We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tramika Craddock a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tramika, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Going from Career Driven to an Entrepreneur was circumstantial for me. Entrepreneurship was never on my radar! I love the idea of busy roads to work, early mornings, the smell of coffee, crowded elevators and busy workspaces. I was corporate breed, thats where I lived, what I loved and my life goals. I made it a challenge within myself. How quickly could I climb the corporate ladder at one company before moving to the next. I found that this lifestyle left me bored easily and unfilled but still daily I played the game. In 2015 after transitioning from NY, to NC to GA, my husband and I were forced to put our 2 children at the time, in after school care.. Which meant they were never home. Now don’t get me wrong, the average family does this daily, but it was not our norm. We always worked opposite shifts from each other, so no matter what parent, our kids were home with one. A blessing I guess you can call it! The job I was currently working for, I hated it! No value of work/life balance. Daily I told myself “People around the world do this daily Tramika, deal with it!” I said that same line over and over to myself to condition myself and normalize my kids barely being home. But something in the pit of my soul was in total disagreement and I cried daily about this and just being miserable working for my current compnay. I knew there was more. In 2015 I quit my full time job with the support of my husband. Now let me paint a clear picture, the way we went about it was … ummm let’s just say, not that great. We were already broke, we had no savings, no investments to fall back on. He just wanted his wife home and I just wanted to escape the job! I decided that I would start babysitting. I had 3 children by this time, I had done it for a few coworkers in the past. I was capable, clean home, organized and I valued the safety of children based on my childhood. We’ll leave that story for another day! I opened up “babysitting” in my home for parents who worked all 3 shifts and around the clock I would care for other children. The demand was crazy, the money was great… but soon even in that I grew bored and it didn’t give me the flexibility to show up for my own kids because I was taking care of other people’s kids. Something had to change! I explored my passion for event planning. I had done it in the past and really enjoyed it. One thing about Atlanta, there is an event every day, so the need for event planners was huge BUT the market was so saturated that I grew intimidated, FAST! I decided that there was no room for me and I didnt fit in that field after trying to pursue it for a few months. One day we received a huge check in the mail, out of nowhere! I knew I needed to use some to make an investment, so I decided if I could beat them or run the race with the other event planners, I would help them, work behind the scenes. I decided on an event rental company where I would rent out event linen to event planners and those hosting parties. This went well for a while. I even hired my first business coach to help me with some strategies on how to grow the business. After one session with her, she told me I should be a life coach. Wait what?! First off, what is that and how can you charge people to help them? After giving it much thought and prayer, I decided to take the certification class to learn more. Well within the first hour I fell in love. I was not aware of sitting in that class but my life purpose is to help and build people. I sat in the class in amazement at the different strategies that were used in life coaching to help people and bring so much value in their life. In 2017 I decided to give life coaching a try in the field. Very unclear about who my target audience was, I just jumped out there. Made a website, did a few lives on facebook and knew the clients would come running and of course they didn’t! After about 2 years of going back and forth trying to get clear on what I was doing, figure out why it wasn’t working or deciding to go back into the event industry because this wasn’t moving fast enough for me, I decided to really give it a good run in 2019. Go hard and see what comes out of it! Hire a business coach, get connected to a community, work on me and give it a real run… Well ladies and gentlemen, here I am, better than ever! I would like to happily say I have a fully functioning coaching business that includes a community of moms, curated mom events, training, speaking, books and more! As you can see it was a journey to get here! What I would love for you to take away as the reader, is where you start is not where you have to finish! Embrace the journey! It looks different for everyone.

Tramika, 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?

Tramika Craddock, certified Lifestyle Coach & Empowerment Speaker, helps Moms around the world find a rhythm between Life, Family & Business or Work.. When coaching or speaking she deals with topics Time & Priority Management, Organization, Planning & Self-Care. Tramika walks along-side Moms helping them create their own custom blueprint by providing Tips, Tools and Strategies for Moms to help them be successful in every area of their life, without compromising family. Tramika also provides community, inspiration and mom events to her clients. Tramika also is the author of Wife Mom Preneur, my journey where she inspires readers about her journey of becoming great in all 3 areas of her life, and although there was a lot of responsibilities, she had to be strategic to find time & strength to make sure she was doing what made her happy. Tramika finds her success in helping Moms grow from where they are to where they desire to be and empowering Moms to help them know and understand they are equipped for managing Motherhood and still showing up to be the best version of themselves!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

As many of us know, social media is a beast when it comes to business exposure. You can create a post, make a comment or be featured in a reel that can go viral and be seen before millions of people. Social media is absolutely vital to many businesses today. The best advice I can give some looking to start social media is found here is these 4 tips:

1. Know what social media platform is right for your business. Where can you find your audience?
2. Pick a social media platform and master it before you move to the next. Having multiple platforms to start with can become very time-consuming and frustrating.
3. Dont assume just because you post the business will come. The way the algorithm is set up, you have to be strategic about posting on social media.
4. Pay attention to your data. What type of post are getting more engagement? Those are the type of post your audience likes and you should absolutely do more of them.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’ll be completely honest and it took me years to learn this. The most effective strategy for growing your clientele is showing up authentically as yourself! I worked in corporate for years and I tried to take the corporate mindset into entrepreneurship and I would often get bored and frustrated. I realized I was living up to other expectations long after leaving the company I was working for. I was being a people pleaser, doing whatever to make others happy and attract them to my business, while I was suffering inside not showing up as myself. One day I decided to go to therapy for personal reasons. I didn’t want to end up in my 40’s going through a midlife crisis, so I said, let me get the help I need now. Well therapy has helped pull back so many layers to who I truly am! Now who I truly am shows up on the “outside” and it attracts the people who compliment me, personally and professionally! Once I was willing to be authentic and vulnerable, that’s when my clientele grew.

Contact Info:

• Website: momsquadworldwide.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/tramikacraddock
• Facebook: Facebook.com/tramikacraddock
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tramikacraddock/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TramikaCraddock
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNJ-p1I5fe-3T4o-snRS9Zw

Image Credits
Yazy Photography & FlowLife Photography