In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Tara Sherstabetoff, Technical Business Development Manager at Scott Builders Inc. The conversation begins with a brief sponsor plug for Anchor and Authors Unite, then moves into Tara’s personal background, describing her upbringing by a single mother who worked minimum‑wage jobs. She credits that experience with fostering independence, mental strength, and empathy. Tara shares her professional focus on sales and business development across oil‑and‑gas and construction, emphasizing the importance of building genuine client relationships—simple actions like picking up the phone to ask how a client is. Despite lacking a technical background, she succeeded selling microseismic services by leveraging rapport and learning from a geophysicist mentor. She stresses the value of having multiple mentors, especially outside one’s immediate field, to gain transferable skills. When asked about advice for her younger self, Tara highlights the need for confidence in male‑dominated industries and recounts an interview where gender bias was overtly mentioned, which ultimately motivated her to seek workplaces that value her. Her view on happiness centers on accepting bad days, living in the moment, and appreciating positive emotions. Tara’s favorite book is The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan; she highlights a story about Campbell Soup’s CEO whose gratitude culture helped him during a serious accident. Her favorite quote, from Jim Rohn, contrasts formal education (a living) with self‑education (a fortune), reflecting her belief in continuous personal growth. The episode concludes with Tara directing listeners to connect with her on LinkedIn (Tara Shirstapinov).
Chapters
Thank you for listening to the Business Blast podcast. So for all my listeners out there that have been wanting to do your own podcast, I'd like to introduce to you Anchor. Anchor is a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, distributing, and monetizing your podcast. So before I found Anchor, I had never actually done a podcast because all the research that I had gathered made it seem very complex. Then I found Anchor, and Anchor makes podcasting extremely simple. So if you want to do your own podcast, go to anchor.fm/start. I can't wait to hear your podcast. Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today I have Tara Scherstebiedoff. She is the technical business development manager at Scott Builders Inc. She has worked in various sales and business development roles in oil and gas and construction for the past 5 years. So welcome to the show, Tara.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Of course. Grateful to have you here, Tara. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
I wouldn't really call it a story, more of a period of time growing up with a single parent. So my mom raised me and my 2 siblings. And basically worked a minimum wage job to put food on the table and provide us with a home and also with education. And she was extremely selfless during that period of time and put her whole life on hold to kind of raise us. And it really allowed me to determine who I wanted to be as a person growing up. I grew up fiercely independent and also really mentally strong, and I really learned how to empathize with people because of my upbringing. And it has really taught me that everyone faces their own hardships. And I think there's a lot of beauty in those experiences, good or bad. They really shape a person and help them grow.
Yes. Thank you for sharing that with us. The next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So my expertise is on the sales side and also the marketing side, but primarily sales. Doing business development. That's what I've kind of focused my career on in the past 5 years. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned is to build really genuine relationships with your clients and to make sure you can build rapport. And it's as simple as just picking up the phone and asking how they are. When I graduated, I didn't graduate with a technical background and I started selling Microseismic, which is fairly technical. You deal with geophysicists, you deal with geologists, you deal with engineers, and not having that technical background, I felt like it really held me back. But then I realized the relationships I was building and the ways that I could communicate with people and still be able to get my point across and still identify their needs and their wants and help them as best I could. It's one of the constants in all of the roles that I've had to have that genuine relationship And I don't think people put enough emphasis on it. I think it's the hard sell sometimes, but it has really helped me be successful.
And what's your— it could tie in— what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
So my best piece of overall business advice is to have a lot of mentors. I was really privileged early on in my career to have people who wanted to dedicate time to me and to my self-development and give me advice and listen to my problems and try and troubleshoot with me. I also think it is really important to find mentors outside of your job field to gain different perspectives and teach you new skills and transferable skills. And an example of that is when I started selling Microseismic, I had a geophysicist, a client of mine, who would send me scholarly articles every month, and I would write a list questions down and we would meet up and he would answer all of my questions because I wasn't technical and it helped me so much. It broadened my horizons. It made me better at my job and I was really appreciative for it.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
To definitely be more confident. So I've always been in a male-dominated industry and coming from an industry where there aren't too many females, I think it's already very hard to speak up or to even do things that come very normally to people. Another big thing was that I remember going to a lot of job interviews. In the roles that I've had, I've interviewed quite a bit just to kind of accelerate my career, but I remember going to one specific interview and the interviewer actually had brought up the fact that I was female and there weren't many females in this type of role, and it was definitely meant to be taken as a negative connotation, and it hit me hard being only 23. 24 at the time. And when I was younger, I always kind of had the strong belief that men and women were on an equal level. So it was kind of tough to see that gender discrimination, but it actually really did help me for the better. I kind of learned a little more to value myself, and I want to make sure I work for a company that values me as well.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
I think the key to happiness is understanding that sometimes you're going to have a bad day and you'll be upset. And that's perfectly fine to feel like that. I think people aren't programmed to be happy all the time. And life's all about the ups and downs. So when you are happy, really try and think why you are happy and live in that moment and be able to appreciate it.
And what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Okay, so the best book, and it's also my favorite book, it's called The Gratitude Diaries. So it's by a lady called Janice Kaplan. And she took a year out of her life to write a diary, basically trying to document what moment she felt gratitude. So she explains the science behind why it's hard to be grateful sometimes and how to take a proactive approach in becoming more grateful. And the favorite part of my book, or the favorite part in the book for me, just because it touches on a professional level, the CEO of Campbell Soup, I think his name was Doug Conant, He was in a serious car accident when he was at Campbell Soup, and he woke up in the hospital, and he had about 20,000 get well cards from his employees. And when he had first started at Campbell Soup, he had tried to send out 20 handwritten messages every day to say thank you to people and to show them some type of recognition and to really give the company a culture. And a purpose, and he was grateful for those people to be there, and they reciprocated when he got hurt and tried to say thank you and feel better. But yeah, it's one of those things I kind of learned not to take things for granted, and there can be good and bad situations, and learning how to appreciate people, especially in any profession and in your personal life and just to random strangers.
Wow, that is a cool story. I actually did not know about that. And what is your favorite quote and why?
Okay, so my favorite quote, and it's on my LinkedIn page, is that formal education will make you a living and self-education will make you a fortune. It's by Jim Rohn. So I was never an academic when I was in school, and I really struggled, and I thought when I got out of school, I wouldn't be that good at my career. Even though I have always tried really hard. But I kind of realized early on that school just provided me with that fundamental knowledge. And the real lesson is that you put yourself in these situations every day just to try and grow, and you learn when you're in uncomfortable situations. And I'm a really big believer in trying to put myself in those situations to grow.
Yes, love it. Thank you so much for coming on, Tara. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
So the best place to find me online and connect is my LinkedIn page, Tara Shirstapinov. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I've written a couple posts. So if you connect with me, I will send you a message and say hi.
Perfect. Thanks again for coming on. We appreciate it.
