UNCHARTED: Navigating Forks in the Road: Path to Confidence and Persistence

Starting the conversation:

From building self-confidence by keeping promises to yourself, to embracing the unknown at every fork in the road, bravery is how you grow. Tessa Thomas, Co-Founder at Pipeline Solutions, shares how to tap into the power of persistence and resilience while facing uncertainty every day.

What happens if you take the less obvious or counterintuitive option when you reach a fork in the road? From recognizing the choice in front of you to how you show up in making the necessary decision that impacts what will come next — a routine helps. Making and keeping promises to yourself helps. And, belief in yourself is a requirement.

In this episode, you will hear the benefits of keeping promises you make to yourself; how to reflect and see how you are pushing or pulling the future toward you; and how to leverage the momentum from small successes that build on each other over time. Listen in as Jess Dewell talks with Tessa Thomas, Co-Founder at Pipeline Solutions, about what makes it BOLD to walk the less traveled path.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Tessa Thomas

What You Will Hear:

6:10 Acceptance and confidence grow from navigating daily choices and uncertainty.

• Feedback from decisions is often delayed rather than immediate, and we need to adjust to making choices without instant confirmation.
• Becoming comfortable with delayed outcomes is a skill developed through repeated experience and practice.
• Each choice made is an opportunity to learn, which builds confidence and self-acceptance over time.

12:35 Persistence and resilience are essential — more than mere stubbornness.

• Persistence involves continually moving forward, even when progress is slow or incremental.
• Resilience is demonstrated by maintaining effort despite setbacks and environmental challenges.
• Redefining your mindset from simple stubbornness to resilience and persistence creates room for growth and reframing.

17:20 Routines and systems create the foundation for sustained success and strategic thinking.

• Systems and routines provide reliability, which reduces reactivity and allows for freedom in other areas.
• Maintaining routines supports mental clarity and opens up space for creative and strategic thinking.
• Establishing foundational routines and pillars enables you to focus on higher-level priorities, driving personal and business growth.

25:35 Focus on essential action — reduction can unlock major results.

• Narrowing your focus to a singular, essential daily action can help overcome feelings of overwhelm and increase consistency.
• Committing to simple, repetitive effort over time produces measurable and impactful outcomes.
• Reduction clarifies what matters most, enabling effective action and clearer results.

32:00 Building engines that work: Know what success feels like and seek consistency.

• Recognizing the feeling of consistency and reliable results is essential for understanding and replicating business success.
• Transforming small, consistent achievements into an operational “engine” is a cornerstone of sustained growth.
• Developing an awareness of what works builds confidence that can be carried into new and future projects

35:25 Confidence is essential for navigating challenges and uncertainty toward your vision.

• Facing obstacles is an expected part of growth, and anticipating trickiness readies you for them.
• Focusing on clarity of purpose and intention is more important than obsessing over exactly how you will achieve your goals.
• Self-belief enables continual progress despite not having any guarantees about the outcome.

38:00 It is BOLD to face uncertainty as you move toward your goals.

Resources

• Tessa Thomas on LinkedIn
• Building Member Loyalty from Day One: How to Track and Improve Early Retention
• Post on LinkedIn: Retention isn’t a metric.

Transcript

Jess Dewell 0:00
It’s actually confidence-building, right? We successfully have been doing it for so long. We know we’re going to have success to keep doing it.

Now we have headspace and heartspace to say what’s next.

Tessa Thomas 0:11
Confidence is in keeping the promise to yourself.

Jess Dewell 0:14
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by at the Bold Business Podcast. We are normalizing important conversations.

Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using?

This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out. Maybe you’re ready to scale.

Maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 1:06
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 1:18
Three things you will hear in this Bold Business Podcast as I speak with Tessa Thomas, co-founder at Pipeline Solutions are confidence is keeping the promises that you make to yourself, and identifying the gaps that you face, see, and feel, and acknowledge how you are either pushing or pulling that future to you, and everything that you’re doing in your business is to build an engine. When you put in X, you get out Y. That is business, and continuously working with that puzzle to find that personal unique equation for your organization, your company, is what it’s all about.

And Tessa Thomas is bringing us a ton of experience from a lot of different backgrounds. Not only is she a former NCAA D1 student softball athlete, she’s also an Athletics Hall of Fame inductee at Winthrop University. She took her passion for fitness, and she took her passion for art, and she is combining it together in a way to help boutique firms grow and scale and find their own unique equation.

We talk about a lot of different things that revolve around self-awareness, self-confidence, how we show up in the world, and I’m excited to share my conversation with Tessa Thomas, co-founder of Pipeline Solutions, with you. Enjoy the show. What was a time where you remember having to do, oh, look, I got to be brave here and learn a new skill to get where I’m going?

Tessa Thomas 2:57
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think what comes to mind would be a bit more on the entrepreneurial side. I think on the athletic side, those steps may have come a bit more naturally to me over time from being a kid growing up and doing things in the athletic world, but learning how to use no-code tools, low-code, building apps, selling software, all of those things were not necessarily intuitively known quantities.

So I think those would probably be the things that stand out to me most of just being brave in that way. But with that being said, I don’t think any one of those things felt like a big thing at the time. It was just the next right move on that journey.

Jess Dewell 3:42
How comfortable do you think you have to be with yourself? So this could be myself, anybody’s self. There has to be some level of comfort there to go, oh, this is the next right thing.

Tessa Thomas 3:52
Okay. There does have to be a little bit of comfort and confidence in that. I think that comes from doing.

It’s not necessarily a full awareness that it’s going to work out exactly as you anticipate. I think as you do more things, you realize that’s actually less likely that it’s going to be exactly how you planned it. But I think as you keep going and just trying little thing after little thing, whether it works out exactly as planned or not, you have the confidence to just keep trying.

So I think the comfort comes in the confidence to be able to take that next step. And I think you do know that it’s the right next thing to do. Like in my brain, typically things come down to a fork in the road and it’s either I go do this thing and I don’t really know it’s going to happen or I don’t do it.

And then I actually do know what happens is that I haven’t done it. So I think the continuous effort to keep going down that other road builds a little confidence and comfort in that you can keep doing that, whether it’s going to exactly pan out how you think it is or not.

Jess Dewell 5:01
How often do you feel like you find forks in your road? [All the time.] Every day? Okay.

Tessa Thomas 5:08
I was going to say obviously. Yay, forks! They’re big.

I think, yeah, for sure. I think some things are bigger than others. The analogy that comes to mind is the one of a pilot.

Let’s say a pilot’s flying from New York to LA and somewhere along the journey the autopilot kicks in because it’s a long flight, but they have to keep adjusting. You can’t just set the destination from A to B hundreds of miles and get there without any adjustments along the way. And so those are the forks, I think, is every day these little micro adjustments that you have to make to stay on track.

And sometimes those are big. Sometimes those are job opportunities, moving, partnerships. Sometimes they’re small.

Sometimes it’s, do I work on this thing right now or do something else or procrastinate or go to a cafe to try and find a little bit of a break in the rhythm of the day to create that space. So I think it’s actually quite constant and to varying degrees, but it’s all the time.

Jess Dewell 6:08
I think it’s all the time too. And it’s interesting because sometimes, I’m not sure how you feel about this, but I know I experience when I’m making a choice, sometimes the response or the feedback that would tell me confirmation, yep, or oops, you might want to try again is not as instantaneous all the time. So I’ve gotten better at being okay with whatever choice I make because I have some concept of what that is going to look like when I get around the bend of whichever fork I chose.

And that comes with time and just doing it the more you do it. How often do you find yourself at a fork in the road and you’re like, I probably should go back or, oh, well, it’s now, right?

Tessa Thomas 6:53
I don’t know that I ever think I should go back.

Jess Dewell 6:56
Going back, because I find myself going back sometimes. I think I want to try the other one.

Tessa Thomas 7:00
Yeah, that’s fair. I guess in my mind, I don’t see it as like a backtrack. Just took a little detour.

Yeah, exactly. So you caught up to that road, but maybe in a little bit more of a circuitous way.

Jess Dewell 7:09
You get out your tools and make your own path to the other one.

Tessa Thomas 7:12
Just some edges and cut through the maze.

Jess Dewell 7:15
Absolutely.

Tessa Thomas 7:16
Yeah, exactly. But even that being said, you still can’t get there unless you go down a road at some point and then maybe you have to work your way back to something else. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, essentially.

Jess Dewell 7:28
It’s true. And it makes me think of the first time, I would say probably there have been a lot of big things that happened after this, but I think this was the first real big thing in my life, Tessa. And it was when I decided I was going to drop out of college.

So I had to tell my parents. Neither of my parents went to college. So this was like an extra big deal.

And so I remember my mom drove across the state to sit me down and make sure I knew what I was talking about. And the thing that came out of my word hole here, after listening and knowing what was coming from my mom was, I was like, what’s the worst that can happen? And she goes, you fail.

I said, uh-huh. And what does that look like? She goes, I have to come home.

Can I come? And then I said, am I welcome home if I fail? And she said, of course.

And I said, okay, I’m going to go try. And so being able to weigh that risk and look on my mother’s face, when I said that to this day, I will still remember. I almost think she wished she could take her words back and say the other things.

So I wouldn’t go. And in the end, it was the right thing. I did not fail.

I did not have to come home. The journey completed itself. And there’s a whole story around that.

But that was the first time I think from our conversation so far, I’m like, oh yeah, this is that first big one that made me realize there are these things happening all the time around me. I might’ve been just 20 or almost 20 at that time. So at that stage of life and being able to go, cool, I can do this.

And then I did. I’m going to cross the country. And it all worked out.

Tessa Thomas 9:06
Yeah. And I’m sure in the, it all worked out, there was all sorts of things that happened. But at the same time, unless you try, you know, you just don’t know what’s going to come of it.

Jess Dewell 9:16
I was recently having a conversation about goals and goal setting. And one of the things that I did too also with this was I was like, not only am I going to do this and if I fail, I’ll come home and go back to school. Fine.

I’m still going to go back to school at some point. And guess what I did. I finished college 10 years after I started with this great.

So some people would go, that was an interesting detour, depending on what your viewpoint is. Me, I was like, that was the right thing to do. And even though I did this other thing and came back to it, I’m glad I kept my promise to myself.

And that’s really all that was.

Tessa Thomas 9:46
You know what I was saying before is, I think it’s confidence is in keeping the promise to yourself. So, just going back and doing the thing you said you were going to do, whatever it is to you, builds confidence in your ability to do that again in any other realm or any kind of decisions. Just to say, yeah, I said I was going to do this thing and I did it.

And that’s where self-confidence comes from over time.

Jess Dewell 10:11
Have you ever had a time where it didn’t look right? This path you went down, this that was chosen. It actually was a really interesting outcome.

It turned out to be the best outcome and it looked different than what you thought, even maybe along the way.

Tessa Thomas 10:27
Actually, the first thing that comes to mind when you say that was, so I had been working part-time in software app building and part-time in the art conservation world. And that is what I went to school for and what I’ve been doing professionally for some time up to that. And I decided that I was going to go all in on kind of entrepreneurship and try and build something.

Threw out six to eight months runway. Just go full-time hours-wise and give it a go. And it felt like the right time to do that.

And that was, I think, February 2020. So, pretty much the whole world shut down with COVID. Everything changed.

Everything changed for everybody across the board in so many different ways. What I had thought the next six to eight months were going to look like changed dramatically. That business, that app, that actually was Pipeline.

That’s what I do now with Pipeline Solutions. But within a month, the gyms closed, the studios closed, and there was no real use for what we were building. It went on the shelf for about three or four months.

Worked on another project. I actually happened to get some traction during that time, primarily because everybody was stuck at home. It’s weird the circumstances that can create different opportunities, but eventually maneuvered its way back to Pipeline later that year.

Absolutely. That’s the first thing that comes to mind is February 2020, deciding to do a thing and the world essentially saying, not quite yet, not quite that.

Jess Dewell 12:01
We’re going to see how dedicated you really are to this idea. How much is it in your makeup? How much is it through your physical body and that spiritual being that you also are in whatever facet that is that you may believe in?

How much of it… I’m guessing you have a streak of stubbornness.

Tessa Thomas 12:17
Yeah. It’s funny. Somebody asked me that the other day if I was stubborn.

I was like, definitely don’t give up easily. It shows itself in different ways, but yeah.

Jess Dewell 12:26
Is there a word you would use instead of stubborn? Because I’m like, oh yeah, I’m the person who’s going to be like, this is why I’m going to camp until that door opens back up.

Tessa Thomas 12:33
I guess it differs for me in my mind. I feel like I’d leave more to persistent or resilient. And the reason being that I think both of those words, like persistence for me feels like it invokes action.

Like you’re trying to move through this thing, whereas stubbornness in my mind has the connotation of digging your heels in and just standing your ground. I feel like I just try and inch forward. And some days that’s an inch and some days it’s a big leap or something like that, but it’s a little bit more of a persistent, like, yeah, let’s keep going.

Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. Even if today, it just means one inch at a time.

And then resilience is just about doing that when the elements or the environment are pushing you back.

Jess Dewell 13:21
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

Announcer 13:35
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 14:05
Now back to the program. I’m talking with Tessa Thomas, co-founder of Pipeline Solutions, the studio intelligence platform, helping boutique fitness studios streamline operations and scale effectively. I like the flip side, that piece, the two sides of the coin.

Nobody’s ever talked about that with me before. I’m going to embrace this and claim it because I do go, yeah, I am stubborn and it got me exactly where I’m at. It definitely is tricky sometimes and I cause my own trickiness sometimes.

At the same time, I’m thinking, you’re right, it is persistence. It’s not making the hole deeper and getting more alone. It’s what else can you do from that and being able to reframe that and use that skill in a way that is actually- That’s positive.

Yeah, and I was actually going to say for everybody, right? That’s like the way.

Tessa Thomas 14:58
Absolutely.

Jess Dewell 14:59
I wonder if that’s a story I told myself. I wonder if that’s just a limiting belief that somebody gave me and I said, okay.

Tessa Thomas 15:06
I’m sure it is, but where it came from, who knows? It’s all stories we tell ourselves or things that have happened over time that either consciously or subconsciously influence us.

Jess Dewell 15:16
Are you intentionally looking for what those stories are ever?

Tessa Thomas 15:21
Proactively looking? Sometimes, yeah. I think sometimes I can get to more reflective spaces.

I think the work is in doing that as much as you can. Then when something does show up, kind of asking yourself why you feel that way about it. I think I’ve gotten better at that over the last couple of years, just dissecting a little bit more my response as things come in and why that response might be happening or what that feeling is and where that’s coming from.

I think it’s really important because the self-awareness is critical to growth and I’m not a perfect person. Don’t claim to be one in any stretch, but it’s always a work in progress. I think we can dissect why we feel certain ways about certain things.

It does help over time to uncover like, is this really about this or is this about this other thing from a long time ago or even just the recent past that’s fluttering into the situation?

Jess Dewell 16:20
There are times I will actively look for something, but that’s because I’m actually working through a challenge. I don’t think I’m proactively thinking about what are my limiting beliefs, but I also think that’s my makeup. I’m just like, that’s not where I want to spend my time.

I know I’ll get stuck there and if I know I’m going to get stuck there, that’s not a place that’s so, yes, actually that can’t be true for me. So that’s really interesting to hear you speak about that and really recognize it sounds like it’s okay to be doing the work as we are growing, as we are acquiring the skills, as we’re thinking about what does strategic growth look like, what does our vision look like in our head versus what everything around us is actually manifesting and can we close that gap to maximize what we can bring to the world?

Tessa Thomas 17:10
Yeah, 100%. And I think that’s, that totally is it. And that’s where maybe some of that dissection comes in a little bit, right?

It’s, is this gap not closing because of me? And that’s where I think about it is what is the, how am I pulling the future closer or how am I pushing it away? So I think it comes up maybe more often than not, but at the same time, of course, everyday things also take a precedent as you move through the world.

It’s good to carve out some space for those thoughts. I think they can serve you quite a bit. And for me, it’s typically in the mornings if I’m walking my dog, who’s back here somewhere, there he is. Lennox.

Jess Dewell 17:56
What a cool name. What kind of dog?

Tessa Thomas 17:57
Yeah, he’s a pharaoh hound, like Egyptian pharaoh hound. It looks like a hieroglyph.

Jess Dewell 18:02
That’s amazing. I have a rat terrier. His name is Nick.

Very cute. And he was adopted into a house of two firstborn adults and an only child. And so we all get along and we all want to boss each other around.

Tessa Thomas 18:17
But taking, yeah, taking time, he’s pretty active. And so he’s got to be out a lot, which is, I think, been a blessing in the sense that more walks, more time to listen to things and do some deep dives on some thinking. And it’s time that I never would have spent that way having not had Lennox come into the world.

Jess Dewell 18:38
Do you do that outside of your walks in any structured or unstructured way?

Tessa Thomas 18:43
For me, it feels pretty structured. If that can happen every day, that’s great. I think when it’s not that, it might sneak in different ways.

But actually, I think for me and probably just having background in athletics and fitness, that time comes when I’m doing something physical. So either walking or working out is when that mental frame finds its space. Fortunately, I’m able to typically do that daily, which is really great.

Jess Dewell 19:10
You mentioned the word routine. There is something to be said for routines. And sometimes I know our routines, they become so automatic.

They’re on autopilot, right? That very dangerous thing where we, I don’t know how much you drive, but there are times I get in the car and I’m having a conversation with somebody in the car and I end up in a place I don’t want to be because I ended up on autopilot, right? And not five miles away, like two blocks away are a grocery store instead of to the house or to the school dropping off a child that’s actually, we’re going someplace else for said child and not, right?

And I think that I find that fascinating because routines also have this opportunity, like total untapped potential to help us through difficult times. And I’m curious if how you look at that and how you bring that into your work and the work that you’re doing with your clients, because I’m guessing there’s a little bit of routine in this to help pull our future toward us. I’m going to use your word from earlier.

Tessa Thomas 20:14
Yeah, that’s great. It’s a great question. I think routines can be very in setting your energy and your vibration and how you’re moving through the world each day.

And when they do get disrupted, I think at least for me, the thing I try to do is try to get back to it in some semblance as best I can, depending on what’s going on. And I think when you are constantly reactive, to lead in a bit to your business question on the client side is when we see our clients with not necessarily a lack of process, but when they’re constantly just putting out flames and reactive in their business. And what we do with Pipeline is try to streamline that and cut through that noise.

So it doesn’t have to be that way. It is partly leaning into what we know intuitively and from experience that getting into a system and a routine of how you operate and how you move through the world or through your business actually creates freedom because that you can rely on certain things like every day or every month or every week or quarter to happen. And when certain things are a given, it actually frees you up to not think about those things so much.

And that’s where you can create some of that space to do more strategic thinking or just reflection or creative work. God forbid there’s time for that. So I think that’s definitely where it relates across what we do in Pipeline to our clients.

And to me personally, it’s just the building pillars. They’re pillars for a reason. They create and set a foundation that you can do other things from, which is really powerful, I think.

Jess Dewell 22:04
Some of us, and I am one of these people, I lean into cadence and routine. I usually don’t have a daily routine, which is why I started to use the word cadences. There’s going to be this cycle of things that are going to happen.

In general, though, I look at a bigger picture always. In a routine, in a process, the ability to just have, it’s actually confidence-building, right? We successfully have been doing it for so long.

We know we’re going to have success to keep doing it. Now we have head space and heart space to say, what’s next? What’s here?

What’s important? What’s not important anymore? I think that’s sometimes the big question.

What’s not important anymore? And I almost wonder if that we’re in a time, in this world, in this space, in this decade, what’s not important anymore might actually be the most important question, not only to stay competitive and to keep market share, but also to go, I want to make sure that I am showing up, that we are showing up so that we can meet the world as we’re becoming and be a part of what the world is becoming.

Tessa Thomas 23:15
It’s fascinating because it’s so counterintuitive that really a lot of growth comes from reducing or reductionary kind of action of what you’re, all the things that you’re doing or all the inputs, because in doing so you’re now letting in like just the key things or the, you’re taking the key actions to where you want to go. And it’s really something totally different, I think, than the way most people might think about it.

Jess Dewell 23:46
Going back to your example of 2020 and the way things paused yet showed up all in the right way, what kind of reduction was there for you?

Tessa Thomas 23:56
Oh, that’s a great question. Interestingly, the other business that I had been going back and forth with the pipeline was something I’d been working on for a long time. It’s called Recruit HQ.

It came from personal experience. It’s a platform to help high school student athletes understand college athletic programs. So it’s kind of like Glassdoor, but for college athletic recruiting, current and former student athletes could rate and review their experience in their programs so that future college student athletes could understand exactly what it was like to play at Duke or, yeah, it’s a totally different experience team to team and school to school.

And so we’re trying to distill down what that experience was like in that program so that if people or student athletes were being recruited for those schools and those programs that they would understand what they’re getting into and their parents as well, because realistically you’re looking at 14 to 18-year-olds trying to make these decisions. And there’s a lot that goes into it. And when COVID hit and the studios closed and really there was no kind of next step for pipeline, I pivoted to focusing on that platform and seeing what we could do there.

And I’d been having a really hard time actually getting the reviews from the current and former student athletes, just finding them. And the ones that did complete reviews did it so willingly because they understood exactly where they were like four or five, six years ago and how helpful it would have been to know what was going on. You know, I found a path to essentially getting these reviews through LinkedIn actually.

And at that time, because we were in, I’m in Toronto, so we were in some of the strictest lockdowns that there were, really couldn’t go do anything. So in terms of reduction, some of it was far out of my control. It was imposed on us, but I just literally woke up every day.

And my goal was to send 50 of these requests for reviews every single day. That’s all that the goal was. It was like, if I can send 50, I might get 10 to 15 responses.

And I did that, literally I have a notebook where I would just tally the 50 every day. And it’s like a notebook full of, you know, dozens of pages of tallies because it just became so simple and clear. And just, this is the thing that I need to do today to move this forward.

And we had over 2000 reviews within a couple months. So that’s probably the best example I can think of that reduction to almost a single activity that once you’ve found and cut out that noise, you can hone in and really see some key results from it. [Is that what you wanted to do?]

Is that what I wanted to be doing? It’s the type of thing that I don’t think is ever dead or gone. So we’ll see if we come back to it.

It’s more of a passion project. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 26:50
When you get to reduction, sometimes the work that’s actually to be done that is the best work done by you or me or the person listening in their world after reducing all of this is not what we want to be doing. But guess what? It still is the right thing at the right time.

Tessa Thomas 27:04
I loved reading those reviews and seeing how helpful they could be. I think the risk that people saw in that type of platform was they’ll get people that are just super negative or could get really personal and all sorts of stuff. If we did see anything like that, they got tossed out and they weren’t published, but so few and far between.

Literally, I can think of maybe we saw like a handful out of a couple thousand reviews because the student athletes just understood how valuable it was to just be honest and help the younger kids and say, hey. And the beauty of it was I went, I played softball at Winthrop University in South Carolina, which is a smaller school. And being from Canada, you don’t hear about the smaller schools.

In the U.S. you might locally understand all the options in your state and you have the state schools, like the bigger schools, and then you have maybe smaller public and then private. But if you’re an international student especially, you’re only learning about 40 or 50 of the biggest names in college sports at any given point in time and you’re not aware of all of the different possibilities. So to see people talk about their experiences at colleges and in programs that people may never have considered, but they’re super highly rated, I loved seeing that.

And so it was a fun time.

Jess Dewell 28:18
I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

Announcer 28:35
Focused on growth? Listen to more programs like this which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at reddirection.com or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 28:51
Now back to the program. I’m talking with Tessa Thomas, co-founder of Pipeline Solutions, the studio intelligence platform helping boutique fitness studios streamline operations and scale effectively. I think that’s amazing and I’m going to go back to the hard work, the repetition of that work for days and weeks on end.

Worth it to get to the result because you saw it in your heart, you saw it in your mind, you knew what it could do and it actually showed up that way because people got it. Without you actually getting those 50 tallies every day for so many weeks and pages of them, it wouldn’t have been possible. And so I guess that’s where I was going.

The reaching out is interesting. The outside voices that you were hearing in relationship to what if it was this and what if it was that, what if it was all of this and are you really sure you want to go that route because you’re already getting all of this pressure in spite of it all. That work got done so that the result could be there and it’s helped and it’s that’s that’s and I find that fascinating because I don’t mind also doing that. I’m going to call it repetitive work.

Tessa Thomas 30:07
That’s how it is for sure.

Jess Dewell 30:08
Everybody who’s listening, you’re going to have your own response to whatever that task is that you might…

Tessa Thomas 30:13
Yeah.

Jess Dewell 30:13
Say I’m going to just delegate this or I think I could automate this or I think I could get an outside source. That is why the results came back the way they did.

Tessa Thomas 30:22
A hundred percent. [Outsourcing it.] Because you can and this is getting into a little bit of the world we’re in now which is a lot of automation, a lot of AI, a lot of things where there’s necessity to those things.

We have to save time where we can for people and there are a lot of repetitive tasks. Don’t get me wrong. And there’s a lot of power in those systems to really crunch data non-human scale which totally makes sense.

But with all that being said, I think there are just certain things where that human touch and that element of actually reaching out to people will actually save you time in the long run. It cuts through a lot of that noise. People understand that it’s you reaching out.

It’s a different kind of efficiency. It’s not necessarily the way we think about automation and those types of things but it actually saves a lot of those get ignored being sent and can cut through that a little bit quicker.

Jess Dewell 31:23
And then there’s just the proof of concept. This was something that if you sent it all automated to every whatever database that was formed and it turned out that the response was low there is no iteration along the way to change to get the response that you would want. You, the collective you.

And I think there’s something to be said for understanding what it is and making sure that it’s going to have the result you want before any sort of optimization occurs. I’m also very pro-optimization. I also recognize that if you’re going to throw money at something it might as well be smart money.

Tessa Thomas 32:00
I think as well the big thing that came from that and some of the other projects I’ve done is just the feeling of it’s really hard to put your finger on but it’s actually just really great whether it works out long term or not to understand what it feels like and see it when something is working. Like when something is literally just working. It’s like I’m doing this thing and I’m getting the result that I expect and I can do that today and I can do it tomorrow and I can literally string these weeks together.

It’s an engine and I think business one of the hardest things is the hardest thing which is to build an engine to understand that if I put x in I’m going to get y out. And so I think what that experience taught me was what it looks and feels like when that actually is happening and that it’s possible. I think when you start doing your own thing you can obviously see we’re all consumers you can see business success around you you take part in it all the time but when you’re on the other side it’s the winds are so small when you start to just have a little bit of wind in your sails and for me with Recruit HQ I think what I took from that into pipeline was just like I know what this feels like now I know what it looks like and I want to and recreate that in a different space but at least it’s almost not this abstract elusive thing of product market fit or growth that is talked about that you never actually feel firsthand that’s definitely what I took from that.

Jess Dewell 33:35
What are some of your goals that you’re looking out five years or more?

Tessa Thomas 33:41
I love helping people in the fitness space when you mentioned that your friends that work out are a positive influence on you. For me the big driver of pipeline I’ve been a group fitness coach and personal trainer for a long time I love helping people I love seeing people do things that they never thought they could do literally like one class the next it’s pretty incredible once you’re able to do that and so enabling that at scale so building the tools and building the platform that enables teams and studio teams to do that more is where my heart’s at right now and the mission of what we’re doing we can keep doing that keep working with as many studios as possible helping them achieve their business goals that’s definitely the outlook there and then also like I mentioned that student athlete piece is still pretty important special to me as well as youth sports it plays such a crucial role in so many things for kids communication and teamwork and resilience and building confidence investing more time and energy into that space I think is in the future as well on a personal note this year I was able to have a goal of getting my mom to all of the tennis majors we did the French Open this year and that’s three of four the big one left is Australia in the next five years I got to get her and hopefully the rest of my family there too that’d be a big personal north star to push for maybe all this business growth will help us get there as well.

Jess Dewell 35:10
In either or both of those goals, do you see the places where there could be trickiness and challenge that you’re going to have to bring the confidence that you’ve been building and the skills that you already have?

Tessa Thomas 35:23
There’s no way there won’t be I think as you get older in regular years and entrepreneurial years you just know that there’s going to be trickiness in your path to answer your question I think the only way to get through those things is to have self-belief and confidence in yourself to do the best you can and that’s all we can ever do is do the best we can to make the next kind of right move with the best intention and to move forward in that way so will there be I am certain of it what it will be I don’t know but I try not to think about the how like how will all these things happen I don’t know but I know why and what we’re doing and those are the only two things that I try to focus on.

Jess Dewell 36:08
Are you ever plagued with the occasional shoulda-woulda-coulda?

Tessa Thomas 36:18
Oh yeah I think as time goes, you can’t help it but it’s always a tricky thing right because if you did something different would you be where you are but yeah I think there’s things that just don’t work out and and they can be hard it can be hard to come to grips with was that a me thing or was that just the universe not working out yeah I think there’s always things like that but I try not to live in those spaces too much rather than just keep you alive what you got to say it’s gone yeah the bigger thing when those thoughts do come up is there a lesson there that I can use moving forward one thing that I know for sure for me and it’s been different circumstances and I can’t necessarily pinpoint one but asking for help and doing that in the moment has been tricky in the past and leaning into that more now I think the lessons of the shoulda woulda could have I try and bring into today which is if something’s getting a little sticky or tricky how about Tessa you ask for help and see what happens and then we’ll go from there kind of thing so those that’s something I would have just tried to figure out on my own in the past quite a bit pipeline was pretty much my first venture with a team and that actually came out of that was in the past I think I just tried to do a lot of things on my own there’s that saying if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together yeah that’s I think been a bit of a through line for me these days in those learnings

Jess Dewell 38:03
Tessa, I want to know what makes it bold to actually build your own self-belief?

Tessa Thomas 38:07
As you move towards your goals, what makes it bold is that it is hard. It’s hard to do it day in and day out, and I think my analogy of the constant little self-correction that needs to happen daily is what makes it bold. It’s not one decision, one time. It’s an active decision every day to pursue what you’re doing and I think that is bold, because it can be easier to not go down that road because it’s comfortable. The road less traveled requires quite a bit of growth saying that and actually doing it are two different things and that’s what makes it bold, is the doing it takes quite a bit. If you’re not careful, it can maybe change you for not necessarily the better, because it’s hard and you have to be very cognizant of who you’re becoming on that path and how it’s affecting yourself and those around you. All of those things are hard so I think that’s what makes it bold.

Jess Dewell 39:12
Every single time I have a conversation I take away something that I want to share with 25 people I know when you’re listening to this podcast you’re also listening for that and we’ll have something that you want to share in the comments I would like for you to engage with us what is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program here’s why it’s important it’s important because yeah there are going to be how-tos yes there are going to be steps yes you’re going to be like oh I wish I wrote that down I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now but guess what you’re not so engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business in your workflow in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 40:06
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance, and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at the Scott Treatment.