The Georgia Virtue Business Spotlight Series features local businesses that function as the backbone of our communities. The series is sponsored by Bulloch Solutions.
Tere Tatiana’s entire family is from Statesboro. She was raised here, her mother, Sherry Goodman Grant, owned a beauty salary for 20 years, and Tere is a product of Bulloch County Schools.
As a member of a family of entrepreneurs, Tere says she knew at a young age that she wanted to own her own business. Her mother’s salon, the carpentry business of her father, Randy Rufus Goodman, and those she watched in the community each paved a portion of the path to her ownership of the several businesses she operates in present day, but that path was not direct. Even still, her brand has evolved in a way that reflects her drive, her individuality, and her efforts to invest in others so they succeed as well.
Tere left Statesboro right after high school and immediately following college, she began working as a government contractor. After her daughter was born, Tere followed the lead of her mom, who was in Iraq at the time, found herself overseas working in Afghanistan as a Senior HR Generalist. She worked in cycles off and on from 2009 to 2013 before returning home to start Southern Hospitality Adult Day Care Facility in Statesboro, a care facility for mentally challenged adults and the elderly.
She continued tours as a contractor over the next several years while simultaneously launching Labeled Blu Realty and Labeled Blu Collections, a clothing line which just recently attached to a store front in Atlanta. Though both have seen considerable success, Tere isn’t afraid of a challenge, which led her take on the male-dominated industry of trucking.
In 2013, she started her trucking business, something she says alternates between both lucrative and frustrating. Labeled Blu Transportation houses a fleet of trucks that frequently run shipments across all 50 states.
It might seem like she juggles a large – and diverse! – load of business responsibilities, but with confidence, Tere said it’s just second nature for her because each business speaks to a piece of her. She said she wanted to own property and navigate a realty business based on what she saw of the many successful people she admired from a young age – all of them owned real estate. Additionally, when she launched Southern Hospitality, she bought a property, ended up flipping the first location, and found the entire process addicting.
In fashion Tere’s always been a girly girl, a ‘salon baby’ she says, with a drive to be a little bit different than the rest. Having her own brand has allowed her to expand beyond the ‘box’ of the way everyone else does things. Though one person she has sought to emulate her entire life is her mother, her role model. Tere and her mother operate Southern Hospitality together, but in industry after industry, she says she has watched her mother work long hours doing what she loved, always knowing she wanted that, too.
In March of 2020, just as the pandemic started to take hold, Tere decided she wanted to focus more on trucking, equipment, and helping others grow their businesses in a similar business model. Tere says she had been approached for years about how to recruit drivers, funding mechanism, and other components of the business. A surprising number of women sought to break through the stereotypical identity attached to trucking after seeing the way Tere’s business skyrocketed. As a firm believer in sharing knowledge and lifting others up, Tere didn’t hold back in sharing her tools.
“Not everyone has seats at the table, they don’t have access, or the network to break out of their small ecosystem. I believe in creating generational wealth…instead of giving food, give tools and teach them to sustain themselves,” she said in her interview. “There is enough for everyone.”
There’s also access, opportunity, and an integral reinvestment into the community her heart still calls home.
That’s part of the reason one of her ventures is coming to Statesboro. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on industries across the nation, Tere is using the environment of change to encourage other women to join the trucking industry from an ownership level, too. She has been hosting seminars, such as the one she has planned for Statesboro on February 27th – Let’s Talk Trucking. (Details and registration info in the link)
If you’re interested in learning more, you can visit Labeled Blu Transportation and for the full rundown of courses, click here.
You can follow Tere Tatiana on Instagram at @iamteretatiana
