We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Taneka Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Taneka below.
Taneka, appreciate you joining us today. Do you have any thoughts about how to create a more inclusive workplace?
Recently at Cultivate, we made a pivot in what we want to bring to the industry. Our backgrounds is in I/O Psychology and that is literally the hub of creating more inclusive workplaces, but what we determined our impact wants to be, is not your average contribution.
We are introducing a corporate wellness component to help businesses and organizations create healthy thriving workplaces through holistic wellness.
Where companies fall off is, they do not take the time to fully develop intentional workplace culture, create trustworthy relationships between executive leadership and employee, and completely remove the humanistic component of what it means to be valued as an employee or team member. Introducing a customized corporate wellness program to your organization can help create and manage all of those things to mitigate the risk of losing top talent, and retaining key players that help your business thrive.
This is a great way to create inclusive programming, build respective workplace culture, and introduce a non cookie cutter incentive to your employees that keep them wanting to perform and enjoy their time working for your organizations. When your employees are healthy, they are happier, and can perform better. And since they are spending over half of their lives at work, it only makes sense to take the initiative in caring about their well-being, intentionally!
Taneka, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Cultivate With Taneka Johnson is the name of my coaching and consulting practice.
Cultivate was founded by me, Taneka Johnson, a life-long hustler, tenacious entrepreneur, and organizational psychology expert.
I earned my degree in Industrial & Organizational (I/O) Psychology from Capella University in 2016. I am also currently enrolled, working on my Doctorate for I/O Psychology at Capella University.
My mission is to provide opportunities to help CEO’s create longevity in their life and business that focusses on 4 key areas or success: Mindset, Operations, Business Diversity (multiple streams of income in one business) and business credit. These are the four pillar areas that help entrepreneurs through their growth and scale phases of their business. By implementing systems and processes that bring ease, flow, and connectivity to teams while enhancing the collaborative spirit and culture within the business.
My specialty is in helping small, mid, and large businesses grow into their full potential through improving their organizational culture, leadership, and workplace.
My goal is to inspire positive change in what the next generation of successful companies looks like, and we do that with healthy teams, company cultures, and environments. I want to equip small, mid, and large sized businesses with the things that they need to start healthy, remain healthy, and keep being healthy – to be that trailblazer, that disruptor in the industry to help bring everything together, full-circle.
We mostly work with entrepreneurs in the beauty, health, and wellness spaces, scaling their businesses past $20k/months by leveraging our on/offline client attraction system and business strategy, but welcome other business owners who may also be a great fit!
Also, we recently just made a pivot in our business, entering into the corporate wellness sector as corporate wellness strategist, that create customized corporate wellness programs that help your company culture thrive and retain top talent.
What I am most proud of is how I now have a brand and a business that truly speak to who I am as an individual. I feel truly aligned with my business and my brand now and it really feels good! But the only way that I was able to get here was by allowing myself to evolve as an individual, learning more about myself, who I wish to serve, the impact I want to make, and how to do it with being authentically me. So many people get stuck in businesses or brands that are not authentically them and have been mirrored from watching someone else. I’m glad that I took the time to do the self discovery work and self care to be able to add the more personable touch to my business. Because of that, I’m majorly excited of where my business is headed!
What I would love for the world to know about my brand and story is that it was birthed from my own experience in corporate America. I came from a very toxic workplace, with unreliable leadership, and always went above and beyond to do my job, but for whatever reason, I was constantly passed up for opportunities to advance. I would be teased a lot to believe that I would get the opportunities, only later to find out that they had hired a less dedicated and less qualified person off of the street. Somehow, they still saw fit for me to continuously get added responsibility without any raise or promotion, because they knew I was the most educated there and was smart, but chose not to allow me the best platforms and opportunities to display that and get the recognition for it. Too often is great talent like that abused because of improper leadership and toxic workplace culture. It’s time to be intentional about changing that, and lead a new way of what proper organizational culture should be like, how employees should be treated, and how important it is to coach and educate leadership into properly exercising their titles, versus just wearing them on their chest. Cultivate is here to change that and lead the way.
If you are looking to Cultivate longevity into your life, business, or workplace, we are definitely the experts to call!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Entrepreneurship is by no means easy at all. Even though that’s what social media portrays, it’s not. It takes a lot of endurance to travel this journey and you have to be open to making mistakes, doing some trial and error, and taking risk to bet on yourself and trust yourself. Honestly the only way that I was able to get past most challenges that I have had is by hiring a coach to help me in building this vision and implementing a self care regimen that keeps me grounded. Self care is so important in my practice as a coach and even as a strategist. If I am not at my best, there is no way that I can perform the way my clients, or even my friends and family need me to. That’s important to me. The other part of beating the challenges is having a great support system. My friends are literally the greatest group of friends that I could ever ask for and they keep me grounded, focused, and make sure I stay on top of my self care regimen.
The biggest lessons that I have learned along the way are:
1. If you can’t find a door, build one. Don’t be afraid to be the first to build a blueprint for what you desire to do. When there is no table, be the table and then determine, who will sit with you.
2. Free yourself from the validation of others & society. Put more focus into being self validated and lead fearlessly.
3. The timing will never be right, the money won’t always be there, DO IT ANYWAY!
4. Learn how to self advocate!! In every aspect of your life! The moment you learn how to do this, your life will change.
-#CoachTWithTheKeys
Have you ever had to pivot?
Sure!
So one of my things that I like to talk about a lot in my journey, both life and business, is that it is okay to pivot. You do not need anyone’s permission to do so, other that yours!
I am really big on if I have outgrown the space (which happens to me fairly often), I can’t stay there. It is way more painful to stay in a space that is too small for you when your gift or your vision is calling for you to take up more room.
People typically are scared to pivot because they subconsciously feel like it is them giving up on their original vision. I suffered with telling myself that lie for so long and it was one of the most painful things and forms of abuse that I could have ever done to myself. I didn’t deserve to shrink myself like that, knowing that my impact was way larger, and even though it seemed scary, I had to be okay with taking up space no matter who that effected.
Pivoting in business is NORMAL. And I am here to tell you that it is OKAY!! You are not failing if it seems like your original vision is changing. It is supposed to evolve with you, as I say, the more that you evolve as a human, a business owner, and individual. Growing pains usually will come in the form of a pivot, and people run away too fast to see it through because it is foreign territory and unknown.
Pivoting can save your life and your business or if you decide not to do it, keep you stuck and miserable trying to give CPR to a dead situation.
Mergers and acquisitions happen daily without us as the consumers knowing. That’s because if it makes sense to save the business, it is a SMART business move.
I recently realized that I needed to pivot. I realized that there were a lot of common themes that were coming up and that really just made sense in the alignment of who I am as an individual and who I am BE-coming, as I like to say, as a business owner. I know sometimes it may be hard to believe, but things that flow easily to you aren’t just flowing your way just because. There is some true destiny there. Don’t run from it. My coach recently just taught me this and I have been embracing the lesson ever since because the doors have been opening, and the blessings have been flowing literally ever since I decided to. That’s true alignment and discernment. Why run from it?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cultivatewithtj.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultivatewithtj/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cultivatewithtj
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cultivatewithtanekajohnson/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CultivateWithTJ
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF8BlC-R48zjTD7et-vHwoQ
- Other: You can check out all of the current offerings, ways to work with Cultivate and even book a free qualifier call to get you headed in the right direction here: https://linktr.ee/cultivatewithtj
We are currently accepting new clients as well as speaking engagements and podcast opportunities. Inquiries can be sent to [email protected]
Image Credits
Amanda Ghobadi at The Branding Babe
Myeisha Nichols at NaTRUal Xpresessions Photography