How many of us can say that the same things that matter to us now, mattered to us as a kid? Tina Wells can say the same. Her adoration with books as a little girl led her to become an award-winning, bestselling author of several middle-grade series including The Zee Files and Honest June.
In fact, when you visit her Instagram (@tinawells), it would probably still reflect a lot of the same things she enjoys such as consuming culture, creating, travelling and just being with the people she loves.
In her early years, growing up in suburban New Jersey, she shared with us how her parents are very much firm believers in education. She’s the eldest of 6 children in a very active family who spends a lot of time together as she recalls having a fun vibrant household. And even until now, they’d see each other often, travel together and also love travelling individually.
Preparation, Inspiration, Recreation and Transformation
As a business strategist, advisor, and founder of RLVNT Media, Tina has four phases she applies in every book and every project she creates. Everything is going through a cycle called Preparation, Inspiration, Recreation and Transformation.
Preparation is when figuring out if the business, idea or service makes sense. Inspiration is when you ask yourself how do I make it happen? Who’s done it before? It’s all about getting inspired to bring this idea to life. Recreation, it’s where you go out to do something fun and you take a step back so that you can look at your product, and check how to make it even better. And lastly, Transformation is bringing it all to life.
Pairing Creativity and Commerce
Tina is also the Founder of Elevation Tribe, the platform for women of colour who want to launch, grow, and lead businesses. To her, doing all of these different things is her way of existing as a full expression of herself.
One of the things Tina is proud of from Gen Z is the ability to pair creativity and commerce in a really unique way that the previous generations failed to figure out. She is optimistic of many shifts that are going to happen as people realize that they’re able to make money doing the things that they love to do in ways that maybe weren’t available to that previous generation.
Loyalty of Readership
We all have the ability, whatever our idea is, to dig deep and know as much as we can in the industry that interests you. So Tina’s advice is to watch what’s happening, watch how people are moving, watch for pain points and how you get your intended buyers.
And this answers the question of why Tina chose the preteen demographics for her books. She loves the universal themes of that age, the awkwardness, and the fact that they’re still at a phase where they’re impressionable. She wants to grab that opportunity to get some good stuff in there and focus on getting the values there. So for anyone who’s thinking about a creative business, it’s how you focus on your audience and really continue to deliver for that audience.
Tina always believed in making a vision really clear and doing everything she could to get that vision across.
“I am always striving for work-life harmony. I don’t really believe work-life balance exists, but I believe in harmony in creating the life that we want.”
More of Tina
Website – tinawells.com
IG – @tinawells
LinkedIn – Tina Wells
Facebook – Tina Wells
Twitter – @tinacwells
Click here for the giveaway!
Tina Wells is giving away a signed set of the first four books of her Zee Files series. Zee files is a fun series that she wrote exclusively for Target that drops on November 9. Whoever wins will get all four books and have them before they go on sale!
