Tara Matamoros Carter

Chances are, it’s going to happen to you. Nearly all businesses eventually have to face some very hard decisions due to cash flow heart attacks.

The likelihood and severity of your cash flow challenge will certainly vary based on margins, the industry profile, and your growth stage, but it would be a mistake for anyone anywhere to underestimate how serious cash flow issues can be or how quickly they escalate.

Large scale data analysis demonstrates that company lifespans have shortened dramatically in recent years. Like the humans who run them, companies are mortal. The real question is how healthy your firm will be during its apportioned lifetime. In this talk, Tara discusses how one key pathway to wellness is to strengthen your company’s heartbeat through smarter cash flow management.

As an entrepreneur, there have been waves of crushing setbacks, but those in traditional jobs have those too. The difference is that all of your effort is going into your mission, not in service of a corporate mission statement.

This should provide some clarity into which business processes move you closer to that goal, and which ones are soaking up way too much of your resources. You have a finite amount of time and concentration, which are far more valuable than money.

For some entrepreneurs, it takes a financial shock to arrive at this understanding, such as a cash flow crisis or a cessation of growth. Others get here by benchmarking their startup against the competition’s areas of excellence. Tara covers how no matter what brought your startup into treacherous waters, business process efficiency will take you to your next station along the startup maturity odyssey.

Tara sees all sorts of dreams float through her office every day. Dreams are the raw materials where companies aim to accelerate their business growth or investigate original paths to digital transformation.

Dreaming is the key to thinking differently, questioning assumptions, and breaking with the past to discover new lines of revenue.

However, most of the dreams Tara see are unformed or only roughly sketched. They are rarely strong enough to stand up to problems, let alone solve them. In some cases, the problem they address is just not significant enough to justify further investment of the dreamer’s time and money.

There’s often a mismatch between the solution and the audience, or no compelling hook to impel action, or a market so saturated that it needs something radically new to shake things up.

In this talk Tara discusses how there’s clearly no shortage of great ideas, but what is in short supply is the patience and dedication to refine dreams into workable projects with a good shot at succeeding.

There’s a popular belief that AI, machine learning, robotics and automation are joining forces in order to return greater profits for shareholders while wiping out essential jobs for humans. While it’s true that the nature of work is fundamentally changing, the financial reality is that AI will add trillions to the global economy.

Collectively, this future of stronger AI investments would pour trillions into the global economy and stabilize markets on an unprecedented scale.

Learn how in this fourth Industrial revolution, businesses are recognizing that value creation lies at the intersection of humans and intelligent machines.

Startup thinking can be a steep climb with very little room to balance at the top. Founders tend to tumble down on either side of it. Either they feel that determination and self-confidence should be enough to power them through any and all roadblocks, or they imagine that somebody out there somewhere has all the answers. Neither is true.

Tara has helped founders grow their dreams into commercial enterprises, but she’s also seen too many brilliant models disintegrate, primarily due to a misalignment in the mindset of the founding team members. The speed of life in the startup microcosm can be so blinding, and the wider market so unforgiving, that once things start to shake apart, a crash becomes inevitable. The vast majority of young businesses can’t survive a crash that bad that early. One of Tara’s goals is to try to predict those kinds of ruptures for the founders and teams she supports. Even when the customers are there, the burn rate is low, and the MVP generates value, mindset can make all the difference in the trajectory of growth.

So how do market winners think differently? In this speech, Tara addresses how a series of startup mindset templates cannot help you predict what sorts of challenges you will face, but it will help you narrow down your most reasonable options in responding to them. Try on one or more of Tara’s 7 startup mindset templates for size.

Blockchain continues to grow in popularity and ability as more businesses realize the implications of a decentralized and super secure network for transferring and storing confidential information, data, contracts and funds.

In this talk Tara covers how companies in almost every industry including, but not limited to, healthcare, finance, real estate, supply chain management, insurance, media and entertainment are already adopting blockchain technology to strengthen their systems, implement new business opportunities and disrupt their industries.

The implications of instant transfer offers opportunity for disruption across countless industries and has the potential to significantly reduce both costs and workload, increasing the efficiency and automation of routine transactions.

Myths about diversity in the workplace simply don’t stand up to even a cursory examination. Diversity brings strength to the business world. The success of Tara’s teams grew organically from the rich mixture of talents that she brought together from across many walks of life.

Community of diverse minds underlies true innovation. Incorporating original patterns of thought opens up possibilities that simply don’t exist inside a homogeneous group. Diversity in the workplace represents the world as it really is outside corporate walls. Only the broadest spectrum of human experience can speak with authority to a diverse public starved for new ideas.

Taking charge on an issue that has beaten down countless others before them is certainly a challenge. As children, the odds are stacked against them, and powerful figures have lined up to shout them down—but even the most jaded and skeptical among us are saying that the kids could really do it this time. We’re living in a world where the impossible is constantly bubbling up in the newsfeed. Maybe “inconceivable” doesn’t mean what we thought it meant.

As such, not only is it important to enable adults in taking a stand against violence, hatred, ignorance, and cruelty, but more importantly, is to empower youth and guide them in developing a solid ethic core to drive real change. As such, Tara has persevered in the Resistance Movement and have served as a role model for many children to not lay down and accept the injustice surrounding us, but to stand strong and demand action. Tara talks on how teaching our children to speak out in the face of injustice in real time will drive resilient and morally-focused future leaders.

Tara knows firsthand how abusers perpetuate stereotypes, hate and ignorance. As a victim in the moment, many cowered in fear, trying their best to hide any public act of violence to protect their abuser.

As a means of survival, some attempt to manage their abusers moods. Keeping them happy meant the victim can catch their breath for a few moments. In the end this is a losing battle, as violence often continues to escalate.

Healing from domestic abuse is a long journey. In this Talk Tara covers the mentality of the abused and how those close to them can aid in their healing.

A significant aspect of your satisfaction as a customer depends on emotion. Emotion, and in larger scale, human insight, is crucial to a customer’s overall experience when interacting with a company’s services. So, with human insight’s increasing presence in all industries (especially technology), companies must be aware of the role human emotion plays in machine learning.

In this talk, Tara expands on the relationship between emotion and machine learning. To do so, she provides a deeper look into machine learning, providing 4 key steps for companies looking to blend human insight with machine learning, and finally, explores how the customer’s experience remains important even in a world consumed by machine learning.