76: Discover how to become unstoppable with Tracy Timm, Founder of the Nth Degree.

Welcome to the Mutually Amazing Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, with the Centre for Respect. The episode you're about to listen to was recorded when this show used to be called the Respect Podcast. So, you might hear that mentioned during this episode. Well, let's get to the show. This episode, we have Tracie Timm, who's a career coach, human capital advisor, With her psychology degree from Yale. Her proven program, The Nth Degree Academy, helps high-potential professionals drive their career sweet spot and helps people come alive at work once again. Thank you so much, Traci, for joining us.

Oh gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm just absolutely excited to be here.

Well, we're thrilled to have you here. Can you give us a little background? What's your story? What brought you to this place of helping people become unstoppable?

Oh my gosh, yes. You know, my story is the exact reason that I do what I do, as is the case for a lot of people who eventually start businesses, right? That they had a problem, didn't know how to solve it, figured out a way to do it, and then realized, hey, I might not be the only one that has this issue, and maybe I can actually serve people with the thing that I use to serve myself. So my story really starts with my childhood. I don't want to go back too, too far, but just to say that Like many of us, I'm currently 31, about to turn 32 in October. So like many people my age, I was a box checker. I was a black belt box checker kid. Like I did everything I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it, thinking that, you know, that was gonna get me approval as a performer, but also to the next best step. So it was always check the box, next step, check the box, next step. And so that's what drove me through high school. It's what got me into Yale playing sports.

I played softball.

And it's what drove me through that whole collegiate process as well. But Mike, as you know all too well, probably, you know, more than many, you, you kind of run out of boxes to check after college. You know, there's this big wide world of it could be anything and you could do anything. And that terrified me. And even though I had amazing parents who were super involved and I was an only child, Weirdly enough, I had never thought about the answer to that question. I had never thought like, what am I gonna do after the boxes are all gone? You know, what am I gonna do professionally? And I had studied psychology, which I loved, but I didn't wanna be a therapist. And so I was fortunate in that Yale recruits heavily. Like there are a ton of companies that come and recruit, but I was unfortunate in that I did not have a whole lot of guidance around what would fit me really well. So the reason that I'm a career strategist and a career clarity expert now is because I royally screwed it up. And my, you know, my first job out of college was on Wall Street. And I worked on a trading floor in sales and trading for 2 and a half years and, you know, left that experience a shell of myself, a shell of myself for many reasons, but mostly because I was playing someone else's game and living someone else's life, pursuing someone else's definition of success. So now, you know, my driving spirit is to bring people alive at work and to do that by helping them see how they've set themselves up for failure, whatever that means for them, right? It could be personality-wise, it could be not playing to your strengths, it could be not leveraging your past. And finally finding work that takes advantage of their individual genius zones that feels like a niche that fits them like a glove so that they can be successful doing something they love instead of Successful, you know, despite themselves. So, there's way more we could go into, but I wanna keep it nice and brief 'cause I know that we don't have too much time together, but that's really the impetus for everything that I do.

So, a lot of people never even leave the track, right? The hamster race, as they say, the hamster wheel. So, why do you think that? 'Cause you can't even get to the next place without getting off that hamster wheel that people refer to. Why, what do you think is the biggest obstacle for people getting off that hamster wheel to even have that exploration?

Yeah, it's such a good question. And so in my work, I call it your career conveyor belt. Because, you know, for most of us, especially let's say you're going to do finance, you're going to do consulting, you're going to go work for a Fortune whatever hundred, right? Like, there's a very clear career path there. And there's something to be said about the comfort that comes with clarity. I think the number one reason, and I think you'll probably agree with me, that people don't leave jobs they hate is fear. And the number one reason they have fear is because they don't know what's out there or what they would do instead, which means the number one reason that people are staying in jobs that are not serving them and allow— and not allowing them to be of service is because they don't have clarity. Because without clarity, you can't have confidence, and without confidence, you can't really overcome, you know, build up the courage to overcome your fear of the unknown or your fear of failure, fear of looking a certain way to the people that you, you know, the people whose opinions you value. It's— it is almost always and only fear. And that fear in my experience is almost always only driven by a lack of clarity.

All right. And you have a 5-step career clarity strategy, which is referred to as the Nth Degree. So—

Look at what we did there.

Yes, exactly. So what are the 5 steps? What do people do to start to create that clarity?

Yes, this is my life's work and I love it. And it took 3 years to come up with this methodology, Mike. So I want people to know that this was— I didn't stumble on this. I didn't, you know, just sort of pull it out of nowhere. I did career one-on-one career coaching and working with companies using behavioral assessments to hire better while I was creating this. And so the 5 steps to go from stuck to unstoppable, to really feel like you go from confusion to clarity, they're called— and I'm also a big nerd, so they all start with the letter N. They're called Now, Nature, Nurture, Network, and Navigate. And if you can follow those 5 steps in that order, you are guaranteed— I have not seen this not work— you're guaranteed to not only discover what your niche is, but network to leapfrog your way there and navigate in advance to know that what you're actually committing to is something that you're actually going to love doing. So the now phase is really figuring out where are you now. I'm a big proponent of Basing your, your life and career search in reality. I don't want to create an army of starving artists. I don't think that that helps anybody. So it's getting really clear on your life and your circumstances. I mean, what do you, what do you have to pay for? What are your responsibilities? Do you have to take care of anybody? Do you have a dog? Do you rent or do you have a home? You know, just the basics of your life and getting really clear on what those things are. But not allowing your circumstances to dictate what you do with your life. Meaning, you know, I just got finished reading The One Thing by Gary Keller, and he has a great line in there where he talks about, you know, there are people who let their circumstances speak for them, and then there are people who say, I know what my circumstances are, and I'm gonna go for this mindfully and not let those circumstances dictate my choices. So part of that is creating your set of core values. You have to start with knowing what you care about. And in order to change your life, right, in order to actually have positive change in your life, you have to commit to those values. You have to figure out what you're gonna say yes to and what you're gonna say no to based off of those core values. So that's where we start with everybody is now. The next 2 phases, nature and nurture, are exactly what they sound like. Nature is getting really clear on what your natural gifts and talents are, as well as your behaviors and your personality. And nurture is learning to leverage your previous experience so that you don't feel like you're starting from scratch when you want to do something new with your career. And the culmination of those 3 things is your, your professional niche is what I call it. It's kind of your genius zone, your, your sandbox, right? It's where you play the best. And then after that, we want to go from internal to external. This is great to know, but if nobody else knows, it's not going to be very easy for you to find the work that you really want to do. So the last 2 steps in the process are network and navigate. Network, we focus really heavily on building and leveraging a group of dedicated career advocates, right, Mike? Like, you and I know that we have to leverage our people, our network. Like, other people need to be going to bat for us consistently so that we're not the only one, you know, banging our drum. And then the navigational strategies are really there to almost take like a design thinking approach to your career. So, you know, try and iterate, try and iterate, prototype, you know, to make sure that You know, if you're going to take a full-time job, that it's not an experiment, that you've already figured out that you're going to love doing that job, working in that environment, being with those people, et cetera. So the goal really is to take people who, like I said, are lost, stuck, confused for whatever reason, and give them the niche, the network, and the navigational strategies to feel and be unstoppable in a career that they love.

So the one that I think people get really stuck on after they get the clarity is the navigate. So we can talk a little bit more about that. That's— you have the network. I got, I got that clearly, right? Using those, which in our line of work in speaking is so important, uh, working with other speakers to help. So where's the navigate? I want to back up on that one a little bit.

Yeah, this is a really cool thing that I learned. So, um, after I quit my Wall Street job, I actually went on a Semester at Sea, um, which some of your listeners may be familiar with. I wasn't at the time. Uh, it's an undergraduate study abroad program. So instead of living in one place for like 4 to 6 months, these undergrads will live on a ship and actually sail around the world together. And I did that at the ripe old age of 25. So I was like mama bear, you know, with all these 19 and 20-year-olds asking me what the real world was like. But, you know, at that point I was traumatized. Poor guys. I feel terribly for them thinking back on it. But I had a really cool opportunity on that trip to work with a guy named George Kemble, who is the founder and director of the, the d.school at Stanford. So he takes design thinking. And if you're in any of the schools or even in the graduate schools at Stanford, you can elect to take a course within the d.school where you actually learn how to apply the design thinking approach to whatever discipline it is that you're studying. And I loved that idea. I just remember thinking, you know, this could be so useful in so so many different capacities, because a design thinking approach is exactly sort of how we go about our careers. First step in design thinking is empathy. So it's exactly what we all start to do. It's like, what do I like? What am I interested in? What do I wanna do? And then the second step is define. So what's the real problem here? What do I wanna do with my career? What do I think I wanna do? And then the third step is to ideate. So what are all the options that fall under that definition? And the best part about this process are the next 2 stages where And this is what we skip, Mike. And this is where I think most people get tripped up, because if you skip the next part and the following part, and you go directly into solution, so from idea to solution, that's when people end up getting into jobs where they're like, holy crap, I hate this by like day 3, right?

Right.

And so instead of just jumping from problem to solution, like I need a job, here's a job. The idea is that we prototype And we test and we prototype and test, prototype and test, prototype and test until we've narrowed in on the perfect job for us, our narrow vision that allows us to get exactly where we want to go, not just close. And so a prototype in this scenario could be anything that gives you more information about the job that you would be taking full-time. So my favorite tests really are I love conversations, informational interviews, like actually talking to a person who works wherever you think you'd wanna go work and asking them what their day-to-day is like. What are their frustrations? What are, what do they love about that place? How many people do they interact with on a day-to-day basis? Just getting a sense of it. But even better than that is if you can actually go be there yourself. So that's shadowing, volunteering, doing some free work, even like secret shopping the place that you wanna go work is kind of fun and creative. So just walking in and seeing the receptionist treats you, or walking in and seeing what the layout looks like. All of those, I mean, you and I both, right? Like, I've been in working environments where if I had gone there at least once beforehand, I would have said, oh my God, I can't come in here every day. I would go crazy. I can't sit behind those 4 computer screens for 12 hours a day. That's not going to be fun. And that was my Wall Street experience. So the prototyping and the testing phase is really there for us to test our assumptions and to hopefully dodge bullets, but then also to learn more about the environment that we're looking for so that when we finally do make a commitment, like I'm going to start a business or I'm going to say yes to this job offer, that we can feel really good about that decision and that we can, you know, have hopefully guarded against any pitfalls or things like that.

And you have a program that helps work within this system, right? The Platinum Lovers of Loyalty.

Yes.

And that, that's regarding retention, right? Once somebody's in your organization. Yeah. Yeah.

So we, um, you know, our sort of business, um, services focus on 2 very distinct tracks. One is serving the individual directly. And we do that through all of our Nth Degree career clarity resources. And we have a foundational program that gives you your niche, um, and, and gives you those networking and navigational strategies and sets you up for success. What you're talking about is the side of the business that works directly with organizations. Whether those are companies or associations or any type of organization, helping them. The Platinum Levers of Loyalty was driven from this idea that we need to move from the Golden Rule, which was how do you want to be treated, to the Platinum Rule, which is thinking about how others want to be treated. In order to do that, we really have to put ourselves in their shoes and go through a process like this to deeply understand what our own motivators are so that we can deeply empathize with somebody else's. And, and, you know, you're seeing a lot of shift in, in the professional world right now of companies who are increasing their engagement and retention, not because they have the best salary packages or the best benefits, or, you know, they serve free meals every day, but because people come to work with intention. The business has identified why these people exist, what their passions are, why they come to work, and they've aligned those things with business objectives. And that's really what the Platinum Levers of Loyalty is speaking to.

So when somebody wants to put those into place, you also want the right people for it to work with, right? You don't want to bring the wrong people in. So how do people attract the top talent to their organization?

Yeah, this is a question I get a lot and I love it because, um, the traditional methods of attraction I think are, they're leaning on what I think are becoming more and more outdated understandings of what motivates an employee. Meaning our parents and our parents' parents, and, and to some extent, a lot of us, right, still see the world as like carrot and stick. You know, if I incentivize somebody to come in by throwing a lot of money at them, or by penalizing them when they don't do things right, then they're going to toe the line, they're going to stay, they're going to be interested in working here, right? And what's interesting is that dollars for hours in so many ways, in so many people's eyes, as employees or as workers isn't a fair trade anymore. It's not one-to-one. It's if I come to work, yes, I want the dollars, but I want something more out of it. I want meaning or I want purpose, or I at least want to see how the 10 or 12 hours I spend here, which is what a lot of people are doing these days, right, impacts the bottom line or makes our customers' lives better or makes the CEO's life a little easier or whatever. But they, they just want to see how what they do every day has an impact in some way. So I think companies that are really going out of their way to show how their work is impacting people's lives, how they support their employees and see them as people, not just numbers, or not just lines on a spreadsheet, or worst of all, cost centers, right? Companies that are really speaking to the human being who comes to work every day are the most attractive places. to work. And if somebody is coming into your organization and they can't see, A, how their efforts are going to be impactful, and B, how they are going to personally benefit, meaning where am I going to go from here? How is this going to add to my career? Is there a growth opportunity here? Then they're not interested. They're not interested in just, oh, but it's going to look good on my resume, so I'll suck it up here for 5 years. Or, oh, but this is really, really safe and secure, and so I'm just going to stay here my entire career. A lot of our parents did that, and a lot of us do that because we're afraid and, and don't have the clarity that we need to make really strong changes in our lives. But, but yeah, the companies that are getting that right are the ones where the top talent is interested in working.

So let's say you're— you've found the company you want to work for, you get the dream job. How do you thrive being you in that other organization's culture?

Ooh, I love this. So I recently put together a big seminar for a large construction company here in Dallas, and what it was focused on was getting through to their young professional employees about how to advocate for themselves professionally. So I think first and foremost, you need to know where you add and how you add value, meaning what do you bring to the table that nobody else has, or that nobody else does as well as you do, or that nobody else has even thought of? And a large part of that is knowing your niche, right? If I go into an organization and I know what, what I stand for, and what my core values are, and what I care about, and I know how that overlaps with what I'm naturally gifted at, and all the skills and talents and expertise that I've gained over time, right, nature and nurture, I'm a massive value-add asset. I'm no longer just a commodity. I'm no longer just a line item. I know exactly how I can impact this organization in a positive way so that it gets more, better outcomes. So in order to speak to that, A, you need to know what that thing is, but then B, you need to understand that the real world— and maybe this goes without saying, but it certainly doesn't for everybody— the real world does not function like school. You don't just graduate from one year and go on to the next and graduate and go on to the next. There is no necessary linear path to your career. And just doing good work is not enough. People need to see you doing good work and know that it's you doing the work, right? Like, you have to advocate for yourself. So if you're not advocating for more time with your boss, for new projects, for challenges, for an opportunity, If you're not going to bat for yourself on a consistent basis, you're going to get lost in the shuffle.

Yeah. Speaking of getting lost in the shuffle, one thing that you've talked about in the past is finding a new identity when the thing that gave us our first identity is gone or lost, or we've aged out of it. Pro athletes deal with this. College athletes deal with this. You've dealt with this. People who retire deal with this. You— here you were, this high-level softball player, and suddenly No more softball. So, as far as not at that level, that doesn't mean you can't keep playing softball, but that identity of that level. So, how does someone deal with that? You see it a lot in the sports world with people really struggling. Even depression can kick in.

I know. And you know what, I've lived this multiple times in my life and in my career. Um, the softball thing was just the first, you know, it was, it was quitting the thing that I had literally held as my core identity from the time I was 8, because it's how other people defined me. oh, that's Tracy, the softball player, right? So then 2 years into college, when I quit softball because I didn't enjoy it anymore, I didn't know who I was from like a, like a pretty foundational perspective. And then the same thing happened, you know, you kind of get attached to your identity as a person on Wall Street. And even though I didn't like it, it sounds good. You know, it sounds impressive-ish to most people. And when I quit that, it was like, Who am I now? I'm unemployed. Like, I can't tell people that. There's— I think the, the perhaps the only way that we can let go of those externally based definitions of ourselves is to stop caring so much what other people think. And it's not— that's easier said than done. I still every day struggle with that every day. So anybody who says they've mastered it is maybe Buddha. And that's, that's about it. It's once you realize that the majority of your unhappiness and lack of joy comes from comparing yourself to somebody else. And you have a sense of foundational belief in your own worth as a human, you'll always attach your identity and worth to something else, right? It'll always be the flavor of the month. And for me, that's a, that's a lifelong pursuit to be unattached to other people's expectations and definitions and to believe from just my core that I am worthy and deserving and And that my identity and my self-worth don't have to be tied up in anything external. They're there simply because I'm a human being and I'm worthy and deserving. Um, but it's hard. It's really hard to live it every single day.

Well, that's a great moment for us to end on because that is a journey for all of us that's ongoing. And I think it's an important reminder for everybody. You have a book you really like, uh, called If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules by Dr. Cheri or Cheri Carter Scott. What do you love about that book?

Oh my gosh. I'm so glad you brought this up because I actually, up until very recently, I would keep a physical copy of that book like on my person at all times and just refer back to it whenever necessary. So she actually is the original author from the very first, what was it, Chicken Soup for the Soul. In that very first edition of that book, there's just a list of 10 rules. And if life is a game, these are the rules, right? And it says by anonymous. And Jack Canfield finally figured out that it was Dr. Sherry Carter Scott who wrote these and said, can I please put your name on there? I had no idea this was you. And she said, sure. And then she said apparently that she had had this epiphany and that she needed to write a book about the rules. And so what she does is break— and rule number 1 is you will be given a body. Like some of it is that simple. But rule number 10 is you will forget all of this at birth. And it goes through every sort of evolution, something like, I think one of the rules is if as soon as you get there, there's another there, or that everybody is really only just a mirror of you. And so each of the rules she talks about teaches you fundamental virtues of life. So like having a body, one of the very first virtues that teaches you is acceptance. Because like, you only get the one body. So you either accept it or you don't.

Absolutely.

Right? So many of us don't accept it. And if you don't even have that base virtue, if you will, or value, it's really hard to ascend to the next ones. It's sort of some, in some cases, like Maslow's hierarchy, right? So what I love about that book is that her virtues are timeless, that it ends, it begins in acceptance and it ends with limitlessness. And if you can go from the A to Z through this book, and it's tiny, it's a coffee table book, it takes maybe an hour to read the whole thing. But it's so timeless and so beautifully written, and she is so gifted at articulating things that you've felt before but had no words for. Um, so I just, I love it. I can't speak highly enough of it, and I would love to meet her one day.

That's cool. Now, yeah, I want to make sure everybody can find you because you created a special website just for our listeners, which is Tracy Timm. Now, Timm is 2 M's for everybody out there. T-R-A-C-Y-T-I-M-M. CYTIMM.com/respect, where you have some free downloads and everything for them. So thank you for that. And we'll have that in the show notes for all of our listeners to be able to find you. So that's super cool. So thank you for that.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And everything that we've talked about here, um, a link to maybe get the book if you want, um, more information on The Nth Degree, even a chance if you'd like, uh, to book a clarity call. Perhaps you're one of these people that's like, I wish I was more respected in my job. I would love to, love to come to work every day. You know, if you want to learn more about our pro— our programs and our services and see if we're a good fit to work together, please hop on a free call with me. That's, that's what those are for. So there'll be a link to all of those resources, um, on that web— on that webpage.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tracy.

Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for the work that you do and helping people, um, and really touching them where, where they're living right now. I'm, I'm just thankful to be here and honored for the platform.

Well, I appreciate that. That means a lot. And for our listeners, you know what's next. That is question This week's question is, Mike, what is a recent way you've been treated with disrespect? Well, in my line of work, this literally can happen every day, as it can happen in a lot of people's line of work in an everyday experience. For me, the person who you see rolling their eyes and not even giving a chance for your thoughts or ideas to be heard or considered, well, that's a form of being dismissive or degrading of someone's beliefs, intelligence, It can be an air of superiority that can happen in my line of work all the time. People who are participants or attendees, even if it's just 1 out of 1,000, you maybe they're in the front row, you see it happen. And so, it's understanding in those moments whether they're going to respect my thought in that process or not does not mean that my value, my thought, who I am in this world is dependent on how they respect me because I'm going to treat myself with respect. And I actually want to inquire with them in those moments to see where they're coming from, that they have this attitude or this approach where they're dismissing or being degrading in that moment. I want to see where they're coming from because I want to better understand them. If the more I can treat them with respect, the more I can learn about them and the more I might be able to even overcome a potential barrier out there. That's stopping them from being able to hear the message or the potential lesson. And that all starts with respect at all times. We'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas. And the best place to leave those with us is on our Facebook page at facebook.com/MutuallyAmazingPodcast. Of course, you can always contact us on our website at mutuallyamazingpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe to this show so you automatically get it every week. And if you could take one moment to leave a review, that really helps other people find the show, which we are greatly appreciative of. So thank you so much for joining us. May you make today and every day a life full of mutually amazing relationships.