Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Trina K. Henderson-Torres. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Trina K., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
Taking a risk, that is the daily life of a business owner. There isn’t a single day that isn’t a risk. You take on all the responsibilities for yourself, your income and the income of your team. The risk of having others’ livelihoods in your hands is a big responsibility and not one to take lightly. I took a risk to open this business after years of working for others. I made a lot of companies a lot of money, and decided one day it was time to stop allowing others to tell me what I am worth. I was tired of being capped or told that I couldn’t go up any higher for one reason or another. Most of what I have experienced as a female entrepreneur is the direct reflection or result of someone in my past saying, sorry, but that is the best we can allow you to do… not accepted. With that, I became a real rebel. I quit taking a salary after that one big commission gave me enough time to establish a business within my field of expertise. I am a former teacher, but I sell educational materials to educators and do it with a lot of thought and consideration for what they actually need. I don’t sell just to sell. I create, and I have a team that creates the most amazing products and customized kits that help educators have fun and do their jobs well. To start your business, you need money. You need the smarts to manage that money. You need a good website. You need credibility and you need contracts and clients. You can’t just expect to repeat what you know from a previous company without the structure in place to execute the actions that are required beyond your initial steps. Perhaps as a previous sales person you think you can do what is needed to complete the process of a sale. But I am here to tell you that without the correct infrastructure, your sales skills will not take that order to completion and you won’t get paid. You need help. You need a team, and you need to be really conscientious of money and how that affects all parts of the chain of events it takes to make a business run well. So how has my risk of creating an educational business panned out? Well we are in year 10. So far, so good! This year we were able to expand our sales team, set up a retail store and continue with our bigger wholesale contracts that we have had over the years. The key is diversifying the portfolio of income. Sometimes we are not paid by a contract for 90 days, and the risk of waiting for that money is stressful and sometimes causes a chain of events that get out of control financially. So diversifying to online sales, private sales, retail sales and wholesale sales helps to offset off seasons and keep things moving forward. We are still growing. We are still learning, but we keep taking that one step forward each day and we are still here!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
So my name is Trina Kay Henderson-Torres. I am a female entrepreneur with a family and a former career as a bilingual school teacher. I have been a teacher most of my adult life, but in various ways. First in the classroom, then in the sales and consulting field, then as a University professor, and now as an educational materials wholesale/retailer selling to US school districts. I work with a diversified portfolio. Wholesale and discounted products to school districts means having government contracts, MWBE certifications and credibility in the industry. Retail requires a ton of marketing, lots of pop-up opportunities and in and out inventory. Online sales requires a constant connection to the virtual world. Social medias, blogs, product development, unique offerings, TIK TOKs and more! Our main buyers are educators in the field of teaching languages mainly English and Spanish. Our clients know and love us for our expertise in Spanish materials and our customization of teacher kits to make their teaching tools worthy of their instructional needs. Our brand is T-H-E Resources (Torres Henderson Educational Resources, LLC) and we are based in Arlington Texas, just two-blocks of Globe Life Center-GO TEXAS RANGERS! Now in the World-Series!! We love being 2 blocks away from them and the Dallas Cowboys AT&T stadium! What can I tell you about our brand–we love kids, we love getting the best materials into the hands of school districts and teachers so that kids can enjoy and really learn with the materials we provide.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
Close calls and near death… yes all company owners have faced this. You have to really read your market. You need to know when your overhead outweighs your income. Know when to scale back and make it painless for your employees as much as possible. We have experienced long off-season months of no income and we learned to keep our on-season income really tight, banked. We used that to leverage credibility with our bank and opened a credit line to help when things got tough. We have had to really watch expenses in the off-season and diversify the offerings and ways to sell them in the off-season to build up constant income. When I thought I might actually miss a payroll, I had a panic attack! I couldn’t sleep for weeks, trying to figure out how to avoid that from happening. I had to go into credit card and banks funds and find creative ways to keep it going until that one purchase order finally paid out. It’s a cycle of hell for those of us that live it during off-season work. So my best advice is to bank that money, don’t spend like you are rich when you have upcoming months of low income and remember, without your team, you are nothing. So pay your closest assets, your team, FIRST. That team support will build loyalty both directions and all will fall into place and allow you to focus on making money, balancing the scale, so-to-speak. The balance will keep any near deaths from happening. Bottom line–don’t over spend, live with low-overhead and high margins. Be humble, be smart. Money goes as fast as it comes. Don’t forget to cover your off-season! Pay your people and keep excellent credit scores.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
I funded my business 10 years ago by taking a large commission that I earned from a previous employment and investing that into myself. I started in my garage. I was able to obtain my own EIN with a lawyer, set up my LLC and get women-owned minority certification. I took those documents and applied for every government contract that I could get in to. Mainly educational school district RFPs and vendor account setups. With the help of my family we built enough contracts with existing area school districts and I developed relationships with those clients in order to establish a trust. With that, I started selling direct to my client list, which I had developed for 15 years prior. This is a list of school districts, not people, so open-market. A few repeat orders and I was able to bank enough money to leave the garage to a storage unit. I hired my son his friends, my daughter, my sister, my husband… everyone that wanted to make a little side money to help me. After a couple of years this way, we moved up to a shared warehouse facility with shareable equipment, warehouse docks, etc. that allowed us to ship larger orders. I hustled sales, then hired a second sales person and we just naturally started to grow. After a bit more growth, we moved up to a retail-flex space with a warehouse attached. So its a warehouse and a retail sight. We have grown our warehouse packing and shipping distribution to adding our own brand, adding a retail store and building our sales, marketing and logistics teams to match our growth. After this growth, I decided to ask a bank to help with a credit line and asked an angel investor to help with cash flow during low seasons. Both have been very vital to keeping our growth scale moving up and covering us in the off-season when sales are slow.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theducationresourcesom
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/torreshendersonedu_theresourc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/T.H.EdResources
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trina-k-h-62939b9/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/THEResourcesLLC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@torreshendersonedu
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/torres-henderson-education-resources-arlington
Image Credits
Torres Henderson Education Resources, LLC