Thomas Anderson and Kintina Anderson

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/29

Thomas Anderson: When I graduated from college, I was kind of like Rodney Dangerfield; I was the old guy in school. So, it took me like 10 years to get a degree and that was kind of like trial and error because the first school that I went to shut down on me. I got this attitude about me that every time something doesn’t work, I set myself for a higher goal and I ultimately found myself at Georgia Tech, which at the time was number one in industrial engineering in the world. That was my first job out of college but I was in Computer Engineering and I got deep respect for college students and the amount of work that they put in and that’s my passion for TomKin Consulting to give back, to really give back to situations that wronged me like for instance, college tuition, I got really robbed on that price because of ignorance and delaying payments and so on and so forth. So, I found myself with like a $50,000 credit or bill but after I think eight or nine years it jumped up to $100,000 because I wasn’t paying on it. So, instead of me just getting all beaten out of shape over it, my attitude is I’m going to fight back by helping other college kids get themselves established so they don’t have to go through what I went through. I don’t want see people have to go to school for 10 years because they don’t have the money. That’s kind of one of my personal humanitarian reasons for what I’m doing at TomKin.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s defined as a full-service branding company. What is implied by that title?

Anderson: We do everything inhouse. We don’t have to go out and get anybody; we got our own writers, we got our own web developers, we got our own Graphics designers. So, when you come to us for something, you don’t have to worry about us looking for somebody to fill a piece of that project. If you come to me with a website project and you need logos, you want branding, you want social media management, we can do that for you. You only have to speak to one consultant and they’re going to facilitate everything for that customer.

Jacobsen: Your main product is websites; why focus on websites in particular?

Anderson: Because I love websites and people are so caught up in social media but social media is rented land. At any moment Facebook can shut down; then what? What happens to your business? With your website, you own it whether you’re making money or not and you got complete control over the message that you portray and it allows you to be as creative as one wants to be. I think social media should be used as a tool like regular medias use. You broadcast what’s going on but you want to point them back to your website and once you get in your website, you want to keep them on your website so that you can offer them some kind of… you want them to do some type of action whether it’s giving your email at the beginning or buying a product later or staying engaged. So, I’m a strong proponent of websites and besides I really love building them.

Jacobsen: Now, one mistake or core mistake people can make with a website is paying for one to get built or building one themselves, then they leave it; it’s inactive. How can TomKin Consulting LLC help with this issue?

Anderson: We got copywriters that’s going to help you get it active. First by helping you determine; this is the strategic part. We’re going to analyze your business, see where you at, and see where you want to go. Then we’re going to design a plan to help you get there. So, what we typically do with a client; we find out what their niche is and we have a spreadsheet where we go and do the research. You know how you guys have been getting all these headlines? Well, we went through and we research and we created 100 headlines based off of the information that we were searching. When you going to a browser, you type your search. So, each headline should point back to a specific search or question that you’re trying to solve or service that you’re trying to provide. So, we do in-depth study before we actually build your website. We take all the information; your mission statement, your target audience, your goals, and we put it into a nice little neat package, so the customer sees it and we have a point of reference if things start going around. 

Kintina Anderson: Yeah, ultimately our clients are not numbers, they’re part of our family. So, when we offer you a service, we’re not just going to leave them high and dry. We’re a full-service consulting company, so whatever it is that we may see that that client needs, within their niche; we’re going to step in, we’re going to stay on top of you, we’re going to send you emails, we’re going to call you up, we’re not going to hassle you as much… Let’s put it this way; yes, we will until you say stop. We’re going to be respectful of our clients but like I said they’re not going to be a number. We are continuing to work with them whatever we may see that they may need. We want to give you a dedicated representative. We offer that service, so your representative is connected to you and your company and your site. That way they’re always watching behind you. Does that make sense? Making sure that your digital identity, your brand, is not tainted and that you’re not getting off track and that you’re not leaving money on the table. 

Anderson: Yeah, big thing; leaving money on the table.

Kintina: We want to stay with you the whole time. We don’t want to just leave you because sometimes you go and you get a website and it’s a situation where we build it, it’s yours; you take off with it. Now then you still have that option to do that but because we’re family oriented and we’re a blended family, so therefore, the tradition doesn’t really work for us. So, when you become a client, you become a part of our family and that’s the relationship that we have; more personal. We can be professional but it’s not always just business.

Anderson: Yeah, we’re not just in it to make money. You need the money to survive but it’s a little more than just the financial gain.

Kintina: Yeah, I mean like we have clients now that we’ve been working with for the past four years. Yet, they’re not paying anything other than they initially put it up but we don’t leave them hanging. We don’t leave them high and dry; they still can contact us forty years down the line. It’s just something that they need; we’re here. So, I guess that’s the main thing, that’s the difference that I would see. 

Jacobsen: What was the very first service that TomKin Consulting LLC provided?

Kintina: First service that we provided was web design for nonprofit. That was our first client. Now, we’ll say it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to [Laughs].

Anderson: [Laughs]. 

Kintina: We were still growing. That is the honest the truth, we started talking seven years ago in 2013 and we started out, we had our first client and my husband did have a meltdown at that time. He did have a mental breakdown and that’s when we realized something’s wrong. So, that was our first client and that’s where that happened; we lost the client, we lost the contract, just to say. It had the potential to be a major one but we learned from that. We learned that sometimes we’re not called to do everything. That is why we chose to bring in help and not try to do everything. So, that was our first client; Life Bridges. 

Anderson: And funny thing about it, they were a mental health facility [Laughs] That was our first client. 

Kintina: So, they dealt with mental health and military PTSD.

Anderson: And adolescent troubled youth. Something funny about that guy; everywhere that I’ve gone like when we got our office, there was a mental health facility right next to me. I guess God is trying to tell me something here.

Kintina: In other words, don’t let your conditions define you. I mean your condition is the condition but it doesn’t define you and it does not limit you. That’s one of the things that we had to deal with when learning about his condition and I’m sorry to get off the subject; is that I was told over and over again “You need to leave him, he’s not capable of starting a business, you need to just let that go, he can’t do this, you need to figure out a way to get out.” And that’s not the case at all.  You have to learn and understand what an individual is dealing with and take the time to be understanding of what other people are dealing with. Once you understand then the problem is solved, you just adjust accordingly or you leave. One of the two; either you can deal with him or you can’t and I’m glad we dealt with it because this man is brilliant, he has a brilliant mind.

Anderson: She’s on my side man, that’s all. 

Jacobsen: So, the core service that are at present are copywriting, ghost writing, logos, graphic design, online branding, web design and development, and social media marketing. Why have those established now and why focus on the future for drones and animation?

Anderson: All right, so animation is her thing; she’s the cartoon person but I just see the benefit in using animation to display information. My passion is videography. I’ve been videoing for the last 15 years anything I can get take a picture of or a video, I would do it and I just love it. I love what you can do with light; how you can bend light. And with videography, you can tell a story in a way that to me is just fascinating. 

Kintina: The reason for that is simply because TomKin Consulting is the parent company, that is our main company which is basically IT and your digital branding and those are the service that we readily have available that we can do right now. Say, if someone wants to call me up right now, I know I can offer that service with no hiccup. As far as the videography, the YouTube-ing and the drone; that is simply an inlet to the sister company which is BNBB Productions which is an umbrella up under TomKin. BNBB Productions handles all of audio and video. So, we want to focus solely on TomKin right now to grow the website to see what it is that we need to do to make it profitable than recreate that with each website or each client that we work with. The things that we’re going to offer next actually links to BNBB Production; the audio-visual side. That’s why we’re not focused on it right now.

Anderson: And the drone is going to lead in to artificial intelligence, that’s what I’m really long-term focused on AI and what you guys are going to do is going to make it easier for us to catalog our information and be in position once the switch is made. I just got a lot of background information on some technology that’s coming forth and I work with it and it’s amazing what’s coming down the road. So, this beginning is going to generate cash flow to support the future.

Jacobsen: What is the timeline or the range for this future?

Anderson: Two years because I’m going to focus solely on TomKin for two years. It typically takes, with consistent effort two years, before your website really explode. Now, one caveat; this is with one person writing his own or her own blogs, I’m trying to scale it, it’s all about scale. Now, she and I could do very well by ourselves but we couldn’t scale it. We have a point of diminishing return. However, with eight writers and one manager, it’s giving me exponential growth. So, that two years could be cut down to six months. However, I’m going to go to course. I will give it two years.

Jacobsen: Last question. If you’re focusing on a family-oriented company, what is the core philosophy of the organization?

Anderson: Well, I would say that our slogan is reach the lost and teach to found through technology. So, our core philosophy is training individual development. That’s why we have these Zoom calls, that’s why we’re trying to present information to you guys because ultimately, you’re going to be training us, you’re training us with your work. Every time you give me a blog, I read it and I’m like “Oh, I didn’t know about that. I didn’t think about that. I wonder why he said that.” So, I want to create an atmosphere of learning because that’s where I’m at in my full-time job. We’re constantly learning. Next week I got a class, a 40-hour block of class; eight hours a day and it’s going to literally wear me out and still try to come do this business and that was one of the reasons why it’s taking so long because my job is so mentally draining that I just don’t pick it up when I come home. 

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time.

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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