“I took a major step back and realized that no matter what I do, as long as I’m working in a male-dominated industry and as long as I’m a single woman, I will never get paid the same as a man.”

By Scott Gilman, Staff Writer for Unsugarcoated Media 

Taff Zangana, guest for Episode 46 of UNSUGARCOATED with Aalia, is no stranger to the business world. She started working young and never stopped, not even to attend business school. Instead, she’s prioritized building her career and learning by experience and the “Business School of YouTube.” She’s left and reentered the corporate culture- opened and closed new businesses. Hers is a philosophy of resilience, echoed by her wellness habits, a daily 5k run, and refusal to rush her personal life. 

Host Aalia Lanius has Taff on to talk about her story, her experience as a single woman in the workplace, and her efforts in entrepreneurship. 

As a child, Taff worked in her parents’ electronic store in the San Jose Flea Market. Aalia emphasizes that in her family, there was never favoritism and there were no special favors as the boss’s kid.  When she asks Taff if it was the same way with her family, Taff rebukes the notion. Taff explains that as a child, no matter whether the employees had a problem with it or not, she was her father’s second-in-command. Taff asserts simply that “I had the business’ best interests at heart and I knew the business better than our part-time employees”. 

With this taste for leadership, it was only a matter of time until Taff entered the larger workforce. However, her early positions were not up to her standards. Taff found herself enmeshed in a political corporate culture, where information was used as gambling chips by the employees. 

Hoping, Taff suspects, to get a nugget of information from her, a male colleague approached Taff and shared his salary, which far out-measured her own. 

Taff is clear about her philosophy. She wants to live lavishly and make plenty of money. She’s willing to work hard for that extra quality of life. If she’s not being paid proportionally to her work, that’s an unacceptable situation. When her employer’s wouldn’t budge, she left her position and moved on to entrepreneurship.

Running her own business, Taff uses the intuition and grit she learned entering work as a child. She’s on her path, ever resolute. Taff is now on her third store, after the failure of two others. She hopes that this venture will stick. But if it doesn’t, that’s more experience. Failure is practice. 

Taff’s business is personal. As an owner, she manages a GNC store, inspired to work in the health industry by her high school health revolution. After learning about nutritional sciences during a job at GNC, Taff found success in consistent exercise and weight loss. By working with GNC again, she hopes to replicate that experience for someone else. 

Personal, existential, and institutional problems are always enmeshed. Aalia and Taff move to speaking about the “When are you going to have kids?” problem. Taff reflects on her parents’ initial pressures for her to marry. Settling for something less, though, just because it’s easy and immediate isn’t in Taff’s playbook. They stopped bothering her about it, Taff says, when she told her mother “Mom, I became the man you always wanted me to marry”. 

Taff is someone who desires and pursues more. The inequality of the wage gap and the discrimination that women face in the workplace hang heavy over those goals. Check out the full episode to hear Taff tell her own story, as well as some candid conversation on the wage gap!

Tune in below to the full episode to hear more about Taff Zangana and the candid discussion that stays UNSUGARCOATED!

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To learn more about Taff Zangana and GNC, check out GNC’s business instagram: @GNC_irvine and visit her twitter: @taffytaff

For more information on Unsugarcoated Media or your award-winning host, go to www.UnsugarcoatedMedia.com and stay connected with Aalia on IG: @aalia_unsugarcoated