Tricia Robinson from MBA & General Electric, to Empowered Online Mom
Tricia Robinson was a Chemical Engineer, then got her MBA and worked at GE for 17 years before she realized she wanted more time for family. Here is her powerful story in our exclusive interview.
Wow, Tricia! You definitely have a smart head on your shoulders. I am excited to learn more about you. So, let’s get started!
First, thanks so much for taking the time to interview me. I am honored that you have selected me to share my story. I am truly enjoying my experience as an entrepreneur – helping others to achieve their dreams!
Where were you born and raised, what was childhood like, and what did you want to be when you ‘grew up?’
I was born in Gary, Indiana. At 5 years old, I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana.
One could say that I grew up with an uneventful life. I have an amazingly supportive family, with no major hardships that I have had to overcome in my life (plenty of setbacks and disappointments of course).
I discovered my first love, the arts, at a young age. My preschool teachers convinced my parents to buy me a piano at age 5. I studied piano for 8 years and played violin for 4 years.
I started ballet at age 5 and continued through high school. I ended up trading in my music to study ballet and humanities in high school. I often describe my high school as the “Fame” of Indianapolis.
I was able to take dance two hours a day for 3 years along with interesting humanities and law courses. I was fortunate to have minor roles with the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre and to go on tour with them during grade school.
What an eye opening experience that was! I also studied and performed with The Indianapolis Dance Company while in High School.
During my senior year of high school, I realized I wasn’t going to be a professional ballet dancer, so I choose taking Calculus and Advanced Chemistry over taking ballet.
However, dancing did make a comeback in my life. After taking several years “off,” I eventually returned to ballet one final time to perform in the Nutcracker and go on tour with the Evansville Ballet Company.
Since I loved the law courses in high school, I decided to go to Purdue to get my Chemical Engineering degree so that I could eventually go to law school to become a Patent Attorney (a technical degree is required).
Fortunately for me, I had an opportunity during college to spend 5 months learning Patent Law and doing basic Patent assignments while on assignment at GE. While I enjoyed interviewing inventors, I realized that I was more interested in the business world and decided against law school.
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What did your parents do for a living and was there any Entrepreneurship in the family?
My Dad had a stable government job and my mother was a registered nurse, then a director at a large hospital. While neither of my parents were entrepreneurs, my grandfather was. He was one of the first doctors in Gary, Indiana, to start a group practice.
He also dabbled in other business ventures which allowed him to retire comfortably. Back in those days, doctors didn’t get rich solely by practicing medicine.
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How did you get involved in Chemical Engineering, and what is your area of expertise?
I had the best Chemistry teacher in High School. Mrs. Dillon inspired many of her students to major in Chemistry related studies (5 Chemists, 1 Biochemist and 2 doctors in my class).
I had initially planned to go to Indiana University to study Chemistry, but after a Purdue reach out program with “Women In Engineering” came to my high school chemistry class, I decided that I was better suited for Engineering.
I loved math and chemistry, so Chemical Engineering was a perfect fit! The thing about engineering is, even though I’m not a “practicing engineer,” the coursework required me to solve thousands of problems. I believe my area of expertise is problem solving.
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You went to a prestigious business school to obtain your MBA. Can you tell us a little about that and how you began working at GE?
I started with GE while I was still in college studying Chemical Engineering. Purdue had a great Co-operative Education program and GE was a huge supporter.
During the fall of my sophomore year, they hired about 8 Purdue students to work at their plant in Mt.Vernon, Indiana. I worked for GE through college and was offered a position during my last assignment (doing patent law at GE Plastics Headquarters in Pittsfield, MA).
I had a wonderful career at GE Plastics and transitioned to GE Healthcare in 2001. I was fortunate to move to the Pittsburgh area as a Director of Service; leading a team of field engineers that installed and maintained medical imaging equipment.
Six months after moving to Pittsburgh, I applied and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon Tepper MBA – paid 100% for by GE since I was working full time and going to school at night. The best benefit was I met my husband through CMU! That’s a story for another time.
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When did you discover internet marketing, what was your first two years like, and can you tell us what you would change if you started over today?
I’m a bit late to the game since I was focused on my corporate career with GE for 17 years. Then 4 years ago, I left to take care of some health concerns (all good now) and be a stay at home mom. I was introduced to internet marketing about 2 years ago, but didn’t join until August 2015.
What I find most new people do is spam the world about their product and opportunity as if no one has ever heard of it before they started doing business. Yep – that was me!
I went from barely posting anything on Facebook to posting all the time about my products and why people should join me. I made so many mistakes early on! If I had met me 2 years ago, I would tell me to build as many real connections as possible, leverage social media to brand myself and not the company or their products and provide value to my followers.
What is the biggest mistake you see new internet marketers make, and how can they fix it?
I see a lot of people posting only about their companies products and how amazing they are. What they don’t realize is that even if they post about it to bring “awareness” of it, people can choose whomever they want to buy from or join. Network Marketing is not a “get rich quick” scheme, it is actually work! One of the MLM trainers I follow talks about the “INVEST, LEARN, TEACH” philosophy.
In order to be successful in Network Marketing, you have to invest in yourself. Read books. Buy courses. Once you learn something, teach it to someone else. You are more valuable if you can share knowledge with others.
If you are providing value in the marketplace and getting followers to know, like and trust you, you are more likely to get people to buy from you or join your team.
Be prepared for rejection and learn not to care that they don’t want your stuff or want to be your business partner.
Also, the phone is your friend!! You make connections through social media, but very quickly – you have to talk to people!
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You discovered online attraction marketing through using a system, can you tell us about MLSP and what it does?
I first heard about attraction marketing through a trainer that was recommended to me through my MLM. He was providing daily, free training to his audience and was building a huge following. Through him, I learned the value of branding myself and not my company.
I trusted him when he said that to go big, I needed my own blog. I tried building a blog on my own, but quickly realized I needed a more compressive training platform.
As it turned out, someone that I had met through a mutual Facebook friend was using a marketing system called MyLeadSystemPro (MLSP).
I reached out to her and she shared with me why she felt MLSP was the best fit for her and why it might be a good fit for me. MLSP has so many valuable trainings to build my business and it also hosts my blog for a reasonable price.
Anyone that wants to build their business (even if they don’t want to blog), can gain the knowledge provided in MLSP trainings to build as big as they dream.
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I love your blog! How old is it, how many posts are on it, and what is your daily traffic like?
Thanks so much – I’m honored. My blog is relatively new – about 4 months with about 20 posts. As of January 2017, my goal is to post at least twice per week. I’m still building my audience – sharing to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon and learning all the analytical tools.
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Should every internet marketer blog and why?
That depends on how BIG you want to build and how much value you want to share in the marketplace.
If you just want to make a few hundred bucks a month, it doesn’t make much sense to invest your time and energy into a blog.
If you have dreams of building a business you can live off of, I believe that if you choose to share your experience and knowledge with others, you can teach and inspire others to achieve their dreams and at the same time, build your team and income.
At the end of the day, if you don’t have your own email list, you don’t really have control of your business. If that’s something you care about, you need your own website and a way to share your content with people.
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What’s the best way to generate leads for you these days, and can you share a technique?
There are so many social media platforms that it can be easy to try to dabble in everything. I’ve decided to focus my energy on Facebook and LinkedIn.
With Facebook, I’m leveraging Facebook Live to build a following and generate leads. I like Facebook live because it allows my audience to feel connected to me.
Often when I’m conversing with people that I haven’t spoken to in awhile, they tell me they love seeing my videos and encourage me to keep going.
LinkedIn is a professional platform where people are marketing themselves to the world and are often open to considering new business opportunities.
Since I had a strong 17 year professional career prior to my MLM, I already had strong connections to leverage and expand my network.
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What is your favorite book right now, and why?
Jeff Olson’s, The Slight Edge, is currently my #1 favorite book, although Eric Worre’s Go Pro is pretty amazing too for anyone joining Network Marketing.
What I like best about The Slight Edge is that it can apply to anyone that wants to develop a skill. I recommend
The Slight Edge to anyone that is interested in improving their life. The gist of the book is that daily actions over time compound to amazing results. The daily actions can be very easy to do, but also just as easy NOT to do. Most people give up just before they realize results. Moral of the story, be consistent – don’t quit!
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What are your goals for 2023?
My goals for 2023 is to rank up several levels in my MLM and expand my reach to provide more value to entrepreneurs with the end result to triple my income.
Along with coaching my MLM team, I will be hosting webinars, creating a course and coaching other entrepreneurs that aren’t interested in joining me in my business to achieve their dreams in their business of choice.
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What is your favorite quote and why?
I have to cheat here … 2 favorite quotes, although one may actually be considered a poem.
You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ve never been hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
(And speak from the heart to be heard.)
– William W. Purkey
I love this one because I feel like it’s telling me to jump in and live my life to the fullest. So many people are worried about “what people will think.”
At the end of my life, I don’t want to have any regrets. I want the person giving my Eulogy to say I was a genuine person that truly loved life and lived it to the fullest! (Plus, I love dancing, even if I’m the only one that can hear the music!)
And my 2nd quote …
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou
I first heard this quote from my Dad. He was trying to help me be better at working in the corporate world. It didn’t hit me until someone called me out about me “being busy” while he was trying to have a conversation with me.
I was pretty big on efficiency and not so concerned with effectiveness. Whoops. What can I say? I was young. Long story short, I learned that it didn’t matter what I felt was most important to do; I need to make the person that was with me feel like the most important thing in my life at that moment in time.
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Awesome value. Thank you so much for this interview Tricia!
Thanks Erik for allowing me to share my story with you. I hope I have provided value to your readership in this interview!
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