Tara-Nicholle Nelson sees herself as a counter-programmer, countering media that tell people they should look different, do a certain thing a certain way, fix themselves.
To her we’re all wired with wonderful, unique gifts and her job is to help us recognize and summon the courage to share them – for everyone’s benefit.
“All of us are uplifted when we bring 100 percent of ourselves to our work,” says Nelson, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from CSUB during the mid- to late-1990s.
The result is SoulTour.com, a “transformation company” on a mission to, as she puts it, help people care for their souls and bring their best selves to the world. Nelson carries out her mission through speaking engagements around the country – including her alma mater this week – and her online School of Spiritual Strategy.
SoulTour became Nelson’s main focus after a hugely successful digital marketing career during which she created content for marquee companies including HGTV, ING Direct (now Capital One), Eventbrite and Trulia (now Zillow). She was VP of marketing for MyFitnessPal, where she helped grow the number of app customers from 45 million to nearly 100 million before it was sold to Under Armour for $475 million in 2015.
Nelson, 43, developed the concept of marketing to the transformational consumer, people who see life as a series of projects to make their lives wealthier, healthier and wiser and seek out products that aid their journey. In 2017 she shared her secrets in her third book, The Transformational Consumer.
As Nelson was consulting and speaking to promote the book, executives kept saying they appreciated the marketing concepts but were struggling to make the case inside their organization for doing the work. They lacked transformational leadership skills.
So Nelson taught those leaders the rituals and techniques she deploys to help transform others.
“At some point I had a summer a couple years ago where several executives in a row were like, “Why don’t you just do this for a living? It’s so important.”
And so she is.
Those rituals and techniques are best explained – and learned – through the courses Nelson teaches (for free) online. Enrollment opens again in September.
One of her lessons – and the subject of her talk at CSUB – is in dialing down one’s inner critic and listening to inner wisdom. Inner critics, which often manifest themselves as fear and self-doubt, keep people from fully expressing the great ideas they most assuredly have inside themselves.
People often fear things that don’t actually endanger them, like public speaking, Nelson says. She asks her audiences to identify what their critic is saying, ask why it is saying it, and give it a “thanks, but no thanks.”
The result?
“It feels good following through on good ideas rather than shutting them down,” Nelson says.
In the following Q and A, Nelson talked about her work, challenges she overcame and the institution that provided critical early support: CSUB. The conversation is lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.
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