From Detroit Hustle to Nine Revenue Streams: Tina Ruark-Baker on LinkedIn, Referrals, and Saying Yes

Jack Tompkins
2 days ago
3 min read

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3zSMlS41U0FfttadYBYbri?si=f856281edcae4c53

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scrappy-but-successful-consultants-personalities-when/id1878384628

YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmDDM9Jivp6CuB8taaTFTzl2zSFfGKWRd

Tina Ruark-Baker has already built and sold two companies, spent two decades climbing to the C-suite, and then walked away from the corner office to start a third business from scratch. Today she runs TRB Creative, coaching small businesses, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits on the one channel she believes almost nobody uses correctly: LinkedIn.

On this episode of Scrappy But Successful, Jack Tompkins sits down with Tina to trace her path from a Detroit staffing company she started at 18 to 20 years in New York City and her current life at the beach in a North Carolina golf community. Along the way she explains why she said yes to a 20-canvas art commission with zero prior experience, and why she thinks most people are using LinkedIn all wrong.

Two exits by 1999, then two decades in corporate

Tina started her first business, a staffing company, at 18 in her dad's basement, with Ford, Chrysler, and GM as early clients. A second company, a storm-response referral service, followed. She sold both in 1999, the same deal that eventually pulled her to New York City, where she spent the next 20 years building a corporate career that topped out at Fractional CGO/CMO and COO roles before she walked away in 2020 to start TRB Creative, her third business.

Why LinkedIn, and why almost nobody does it right

Tina expected to build her new business as a fractional CMO. Instead she found a bigger gap: business owners who had no idea how to use LinkedIn as anything more than a place to post and hope. Her pitch is that personal profiles consistently outperform company pages, because people search LinkedIn the way they search Google, looking for leaders, talent, and partners by name. Without real optimization, she argues, a business is simply invisible there no matter how much content it puts out.

Saying yes to a 20-canvas commission she'd never attempted

Tina also paints abstract art on the side, and when her own doctor asked her to fill an entire medical office with large-scale canvases, she said yes despite never having taken on a project anywhere near that size. She turned a spare bedroom into a studio, worked through a difficult pricing situation with an existing vendor, and delivered more than 20 pieces that are still hanging in the office today, a project that ended up launching a second revenue stream in her business.

Nine revenue streams, one referral-driven philosophy

TRB Creative now runs on nine connected revenue streams, from coaching to keynote speaking to her Rev Lab community for entrepreneurs. Tina credits a network of power partners, trusted specialists in areas like CRM, bookkeeping, and law, for making that possible. Her rule for connecting people: make the introduction, then step back and let the two adults figure it out, rather than trying to manage the relationship afterward.

Connect with Tina Ruark-Baker

[Guest links pending - the Bio and Links section of the prep doc is blank. See note to Jack.]

Connect with Jack Tompkins

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-tompkins/

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