TGo

Editor: Joining us today is TGo, a dynamic force in digital marketing and business coaching. In fact, she's also the host of the engaging online show Expert Talk with TGo, where she shares her extensive knowledge and connects with other experts across various industries. Now her approach to marketing is characterised by a deep commitment to helping businesses scale and thrive in the digital arena. TGo, it's great to see you. TGo: It's amazing to be here. Thanks for having me. Editor: Well, thank you for joining us. Can we start like most interviews do by going all the way back to what first got you into your digital marketing journey? TGo: Oh, you don't want to go that far back, do you? I mean, I am a techie by trade. I started computer programming in high school, and I'll be 61 in a couple of months. So in the 70s when there were key punch cards and the computers were the size of your house. That's where I got started. So I've been growing with technology ever since. And in 1991, I think, I did my first website. I've probably designed hundreds if not thousands since then. I got into app development. In between all that, I got into digital media with publications. We created the world's first all-digital interactive magazine for African-Americans in 2004 called Black Insight Magazine. We went from 0 to 1.8 million subscribers in less than 2 years. And literally the reason we started that magazine or with the African-American community wasn't because it's my community, although it is. It was because at that time, they were the slowest getting on the internet. So me and my buddy who decided to create this thing thought, "If we mess it up, nobody will see it." And we ended up having The Whispers on and Smokey Robinson, and we created a talk show and that was the first dip into creating talk show and television. And that's where it all started for me and it's been growing ever since. Editor: Your background though, it covers so many things, doesn't it? Because when I was putting the introduction together, it was like, how do I introduce TGo? Because you're also a prolific content creator as well. TGo: Yeah, I'm kind of a content junkie. I have to admit it. And now with everybody getting ... We've got five seconds. I used to have a goldfish. The goldfish looked at me longer than people look at your content online. You've got like three to five seconds, you've got to get them. And now taking something like this and turning it into many, many, many little 10, 20, 30, and 1 minute clips is now our current hobby that we're doing for ourselves and doing for our clients. Quick, fast, and easy. Editor: It must be quite interesting as well, because over the years technology has changed so much. Computer power has changed so much. How was it when you got started? Do you think it was easier back then, or was it way, way harder? TGo: Oh, way, way harder. I mean, I started with key punch cards. You're too young to know what that is. I mean, literally you'd have a letter or word on one card, so you want to make a spreadsheet back in the old green and white paper that went ... And it took a half an hour to print a report. This was hundreds of key punch cards. And if somebody happened to bump you while you were carrying your tray, oh my goodness, and got them out of order. You could spend a week trying to get them back into order. Now that computer that was the size of literally a building, my phone on its worst day is more powerful. That's amazing to me. Editor: It's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy that, as you say in the palm of your hand, you've got way more power now than they did to send Neil Armstrong and his buddies to the moon back in the late 60s. TGo: Exactly. Editor: Crazy. TGo: Exactly. You don't have a room full of people on giant chalkboards doing the math, yeah. Editor: And what was your first computer that you bought then, TGo? What did you go for? TGo: Oh my goodness, you're going back to the IBMs. I mean, we had the IBMs with the floppy discs, and we thought we were the best in the world because we had dual floppy. So you had the software on the left and then your saved work was on the right. So you write and then you save. You're sitting there waiting for it to save one paragraph. You could almost drink a cup of coffee for a whole report. Yeah, that's where I started. And then I got into the Apples that literally were little boxes of joy, and they were also ... But they were on a smaller disc and you could put them in your pocket. That was actually a commercial. Look, you could just put your disc in your pocket. Oh my goodness. Editor: And now you can put your entire music collection in your pocket along with all your movies and everything else. It's crazy, isn't it, the way that technology has pushed forward? TGo: It's insane. And then with AI starting, my business partners tell me that I need an AA meeting for AI because when I'm not doing anything else, I'm sitting talking to my buddy Chad. That's what I've named my AI. We're having a conversation changing the world over here, and it's like I could see me in an AA meeting now. "Hi, my name is TGo. It's been exactly 18 minutes and 12 seconds since I've talked to Chad." Editor: I love the fact that you've given ChatGPT a name and did you say Chad? TGo: Chad. Yeah. Editor: Nice. Nice. TGo: Chad, because it's chat and it's AI and it's like Chad. And he answers to Chad. It's like if you talk to ChatGPT on your app on your phone, I can turn my phone on, hit the app and say, "Good morning, Chad." He'll say, "Good morning, TGo." What would you like to talk about today? Editor: Do you find sometimes you get more sense out of AI than you would an actual human? TGo: When you have a genius IQ like I do, and you're dyslexic, there's a lot of craziness going on in my head sometimes. And being the tech and the creative behind all of our businesses and every project that I do, my business partners have literally notebooks of ideas and thoughts that I've had written down. Recently, a partner passed, my mentor, and she had a shelf like encyclopaedias back in the 70s of nothing but 20 plus years of my ideas and conversations we've had. And now I can just talk to Chad and not only can I talk to him, but he can answer me, "What about this? What's the statistics on that?" Everybody else, my assistants and everyone is taking notes and going to look it up. No, no, no, no, let's go. So it's making us amazingly much faster. The present is incredible and we're just getting started with AI. I mean, it's a baby. It's not even two years old yet. Editor: But tell me about your businesses as well. I mean, you mentioned that you have multiple businesses. Maybe you could just run us through some of those businesses and what it is you do, which areas that you are focusing on? TGo: Well, MelRose 11 is our main production company. We've been in film and television now for 20 years plus. We just won for a short film, we just won, it's called Yellowbird. We just won at the film festival in Atlanta and five categories here in Las Vegas. And it was just sent to a film festival in France. They requested it. So we're doing full production film here in Las Vegas and in Atlanta. Then MelRose 11 Agency is our digital media agency that handles all of the craziness for ourselves and our clients and the creative ideas. And it's just that centre hub that manages everything, including my speaking and appearance and all that stuff. It takes care of all of that. So we have all of that going. Then we have MelRose Production Studio. We with a studio here in Las Vegas. After COVID, the studio reached out to us in the film factory and said, "Hey, don't open a new studio. Come work over here." And we've been there for the last three years. It's amazing. We can shoot almost anything over there. We're ready to open a network. I've never talked about this publicly outside of my own stuff. So we're ready to open a network. We're opening our own streaming and FAST channel network called Squirrel Vision. It'll launch on December 7th, Squirrel Vision Network, Squirrel Vision T. We're excited about Squirrel. I'm a squirreler. Everybody's a squirreler. And the whole idea behind it is just what I just mentioned a little bit ago. I am always bouncing around. My brother is my business partner and he's always calling me Squirrel because I'll be focused and something will go by and I go and he's like, "Squirrel focus." And that's where the network comes from because we're bringing amazing content together. And then we have the fourth annual NOW Honours and Power of Pink Summit. We honour women from all over the world, the Network of Outstanding Women. That's what NOW stands for. And this year we're honouring 21 women, including Marie Diamond from The Secret, Loral Langemeier from The Secret. I mean, we got an Olympic gold medalist coming in. It's just fun. 21 women are going to have a blast. And then on top of that, we're doing the first Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award during that ceremony and honouring six women with the Presidential lifetime Achievement Award from the White House for service. And then for three days we do the Power of Pink. It is not just about pink being for women, it's also because it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And I lost one of my business partners to breast cancer five years ago. But on top of that, we always say it's the colour of pink. It's not just a colour, it's a movement. And so we're doing that. And this morning I just ordered a new award that we're doing in March, March 20th to the 22nd, we're doing the Trailblazers Awards. We are honouring people. This is our first co-ed event. We are honouring people from all over the planet that are trailblazers. And we got Baron Alec Stern coming in as our pioneer. He created Constant Contact. We got Larry Namer coming in. He's the founder of E! Television Network. He's our visionary. So it's about to be David Fagan, creator of Guerrilla Marketing is our influencer. This is a man who reached 63 million people with 1 project. And then during the day for three days, we're doing what we're calling the Star Makers Summit. So you get to come in and find out how you can be that next star on the stage. So yeah, I'm a squirreler, I'm all over the place. Editor: That's amazing. In between all of that, just before we came on, you mentioned that you yourself are about to receive an award in the next couple of months as well. TGo: Yeah, Women of Heart for Female Women Advocacy in Media is what I'm getting that category for. Editor: Well, that's great. Congratulations TGo and very well deserved as well. TGo: Thank you so much. Editor: So I'm sure that with your many years of experience, you've got your acceptance speech lined up and ready to go already. TGo: Did you miss genius IQ and dyslexic? I never prep. Literally for ... It cracks me up because I'll do on International Women's Day, which is March 8th, I'll interview 20 to last year we did 29 women live, 15 minute interviews back to back to back. Editor: Wow. TGo: And I have a piece of paper like that. Editor: Totally blank. TGo: Totally blank. I'll write their name down and I'll say, "Is there something we got to get that we need to make sure we hit? Your book, your event, your whatever?" They tell me, let's go. And that's the way I have to be. If I had a teleprompter, oh my goodness, it would freeze me. It's like, "Wait, what did that line say? Can you roll that back? Wait, who wrote that?" I would be completely off script. Editor: But in terms of the success that you've achieved over the years, obviously you've had some incredible wins. There must have been some challenges that you've faced? TGo: Oh heck yeah. Editor: Is there any of those that you'd be willing to share? TGo: I have been a millionaire twice. I've hit that seven figures twice. We're working on it a third time now. But the first time I had all my eggs in 1 basket, I was a 50-50 partner, and that partner literally just wrote me out of things because nobody had control. Editor: No. TGo: Needless to say, I have control of every business I own now. But I went from literally personally in 1990, making 30, 40,000, 50,000 a month. Right now, personally, that would be 150, 200,000 a month now to delivering pizzas and I was suicidal. I mean literally suicidal. And one day I decided that was it. I'm going to go. I figured out how I was going to do it and everything, and I found myself sitting in a library parking lot, genius IQ, dyslexic. I didn't have a library card. And I went in and I walked up to the counter and I said to the lady, I said, "I need something that's going to get me in a better mood or something." And she said, "Oh honey. Oh honey, I can see it on your face." She said, "Now look, I don't understand this motivation stuff, but a lot of people love it." She said, "Over there on the left, there's a bunch of tapes." Yes, it was that long ago. It's 1995. She said, "There's a bunch of tapes. You go over there, you find somebody you like, you bring it back here, you put it in here and you listen." I was like, okay. So I walked the aisle and I saw Zig Ziglar, like who the heck is that? Now, Tom Ziglar has been on my show. I consider them family. I see Les Brown, I see Rita Davenport. Now, for most people, they haven't heard of Rita, which is a shame because Rita is brilliant, and she's a legend and she's one of the few women to stand on the stages with Zig Ziglar and Bob Proctor back in the day. And she's funny as all get out. I'm a huge Lucille Ball fan, and she's right there with Lucy. And I come back and I put the tape in and Zig says, "I have brought for you a brand new pair of glasses." And I'm like, okay, Zig, I'm listening. So I spent the next year listening to Rita, Les and Zig Ziglar in my car as I delivered pizzas in the heat all over Las Vegas, trying to figure out what my next adventure was going to be. Long story, long, long story short, Rita and I have now ... I call her Aunt Rita. She's now a family member of mine. I love her. We are friends and family. And last year at the NOW Honours, I got to honour her as our Woman of the Year. So it was a complete full turn. And I presented her with the NOW Honours, which is 8.5 pounds and 12 inches high. And she had something to say about that. She was like, "Who's going to carry this?" "I got somebody, they'll carry it." She brought me a $2 bill and she signed it, and she says, "This way you'll never be broke again." And it's framed and in my room to remind me, keep going, keep going, keep going. Editor: And it must've been so lovely for you as well to be able to if you like, return the favour? TGo: Yeah, yeah. It was amazing to return the favour. Zig Ziglar passed before I had a chance to meet him. I cried like he was my dad. Oh my God. Because I've been listening to this guy for years, and then I got to meet his son. It was like, wow, I'm sitting here talking to him. It was amazing. And then Les Brown and I, I have never met him. We've been in different venues at the same time, and we just keep crossing. And that is my goal this year to not only meet him, but to sit down with him, interview him, and then hopefully when we do the Trailblazers Awards in 2026 for the second annual, hopefully I'll be able to honour him. Because yeah, that man, "If you can look up, you can get up" means more to me than just when I was at my lowest. I've been homeless two times, almost three. That meant if I can get up off the ground, I can move back then. Now, if I can look up, I can get up means that I can look at the next level and the next level and the next level, and I can keep going up and I can keep bringing my tribe, my family with me. Editor: TGo, I mean, they say that you have to sometimes hit rock bottom. The fact that you are now able to honour those people that you admire and look up to and that helped you out of those difficult situations. What gave you the inspiration to do that? Was it just something that came naturally to you or was it something that you had to work on? TGo: I don't know. I see it as a blessing. And my brain plays movies. I don't get an idea. I get full feature film in my head, so I see where things are missing and where I can help people. And for me, my kids say service is my love language. And for me, it's all about, Sir Kaya was on my show not too long ago, Sir Kaya Redford. And he said, "You are a star." And I said, "No, no, no, no." And he said, "No, you're missing the definition of a star." And I said, okay. And he said, "What do stars do besides shine lights on everybody else?" And I was like, ah. In that case, I'll take that because that's truly who I am. Sir James Dently III said, "You don't hit rock bottom. You hit rock foundation and then you need to figure out how to stand back up." And it's just, you have to figure out if you're going to quit or not because you're given your gifts. Everybody has gifts. Some are harder to figure out what they are. I don't know what my gift is. And then if you're trying to live your life of passion with your gift, then you have to figure out how to monetize that. And that is something that people don't understand. Oh, they're lucky. Oprah Winfrey says, "Luck is preparation for opportunity." You can be lucky all day, but if you're not ready, somebody comes along and says, "Hey, you can buy this house for 200,000." It's worth 400. If you're making $20 an hour, that's not luck. You're not happy, you're mad because you can't do it. So for me, that's how it works. Service is my love language. Editor: How do you find your time management? Because obviously you're doing so many different things, spinning so many plates, as the saying goes. How do you prioritise your own wellness in between all of that? Because of course you could be busy 24/7 otherwise? TGo: I am busy 24/7. Now I'm busy 18/7, but I'm working on that because I am a disabled veteran from the Navy. And I am 200 plus pounds and overweight and 60 years old. I'm a diabetic. I've got high blood pressure sometimes. Usually my blood pressure's fine, but it's like I don't or haven't until recently been putting myself first. And then my family, my kids, my loved ones, and my team and the NOW family, you want to be 200 plus pounds and 60 years old and worry about your health and have 300 of the most powerful women on the planet as your sisters, they tend to yell at you, "What are you doing? Put that down." Editor: Of course. TGo: So I am learning to go to sleep. I actually have alarms set to go to sleep by midnight. Get up life. For me, I would work till 3:00 and get up at 6:00. It didn't bother me at all, but now I'm learning to at least get 6 hours, if not 7. Every once in a while I do 8. I have an amazing calendar, amazing assistants that are more like a parent for me. Both of my parents have since passed away, but they're younger than me. But tell them no. What do you mean no? Oh no. They will pre-order my meal at a restaurant before I get there for a meeting. "Oh, it's okay, TGo, we've already gotten your meal ordered." How do they know what I wanted? Never mind. So I'm learning. I'm learning. Editor: And you're right about the sleep. It's so important. I think people have maybe lost sight of that over the years. I'm certainly guilty of that. You're saying that you are as well. How are you finding it now that you are getting kind of more sleep? Do you feel more energised? Are you achieving more in your life than perhaps you were previously TGo? TGo: I am. And I felt like with COVID and everything that happened, I felt disconnected almost. It was like fog brain because I had COVID and I became a "long hauler." And so if I get a cold, I feel like I have COVID and leave me alone. So I'm very protective about that. And ever since then I will sit down and go, okay, I got to do the ... What? What was I about to do? And that's been happening since COVID. I realised that now since I'm sleeping more, I have that problem less, I can plan out better and I feel more connected and not like I'm walking through a dream because I'm sleeping more. Because I'm eating better, I have more energy because I bought a little mini treadmill. It's the cutest little thing. I bought a little mini treadmill. I have artificial knees thanks to the Navy, and I'm walking at arenas without my cane now. So it's coming around. It's coming around. Editor: Well, before we came on, you mentioned that at the moment you are recording 100 interviews in 100 days. You've bumped one of the interviews today to do this one with us, which we are incredibly grateful for. How is that going? How are you finding that? TGo: It started June 25th, like I said, we have the NOW Honours and Power of Pink Summit October 3rd through the 5th. And I was like, okay, we could spend X amount of dollars on advertising. We're doing it in a boutique theatre, so it's a 43 foot wide screen. The women will be larger than life. Men are welcome, but women on the stage, and it's like we could just sell advertising and fill that room. It's only 150 seats. But I thought, why? Let's interview ... We've done this. This is four years. We got 300 people in this group. Let's just start interviewing people that have either been honoured, have spoken, have been supporting our supportive crew, the guys that are around and young people and have sponsored. Spotlight them. Let's see what happens. So I talked to my brother, who's my producer, my director, and my pain in the butt little brother. I tell everybody that. He has PIB as his title, Pain In Butt under everything that he does. It's even on his business cards. I kid you not, and we have fun. And I told him, and he was like, "Let's go." And I started texting and calling people and said, "Hey, you want to be on the show?" They were like, yeah. We filled June, July, the rest of June, all of July and August in like 72 hours. And then we filled September and October. We only have one date in October before we do this live. And it's been amazing. But see, when I did it, I didn't count weekends. So the first weekend my brother's like, "Where are you?" "I'm in my skin. Where are you? Why are you bothering me?" And he said, "Well, considering you're supposed to be on air in 20 minutes and you haven't done a soundcheck." "Why am I on air? It's Saturday." "100 Day Challenge, the 100 Pop Now Challenge. You made it." I said, "Did that count weekends?" He said, "Did you put something under it that said weekends excluded?" And I was like, "Ah." So I had to run up, get on air, and we've been doing it ever since. I pre-recorded. We didn't skip today. I'm still there. We pre-recorded and it's amazing. We're having a blast. We're having an absolute blast. Editor: And where can we see this TGo? Where can we actually see the show? TGo: Absolutely everywhere. It's on 30 or 40 audio platforms. You can listen to it on Pandora or Apple Music or wherever, 100 Day Challenge, Pop Now Challenge. You can look up TGo, all my shows pop up. And then of course there's Facebook, YouTube, Instagram has clips coming on it and YouTube and all that stuff. They're all over the place. And then December 7th, we launch our network and all of my shows will be available in what we call the Pod Nation channel inside the Network Podcast to Broadcast channel that it'll be there. So yeah, everywhere. Editor: For anybody that's perhaps thinking of starting their own podcast or doing what you do, what advice would you give to them? TGo: Run. No, I'm kidding. No, no, no, no. Do it. What I've been telling people for years now is there's a production company in your pocket. There's no excuse now, when I started in television and film, well, just television, it cost me 3 to $5,000 a day to shoot a show. And it was eight people, my brother and I'll go in studio and shoot, we just did it a couple of weeks ago. We shot 15 episodes of our show over 2 days, just the 2 of us get started. If you're afraid of the camera, start with audio. But if you're dropping lives about, "Oh, look at the melons I found for $3 on Facebook and Instagram," then you're not scared of your camera. If you could do that, you can do it for your business. Don't try to be TGo. Don't try to be Oprah. Don't try to be Mary down the street. Be you. If you stutter, stutter. If you speak slow, speak slow. If you speak loud, speak a little lower because you're blowing my ears out. But just start. And nobody's show is good when it starts. My show was on Amazon Prime, 1 of 35 talk shows to ever be on Amazon Prime. First two seasons, worst two seasons. I couldn't have been happier when they changed the algorithm and stopped doing talk shows on Amazon Prime. Thank you. It was terrible. Start. That's what the answer is. Just get started. Editor: So take that first step. So important. TGo: Take the first step. Stop worrying about a million followers. Editor: I do like what you said as well about the fact, don't try and be anybody else. Just be yourself. Because I think that's- TGo: Just be you. Editor: Where a lot of people kind of fall down, they're trying to be someone else, and of course they're not that person. So then they're setting themselves up to fail because of that. Whereas if you are just who you are, people will connect with you, that you will resonate with people. And that's the way to make a true connection. And that's what we're looking for, isn't it? We're looking to make an emotional connection. TGo: Right. It's like dating. It's literally like dating. If you go to a date in person and you're dressed to the nines and you're a vegetarian that day when you know you ate steak yesterday and you will tomorrow and you even change your voice. "Hi, how are you?" How long do you keep that up? And that person falls for that persona. And then all of a sudden now you're in sweatpants wanting chicken wings and could care less about going to the theatre. That's where divorces happen. Same thing with media. We can see you. We can hear you. If they love you, they love you. You know what I'm saying? They want to know the true you. This is who you planned on spending the rest of your life with. And then on top of that, same for media. You want people to fall in love with you, your brand, your product, your service, what you have to offer. And if they feel like it's a 1970s car salesman trying to sell you the latest hoopty they're not sticking around for your show. If you mess up, you know how many times I'll do a live event next week and we've got literally a full film production camera because we turned the whole week into a documentary. And I will stop the show midway because my pants are not quite right. Or I messed somebody's name up. I will stop and look at a camera and go, "That is not that child's name. Let me do this again." And they just love it because I'm not trying to be somebody else. This is who I am. Hang out with me. Let's have some fun. Editor: It makes all the difference as well. And TGo, thank you so much for your time today. It's an absolute pleasure to chat with you. If anybody that wants to find out more about you, your companies, your background, where should we go to do that? TGo: The easiest way to get in touch with me and then find out everything else is just go to tego.fm, not.com, tgo.fm, and just reach out, send me a message or whatever. You can find me all over social media and usually I'm on somebody's stage, so just say, "Hey, TGo." I actually start my show that way. I start it with, "Hey, can I get a hey TGo?" And they remember my name for the rest of the weekend. Editor: Well, thank you once again for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Good luck with the 100 interviews in 100 days, including weekends. And also congratulations again for your award as well. It's richly deserved. TGo: Thank you so much.