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Life Lessons: Tara Landes

Don’t sell yourself short
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Tara Landes, president and founder, Bellrock Benchmarking

Tara Landes, president and founder of business consulting firm Bellrock Benchmarking, was born and raised in Vancouver and her business is based here. But she says it took a lot to move back after establishing a career in Toronto.

To create her West Coast dream job, she had to found her own company – and that meant finding the confidence to be the boss after being a competent “second in command.”

After completing an MBA at the Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario, Landes said she still didn’t know what she wanted to do for a living.

To find out, she took a job at a small business consulting firm in Toronto, where she would get to try on many hats and learn about a wide variety of businesses.

“I loved the work,” Landes said. “We would work in a client’s office … on a project. We’d be there for two or three months and put some systems in place, and then we’d leave. I got addicted to that fast-paced environment, and I loved it.”

Landes married and established a social circle in Toronto. But Vancouver kept beckoning, especially after the birth of her first child. In 2007, Landes and her husband finally decided to take the plunge.

“My husband’s company agreed to start an office in Vancouver ... Once one of us got a job, we were ready to move,” she said.

While she interviewed at several large companies, Landes found it tough to find a position that would be a career fit. It was her former boss who pushed her to create her own perfect job.

“I was complaining to him about what was going to happen to my career, and he said, ‘So just go sell a project.’ It had never occurred to me to do that. I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur.”

Landes had early success with her consulting business but was truly tested when the recession hit and her husband lost his job. As if that weren’t enough of a challenge, she was also pregnant with her second child.

The business managed to survive thanks to a “cushion” it had built up through cautious spending before the recession. The one employee the company did lay off later returned.

The experience gave Landes confidence in her leadership abilities and taught her the value of mentorship. She now makes time to mentor others by volunteering with the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and the YWCA.

“You don’t know what the possibilities are before you try.”

On employees versus contractors: “We’re organized differently than most consulting firms in Vancouver, in that everybody who works for me is an employee. They’re not contractors. [So] I have to pay their salary whether they have a project and are bringing in income or not. I did that because the quality of the work is just so important to me, and I don’t know of a better way to have control over that quality than to have people working for us, steeped in our culture.”