Episode 002
Nina Byrd
and thrilling journey of pitching her first $1M deal in her early 20s.
Nina shares how she overcame racial and age bias by leaning into her “old soul” wisdom and the power of listening. From her unique “shower whiteboard” brainstorming sessions to protecting yourself as your business’s greatest asset, Nina provides a masterclass in intentional growth.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
"Do not invest all your energy into work. at the end of your life you're going to think about all the wonderful relationships you created, not your 90 hour workweek."
[00:00:00] Welcome to women’s million dollar conversations with Alice Tang, where we share stories from successful business women on how they built their success and insights to help you achieve your goals. Now let’s join the conversation.
[00:00:14] Alice Tang: Today. We are very happy to have Nina Byrd.
One of my very good friends, young friend, but very experienced with us on our women’s million-dollar conversations show. To be on our show our guest must have accumulated a million dollars, made a million dollars as income and new income of course, or close a million dollar deal. Hi Nina.
[00:00:40] Nina Byrd: Hi Alice. Great to be here.
[00:00:43] Alice Tang: All right. Tell us about your industry. Tell us about how long you’ve been in your industry and your company name.
[00:00:49] Nina Byrd: Absolutely. I’m an independent business strategist. I’ve been in this industry for about seven years. I transitioned from the marketing communications kind of [00:01:00] advertising world into business strategy. Just for more intentionality, I wanted to make a bigger impact.
[00:01:07] Alice Tang: Thank you, Nina. So there are three areas, right?
Accumulate, a million dollars, made a million dollars and strike a million dollar deal. I mean, You’re business owners. We can talk about all of them or one of them. Which direction would you like to go?
[00:01:20] Nina Byrd: I think the first area I was able to accomplish, I’d like to talk about first, which is the ability to strike a million dollar deal for one of the first companies I worked for.
Excellent.
[00:01:31] Alice Tang: Excellent. So let’s go there. How did it make you feel after you achieve that goal?
[00:01:37] Nina Byrd: When you see a million dollar proposal go out or a deal, in process and you’re a part of that team. It, at first, in my early twenties, it was very intimidating because you think, oh gosh, what if this doesn’t go well, what if I don’t have the skill, all these doubts, start to come in and play a special, I think when you’re younger and you don’t have.
I didn’t have the experience of having done a million dollar deal [00:02:00] or be part of that. So I was really grateful that I was part of that team. And then when I was able to take the lead on the project it really just happened was by having, since I wasn’t originally chosen to be the lead, but certain variables fell into place and I ended up being the lead and so pitching making sure that we were accomplishing all the client’s needs that they asked for in the proposal. That was really all up to me leading the entire team. So it was to be honest, it was terrifying. But once we made it through and we were awarded that deal, it felt amazing.
The team we celebrated that was a big deal for this agency I was working for. It was a very small firm. So a million dollars really made the difference in their ability to scale. And from there, it really allowed us to accomplish even greater tasks because we weren’t afraid to lose a million dollar deal or to win a million dollar deal.
It just became another benchmark on our goals.
[00:02:51] Alice Tang: Two things like hard just now and listening to you, you were still at your twenties at the time. And then you also [00:03:00] talk about after you land a million dollar deal, you’re able to scale. The next one and the bigger one. So can you speak more to that?
[00:03:09] Nina Byrd: Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of variables that come into play and factors and teams and things you need certainly to land a million dollar deal in any type of agency environment. And for us, we just started to be, we were able to refine that and that’s really, the strategist in me came into play.
It was awesome to sell the product good or services. That’s great. Get the deal done. But I was so curious about the company and how do you grow the company to be sustainable? And how do you continue to provide more opportunities to have great coworkers and great leadership and great management?
So we talked for a minute about being nosy, and I want to talk about that for a second. We’re both kind of nosy people when I was a child. So my precocious child asks a lot of questions. I was the one kind of asking the teacher, asking the adult, these more adult kind of sophisticated questions because that’s really nosy.
I really curious. I wanted to understand how things worked. I [00:04:00] have, I think, a human engineering brain. I like to understand the dynamics of the way we operate as humans. So for me, when I was in an agency setting, working for partners, it was just fascinating to me to understand how do we get this company to grow bigger because I know we had very lofty goals. Every time I would ask my manager and then he asked the director, then you asked them, I was like, Nina has hard questions. Just go to the partners. And so it was a continual occurrence in my early twenties that I would have to be managed by partners already have to be managed by the owners of the company, just because I’m so ambitious and not for the sake of me growing in my professional career that I knew would happen one way or another, but it was really about the growth of a bigger entity that excited me. Sustainability across a larger landscape.
That was always just thrilling to me. So that’s what enabled us to really grow and continue a trajectory of getting consistently million dollar deals.
[00:04:58] Alice Tang: Very good. What is the [00:05:00] biggest bias you face on your path to success?
[00:05:04] Nina Byrd: I think it’s changed a little bit in my, over the course of my life. So I’m a black millennial woman from the east coast.
And I was raised in a fairly middle-class environment. I understand what poverty looks like. And I understand what wealth looks like. I was very blessed to have an upbringing to understand both paradigms. And so growing up, going to private school is are we rich enough? That kind of thing, where we wealthy enough, we couldn’t quite compete in that way.
And When I got to, I would say college, it was, what was I smart enough. I went to an engineering college. Was I smart enough? Can I keep up with these people? A lot of like comparisons of how do I stack up against the people around me. And then when I got into the corporate environment, it was my. Sometimes, the racial bias comes into play.
Is this person going to culturally understand this? I’m American. I was born here. I’ve been raised, six, seven generations of Americans. So understanding culture in different paradigms. Coastally that was very easy for me, understanding Oh, white dominant [00:06:00] culture. That was very easy for me.
And so the age thing continually comes up and people often think I’m older than I am. I’m in my early thirties. And that works for me. Sometimes it works against me, but either way, I’m usually one of the most, younger youngest people in the room, I would say, or most junior people in the room in terms of professional career lifetime. And I think oftentimes people miscalculate me and early in my career, especially a lot of older men over the age of 50 that worked really well for me. And the reason is I would just sit back and listen. I would be the last person to speak. And I would say something really interesting or profound.
And it would be so unexpected and say it confidently, like with all due respects, I think this might be the better path to take, or have we considered the X variable. And with that, I was able to really I’m able to quickly move fast that I think people can now recognize that if we have a conversation that there’s a lot of wisdom and I’m an old soul, as people would say, so I’m able to [00:07:00] get past the age of bias thing, but every now and again, But I don’t get carded anymore.
And my husband does and he’s older.
[00:07:05] Alice Tang: Do you feel sad that you don’t get carded?
[00:07:08] Nina Byrd: A little bit? Cause I’m like, he’s older.
[00:07:11] Alice Tang: It’s so funny. This is real because 21 years I started my current profession. And my manager would always say, Alice, when you introduce us, the two of us. Just say that between the two of us we have over 20 years of experience and I was three months old.
[00:07:29] Nina Byrd: That’s combined.
That’s the way you massage number sometimes. That’s ,yeah.
[00:07:33] Alice Tang: But that helped because some people are looking for not necessarily how old you are, but how much experience do you have? Especially in my profession. We’re giving you money. Can I trust you?
[00:07:43] Nina Byrd: You’re totally right. It is about experience.
And, we all have our biases that come into play. We’re making assumptions about people. The minute we lay eyes on them and that’s part of human behavior, but I think there’s something to be said for kind of the way that we’re evolving as humans in the workplace. And as we’ve seen these last few years with [00:08:00] the pandemic, It’s just changed.
People are able to now start to come to work as their full selves and find that they have hidden talents that they never thought were valuable. And sometimes that comes from really young person or a person who doesn’t have as much professional experience. And I think that’s great. I think that’s wonderful because I think it takes a team in multiple parts to make the machine, your company work.
[00:08:23] Alice Tang: That’s so good advice. So the next question is also about advice. What is your number one piece of advice for those women? Who’s looking at you and say, I want to reach my million dollar goes to, what would you say to them?
[00:08:39] Nina Byrd: I would say two things.
If you don’t like managing money, which I don’t love managing money, let someone else take that burden off your hands. I wish I would’ve done that sooner, more quickly. I. E. Accountant, bookkeeping services, all of that, as well as my wealth management, reaching out to someone like Alice early in my career. Even if you don’t like what money can [00:09:00] Alice manage for me? I don’t have any money.
You’re going to accumulate more money. So just getting the team in place is going to be really great because then you can make critical decisions to enhance your wealth early.
Play What is the Biggest Bias You Face on Your Path to Success
[00:09:11] Um, The other thing is stop, definitely stepped doubting yourself. I wish I would have had more people around me that could model what it means to be a business strategist.
I didn’t have a lot of examples that I could follow. I had great CEO partners. I had great bosses, but they didn’t quite do what I wanted to do. And I wish I would have had more examples and sought that out. Now, mind you. I grew up partially in the digital era. So I didn’t have the wide access that young, Z-ers right now have with access to people at their fingertips on Facebook or LinkedIn or any of these platforms.
So if they’re not organically in their community, have to go and seek it out. So seek out mentorship and examples of people that you want to emulate and ask them. What, how did you get there? What did you do?
And then the third thing is just
[00:09:53] make sure you surround yourself with a great friend circle and colleagues circle, whether that’s professional development, whether [00:10:00] that’s networking. Listen, I’ve been a part of networking groups that I would never want to go back to. That doesn’t mean just do it to perform, to be part of a circle. Be part of people who are in a groups that are intentional people that believe in the same values.
People who want to change the world. I am really passionate about leaving an impact on the world, surround yourself with people like that. And oftentimes it means cutting a lot of people out of your life. Not to be, dismissive of them. I value and love everyone for who they are, but they can’t necessarily be in my first degree, circle of close colleagues, friends, and trusted people in my life because those people will always influence you.
[00:10:34] Alice Tang: Very, super power. Good. How do you process and make a big decision, especially when the stakes are high?
[00:10:44] Nina Byrd: When the stakes are really high, I have to quiet myself. I’m someone. I love data. I like examples. I like knowing that what I’m walking into. I like things that are predictability, but I also like pushing the boundary to find out what’s possible.
I have the [00:11:00] futurist mindset and I want to know five years out. How is this going to impact the future 10 years out? And so in order to prepare for something that’s high stakes for me, whether it’s speaking in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, whether it’s pitching a $10 million deal, whether it’s talking a client into, a big, potentially risky decision, I quiet myself because your intuition will tell you everything you need to know.
If you can really dig deep. And this is a skill that you have to develop. It’s like working out. It’s not something that you can just do. I think people talk about it in this way. It’s you just get quiet, you meditate, you just do it. And all of a sudden, you know, all the right answers that at least that’s not how it works for me.
I had to really develop it as a skill like I would working out. And the more that you can understand how your brain operates and find the connection to your highest self, your intuition, the more confident you’ll be in your decision making process, because you’ll know when something’s right.
[00:11:55] Alice Tang: Very good. So I’m going to be a little nosy.
Or a little curious about [00:12:00] what exactly do you do? Do you really meditate or do you go to a gym and just lift weights until you think through everything? Or clean the kitchen?
[00:12:11] Nina Byrd: For you, I will totally dish the real true stuff. I would love to say that I have an awesome meditation practice and that I do these amazing sits for an hour a day. I am not quite there yet. Maybe one day. I do some two, three minute meditations, especially if I’m finding out and having a very busy day or I’m going into a high stakes situation.
I might do that five minutes before. But where I really find strokes of insight and can creatively think and free my mind to find the answers. Is in the shower.
[00:12:40] Alice Tang: Take more showers!
[00:12:42] Nina Byrd: I love water. I’m a water girl. I live on the water. I grew up doing water sports. So something about the water for me. I mean, Humans were like 70% water.
It’s just very it connects me and it grounds me. Other people like to go on walks. Other people like to exercise. Some people like to talk through what they’re thinking about. I love the water. And so I [00:13:00] actually, in my shower, it’s a fully laminated surface. Essentially my shower is partially a whiteboard, so I actually have markers in my shower.
I use the dry erase ones because water can get on it and not the wet erase and I will mark it up. And I know my cleaning person’s probably oh my gosh, what are, what am I scrubbing all these notes off? And I’ll take a picture of that and put it into a file because sometimes the best ideas come to me in the shower.
And so I want to capture that right there.
[00:13:25] Alice Tang: Very good. So take more showers if you need more ideas. What is the one thing you would do differently on your path to success knowing what you know now?
[00:13:37] Nina Byrd: Knowing what I know now I would for sure get around a group of really strong women who are also business owners early on.
I knew strong men, right? 18, 19, 20. I know a lot of men in had examples of male CEOs who did very well, but I didn’t have examples of women, especially women with families. That’s particularly I was interested in because I [00:14:00] think women have families and women who are single, you have different different tracks, different variables that you have to look at in terms of obstacles.
And I wish I would have had those women in my life to be able to learn from them and for them to mentor me. Whether it was friends of friends or people in the neighborhood, or, people through my business journal or whatever community I had access to, I wish I would have been close to women like that growing up.
[00:14:24] Alice Tang: So power woman who has, who had families.
[00:14:28] Nina Byrd: Absolutely. Absolutely. I just think that they. It’s a different experience and journey and the way that you have to organize your life to accomplish your goals has to be incredibly intentional and to raise a strong family, compassionate and aware without burning out.
Cause burn out a real thing, especially for women. And if you’re an empath and you take on a lot of energy, which people who change the world tend to have that type of personality trait. You have to be very protective of you as an asset. We talk about protecting your assets, your [00:15:00] financial assets, but you are an asset.
You are your greatest asset. . Your brain is your greatest asset. If you don’t take care of yourself and that’s in every way possible, including strengthening your knowledge base, strengthening your community of support, then you just cannot thrive and prosper. It’s just, I don’t think it’s as possible or feasible.
So do everything you can to surround yourself with the perfect environment and the perfect community that might mean sacrificing some things and you have to be okay with that.
[00:15:25] Alice Tang: Yeah. Saying no to the things that is secondary saying yes to the things, that is important and protecting your human asset, which is you.
[00:15:34] Nina Byrd: Absolutely.
And investing in yourself in ways that work for you. If you want to invest more money in one aspect of something that energizes you and you don’t see your friends doing that, that’s okay. If showers, aren’t your thing. And you’re like I can go a week without, that’s okay. But you’re like, I can’t go a week without a massage, or I can’t go a week without having a party because parties energize me, or I can’t go a week without doing a coffee date with a new person every other day.
Whatever that is, or making [00:16:00] kombucha or washing dishes or whatever those things are that energize you and make you feel like you. That’s the most important thing. The things that are going to fuel you, your fuel for the future are the things that you do that make you feel most like you, where you don’t have to change your voice.
You don’t have to change your luck. You don’t have to change your mindset. You can be authentically you do that as much as possible, and you will be successful because you’re living your authentic self.
[00:16:26] Alice Tang: Very good.
Final question. Unless you have questions for me, what is one piece of very good advice or very bad advice that has made the biggest impact in your life?
[00:16:41] Nina Byrd: Ooh, I’ll start with the bad advice. It’s a great question. The one piece of bad advice is to work as hard as you can and exhaust yourself and put all of your energy and effort into work. Horrible advice. It comes from a very old school way of working that’s militaristic that values [00:17:00] people as assets to a larger organization, not as human beings.
And it’s a pathway to burn out immediately. I do not invest everything I have all my energy in my business. It’s just not, you can’t get balanced that way. I have a family. I have great friends. I have a lot of integrity with the people that I bring into my life when I choose to share time with, and I need room for that.
And those are not revenue generating activities necessarily. And pour as much energy as you can into sustaining yourself and then make sure that fuels your business, that fuels your job. If you can show up fully, I would rather someone show up fully to meeting. Fully present, fully engaged, excited, and ready to work together.
Then be halfway because they’re stress out about something. I would rather have you at a hundred percent for 10 minutes, then you at 10%, for 60 minutes, it just doesn’t make sense because I want people to bring their best. So I excuse a lot of folks from meetings. I’ve I always have. I know if [00:18:00] they’re moving through something and they’re going to pull away from the team, I excused them from me.
Hey, go take your view. It’s a much more balanced approach. That’s the worst piece of advice. Do not invest all of your energy and grind and work until 2:00 AM and make yourself sick, especially for women because we’re more prone to get sick. It’s not worth it at the end of your life. You’re not going to be thinking about your 90 hour, 150 hour workweek. You’re not going to think about that. You’re going to think about all the wonderful relationships you have. So that’s the worst piece of advice.
The best piece of advice I ever got is be careful who you take advice from.
Meaning we’ve had this, we’ve had maybe the elders in the community, or people that want the best for us, but they don’t necessarily have the experience. Or friends. Friends who grew up with, and maybe we’ve outgrown or new people that we meet in the community say, oh, don’t do that.
You should do this. It’s it’s very, I always, listen to folks and say, thank you for. If they’re offering something because they want their goals to make your life better, hopefully. But they might not be qualified. They might not at, might be qualified to speak [00:19:00] into your life. They might not be qualified to speak about what you’re doing or where you’re going.
They might not have the relevant experience. And so I take all of that at arms length. I really value the people that have the experience and have my best interests at heart. I will listen to them all day everyday people like you, Alice.
[00:19:16] Alice Tang: Oh, that conclude our short conversation. Thank you, Nina. For sharing your ideas, your secrets, your shower tips.
And protecting your human energy capital because thats the most important asset we have. Thank you so much for coming on board with us today, spending a few minutes.
[00:19:41] Nina Byrd: Absolutely. Thank you, Alice.
[00:19:42] Alice Tang: Thank you.
Nina is a problem solver. Nina has 12+ years in strategic consulting for financial, government, environmental, non-profit, healthcare, entertainment, creative services and property development industries. From small businesses to enterprise corporations, her robust experience ensures an agile approach to any project plan. Through empathy and analysis, her skills span the gamut of business advisement to equitable holistic operational practices. Nina’s experience integrating cross-functional teams such as founders, developers, managers and vendors alike enables her projects to produce high-impact results. Her mission is to elevate the human experience internally so that your organization can be authentically represented externally. Nina values non-linear thinking where teams can balance purposeful work with high-impact results.