Breaking Barriers: A Journey of Grit, Growth & Leadership

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: From overcoming personal struggles as a teen mom to leading a successful business, Tami Cole has built a career defined by resilience, determination, and leadership.
In this episode, Tami shares her inspiring journey from adversity to entrepreneurship, offering powerful lessons on:

✅ Navigating the challenges of single motherhood while building a career
✅ Transitioning from IT consulting to business ownership with docstrats
✅ Overcoming imposter syndrome and leading with authenticity
✅ Balancing high achievement with steady consistency
✅ The power of vulnerability, transparency, and self-leadership
Tami’s story is a testament to grit, growth, and the courage to take risks. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, leader, or someone looking for inspiration, this episode is packed with real-world insights you can apply to your own journey.

TAMI COLE: Tami is the President and CEO of docstrats.

MATT ZAUN: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors
Matt Zaun
Life is a journey full of twists and turns.
And as we rise into leadership positions, it's easy for others to assume our path was smooth. But the truth is the setbacks and intense moments of doubt.
Today's guest embodies this truth and I'm thrilled to share her story with you. Joining me today is Tammy Cole, the president and CEO of Doc Strats.
She's a leader who's faced her fair share of trials and triumphs. And I cannot wait for you to hear the lessons that she's learned along the way.
Welcome to stories of attraction, Tammy.

Tami Cole
Thank you, Matt. It's a privilege and honor to be here to talk with you today.

Matt Zaun
Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. I know. And you're incredibly busy, so I appreciate you sharing time with us today.
And I really appreciate our conversation a couple of weeks ago. You shared with me parts of your story that I think people really need to hear.
I think often as it pertains to shows or movies, there's an element of glitz and glamour to entrepreneurship and leadership in general.
And often we don't see the blood, sweat, and tears behind the scenes. And I think stories, especially the ones that you would share with me a couple of weeks ago, I think that it's really important for people to kind of peel back the curtain and see that it's not all hearts and rainbows, it's not all, it's not all easy.
But before we dive into more of your background and story, can you just share with us where you are now so we can do a comparison and trust? Can you tell us a little bit about your organization and who you help?

Tami Cole
Sure. So our company is called Doc Strats.
That is an abbreviated name for documentation strategies. It's an organization that was founded in 1980. one on documentation and training practices and mostly for public sector.
We're based in New York State, majority of our clients are New York State or New York City based. However, we have branched out into Massachusetts a little bit into Pennsylvania.
We provide as a woman owned business, we provide project staffing for crime vendors of state contracts. So what will happen in New York State especially is every contract is required to provide 15% of the contract value to a woman owned business and a minority owned business.
And so we fill that WBE, which is woman owned business acronym, we fill that nicely and have been since the beginning of the program.
And we work with some of the big fours, the mid tier system integrators to provide IT development services, training services, documentation services,
is on a contract base for as long as the project continues and that can go anywhere from six months to five years.
So that is what we do.

Matt Zaun
Awesome. thanks for sharing that. Here's here's why I wanted people to hear that because where you are now in business, I feel like a lot of people aspire to.
There's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that if they would see your business, they'd see your team, they see the clients that you serve, they would want that they would desperately want that and some of them are aggressively working towards achieving your level of success.
So we have that picture now where you are. I want to backtrack and I want to hear from, from Tammy when she was 10.
So when if you can put yourself in that seat when you were 10, did you have maybe something that you wanted to do or a certain aspiration or where did you see the direction of your life going when you were 10 years old?
Did you see yourself as a leader?

Tami Cole
Absolutely not. not. So as a leader, At 10, I was basically just trying to get through my days and nights and navigate childhood in a dysfunctional home through challenges that were completely out of my control.
The time I did spend on a career thought path would be teaching. I really liked writing and drawing and coloring.
I wasn't very good at the drawing aspect, but I would write a lot. I tended to spend a lot of time inside myself in my brain and in my room and just very quiet.
And like I said, just really navigating my world the best I could to kind of keep things calm at home and successful at school.

Matt Zaun
So you mentioned a word dysfunction, dysfunctional home, and then you mentioned writing. Did you, did you view writing as a therapeutic outlet?
I think in some ways it helped me.

Tami Cole
It helped me kind of lock into a creative side of my my brain where I didn't have to think about what was going on in my daily life.
At 10, I was writing things about the circus and cats and those types of things. Nothing, you know, nothing inspirational or deep meaning, but it certainly allowed me to get my mind off of what my everyday life was.
And that pattern kind of continued as I got older, where writing stopped, but I fell into other things that would keep me distracted from what I was dealing with.

Matt Zaun
Okay. So tell me a little bit about your teens. you mentioned creativity. Was there a certain element of creativity in your teen years?

Tami Cole
Creativity in my teen years. I mean, I was a good student. I played the flute in the band. I was good at that.
played softball, but I think the music was the a lot of the songs resonated with me. And that was how I escaped.
would say. in my room listening to music. And I surprised myself today with just the sheer volume of songs that I know the words to.
And it's because I've just hidden my room and listened to music constantly. So that was my teen years. My teen years were extremely volatile.
Extremely volatile. I started escaping into alcohol at a very young age, seventh, eighth grade, was probably my worst years.
And then we merged into a much bigger school where I got lost. And that kind of shut that part of myself down.
So I got out of the drinking and I became very isolated and met my high school sweetheart in 10th grade.
And then that was it. That's how I spent 10th, 11th and 12th grade was with him. So very quiet, very reserved.
But also in school, I was very popular. I was very happy. I was very social. I liken it to putting a mask on when I left my house to go.
go be happy at school because school was safe. And then go home and put my mask on the the dresser and have to get through the night and then get it back on and go be happy at school.
So it's kind of living two lives like nobody at school knew how difficult my home life was.

Matt Zaun
How do you feel? I know it might be tough to kind of put yourself back in in this moment.
But how how did you how are you able to navigate being happy and social all this was going on?
I know you had mentioned the mask. What was it? Did you do anything in particular? Do you think it was instinctual based on that the challenges that you were going through?
How were you able to make that switch back and forth on a daily basis?

Tami Cole
Well, what I learned from being at home, all of those years was to stay small, stay invisible and don't rock the boat.
So when I went to school, I made sure that I kind of got along with everybody. I kind of became a people pleaser.
But I also became a pretty good actor. address. I didn't want anybody to know how unhappy I was at home.
I didn't want anybody to know the challenges and what I went home to. Therefore, I pretended extremely well. My first school through ninth grade was a K through 12.
So, when I got into high school in seventh grade, seventh through 12th graders, we knew everybody. And there were 65 kids in my class.
We knew everybody. I knew everybody. I was a cheerleader. was, you know, I was just very integrated into what was going on in the pulse of that school.
So, it made it easy to really enjoy that kind of my life. And I think now as an adult, I realized that doing that for the majority of my life makes it hard for me to know today who I am and how to interact with those who are close with me, because I just recently had a breakthrough.
So, now I'm looking around going, how do I interact with people as my own authentic self.

Matt Zaun
Sure. Wow. I appreciate sharing that. appreciate your vulnerability with that. If you had a rewind button and you could go back to high school, do you think that you might have disclosed to teachers?
What was happening at home?

Tami Cole
No. What was happening at home was being raised. My sister and I were raised by a single mom. And I was in the mindset that if something happened to her, I wouldn't have anybody in my world left.
So as bad as it was or as unhappy as I was, it was better than not having any parent.
That was my my mindset. So no, I don't think I would.

Matt Zaun
Got it. Okay. No, appreciate sharing that. So as you transitioned from high school into what you're going to do after high school, did you have aspirations for college?

Tami Cole
You have aspirations for specific career, and then what what happened along the way? Well, I'm a lead bra and
for those who dabble in the astrology world, that means I have the, I'm very black and white, the scales, justice scales.
So probably ninth grade, I wanted to be a cop. I was really excited about being a police officer. I thought that I would do extremely well there.
As I got older, I decided, oh, well, you know, that's kind of, you can affect change, but how much change can you really affect.
So I, I wrote, rose my, my aspirations to becoming a lawyer. I had picked my school, everything was, you know, my plan, my path for was set.
And in my high school year with my high school sweetheart, I became one of the stereotypes that became a pregnant senior.
And I became a mom, just after I graduated from high school. And that took college completely off the table for me.
So I started my life as a young mom with with my high school sweetheart, who we married, we married and went into the air force and got picked up and moved down to Georgia.
so my life went in a very, very different direction, challenging and very fulfilling at the time. Obviously, I adored my daughter, but definitely not what I expected.

Matt Zaun
Take us back to that moment because I'm sure there was fear. Can you can you can you can you walk us through the because I feel that there's a lot of people that that go through what you're what you had mentioned, but a lot of people don't recognize or understand the elements of fear that are involved with it.
They just hear a story or they see someone and there could be potential judgments or there could be potential whatever they're projecting on the story.

Tami Cole
But could you take us through kind of how that felt some of the experiences that others might not be aware of.
Yeah. Yes, so, you know, we, first I'll say we thought we were being responsible. We had discussions about what would happen before, you know, the physical encounters ever took place and, and, you know, we were smart, all of this stuff.
And then lo and behold, we get the, get the test results. And I just obviously will never forget that moment.
And the terror that I felt first was disappointment in myself, because I was going to break the mold out of my family.
I was going to go to school. I was going to become successful. I would have been the first one to go to college, out of my immediate family.
And that was taken away. So I felt like a failure immediately. And then the biggest, the biggest fear was deciding to have the baby and keep the baby and having to communicate that to my mom.
That was probably my most fearful time. in that period. We had always thought, you know, woman's choice that I was going to make that choice.
But when it happens to you, you just don't know. And I really thought adoption would have been the better way to go, probably.
But I didn't have the strength to do that. I think the most courageous people are those who are able to give their child's up into a family where they have a better chance to add a good life and a solid, stable life.
But I could not do that. So I had to communicate either way to my mom. And I ended up telling my aunt and uncle first because I was so terrified telling my mother.
And when I told her to not go well. So I moved out, actually, my boyfriend at the time, and I moved out, we moved into apartment with his sister.
And we got jobs. I only needed one credit, one class to graduate high school. So I took that in the evenings and worked as a assistant man.
I drew at a retail store in the mall and just kind of started the hamster wheel of being a young adult with responsibilities being heaped upon us and not really knowing where I was heading, where we were going, what was to happen when the baby was born and actually having to raise this little human being.

Matt Zaun
So you mentioned two words, you mentioned terror and failure.

Tami Cole
Yes.

Matt Zaun
So at this point, so you made a comment to me a couple of weeks ago that, believe it or not, I've actually thought of a few times.
And I really appreciate you mentioning it. You said something new fact and it might be paraphrasing, but you had said that worry is as useless as a handle snowball.

Tami Cole
Yes.

Matt Zaun
And that stuck with me. And there were a couple moments in the last two weeks where I was repeating that to myself because that is there's profound wisdom in that we often worry about a lot of stuff out of our control.
But do you feel that you had that mantra at that time in your life? Or was this still you pushing through?
through. And, you know, you mentioned terror and fear. At what point were you able to reflect on the element of, we worry about things unnecessarily?

Tami Cole
Oh, um, probably that in the last 10 years. So that would have been my early 40s. I had a tough life.
My daughter had a tough life. My marriage did not work out. Surprise, surprise. You know, I still was wearing a mask.
I didn't know who I was. I so so terror kept wearing its head, never more so than having to tell them I was pregnant.
But terror of moving to a state where I knew nobody. My husband going off to the Air Force to work and being stuck alone with this tiny human day in and day out in a community that where I didn't know anybody.
I'm not having money to pay for things. I remember having $6 in our checking account for like seven days before we got paid again.
That's fear. That's terror. is a current throughout because at times when it got hard, I'd be like, how did I get here?
How did I let myself do this? How did I find myself here? must have deserved this. I must have done something in my past that made this life become a reality for me.
And, you know, then comes the blame. It's because you didn't do this, it's because you didn't do that, it's because you weren't quiet enough, because you weren't compliant enough, whatever it was, the first few decades of my life were continued to be wearing a mask, having fear, feeling like failure but pushing through, it's been a very long journey to get to where I am today.

Matt Zaun
Wow. I appreciate you sharing that. So you're Or your background as it pertains to consulting is astounding. So how do you go from your your first job into the consulting world?

Tami Cole
Take us through that part of your life. Yeah. People are going to be like, what, how she's a leader of what?
Actually, it's a great story. It's my favorite story. And it's the one moment in my life where I made a decision.
I mean, probably the second, the first was having my daughter and keeping her. But from a positive life, growing prosperity perspective, I was given the opportunity in my early twenties.
I was working at the state. I had had a number of jobs up to that. I had went back to school.
I still had a drive to always be better. I got a paralegal certificate from a business school. I got put in what I was more qualified to understand was a typing pool that still existed in 1992.
and things didn't work out there. was told I was getting paid too much to have benefits, so I had to lower my, so I ended up doing what I didn't want to do and go to the state for work.
And I went to the state and I was a grade six, making very little money as a keyboard specialist.
And a friend of mine there told me about this opportunity she was taking. She had gotten into a boot camp for coding.
Now she had a computer science degree from college, so that makes sense to me. She, she went and started this and she had a great time, but she asked me, she goes, Tammy, they're going to do another round, another cohort, so to speak.
And I really want to encourage you to apply. And of course, me being, I don't have a college degree, I don't have any experience.
I'm a young mom, I'm a single, who am I to think that I could potentially go into something as cool as coding for, for soft
where development. And that was another terror moment. I actually did apply. I applied and I had a conversation with the guy who was responsible for recruiting.
He was lovely, he was great. For some reason he took a shine to me. I had to go through I think it was eight interviews overall and I felt like the smallest person yet biggest imposter at the same time.
Each interview and the end of it they said I was I was hired. I was going to join this next boot camp and be given the opportunity become a certified client server developer and I was so excited yet still shaking in my boots and then they said well unfortunately we have to wait.
We can't do this boot camp right away maybe next month maybe next month and then eight months later we actually started.
So that was a very very long eight months where I still was unhappy, where I was still scared, the opportunity was going to go away.
But it didn't and I got in there and ended up in a group with like 15 other people. And we had to learn a lot.
I did a lot of studying. And luckily, I found that it made sense to me the way my brain was wired.
It made sense. I took to it very well. And I did extremely well throughout the boot camp. So when I got done with the boot camp, you had to get certified in the software.
did. And I got put out at my first client where my mentor brought me over to this big corporation, sat me at a desk and said, you're going to make a timekeeping application.
Call me if you need anything and left me alone. And I was terrified again. Somehow I made it through.
came a consultant with that organization. And I had tons of opportunities there. kept moving up. kept making more money, because obviously, I came in very, very low, and it really just changed the absolute trajectory of my life.
Every aspect of my life changed from that moment on. And I can pin every piece of prosperity and success back to that one particular moment.

Matt Zaun
Wow, wow. So you mentioned that word again, Tara. So I want to unpack that a little bit. So you had mentioned, you know, one point, you had $6 in your checking account, you had mentioned, you know, your husband in the Air Force, he's away, and you're doing everything you possibly can with your daughter in a community that you don't really know many people.
So from a terror perspective, as you're going through this experience, were you, were you thinking about tough situations that you had gone through to try to get yourself to push through to a brighter, more hopeful future?
Were you thinking about how you know you didn't have much money or thinking about maybe your daughter's future would be positively impacted?
What were you? doing to get you through this incredibly challenging moment in your life?

Tami Cole
Well, I think early on, I figured out that I had something in me that allowed me to push through the challenges in my life.
Whether it was a healthy way or an unhealthy way, the unhealthy ways didn't last long, at least the drinking, etc.
The pretending and masking myself continued for a very long time, but it allowed me to do things that would move my life forward as opposed to dwelling on the parts of me that felt incomplete or scared.
So, terror, money. I'm like, okay, well, we've got enough food to get through. We always knew another check was coming.
Even though it wasn't much, we found a way. I could always get a job at some point. I think the underlying current with my daughter was not only is she gonna have a better life than I had.
She at that current moment, she is not going to experience what I experienced as a child. And that is something that drove me every single day to be better than what I experienced.
And I tried hard. I did my best. But when she was about four and a half. I looked at her one day.
I was raising my voice. She did something that upset me. And I realized I was being just like my mom.
And that was a real eye opener. And I immediately stopped and I hugged her. And at that point, I went and got help.
I got went into therapy. I've been on and out of therapy my entire life since then. And I don't think that I think I'm
was able to make a different life for my children, for sure. I now have three. my daughter, I still have some guilt because she was four and a half.
And, you know, there's all those statistics that tell you kids by the time they're five, 95% of their brain is formed.
And I can see it today in some of the challenges that she faces. You know, she, she apologizes a lot.
She gets stressed easily. I don't see that in my other children, where I had them 12 years later in my life.
So I knew more, I knew better. But I would say that that's what kind of pushed me through. did not want her to experience what I experienced for her life.

Matt Zaun
That's what always put me.

Tami Cole
Keep moving forward, keep moving forward. You can do this. You want more. You can have more. So what it didn't work out the way you wanted it to, you have ways to make it happen.
Just keep going.

Matt Zaun
Wow. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And it really speaks to an element of legacy. You wanted a
legacy for your children that you didn't have. See, it's almost like you broke a cycle generationally speaking. how brave of you to go out and get help.
I think everyone needs therapy. I think everyone needs counseling.

Tami Cole
I totally agree.

Matt Zaun
So I've been utilizing counseling for years now. My therapist, she is absolutely amazing. I don't know how I could have navigated life without her.

Tami Cole
So I appreciate you sharing that. think more people absolutely.

Matt Zaun
One thing I do want to touch on, this was very intriguing to me, especially as I got more and more into the business world.
And I mentioned to you earlier what I do. One of the things I do is I do a lot of speaking engagements.
I've spoken now in 30 US states. One of my goals is to speak in all 50. So I've had my fair share of working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, owners, and a lot of the people that society would put on pedestal.
would say these individuals are the cream of the crop, they're high. achievers, they've done it all, they've seen it all, they're uber successful.
And one of the things that was just mind boggling to me is it doesn't matter where I am, how successful the company is, how successful the person, every single human being has some form of an inferiority complex.

Tami Cole
Absolutely.

Matt Zaun
This was wild to me because I feel like, and I don't know if it's Hollywood or mass media or the way or maybe even social media in general where it's kind of warped our minds thinking everything is flashy and everything.
We will live in a society now where it's this dopamine infusion, right? Everything is the best of the best of the best.
And we fail to realize often that there's a human condition and that everyone has some type of feeling of lack in their life.
And it's very shocking to me, like I've even been in the presence of just wildly successful people. You would never imagine that there's suffering.
with something or that they have some type of an inferiority complex. So for everyone listening to this episode, is there any advice that you would give someone, even if they've obtained a lot of success, but they feel that they're falling short, what would you advise them to do when it comes to them feeling lack or feeling like they're inferior in some way that they need to put a mask on?

Tami Cole
What would you say to that person? Oh, that is a really, really great question. I think what I've seen and what I've found and what I do personally for myself is I look for the signs that that's what I'm doing, that when I feel inferior, when I see myself getting nervous or anxious or I'm not worthy, I'm not as good as everyone thinks that I'm this great.
a successful business owner and I'm feeling not that. I have to take a deep breath and I stop myself because it's one of those things where you have to, in my mind, I have to acknowledge that that I'm feeling that and that that's not ever going to go away.
But that I'm here for reason share my world with people and understand that they are very accepting of who I am and I'm my own worst critic if that makes sense.
for me it's acknowledging and then putting it to the side and saying that's not who I am that's just a part of me and it's a voice and okay now go that's not being helpful.
It's not helpful to me. It's not helpful to my business. Can I acknowledge it, but I have to move forward from it.

Matt Zaun
Yeah, I really appreciate you mentioned that because you had mentioned, you know, you're, you're feeling that I I'm sensing you're in the present moment.
You pause, you're reflecting. I think there's a tremendous amount of wisdom in this because I feel often when someone feels inferior, one of the natural things to do is to put on a face and it comes across as fake and faulty.
And that's where like the fray, there's like a distrust and there's there's a disconnection with other people and no one has all the answers.
I mean, for anyone that says they do, it's ridiculous and no one's going to believe them, it's going to, they're going to be more disconnected.
And I feel that now more than ever, especially with AI technology and all these different things, the human condition connecting is so powerful.
You know, AI cannot replace love, compassion, empathy. There's no way that they can replace that. So as humans, just being vulnerable and real and authentic with people, it's amazing how much connection can take place.
I really appreciate you mentioning that. You know, one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits, the author, James Clear, talks about something called pointing and calling, which I've done now for quite some time.
It's been incredible to me. So basically the point in calling and the way I use it in my life is when I'm thinking something like something's really deep in my head.
I start speaking it and it's almost like a real-time journaling. So, you know, you had mentioned you're four and a half year old.
I also have young kids. have a 10, nine and a six year old. So often when my six year old is doing something and he's, you know, he's being very six year old, right, very age appropriate.
And I want to yell at him. One of the things that I'll do is I'll go into the other room and I'll literally speak what I'm thinking deep in my head.
I want to yell at my my six year But right now, I want to tear into him. want to let him know how terrible he is in this moment.
And I want to scare him to the point of listening. And then me speaking that, then I backtrack and I'm like, wait, wait a second.
Why, why am I going to do that? He, he's six. What he's doing is very appropriate. So instead I should probably get down on one knee, grab his hands and look at him in the eyes and say, you know, buddy, and then kind of go through.
Here's, here's what I'm going to do instead. It almost sounds like you're, you're doing an element of that where you're pausing, you're reflecting, you're understanding where you're feeling.
I'm really big on emotional wheels. I think it's so important to recognize where are we. think as a society, we do not talk enough about understanding where we are emotionally.

Tami Cole
think it's caused major harm to our society in a big, big way. and you, and I think a lot of it's generational too.
You can kind of go through the generation.

Matt Zaun
Oh, yes. I think from World War Two, if you start peeling back, you know, this generation pass this on to this generation and this generation.
We're not, you know, we're not in touch with, hey, right now, we're really angry. Why are we angry? Let's dive deeper.
But pointing and calling has been something that's helped me. And I appreciate hearing, you know, what's helped you. Another point I'll make that I think this also faceted me is that the more, the more I'm around success, there's an attribute that almost shockingly came to the surface.
I feel like a lot of successful people have an element of humility. And this was shocking to me that I can't tell you how many times I've been in a room full of people and I'm going around the room, I'm shaking hands, and someone will come up to me and they'll say, do you know who you just spoke to?
Oh, that's so-and-so. They own the company, you know, this multi-billion dollar company. that's the owner, which you would never know, right?
You would potentially mistaken them for the janitor or something, right? yes. what What is humility meant to you, where you are, from a leadership perspective, can you just talk to us a little bit about the importance of humility of passing that on to your team, what that's meant to you?

Tami Cole
Sure, this is, it's actually a very timely question because I was at an event last week speaking, and the woman interviewing me mentioned that, you know, I admitted in our conversation that I was a very reluctant leader, and in the conversation I had said to her, you know, she said, you know, a lot of people look up to you, you're considered a leader in this community, a successful leader, and I said, okay, if I have to label myself a leader, I would say yes I am, but I'm a very humble leader because I don't think of that as my first job.
I think of doing what needs to be done in a kind and empathetic way and bringing others along for the ride and always understanding that we're all just humans, we're all the same underneath and we all have challenges going on that none of us can know about and for example this may be a little bit of a segue but I think back to my challenging childhood and I look at my mom that you know caused me a lot of trauma challenge growing up she did the best she could do with what she was raised with and I recognize that but it doesn't change the fact that I was impacted right so I try to bring that into every interaction that I do is my authenticity, transparency is extremely important to me connecting because without that to your point there is a rift.
People know if you're being genuine or not being genuine. And I have to say the majority of my success in the business, when I talk to clients and they keep coming back, it's because of our genuine relationship and our ability to be transparent, to think outside the box, to really want it to be a win-win situation.
And I'm going to tie something up between the last two statements you said, because you were talking about the point and from atomic havoc.

Matt Zaun
Yeah, pointing and calling.

Tami Cole
Pointing and calling. Something I learned over the years, and this is advice I give, it's true advice because, you know, I know how many else shouldn't do advice, but this is advice I give to absolutely everybody.
If you are in that moment in a situation and you don't know how to move forward or how to make a decision.
If you have children, and even if you don't, if you can imagine you. had children. What would you tell your child to do in that situation?
Because you're not going to tell your child to do something that's detrimental to themselves. Your goal is to make them and help them be the best that they can be, which is not necessarily our goal for ourselves.
We'll hide behind fear. We'll make excuses. So whenever I get really worked up or I just don't know whether to go right or left, I say, what would I tell my children to do?
And that puts a perspective on it that allows me to take the noise away and look at what is the right thing to do in the situation.

Matt Zaun
Wow, that is so powerful. You know, it's amazing. often struggle to parent ourselves.

Tami Cole
Yes, absolutely.

Matt Zaun
Like last night when I won an eight half a bag of chips. I wouldn't advise my kids to do that.
I really appreciate you mentioned that. Let me ask you this. Do you think someone needs to experience tremendous amounts of pain to be empathetic?

Tami Cole
Oh, I certainly don't want to say this because that's terrible. Um, but I do think struggle, whether it be pain or difficulty or challenge or obstacles.
I think struggle builds empathy. I think having to navigate the world in ways you may not have expected or didn't want to deal with is going to only strengthen your empathy to put yourself in other people's shoes and go forward, because that's what you would want other people to do for you.

Matt Zaun
Well, I appreciate your sharing that. Thank you so much. I do want to go back to the coding job and go from coding to then Can you take us through?
kind of the world and the lens of consulting because my understanding, especially based on what I've seen with your background, is my guess is that you have had many, many, many long days.
So can you take us through the grind of what it means to work for one of the big four consultants?

Tami Cole
Well, I got myself out of long, long days initially because I transitioned after about two years into business analysis because having a young child, I knew I could keep up with the pace of technology changing and being able to continue to code.
And I was way more interested in solving problems and hearing challenges and helping people kind of come up with ways to get them what they need to be successful.
So I got into business analysis and I ended up leaving that company after about four years and I went and worked on my own as a consultant, independent consultant, which is part of the reason I got into the decision to buy Doc Strass.
So after being an independent consultant, And I ended up at one of the big four as an independent work there for several years and they said, okay, we've got to convert you or you've got to leave, you know, you've been here for years as a contractor, it's time to become an employee.
said, okay, my youngest child child was a little bit older. And it was it made sense. So I transitioned.
And when I got there, the expectation was about 50 hours a week is your normal. And if you really wanted to advance or show ambition, you're working 60 plus still have young kids at home.
It was very, very challenging. However, I made it through, and I actually received some great advice from a partner, one of my partners at the time in the office, which again, another, another gem that I hold on to and that I share with other folks as well, is the fact that you can't always be an
plus player, there's not enough room in the world to have all a plus layers. You have to have what he called voice.
And worker bees are those who are steady, consistent, provide quality. They may not be going above and beyond. They may not be bringing in the big projects.
They may not be changing the world. But without the worker bees, the success will never be there. So that phase of my life, I needed to go 55 miles an hour, which was getting my 50 hours in and being done.
So that is something that stuck with me that I like to share. And I need to circle back because I forgot, oh, the big four.
So after I was doing business analysis for about nine years with this team, that was remote. One of the first teams that were remote in the firm and we were doing software development and our job was to help the advisory practice convert some of their excel spreadsheets that are like I mean beyond ridiculously big and complicated and create applications to make their lives easier.
Well at that point I was there for about four years and I was a manager at this point a project a manager project manager and at this point I had responsibility for taking care of the entire project and the entire team where we had developers in India we had testers in China my main stakeholder was in California while I was in New York and the rest of my onshore team was spread throughout the country so multiple time zones so I was having meetings at five in the morning I was having meetings at nine or ten at night and then you work a normal day so that became extremely challenging especially because excuse me because my husband
um at the time was working for another big four firm not not consulting firm but a big a big corporation and he had similar challenges with ours so it was extremely stressful and we did it for quite a while um until um my son my son my son son and i had date night which never came to fruition and that made me realize that nothing was worth what i was doing to my kids um i mean my son was probably five five or six at the time and that's when i decided okay i can't do this anymore because he ended up with his little blanket on my feet on the kitchen floor laying down because i could not get off my computer because there was a problem i needed to fix um so that was my very rewarding um until i got to that
that point where I said, you know what, this isn't worth it.

Matt Zaun
Wow. All right. So that powerful moment of that transition you into purchasing doc strats.

Tami Cole
Yes, actually. My husband had known the owner and that she was looking to retire. She was she had done her.
She had made her mark. She was ready to move on. And he was trying to convince me to us to buy it.
And I thought it was crazy at the time. Because here I was a practitioner, right? I'm a consultant. I do business analysis.
I manage projects. Nothing like running a business. But as it was a woman owned business, I needed to run it.
It needed to be mine. And there was a lot of terror, fear, unsure, insecurity, imposter syndrome, was all that mixed up for the longest time.
think it took me nine months to say yes, struggled, struggled and struggled. Could change my role at the big four and be
but that would mean traveling. So that didn't do anything. But I was talking, I was on a leadership program and they had master class calls and I raised my hand saying, I have a challenge, it was just for challenges.
I said, I have a challenge, I don't know what to do, I have a list of pros and cons and I cannot make a decision and I need help making a decision.
So I shared my story and he said, okay, he goes, I'm going to give you a question and you can only answer yes or no, no other words, tell me your answer, here's the question.
He said, are you willing, knowing the pros and the cons, what's at risk, would you be willing to give up everything that's at risk today to have the opportunity that this would give you if you are successful.
And of course, I tried to go well and butt and maybe he's like, no, I'm going give you 30 seconds, yes or no.
And after that 30 seconds, he said, and that 30 seconds, my mind was going, well, I've got on here.
I've done more than I ever thought I could as a teen mom. Um, what are things I can start?
Can I start over? Absolutely. Am I still employable? Absolutely. So when he said, tell me, I said, yes. And that moment on, I never looked back, I was full force forward.
And it just shows the power of the mind, but also get someone's pulling you out of that stuckness, right?
So that is how I make that decision. And we went forward, it took us, I think, months to close.
And then I walked in, of course, feeling completely inadequate. But here I am 10 years later, was 10 years this month.
Um, we're still here.

Matt Zaun
Wow. That's a powerful moment. years, congratulations. few businesses can say that they made it that long. So congrats. If you were to look at the future, we don't even need to discuss, you know, 10 years from now.
But if you were just a look from now to let's say three years down the line, yes, what for some goals and visions that you have for the company?

Tami Cole
Well, I've recently been able to bring in a director of business development who is very skilled at working with the public sector.
So I have been transitioning all of the doc strats, relationship building and business development to her. You know, obviously I'm still there on the face.
I get involved with my current clients and whatever she needs. So the goal is for her to build a company and be running that kind of component almost on her own in the next few years.
And in the meantime, because those of us who are entrepreneurial can never just sit still, I've spun off a private sector version of our company and that is called Hire Strats.
And that's really in the startup phase where we're just really getting to understand what the market's looking for. And that is like we can do project based staffing, but really it's more a permanent placement for the private sector.
And that's at business, I really want in three years to have running smoothly in a way that is true to our mission, which started with helping women and even men who need flexibility in their lives, even my background and the struggles I went through navigating the work worlds and parenthood.
I think there's a lot of people in our area that still are very traditional in the way they want to see their people work nine to five.
They want to see their people at a desk, which has gone away, but it's coming back. They don't think necessarily outside the box that someone who puts their child on the bus at 830 could work nine to three and get their kids off at three thirty and be just as productive as someone who's working eight hours because they don't have the interactions at the office or they're more focused because they
know they only they have to get so much done. So that's kind of our mission is to kind of get out there and try to help change the work culture and help organizations understand that flexibility, culture, authenticity, communication is really important to being successful.
So that's where I want to see higher strats in three years. So both of them together under the umbrella, successful continuing to grow.
Our 50th anniversary of the company will be in 2031, which will be a very exciting time. And so we're just slowly stepping towards that goal.

Matt Zaun
50th anniversary.

Tami Cole
Wow.

Matt Zaun
That's exciting to push.

Tami Cole
Yes. It's crazy.

Matt Zaun
And what a powerful mission. I appreciate you sharing that wonderful, wonderful work that you're doing. Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you for your time today. I really appreciate everything that you share with us. I appreciate your vulnerability. I think it's so important for people here, these stories, because we often
see a quote unquote finish, you know, for an extra product, if you will, or someone that is amassed a ton of success, like you have people that would only dream of being able to have a successful business and run it for 10 years, but just to hear elements of your story, I think it's very invaluable.
So I appreciate that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. There's three specific things that I'm gonna take away from this conversation.
I really appreciated how you tackled the inferiority complex part where you'd mentioned that you sit with it. You'd mentioned where do you feel?
I'm transitioning from feeling into pausing, being in that present moment and reflecting. think that's so important. Again, I feel like often when we're pushed into a corner and we don't feel like we have the value of you, we put on fake face and it could be faulty and there's a disconnection.
So I really appreciate the way you shared how you handled that. The second piece was incredibly powerful where you said if you don't know how to move forward, you need to ask.
yourself, what would you tell your child? I think there's a lot of power in that because it is interesting that we would parent our child often different than we would parent ourself and think of all the opportunities we lose out on as individuals because we're not getting ourselves that sound wisdom.
So I really appreciate that second point. And then the third and final point is actually something I've never heard before, but I thought that there was definitely something to this.
As you had said, you had a former boss that you can't always be an A plus player. Sometimes you have to have worker bees.
And I think that's really important because often we want, we want to be great. We want to knock it out of the park all the time.
But that's just not life. know, often we need to go through mundane, monotonous situations for us to get to that A player, A plus player type status.
I appreciate those three points that you had mentioned, Tammy. If anyone wants to get more information on you, what you do, they want to reach out to you for your services, where's the best place that they can go to get

Tami Cole
that information. Well, they can easily find me on LinkedIn, and then my website, DocStrats.com. There's a little info, contact us, form, and then I believe you'll be providing my email address somehow.
If not, it's tami.co, and that's t-a-m-i.co, see you wellie at DocStrats.com.

Matt Zaun
Perfect. I'll include all that in the show notes, people will just click and go from there. Tami, thank you again for your time today.
I really appreciated it.

Tami Cole
You're very welcome. It's been a pleasure.