Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at the BusinessMakers.com. And now it's time for the AFLAC BusinessMakers Flashback, ask about it at work. And for this morning Flashback we're going to roll back to the story we call "from Food stamps to CEO" as we featured Tara Jean Hart, the founder and CEO of The Compliance Alliance. We enter the discussion where we had just asked Tara to tell us about The Compliance Alliance.
Tara Jean Hart: Well, The Compliance Alliance, and we brand under TCA, is a safety services company. It's professional services, and we have a specialized niche in a system that we developed that serves the construction industry. We deal with owners across the board from medical center to oil and gas and, you know, everything in between, and our systems and tools have been ranked number one in the world for managing contractor safety and that's, in a nutshell, what we do.
Russ: Does that mean that you watch 'em do their job and make recommendations? Or do you put rules and regulations and procedures?
Tara Jean Hart: Well what we actually do is use a system called the TCA Safety System which transforms the paradigm of dealing with safety and construction operations. Basically, there's a culture across all industry and it's more prominent in some of the more hazardous industries of faking safety, you know, safety first but really the operations don't support that and the traditional way of dealing with it is having people focus on what they don't want to happen.
Russ: Since we were well aware of her 'non-traditional' upbringing, we decided here to move on to the topic of her personal life, and we asked her to tell us about what she was like in high school, and about growing up in general.
Tara Jean Hart: Well, you know when I was growing up, my family was a very, very old-fashioned family. And my dad's attitude was the boys are gonna go to college and the girls better marry well and keep him happy and I wasn't – you know, I wasn't really good at that. So I had to find something else, you know. I tried, you know, I really tried. But I wasn't as good at that as maybe some of the other people in my family.
Russ: Well, I don't think that's a very easy thing to do anyway, quite frankly. (Laughter)
Tara Jean Hart: So, I ended up kinda bouncing around a little bit since I didn't blend in with the family. Maybe I was the swan in a family of ducks.
John: Uh huh.
Tara Jean Hart: And so I went to a lot of different schools and I ultimately dropped outta high school and you know. You know, I went to Westbury and I went to Cline and I went to a school in Tennessee and I probably have faint recall of maybe being on a state school campus for a little while.
Russ: Okay. But at some point in time I assume you went back and got a GED or finished high school or something?
Tara Jean Hart: Well, actually I did get a GED. When I was leaving state school, I was a little bit young for the GED but the administrator decided to give it to me and I said, "Well I'll finish school," and he said, "No you won't." And I said, "I'll finish school," and he said, "No you won't. You're gonna take the GED now." And so I did and that particular day I was kinda dragging it out, got hungry. He wouldn't let me have lunch if I didn't finish and so I, I went through and check all the boxes and I still passed. And so, I feel embarrassed to tell people I have a GED because I didn't feel like that was a real accomplishment.
Russ: So you just, you weren't even really guessing. You were just checking boxes to finish it up?
Tara Jean Hart: I was getting to lunch. I thought I had a statistical probability that at least have of them would come out right. So –
Russ: Well congratulations, Tara. You graduated. What did you do after you got this high school GED diploma?
Tara Jean Hart: Well, you know, like I said, I did try to do that, you know, make him happy thing and I did have some children. I had three children and then got divorced and spend about ten years divorced and that's when I started exploring business opportunities and trying to do a few things on my own because I started off in a job that was well under what it cost to support myself and I went on to meet some mentors and friends in this community that supported me and I started exploring different business opportunities.
John: Okay. What were some of the ones that you liked?
Tara Jean Hart: Well, I did a lot of special projects and I especially worked with major events and because of that, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of the business leaders in the city working with events for charitable activities. The first district level golf tournament for the Boy Scouts – you know, special projects for architectural and engineering firms and developers had through that I met a lot of contractors and one of them ultimately came to me after some new legislation came out on hazard communication and said you need a special project for the small to medium contractor who can't afford the overhead of a safety department. And that ultimately launched me into where I am today.
Russ: At this point of the interview John and I were beginning to get the picture that we were talking to someone special – someone who had just barely got a GED, but who was clearly smart and articulate, so I asked her to explain that.
Tara Jean Hart: Well I think, if my parents didn't do very much right there's three things they did do right.
John: Okay.
Tara Jean Hart: One was my mother made me enter in every spelling bee ever in school until I won one and she wasn't gonna let me quit until I did.
Russ: You – so you did win one?
Tara Jean Hart: I won and said, "I'm done with this! I'm outta here." But in the meantime, I memorized Webster's Unabridged and that has served me well to be articulate and express myself. My father was compelled to teach me chess from the age of eight so that taught me how to strategize. And then my mother was obsessed with how the wealthy dress and while I'm a Bohemian geek when nobody sees me, I actually do know how to blend. (Laughter) And those things gave me entre and if my work ethic and integrity and knowledge could keep me there, that's what made it happen.
Russ: Man, sounds like a formula to success right there. I am impressed. You were in this period where you were this high school dropout and you had three children. You were a single mom, probably with some support challenges with these kids. I mean keeping them all dressed. What are the age of your children now?
Tara Jean Hart: Now they're 13 to 30.
Russ: Thirteen to thirty, okay. And how many of them are there now?
Tara Jean Hart: Five –
Russ: Okay.
Tara Jean Hart: - and four grandchildren, actually.
Russ: Oh my goodness. Well so at one point, apparently, things were tough enough that you were able to sign up and participate in the government food stamp program, right?
Tara Jean Hart: That's right.
Russ: And this would be before you founded TCA?
Tara Jean Hart: Actually, I had already launched TCA but it was one of those things where I was real kinda lackadaisical about it and if I could work five or six days a month and have enough money to get by, that's what I did. That was the Bohemian part of me.
John: Okay.
Tara Jean Hart: You know. And so I hadn't really gotten dedicated to a clearer focus and a clear path in the business. I was just kinda floundering a little bit and then because my marriage disintegrated, I decided, you know, you've got a couple a choices here. Well three really. You could go back to school – but I didn't like it before.
John: Right.
Tara Jean Hart: You know. You can get married again but you're – you're not doing well with that.
John: Yeah?
Tara Jean Hart: Or you could get dedicated to your business and see what you can do with it.
John: I can tell you're a quick learner. (Laughter)
Tara Jean Hart: So in 1993 I was on Food Stamps and I sat down and wrote a business plan.
Russ: Oh.
Tara Jean Hart: And when – and I wrote a ten-year business plan because I had learned that companies, 80 percent of all companies fail in the first 5 years and most of those plan 1 to 2 years out. And the ones that make it through hard times plan 5 to 10 years out and the ones that lead the industry plan 10 to 20. And I decided if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna be a leader because I'm not a good follower. So I planned – my first business plan was a ten year plan and in 2003, I had accomplished every goal in it.
Russ: Wow, so no longer this lackadaisical approach to TCA, right?
Tara Jean Hart: Well right. I didn't have any more Plan Bs. I had to move forward.
Russ: And man, move forward she has. Today Tara has over 1000 clients, Has handled over 400 OSHA cases and investigated over 60 catastrophes . And that wraps up our review of Tara Jean Hart, the founder and CEO fo The Compliance Alliance. And that wraps up this mornings' AFLAC business makers Flashback brought to you by Aflac, ask about it at work. Stay tuned in for our Featured Guest segment, featuring going form Busboy to IPO, Larry Forehand, the Founder of Mexican Restaurants Inc., along with his CEO Curt Glowaki, You're listing to the BusinessMakers show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com
