Meet Tara Jabbari

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tara Jabbari a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tara, so good to have you with us today. We’ve got so much planned, so let’s jump right into it. We live in such a diverse world, and in many ways the world is getting better and more understanding but it’s far from perfect. There are so many times where folks find themselves in rooms or situations where they are the only ones that look like them – that might mean being the only woman of color in the room or the only person who grew up in a certain environment etc. Can you talk to us about how you’ve managed to thrive even in situations where you were the only one in the room?

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago where I was the only Iranian, Baha’i. Many classmates did not have a passport and only a fourth of us in the class were children of immigrants so we spoke a different language at home. Therefore, I am used to being the only one like me in some way in a room. My first friends in school were a Filipino girl and a Romanian girl because they were the only other ones in our class that whose parents immigrated to America and we were the first in our family to be born here.

I learned not to be so shy or embarrassed about being so different. It helps when you find allies like I had with my friends. We were from three different cultures but we had that immigrant background and bonded over that. It gave us confidence and security at school when kids made fun of our last names, of our parents accents, or our home lunches because it wasn’t a bologna sandwich.

So when it came to work, to socializing as you get older, I would embrace my differences and also seek out to find out what made the other person so unique. I remember I was a contractor at an advertising company in Chicago. I was not crazy about it and it did not last long. Again, I was the only one who was not from some Western-European decent from a few generations ago already in America. I was “fascinating” because I had studied abroad twice and lived in New Zealand for a year to work at a production company. I spoke Persian and knew some French and Spanish. But I asked about my colleagues, one was a donor baby who found out he had 20 biological half-siblings and was planning a meet up with them and the sperm donor. One had a scholarship to play basketball in college.

I liked showing people their uniqueness as much as my own. Our uniqueness also helped in cases where it could help with client work like when a sports company needed branding, the colleague who played basketball was the one who came to mind.

For myself, I have worked on a few documentaries and podcasts where we interview people from multiple countries. Since I speak Persian, it comes useful when I was able to assist in interviewing people from Afghanistan or Tajikistan. To clarify, my family is from Iran so the dialect is Farsi, the most commonly known version of Persian. In Afghanistan, their dialect is called Dari and it is called Tajiki in Tajikistan.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I work in all facets of digital media but mostly concentrating on social media marketing and podcasting. My clients usually have me work on their day to day social media engagement and content creation. Then for podcasting, I either help podcasters logistically schedule and obtain engaging guests or help people who have something to offer to get on podcasts to promote their work and services.

The digital age has allowed a growth in so many possibilities worldwide to disseminate information and reach audiences like never before. It is an exciting time but it is also a concerning time. While literacy rates have gone up no matter your economic status, so have anxiety and depression rates.

Therefore, I have focused on not only working with organizations and businesses on how to best utilize digital media to spread their message but also teaching media literacy.

I teach and advise teens, parents, and even companies on how to balance their digital tool usage. There is a need for it and a use for it but you also need to recognize when you are abusing it and creating bad habits. Recognize when reading headlines that are misleading and fake news.

I also want people to know what they put out there is how they represent themselves online and it is impossible to delete completely. So I hope to continue my work helping organizations, businesses, families and individuals use digital media wisely and positively.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

One quality that I have learned that has been the most impactful in my journey has been punctuality. When I started babysitting, I had a bad habit of being late, by five or so minutes. The family said that while I was great with the baby, and they liked me, they would not tolerate tardiness and it is not a good habit for me in the long run. I appreciated their candor and worked on it, sometimes arriving 30 minutes early and waiting outside. Clearly, it took me practice to get my timing correct! That lesson made an impression on me about how even though I was doing a good job in all the other aspects, my tardiness would be still a reason to lose this position. Even for parties, I usually arrive on time, I say it is practice for when it is a professional reason and I don’t mind sitting or helping with setting up for the informal event.

Another quality is resilience and knowing that most often, things are not done to personally hurt you. I did a podcast interview with the actor, Benjamin Byron Davis and he advised that when you do not get the part, do not dwell on it, move on.

You can watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5CKaJdjpQ0

If I did not get the job, if the client decided not to renew their contract with me, I do not wonder what did I do wrong, why don’t they like me? What about me is not worth working with? It rarely is about that, if it were, they would most likely say it. (Go back to my first example of the family telling me my tardiness would not be tolerated.) A client has to make decisions and you have to make decisions, sometimes they do not sync. That is okay, do not take it personally.

A third quality is to always trust your instincts. Unfortunately, I had a few managers and clients that tried to gaslight me. Some would say they had paid me when they didn’t. Others accused me of something that I had never done. I also keep every correspondence for my own notes and for proof of when someone is accusing me of something I did not do or proof of their wrongdoing when it needs to go higher up. For example, I was not being paid for coaching and was owed over $2,000. After weeks of trying to contact through Skype and email to my manager, the head of the company, and HR, I went to my clients and told them that we would need to stop meeting until the company paid me. Almost immediately afterward, the company reprimanded me for sharing finances with the paying customers and asked why had I never come to them in the first place. I had screenshots from the Skype chats that showed weeks of just me sending unanswered messages, and my emails with timestamps. I said that I attempted to go to them for almost a month and they owed me so much money, I gave them plenty of time to get back to me and they never did so I had no choice but to let my clients know that I had to end our sessions. The company went into bankruptcy and never paid me but I trusted that I knew I did everything I could do to be fair and help my clients and myself.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

In the past 12 months, I wanted to do a little experiment, I went to almost a dozen conferences that were focused on social media marketing and podcasting. I went to network and ultimately found new clients to meet my goal of obtaining 2 to 3 new clients. I went to the largest podcasting festival in the world, called The Podcast Show held in London every year in May with over 6,000 professionals from all over the world. I went from Barcelona to Los Angeles and I met and connected with hundreds of inspiring and interesting people. I had dozens and dozens of follow-up virtual calls, wrote countless proposals, and had to keep track of all the different time zones.

I do want to note that I am currently a nomad, I do not have a home base and that is why I can travel so much since I already pretty much live out of a suitcase.

After all of that, I ended up with only one new client. It made me feel depleted until I realized, I did achieve a few other things that were not monetary achievements. Several connections asked me to contribute on blog posts, like this one: https://studiocotton.co.uk/blog/creative-ideas-for-pitching-podcast-guest-appearance/

Another new contact was able to give me a discount on an upcoming conference, I was even asked to contribute to an e-book that is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTHST5Q7?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K1JSMSKEFB9CYNKDAWXS&skipTwisterOG=1&bestFormat=true&newOGT=1

And while it did not get me a paying gig, I was referred to a few potential clients. This led me to realize that I did make some good connections and who knows what the future holds. It might not be immediate but I did enjoy learning from these conferences, and my travels and made new friends that appreciate what I have to offer. That helped me revitalize myself for the next 12 months and beyond!”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tarajabbari.wordpress.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/tara_jabbari
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/tarajabbari/
• Twitter: https://x.com/tara_jabbari
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/user/mstarajabbari
• Other: https://about.me/tarajabbari