. and I don't know how they did it but I just know there's four kids in that bed and they had no shoes and when I first moved in next door to them they brought me over a small bowl of rice pudding I thought oh that was so nice and I you know it was delicious and I realized that bit of rice pudding for them was was like what they could have eaten, the value of that, of what they could feed their whole family in two days. And for me, I was completely oblivious to that. And of course somebody kind of explained that to me, and I found out later how little they had, but yet they were so happy to come over and share this with this young American woman who had moved in next door that they knew nothing about, and nobody in Nicaragua has blue eyes, and so they thought that I was like from another planet. because I looked so odd to them and because they were never exposed to other cultures or very little and so that just that whole experience really taught me of I think it's taught me to be really grateful for everything that I do have I complain just like everybody else does but I often will think to myself boy you know I really do have very little to complain about knowing what people in other countries just don't have what we have So...

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Tom Finn:

Yet gratitude and being grateful is a fabulous way to live. It just loosens up the heart and the mind. It allows you to be yourself. It allows you to find your own purpose and then give to others, which is so important along all of our journeys. We're very blessed to have what we have and live in first world countries and have the tools around us to be successful. Sometimes it's the mental health, it's the education. and it's the communities that allow us to be successful. We've got to have a little active behavior, if you will, as well, but we're given a bit of an advantage when we live in those types of communities that can prosper an economic result. So very well said. What was the, is there one thing that you took away that has so much meaning to you from that experience?

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Vicky Winkler:

Well, I think that we can't take for granted the things that we have here and the education and the experiences and that it's amazing that there are people in other countries who don't even understand the basics, that the children and adults are not given the education levels that we do. And just that, you know, there's so much that we really should do to... do what we can in our lives to help other people. And I know in our company one of the focuses that we have is large nonprofits and helping them with their marketing. Because when I came back from the Peace Corps, I really had a passion to work with companies that, or organizations rather, that are doing something a little bit more to impact their communities and do things to help others in communities. And so I just think that to get outside of ourselves a little bit. You know, we all have more than we may realize. And I'll tell you that it's just an experience that I will often tell people, if you can find a way to get into a community like that, to, when you travel to a country, my daughter and I just came back from Peru last year and we were in a tour group, but it was a tour group specifically engaged in going into the, really into the local communities and seeing are working not just in the tourist areas that you see. And again, I just think that that's so valuable because it really, again, it gives that sense of gratitude to us that, boy, we have so much more here than we realize.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, Vicki well said and I'm going to leave it there because that is a great way to end the show. Uh, fabulously done today. People are going to want to get in touch with you. We can feel your heart, uh, through your voice and your tone and your language today. How can they get in touch with you?

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Vicky Winkler:

The best way to get in touch with us would be to go to the website which is www.tms.marketing and you can follow up and get some free tools that are on our free tools page or fill out the contact us form to get a hold of me directly.

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Tom Finn:

Yeah, fantastic. And we'll put that in the show notes for everybody. Um, thank you for empowering so many others in your local community and around the world. Uh, you're a guiding light for all of us to look at as a great, great example of how to work in big corporations and then how to take that leap of faith and go out on your own, uh, in a time when working from home was not a thing, uh, so well done.

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Vicky Winkler:

Thank you.

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Tom Finn:

And thank you for joining the Talent Empowerment podcast and tuning in today. We hope you've unpacked a few tips and tricks to love your job. Get ready to dive back into all things, career and happiness on the next episode. We'll see you then.