A young and creative dynamo, Tamara Taylor has emerged as the driving force behind some of Hollywood’s most influential image architects, such as Law Roach (Zendaya), Zerina Akers (Beyoncé), and Kollin Carter (Cardi B) to name a few. In 2013, she faced a pivotal moment when she was laid off from her corporate job. It was during a fortuitous flight back home to Chicago that she crossed paths with fashion icon Law Roach and got the idea to launch Mastermind MGMT, a management company that specializes in supporting and advocating for glam artists and stylists in the entertainment industry. Utilizing her business skills, Tamara grew Mastermind MGMT into the go-to management company for today’s hottest trendsetters that are shaping both urban and pop culture.
It is Tamara’s reputation as a “certified deal closer” that sets her apart in a male-dominated industry. She fearlessly advocates for her clients, ensuring they have access to top-notch benefits. Tamara started her business on her own, but has successfully pivoted and grown her years over the past decade – her ability to stay the course as an entrepreneur for several years is a testament to her determination and resilience. In this interview with BAUCE, Tamara reflects on the lessons she’s learned running a service-based business and what other female entrepreneurs should focus on if they desire longevity in their businesses as well.
You have been running your management agency for 10 years! That is no easy feat. What specific personal traits would you credit for being able to stay in business for this long?
Tamara: Yeah. I would say being super organized. That’s definitely number one. I think the background that I got from operations and business and being able to translate that in an industry full of creatives was really a skill that I was able to master. Sometimes I consider myself a corporate translator. I have experience in different corporate environments, but still come from very humble and urban beginnings and I’ve been able to essentially translate the business talk in a way that creative artists can understand.
And when it comes to managing your team and continuing to grow and scale your business, how have you been able to stay afloat? How have you kept your business profitable?
Tamara: Two things. As far as clients, I have been blessed to where most of my clients have been referrals. So I did not have to go like the traditional route of pitching artists. It literally started with one and snowballed from there. As far as the team, I did lean on a lot of people who were close to me or within several degrees of separation. I think one of my skills has been being able to see potential in people. And, um, we have this running joke within the company that working for MMG is like a Death Row contract because none of the people who work for me thought this was a career goal for them. I was able to see some of the skills they had and saw that I could train them to do other things, as long as they had grit and instinct.
But, you know, there are challenges when it comes to working with people that you know personally and like. Having that thin line of business versus personal can create challenges in general when it comes to scaling. I know at the beginning when it came time to figure out what to pay people because it did fluctuate so much, I never wanted to bite off more than I could choose. So I would always try to make, pay somewhat percentage-based so that I knew that I was never paying more than what I could afford. But that isn’t sufficient when you’re trying to look for quality talent who also wanna have a guaranteed income that they can rely on. So I had to make that transition and step out on faith and really look at the books, look at the business, look at the peak seasons, you know, look at the slow seasons and see what would be manageable as far as like stretching the funds so that I could be able to offer salaries and offer benefits to maintain quality talent as we grew.
You mentioned briefly that there have been some challenges in running your business over the past 10 years. Is there anything that you would have done differently?
Tamara: It’s hard to say what I would have changed. Because the biggest growing pain for me was being thrown into an industry that I had no background in. And I didn’t have real proof of concept models to follow after. So a lot of it was trial and error, and though you would think that I would want to kind of jump past that and just be able to set the business up the right way the first time and grow from that, having those challenges and learning experiences having to go down those research rabbit holes allowed me to learn so many different things that I wouldn’t have been privy to had there been a model for me to follow after. I think one of the things that I would have done differently earlier on and now I live by this is to document the process.
Once I knew what I was doing and I knew how I wanted things done, I was able to train people. But after you bring on a few people, training takes so much time. And so literally for the past few years, what we’ve been focusing on is going back to the trenches step-by-step, figuring out how this company runs, what is the point A to point Z from the time that a booking comes in our pipeline to the time that the artist gets paid.
I think it would’ve helped a lot when I went out to contract a tech developer to help build our system because that ended up being a lot of trial and error. I wasn’t able to effectively communicate what I needed because I didn’t have a skeleton of what our processes were.
So what advice would you give to others starting a service-based business?
Tamara: I would say from the very beginning, document everything, document the mistakes, document the challenges, how you overcame them, the roadblocks, the options. Why did you choose to do something this way? And really like, build out your system so that you can easily train people. And then as you scale to incorporate technology in, and now AI, you know exactly what the pain points are and what the overall goal is instead of working blindly or just off of your own subconscious. You may know your business, but you need to operate in a way that you could teach someone else to know your business too.
You’ve learned a lot about business over the years and I see you have goals to pay this knowledge forward through your non-profit organization Mastermind Matters. What motivated you to start this organization?
Tamara: So Mastermind Matters is really birthed from a need that I discovered really early on as I was representing artists. Particularly artists who had come to me from agencies. A lot of those artists were with agencies that are good for helping them source clients and things of that nature, but they’re not really focused on the business aspect of the artist. And so I would have six-figure earners coming to me when they were onboarded were putting their social security number on their W-9 instead of an EIN number.
It just really struck me to the core that there are people out here who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars off the back of artists knowing that they’re not set up properly. And so, from my perspective, I know that I’m not a subject matter expert as far as law is concerned or as far as accounting is concerned, but there are some things that I know that I would at least want to put the bug in their ear about so that they can get access to resources.
That passion kind of compounded when we went through the pandemic. I saw that so many people who were high-earning individuals, specifically creative entrepreneurs, were stuck without having that income coming in. They couldn’t work and they didn’t have backups. They didn’t have savings. And when you dig deeper into it, you realize that there’s really a financial literacy gap.
And so I really wanted to make Mastermind Matters a resource for them. We are also tapping in at the high school level so that they are prematurely exposed to it. So they know, you know, when they graduate, if they do wanna go to cosmetology school or they want to pursue a career in fashion, we’re tapping into them younger to let them know what steps they need to take to get there. They can build from in the future with knowledge so they’re not going into it blindly.
Was there ever a time in your 10-year business journey where you wanted to quit doing what you were doing or just go back to corporate or do something else? What motivated you to stay the course?
Tamara: Yeah there was a time where I hit what I don’t want to own as rock bottom. I was at a really low point. Things went really left with a client who was not a creative entrepreneur, but it was my first client in the talent space. I really trusted this person and put a lot into them and kind of got bit on the backend [financially]. There were also some decisions that I made alongside people who I thought were professionals that I could trust that landed me in a really tough situation to the point where I was like you know what? I don’t like this. I felt taken advantage of and I was concerned that maybe this [path] was not what I’m supposed to be doing.
And so I started looking for jobs. One thing I said I would never do was go back to corporate America. I started looking for jobs and I applied for a position, interviewed, and didn’t get the job. When I asked the hiring manager for feedback, he was just like, “Everything about your spirit is an entrepreneur. You are not going to be happy here and I’m not going to offer you a job when I know that you’re meant to be running your business.” That little boost of confidence just made me go back to the drawing board and I rebuilt my business from the ground up and made it successful. ,
I love that you didn’t give up on yourself. A lot of people will start an idea but not see it through. What is your advice for other female entrepreneurs who are looking for longevity in entrepreneurship?
Tamara: I have two main pieces of advice. One is to be transparent, not just with yourself, but with the clients that you’re serving. I never say that I know something that I don’t know or I can do something that I have never done. I’m always honest about the scope of my strengths and if there is something that I believe I can do, but I haven’t done before. I think that that goes a long way as far as trust is concerned with clients. And it also allows a level of accountability and partnership when you are just thoroughly honest and transparent about what you offer. And the biggest thing for me is to figure out what you love about what you’re doing and why. I think understanding the purpose and falling in love with the process is what helps you sustain and really pushes you to move forward.
I think a lot of times people start businesses and they just look at the end goal, right? They want to be a multimillion-dollar company, they want to have everybody in the world with their product or everyone in the world using their service. And it is not going to happen overnight. But if you fall in love with the process and really, you know, stay focused on what the end goal is, you can succeed.
There are definitely things that are going to happen in the journey, whether there are hurdles or whether there are, you know, one-off mistakes, and if you are really passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll be able to overcome that and not let it deter you from the goal. And if you’re easily deterred from your goal, then I would just advise, you know, to figure out if this is something that you’re really meant to do.
