We were lucky to catch up with Tara Hollies recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.
My parents did a lot of things right. I am thankful for the loving and happy home they created for my brothers and me. I could write a full manuscript about the things they did right, how they positively impacted my personal and professional trajectory, but for sake of time, I’ll focus on one specific and vital belief they instilled in me from a young age–that I can be anything I want to be.
My earliest memory of my parents empowering me with this simple yet poignant notion involves a dispute that I had with my brothers when I was in elementary school (I was probably no older than six). The details are a little fuzzy, but I remember playing in the basement of our house, arguing with my brothers about what imagined profession I had in our make-believe town. With my brothers’ penchant for arguing and my sassy and sometimes contrarian attitude, you can imagine how games often devolved into bickering (and eventually shouting) matches. I do not recall what job I insisted I would have, but one or both of my siblings rebuffed it. When my mom intervened, she stated, “Tara, you can be whatever you want to be.” She insisted that only I could decide what I would be. Even though the stakes in that instance were low, the truth of that assertion stuck with me. Thereafter, my parents regularly reminded each of us kids that we could choose to be whatever we wanted.
I went through a phase from about age seven to eleven in which I was determined to someday become a professional artist and move to Paris, France (because where else do artists live?). I also wanted to be a writer, even considering a career in which I could write and illustrate children’s books. Although I was skilled at drawing and painting, by the time I reached high school, I found that I loved reading, writing, and history far more than I enjoyed making physical art. Maybe I should have known from my insistence on “playing school” with neighborhood friends during summer vacations, and always wanting to be the teacher (who unfailingly wielded a ruler, as if it were the 1950s), that teaching was my calling.
Today, I am a college professor, scholar, editor, and writing tutor. In every facet of my professional life, I play the role of a teacher. While sometimes I wish that they had strongly urged me to pursue a more profitable profession like medicine or engineering, I am thankful that my mom and dad empowered me to study what I wanted to in college and graduate school and to ultimately seek a career in academia, because every day I get to read, write, and teach about subjects that I love, namely, African history, women’s and gender studies, and literature. I am thankful that my parents allowed me to forge my own path and do what makes me happy.
Tara, 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?
I am a one-woman editing and writing tutoring business. While I am able to support clients on a variety of writing projects, I specialize in editing PhD dissertations, MA theses, Fulbright and other research grant proposals, and essays for college or graduate school courses. I also assist clients with crafting resumes, CVs, cover letters, and other job application materials. Through Tarastotle Tutoring LLC, I offer asynchronous editing (using Track Changes in Microsoft Word or Suggestion Mode in Google Docs) as well as synchronous tutoring (via Zoom or phone call) options.
I have a PhD in African history and a BA in English and African Studies. Because I earned a Fulbright-IIE grant and a Social Science Research Council/Andrew W. Mellon fellowship (both of which I used to fund my dissertation research in southeastern Nigeria in 2018), and because I have led several Fulbright and other grant-writing workshops, courses, and one-on-one advising, I am a great resource for anyone applying for a scholarship, fellowship, or research grant. Because of my PhD and other academic experience, I am able to provide students and scholars with detailed, content-based feedback on their written work as well as edit their documents to improve their grammar, syntax, flow, and clarity. I have a lot of experience teaching undergraduates and graduates in the classroom as well as supporting students and scholars in various other settings.
While I was a graduate student at Michigan State, I worked in the university’s writing center, where I helped college, graduate, and professional students on a wide variety of writing projects. Soon after I successfully defended my dissertation in the fall of 2020, I decided to start my own business, taking the skills I honed as a writing tutor, researcher, scholar, and teacher to provide clients–ranging from college students to professors–with individual writing support.
I am most proud of the fact that I have found a way to use my talents and academic experience to help clients who are working on meaningful projects. I have clients who are completing or have just completed their PhD work in various fields, including history, anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, family social sciences, and medicine. Through the course of my work, I read research proposals, journal article manuscripts, and dissertation chapters concerning projects that my clients are conducting, and I believe their work can create positive change. Some of my clients seek to reform K-12 education so that it is more equitable, decolonized, culturally relevant, and impactful for future generations. I have other clients whose research promises to make significant contributions to global discourses on food scarcity and clean water access that can lead to policy changes that can improve the lives of millions. When these clients approached me, they had great ideas, impressive accolades, and ambitious goals, but they often lacked the confidence or experience needed to clearly and concisely, but also comprehensively, convey their intended message to a wide audience. In addition to editing clients’ papers for grammar, syntax, and the flow of the writing, I also provide detailed comments and questions in the margins of their documents, suggesting ways to more clearly articulate a certain point, how to link their project to other work in related fields, and how to structure their arguments, evidence, and analysis in a compelling format, among other things. I am honored to play whatever small role I can in the journey that my clients’ work takes from idea to research design to published manuscript to tangible, enacted change.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
The creation of my business, Tarastotle Tutoring LLC, was the result of a career pivot. Even though I am still in academia, my livelihood is no longer solely reliant on academic institutions.
By the time I entered graduate school, I realized that teaching was my vocation. But, it took a global pandemic to help me understand that teaching manifests in many ways and in many places beyond the classroom. During the fall of 2020, having just defended my PhD dissertation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and having only recently relocated to a different state, I was overwhelmed with multiple major life changes all at once. I was stressed and unsure of my career path.
That prompted me to think more broadly and creatively about what teaching looked like. I reflected on the many ways I had played the role of a teacher over the last several years as a graduate student at Michigan State University (MSU): as a teaching assistant who led weekly “recitation” classes for undergraduate social science courses, as the instructor of record for a couple of undergraduate history courses, as the teaching assistant of a graduate-level grant writing course for which I planned and led several of the lessons, as a facilitator for Fulbright grant writing workshops and a volunteer Fulbright interviewer for dozens of applicants from MSU, as a volunteer assistant coach for the MSU women’s hockey team, and as a writing consultant for the university’s writing center. Upon that reflection, I realized that my mom had been right all those times that she had observed, “Tara, you’re a teacher at heart.” For someone with a PhD, I felt a little dumb for not seeing it sooner.
When jobs were scarce in the fall of 2020, I decided to use my gift of teaching in a new (or at least modified) way by providing editing and writing tutoring services completely remotely. The MSU writing center for which I had been a consultant over the previous few years had switched all of their in-person consultations to online sessions when the university went fully remote in the spring of 2020, so I had a bit of practice with virtual tutoring by that fall. I reasoned (correctly) that I could pay myself much more than the university would pay me for my editing and tutoring expertise. Moreover, there was an increased need for online tutoring and other academic support for college and graduate students because of the limitations of virtual classroom instruction. I started to take on clients for my editing and writing tutoring business that November and found that I could pivot relatively easily from teaching a class of 20 to 30 students in person to teaching one client at a time online. Several traits are necessary in both situations, especially empathy, kindness, and patience. I also used many of my previous classroom teaching tactics when editing papers for clients, such as asking questions to elicit critical thinking or deeper analysis, noting places where specific and concrete examples would improve clarity, and explaining the different stages of research and writing processes.
Teaching does not have to occur in a classroom or even face to face. The detailed comments and questions I include in the margins of the documents I edit are meant to explain my reasoning for certain editing choices and to demonstrate how clients can improve their own writing in the future. This form of teaching is just as rewarding as lecturing in front of a class or facilitating a lively discussion among students on a college campus. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I am confident that I will always be a teacher.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The two most important elements of growing my clientele have been organic growth (primarily in the form of referrals) and distributing my business information to a targeted audience.
Regarding the former, I am thankful to have had many happy clients who rave to their friends, family, and colleagues about their positive experiences with my services. Moreover, I ask clients to submit Google reviews after using my editing or tutoring services, and that also acts as a form of referral, encouraging potential new clients to trust my business. For my part, the strategy is simply to deliver quality editing and/or tutoring and to ask clients for Google reviews afterward. The rest of the process takes care of itself. I believe in the wisdom of an Igbo proverb I learned many years ago in the Igbo language courses I took as part of my preparation for my PhD research in Igboland, southeastern Nigeria. The proverb “afia oma na-ere onwe ya” translates to “a good market ware sells itself.” In all aspects of my work–as a professor, scholar, editor, and writing tutor–I hope that my dedication to perfecting my craft and to supporting others on their academic journeys speaks for itself.
The second part of expanding my clientele has required me to put my limited marketing skills to the test. On the social media side of my marketing strategy, I have focused on posting content related to editing, writing, research, scholarship, and book reviews on Instagram and TikTok as well as following accounts that self-identify as graduate students or scholars. I have sent brief introduction messages to those accounts, inviting them to check out my website if they ever need writing or editing support. I was skeptical of this method at first, but it has led to a few new clients with whom I have worked a considerable amount. Since writing tutoring and editing is not something that can be advertised as an immediate need for a wide audience, I know that most people who encounter my posts or my accounts as they scroll through social media do not need my services at that exact moment. But, they may remember my name or account details when they do need an editor or when a friend or family member asks if they know any good tutors. Nonetheless, this work takes time, and I’ve scaled back my social media efforts over the past six months in lieu of a more targeted and successful approach: cold emailing.
Like cold calling, cold emailing involves sending emails to people I don’t know (and who don’t know me) so as to spread awareness of my services. I create lists of potential clients by sourcing information from university websites, where colleges and departments list their graduate students’ names and emails, often also including information about their research interests and fields of study. I then send a templated email to those on my list to let them know about my expertise and services and to provide them with links to my website and Google reviews page. This has been, by far, the most effective strategy for building my clientele. Sometimes it takes months for a person to respond to my email, since they file it away until a later date when they have a draft that needs editing, but it eventually pays off. Over the past 15 months that I have been cold emailing graduate students and recent PhDs from a few large universities in the US, I’ve gained at least 15 new clients, several of whom have become loyal repeat customers, working with me on multiple iterations of their research papers or dissertation chapters for several months at a time.
At the heart of my success is the reputation I’ve built up over my many years of research, teaching, editing, and tutoring. I am grateful to all those who have shared about the ways I was able to assist them through my services or referred people to my business. If you appreciate the work of a small business, make sure to sing their praises as loudly as you can! I do this anytime I encounter a wonderful small or local business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tarastotletutoring.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tarastotle_tutoring/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarahollies/
- Twitter: https://x.com/drtarastotle
- Other: Google reviews page:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&gl=us&q=Tarastotle+Tutoring+LLC&ludocid=16595804113635688087&lsig=AB86z5UYfZ1TF5KWEhIQn-aivIJG#lrd=0x87f631f9c0f296df:0xe65023e9bb38be97,1
Image Credits
Cory Hollies