Growing And Connecting with Tracy Hazzard from Expect Miracles with Dr. Kevin Pecca

My name is Dr. Kevin Peka. I wanted to make a podcast that exposes people to the true miracles of life and health. All the guests on this show have been specially picked because they bring something positive to the world. They have some of the most amazing and inspiring life stories. These people have a passion for living, healing and leaving the world better than they found. There is something inside these people that made them keep fighting through all the tough times. Even when people told them it was not possible, they carried on and made their lives beautiful again. And now they are sharing their experiences with the world. This is the Expect Miracles podcast. Enjoy the show.

Today on the Expect Miracles podcast, we have Tracy Hazard. Tracy is an expert in growing small businesses and helping them reach their maximum potential. She is known as the product fixer at, has designs and is responsible for over 250 retail products that you see on the shelf every day. Tracy Co hosts two podcasts available on iTunes, the WTFF 3D Printing Podcast and the Daily 3D Start Point for entrepreneurs, designers and educators to scale the learning curve on the next industrial revolution. Tracy is also an expert in networking and connecting people. She is an amazing person and it's always a great time sitting down and having a conversation with her. Please welcome Tracy Hazard. Tracy, how are you today?

I'm good, I'm good. Excited to talk to you. It's been too long.

It's been a very long time. Yeah. And I'm just so thankful to have found you guys because you guys make this podcast happen and it is one of the best things I've ever done. And you guys do such a great job with not only putting the podcast together, but putting me in connection with people. It's been absolutely amazing. So thank you so much.

Oh, you're very welcome. We love to help grow other people's businesses. It's kind of our thing. I mean, whether you guys do a great job, whether it's products or podcasts, we're happy to do both.

Absolutely. So, Traci, where are you from originally?

So I'm actually from sort of your neck of the woods, from the East Coast. I'm born in Connecticut.

Okay.

Yeah. But, you know, I've spent most of my life living in other places around. Around the world, actually.

Really?

All over the place. Yeah.

Did you ever live outside the States?

I did. I lived in South Africa for two years at the height of apartheid in the late 70s.

How was that?

So, you know, I was a child, so I was nine years old, you know, eight. Nine years old. So pretty different. But What I always say to people is, like, it was a sneak peek at what it might have been like to grow up in the 60s.

Oh, yeah.

Because I didn't have that view. But there was so much hostility and so much going on at that time, and. And so much revolution. And there were literal bombings happening. I mean, it was quite volatile, and my parents got us out of there as quickly as they could. My dad was on an assignment. But it was also such a beautiful country with such amazing people.

It looks beautiful.

Yeah. And so to me, that was eye opening, and it gave me a different worldview than most people, and I've appreciated that throughout my life.

Yeah. So, Traci, what were you into growing up as a kid?

So I honestly thought that I would be the first female president of the United States. Yeah. Pretty quickly decided that that was not for me.

Still a possibility.

Yeah, I don't think so. You know what. What I found out really quickly is that I actually. It sounds like a really crazy thing to say, but I don't care what other people think of me.

Yeah.

And I think when you're in politics, like, you kind of have to care.

Except if you're Trump. Yeah, maybe.

But I think I learned quickly, like, yeah, I wasn't gonna care. I still felt, yeah, I was gon who I was going to be. And so that's when I decided school politics wasn't for me. Maybe real politics wasn't for me. So that was early on, one of those things. But I always thought I wanted to be a writer.

Really?

Yeah, I did. I always thought I wanted to write a book and be a writer and the whole things. And the one thing that I still have yet to do is publish my book.

I write a column.

But I see you liked writing growing up. And so you and your husband Tom have started so many companies and just helped so many other companies start out. Where do you think that passion comes from?

It was really Tom from the first thing. I mean, for the first time I met him, he always felt like he was, as he has put it, genetically unemployable. And I never thought of myself like that. I just. I mean, I was like, I didn't really know any entrepreneurs. I didn't grow up like that. I grew up with people. My dad worked for an oil and gas company, you know, there. So I had always thought, oh, my path is a corporate path. But, you know, quickly what I realized is that there is a certain amount of freedom to being able to create and do what you need to do. And so I was great at that creative part. That's why I went to art school. That's why all of that came out for me. And the creative process was it. But getting stuff to market, then when you have organization and you have structure and you have divisions, and it was just so frustrating to me be in control of something that I liked. And so that's kind of what attracted me to it. So when Tom came with one of the very first inventions back in the late. Which was what it was a stylus pen for handheld computers for Palm Pilots.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And so when he came up with that one, which was my idea, like, I didn't want to have a stylus and a pen, but he invented it. So this is kind of our ongoing thing is like. I'm like, this is a problem. Figure out a solution.

And he figures out a solution, figure out Tom.

Yeah, it's brilliant. And then I go, you know what? We need to have a company that makes that. And so that's kind of how these things have started for us. It's like, that's pretty brilliant. We need to do that. And. But being in control and starting that company was really amazing for me. And at the same time, it taught me what I didn't love. And so you kind of got both sides of it because it's really hard to start a business in a company.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Especially at that time. I mean, I was in my late 20s, so it was not, you know. Yeah, not a lot of experience to draw on.

Absolutely. And it was both your first companies you guys started, right?

For Tom, it was his second, but his first was a consulting firm, so a little bit different. There was no product sales, so for Tom, it was his second.

So a lot of learning on the fly then.

Yeah, really A lot of it. Managing people, having employees. That's for what, for me became the most stressful and hardest to do because you start to think of them as family. And I felt so, you know, it is a burden. They're also wonderful, but they are a burden at the end of the day. And every time you go to write out all those payroll checks, it was just like, wow, am I going to have enough business tomorrow? And when we were doing this, there was lots of volatile things happen to us. 911 happened. We got in a patent infringement lawsuit with the largest industrial design firm in the world, ideo.

Wow.

And Palm Computing. Right. So here we are. It's like, do we even have a business? At the end of the day?

That must have been frightening.

It was scary. It was one of those things where I always say that I went home after I found out that they were infringing on us and cried for like 12 hours and then said, what else are we gonna do? And you get up and you put on your big girl pants and you go figure out what you're gonn.

Right. Yeah.

And what we did was really crazy, actually. So this story, what really happened, has become a case study in a course on IP intellectual property and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business Review.

Wow. So what happened here?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's crazy, but it's taught in 26 countries around the world. And every so often I get a LinkedIn message from someone saying, I learned all about your company. I'm like, which company? And they're like, oh, the one from the 90s. It was called T Tools. And I was like, oh, okay. But they teach the course in a really interesting way. So they teach what happened to us that we got infringed upon by this large industrial design firm. They made a stylus pen that looked almost exactly like ours. It had our patented feature, and it came out in the catalog distributing the Palm Pilot because, gosh, you guys had.

It first, and they made a pretty much exact replica. And then they tried to sue you.

No, we sued them. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So they infringed upon us, but here they are in the catalog. So they've got Prime Position, which we were never able to obtain. And we understood now why we were never able to obtain it because they knew this invention was happening. But we'd come to market first. We knew that. But back then, it wasn't first to file, it was first to invent. So your conception date mattered back then. The rules of the patent infringement and all that has changed. So we didn't know, like, were we going to win?

Did you guys have that date before them?

We believed we did.

But, yeah, it's got to be tough to prove. Right?

Right. The courts have to decide. Right. And so you disclose your dates in. And someone says, okay, yes, that's true. They were first. And, you know, this kind of thing, now they file interferences in the Patent and Trademark Office. It's a nasty mess. It's actually worse now than it was back then. So anyway, so we get into this whole process, and this is what happens. And this is the first stage that sort of sets the playing field. And then it ends with me crying, basically. And now what do you do? Right. And so then the second part is what we did do, which is gather together all of our investors and we had 13 angel investors and we had a PR independent agent, we had a lawyer that was a friend of ours and we had a patent lawyer. And so we had a couple of them. We all gathered in a room with our top employees and we said, what are we going to do? And at that time we had $5,000 of cash flow because we had just moved into a brand new office. And so we had just spent all this money renovating and doing all this. So we were kind of tapped out on cash. And so we said, well, for $5,000 we can do a little press and we can file the lawsuit, but we can't take it to court. We have no money to do any of that. We could do the filing and that's it. So that's what we did at the end of the day. So what happens is that when they teach the course, that's at the point where they say, okay, now what would you do?

Yeah.

And so they understand we have $5,000 and you know, what would you do? And 95% of the people, when you go into the third phase where they give their report and they say what they would do, 95% don't do what we did. And keep in mind, this is pre social media, guys. So the costs were a whole lot higher to do everything that we did. And so what we did was we put on our website our conception date of our patent. We put a whole timeline of every time we had met with people along the way at Palm Computing. We put a header up at the top that was like a gif, right? And it said, do we detect a bit of pen envy? And it was their pen and our pen and they were going, stylus pen, stylus pen kind of thing. And so it went viral, but without social media it did, because there was this community around it that were called third party developers. People were making cases and software and things for the Palm Pilot. And it was the first time that they existed. Nowadays we consider them all app developers, right? Like they're everywhere. But back then they were new and they were worried that if Palm Computing was going to infringe upon, they're going to do a hard good. Imagine how easy to steal a piece of code, right? A whole lot cheaper and easier. Yeah, they were afraid and so they started sharing our message and like everyone was sharing the website. Our website crashed a few times. Like it was that.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. And we got picked up by San Jose Mercury News and Fortune Small Business. And so they wrote up this sort of David Versus Goliath. Articles that just were amazing covers, amazing stories. And then it hit home because Palm Computing was about to go public, and so they were trying to become a public company, and they didn't want the publicity, the bad publicity. And so they made IDEO settle because there was a indemnification clause in their contract with ideo. And we couldn't have known that. Like, that was just like a gift. We were lucky. Right. And so, in a sense, we got very lucky, but it forced a settlement and came away with our patent in hand and our business still intact. But it was never quite the same, though, because you taps out your energy and it.

Oh, yeah, definitely. So after that was over, what happens after that?

Well, unfortunately, right after that, that's when 911 happened. But we had already been diversifying our business, so we were lucky. We learned very early on, I think we made some really smart choices in our entrepreneurship venture. First off, we didn't think of ourselves as entrepreneurs. We thought of ourselves as business owners. And I think that that mindset made a little bit of a shift. It didn't feel as risky. Right. It felt more we were building something established. So the dot com bubble bursts and 911 happens. But we had managed to diversify our business and stabilize some things. But at the end of the day, what we did was by having done that patent infringement suit and having established and created that core value, we were able to take that intellectual property and sell it off.

Oh, absolutely.

License that and sell it. And so at the end of the day, our company had value. Even if we didn't have sales, our product had value. And that's where we've taken that through and translated that into everything we do for our clients and what we've done in our own businesses.

Well, that bad thing that happened to you guys was almost like a huge free marketing thing that worked out in your favor. Yeah. So it took a little spin on it, and that's amazing.

Yeah.

So, Tracy, a lot of people are starting new businesses and branding and patents, and what do you think it takes to get the idea from your head down onto paper and just to start making it happen? What's that process like?

So I want you guys to make less products. I want you to make less things. I want you to find out if your thing matters to a community.

Thing like. Thing.

Yeah, idea, whatever it is. Right. Okay. So today's world, here I am a person who's designed hundreds of products. Right. But what matters more is if the product will sell, if the idea will sell, if People will show up to your business, if they'll show up to your events, it doesn't matter whether you're building a personal coaching business brand, you're building a practice like yours, chiropractic practice. If people don't show up and don't come in the door. Right. You don't have a business.

Right.

So we have to make sure that people want to transact with us. And then does that idea, what differentiates us have value?

Mm. So I guess a good question is how do you add value to your product?

Well, and that's the thing, is we can't add value. We invent this, we have this, but we have to test whether or not it has perceived value. So does the market think it has value? It doesn't matter what I think about it. I of course, believe in my idea. I can tell you I've met thousands of inventors who thinks they have the next best thing on earth, Right?

Absolutely. Yeah.

And they make no money. So my statistics are scare people. 7 out of 10 consumer products fail.

Wow.

14 out of 15 fail on home Shopping Network.

That's really scary statistics. And less than 2% of patents make their inventors any money. And keep in mind that companies like Apple are still built into that statistic. So less than 2% includes Apple, who's made a trillion dollars. Right.

So those are some pretty frightening statistics if you are trying to start a new brand or anything like that.

Right, right. It is. So business fails. There's like 70, 80% business failures in the first three years. And like, those numbers are all there. And what I have found over time, and I've done a study of the market because I write a column, so I'm constantly studying the stats and the data. And what I learned was that it is product market fit. So idea market fit. What you're selling, it doesn't matter what that is. It doesn't have to be a physical pen. It can be your services. Right. That's the product. But product market fit accounts for 56% of failure. It's not lack of funds, bad team. It's not all those typical things we think about. It's that we're trying to sell the wrong thing to the right market. So we may have a great market, but we're selling them the wrong thing. They don't want.

Right.

Have it doesn't. It's not valuable to them. Or we have the right thing, but we don't know who that market is, how to find them, or it's too expensive to teach them. And so that fit is the biggest problem. So if we can get our market.

Right, do you have an example of a couple of those where it's like the right product, wrong market, and stuff like that?

Yeah, you know, I mean, there's tons of them over the years. But I think that what it really is is thinking about it this way. If you already know who your market is, if you know that you attract on this podcast people who expect miracles, people who want better health and wellness and want to believe that these things can happen in their life. Right.

I see what you're saying.

Okay, what would you make for them? What would they want in their lives? That's a whole lot easier to do than it is to say, wow, I have this amazing pen and I'm just going to sell it to this group.

Right.

It's not going to track. And that's really where it gets to. It's not that the products aren't amazing. It's not that they were a mess. They were. It's just that there was a mismatch here, and it costs too much money or takes too much time, and then somebody else comes into the marketplace with something better. Fit spends more money. So we see that a lot nowadays. And it's not just in products, it's in services all the time.

Yeah. So how do you find the niche of what you're trying to market and how do you put it there and everything like that?

So that's the new branding game, if you want to call it that. Right. The new branding game is to start to have an ability to have direct conversations. So can I build a community where I can talk to them and. Or can I tap into a community that's already known? That's why we have a huge group of people selling on Amazon and ebay and places like that. Right. Because those shoppers already exist. We don't have to attract shoppers. They're already there. They're buying stuff. So now all we have to do is get their attention for our thing because they're there to shop. Right. So a little less work. Right. And so we don't have to attract everyone completely. And that's really where entrepreneurs fail so often, I think, in that they build everything. Instead of, let's test out here on Amazon, on ebay or on YouTube or on iTunes. Right. It doesn't matter. Let me test where audience already exists and see if people want to listen to me, want to hear what I have to say. That's track one. Now that I have a group that wants to hear what I have to say right now. Let me understand more about them. Why do they like me? What do they think? What value do I add to them? And then how can I invent and intentionally invent or design something or find a right product or find a right service to help give them even more of what they want, what they already like? That's a whole lot easier.

Yeah. Do you think it takes a little bit to find your audience and because I think it's important, a lot of doors can close for you right away and you're just getting started and that could be very discouraging. But if you just keep cranking out the content, if it's a podcast or something, I mean, I don't think anybody was listening in the beginning when I started doing this. But you just keep it going because you like doing it and eventually you find that market.

Yeah. I mean, I think there should always be a good purpose for what you're doing. So even if the purpose is not a clear return on investment in terms of like, I'm going to get this many patients out of this podcast. Right. Even if it's not that clear, it is a clear business builder. It's adding value to your website. So there's got to be some clear value for you to spend your hard earned time. Right. You're busy. Right. So that's what I have to say is, you know, we have a line, we have to meet a minimum entry fee. Right. To business world today, we have to be on Facebook, we have to be on Twitter, we have to be in these places.

Right, Right.

And we got to give it the best content possible. That is the best us.

Yeah.

And where we can be ourselves. And if we can find a method by which we do that, whether it's podcasting, doing videos, writing blogs, it doesn't really matter nowadays, as long as it's authentically you. I recommend all formats, of course, because they give you ultimate power. But doing that where you can have your voice be heard by the people who want to hear it is really the valuable connection. Because once you find those people, you're like, they want this from you, they want that from you.

Right.

I didn't realize early on that I thought, oh, I'm a designer. I design products for people. I can build podcasts for people. I'm a how to girl. That's what I think. I know the how to do anything.

Yeah.

But I didn't realize people just wanted my straight advice. And I was like, it took me a year of people saying, will you coach me or will you mentor me a while? I was going, I don't do that. That's not my business. I'm not a life coach. I'm not a business coach. I'm not that for that me to go. Yeah, sure. Here's my link. And you can pay $500 a month to have an hour with me. Like, it was like, why wasn't I doing that before? Because y definitely that's what they wanted from me. And I wasn't giving it to them. And they were asking for it.

Yeah. And Tracy, how important is it to build a team and surround yourself in the proper circle? Because it's very tough to start something by yourself. It's. Well, even if it's your own product. But I think it's very beneficial to start a team and be supported in that way.

Yeah. You know, a team is so critical. A team is so critical to everything that you do. And sometimes it's a service. Right. You're buying a service business or you're buying them to do a done for you system. It can be any one of those things. But what it really needs to be is that giving you the opportunity to be brilliantly you. So whatever it is that has to support that, you're the doctor. Right?

Right.

Weren't in the patient rooms having the direct, helping them, improving them, fixing them. Right. If you can't do that because you're spending time doing insurance paperwork, then delegation.

Yeah.

That's a huge mistake and a huge miss. And running a practice is a lot clearer because lots of people have done it. So you have a clearer path of. You understand, I need someone to handle insurance. I need someone to handle my appointments and my phones and you know, you understand that. But for many of our businesses, we don't understand what our businesses are supposed to look like. So we don't understand what that support team looks like. And that's where we start to fall apart because we aren't following a business model.

Yeah. So like you said, I have a bunch of people I can look at. They've done it for 25 years and I can pick what I like, what they're doing and make it my own. How does somebody that's entering a new field that's really. It's cutting edge. They don't really have that blueprint. I guess it's. You just got to do the best you can. And it's trial and error at that point.

Yeah. You know, I like to go on a been there, done that again and again model. Like I Say this all the time to people, right? You mean just because I'm a digital marketer or something like that, and I'm starting to do Facebook ads and all of those things, and it's a new business, or I'm hiring a new firm and I'm screening them. You know what I want? I want someone who knows advertising. I want someone who knows the mindset of consumers. I want someone who knows how to construct good copy. So thinking about whether or not they've got years of practice or experience, deep experience in some particular area. Back to my pen before. So early on in our business, I learned this lesson the very hard way. Tom and I, we invented these stylus pens. We decided this was really before it was easy to go to Asia to make things. We decided to go down this road in Connecticut to a firm that had been injection molding products and did all kinds of things. They'd never made pens before. And so we thought, well, this is a pen, right? It's a couple plastic bodies. You screw them together. No big deal. They engineered the screw mechanism between the two parts of the pen, and we engineered the style of the pen itself, the outside style of it. So they did the inner mechanism engineering for us, and they created the mold and created the tool. We got, I don't know, a few thousand pieces off of it first. And we started immediately because we had pre sold them immediately, shipping them out to people. Within two weeks, we got people sending us messages. My pen is exploding. And I was like, nightmare, oh, my gosh, we're gonna be out of business before we even started, right? And what was happening was, is that as people were writing, the two pieces of the pen were unscrewing because they were threaded the wrong direction. They were threaded normal way, and you have to counter thread them in order to counteract you writing.

And that's something you guys definitely didn't probably think of, right? How could you.

How could we have known that if we were not company that made pension and we had discounted and said we didn't want to go to someone who was making pens? We just didn't consider them. We just thought, oh, we know these guys. They've done injection molding. That's all they need is plastic. And so this is where I say, you know, you want someone with deep knowledge in your category, especially if you don't have it.

Yeah, definitely. So, Tracy, what are some of the big mistakes you guys made early on that could just that you would almost like, gift or just fast track a couple people? Because I'M sure you made a bunch. You have some very successful products. And I'm sure that wasn't always. You guys definitely didn't hit all home runs, right?

No. I mean, no, of course we didn't. I mean, we have a much higher hit ratio than most. But part of it is simply because early on I figured out that market fit thing and we actually just refuse clients who don't already have that stuff in order for themselves because we know it won't be successful. So it will take long and it won't work. Couple of the critical things I think that happens, and I would say this to a lot of women out there. The women entrepreneurs take too long to get to market longer. And it's kind of an entrepreneurial thing to be a bit of a perfectionist.

Why do you think that is?

It's more of a female thing. We hate it a lot. I think we believe we have to be perfect.

Okay.

And it's difficult for a lot of people. They finesse their course so much until it's like. And spend tens of thousands of dollars getting it right. Or they spend a year writing their book. And I am a big fan of. Let's do a small test of something. Let's test a chapter, right? Let's test one segment of the course. Let's run the course for free and do it live for 30 days and record it all along and see if there's value in it and then go. And we say now if people like that and now if people are buying that, willing to pay for that. Now I'm going to go and have professionally record over time and get it right. Making sure that you have what I call the market proof stage is so critically important. And we spend way too much time in perfection. And I'm big problem in that process as well. I want it to be absolutely right. But getting things out there to get that market feedback faster is so critical because our market is moving fast.

Yeah. Well, that's interesting you say that too. Have any of your products that you thought that were going to be okay, or maybe you thought it wasn't your best product ends up being just like bigger. And then you have a product, they're like, oh, this is going to be a home run, this is a hit. And then it doesn't do as well as that one. What do you think that's all about?

So for me, I'm not that invested in them. I think that that's the thing at the end of the day, because most often they're not my Products, I'm designing them for somebody else. So I care about the market. I mean, I care, and I want to make sure that they're successful. But I can design a different one tomorrow. I'm really flexible, and I've seen things fail so quickly, having nothing to do with being a good product. Just because a buyer didn't want to put it on the shelf at Target, they didn't like the salesperson, they decided to kill it. Like, I've seen things like that happen. Tom and I have a platinum record product that we just found out, Tom, just before I got on the phone with you, that found out that it's no longer available, but it went for seven years in Costco.

Wow.

So to have a product in Costco for seven years is a platinum record. That's what we call it. It did about $20 million a year on average. And so my clients were pretty happy with that. And no competitor ever came in to replace it. It'll be interesting to see what they've done with it now. Maybe it just ran its course and the style is just no longer right. I mean, we haven't designed it in three years, so we haven't redesigned it. And so those things happen. I didn't expect that chair to be that big a hit. I knew it was good.

Yeah.

You can't anticipate something lasting that long in a marketplace like that. I don't think anyone can foresee that. But one of the things that I do every year is I color forecast. So I pick the colors that are going to be popular for the next year. I say I'm never wrong. I'll probably be wrong occasionally, but I'm very rarely wrong. It's because buying doesn't change. Consumer habits don't change. What people want in life, what they can see and what they value. That doesn't change over time. And so it's just a matter of, did I embody it this time and did I get that right? Let me ask them. And so that perception back and forth is so critically important. And then watching what's going on in your marketplace, this is where a lot of people fall off, is they think they don't have any competitors.

Yeah.

Like, I've got something so new, no one else has it. I'm like, no, you have a competitor. You have a competitor for your dollar. It might be something completely unrelated.

How do you make those adjustments? When somebody comes out with something similar to you, you still have a good product, but these people are right on your tail, or they might even have something a little bit better of a feature. How do you keep up with that?

So we are always ahead. We're always onto the next thing. That's why I say I'm not that invested because I'm already onto the next design. So we are always staying ahead of that. So the deep knowledge that we're gaining while we're selling that one product, we've built into the next product and exceeded where they could go. When someone comes in copies, it's just that, a copy. And so they don't have any of that underlying knowledge as to why people liked it, what wanted, and they don't know what to do next. So we're always up on top of that. And so that's how we, like, round out value for people. And we give them full programs, full lines, full brands. Because it matters at the end of the day that you provide more than just one thing.

Yeah. So, Tracy, you guys have started, like, a pretty remarkable podcast. And you guys were on the podcast game, like, early stages, right? When did you guys start podcasting?

Five years ago. So, yeah. Yeah. So we start pretty early. And we started with that 3D print podcast you mentioned, WTFF. And this is the thing, like I mentioned before, I like how to. I like to figure out how to do something, how to break a system, how to make it work better. And that's what we did. We figured out how to make a successful podcast work for our business. Now, it was a market test for us. It was a test to see if our clients would want to buy services surrounding 3D printing. And we came to a very clear no, pretty much within four months of launching the show. But people want the value of the information right now. The show itself was valuable. So we then said, well, what are we going to do with that? And we built a website.

Okay.

And so then we had podcast some videos, because we had started doing videos in there, podcast videos and blog posts. So now we had what we now call brandcasting. Right. That's what our company called brandcasters. We now call that brand casting, because you're taking one piece of content, but you're putting it into all formats. And we hit on this formula of tapping into the Google algorithm at a time at which voice recognition was being tested by them, because now we have Google Home and we have Amazon Alexa. But we were on it before. We just didn't know why it was working. It was just working. Now we know there's a whole bunch of reasons why it was working, but. But we didn't Back then. And so we had built this team in this system to produce our shows because it was a lot of work and we were doing one a day, so it was really a lot of work. And so people would come up to us and go, would you just produce my show for me? And I was like, I don't think we're in that business. And for four months I said, I don't think we're in that business. And Tom finally said, I want to be in that business. And I said, okay, let's do it then. And so that's how we took on a handful of clients. We beta tested it, we made sure we really it could scale it. We started growing a team, and Today we have 40 employees worldwide. So we work 24 hours a day. And not me personally, my team works 24 hours a day, which helps us produce enough content. And last time I checked, we had 150 shows that we helped produce or on our platform. And I don't know, I think Our high was 350 episodes or something in a given month that we produced. Yeah.

Tracy, how do you view social media and how do you vital do you think it is to grow a business? Because a lot of people have a negative connotation about it. I think it all depends on how you use it. And if you let it work for you and you put your brand in the proper place, there's nothing better.

Yeah.

How do you feel about all that?

So this is the thing. It's a hot button, right? So I don't love Twitter. I'm not 140 character kind of person. Right. And I know they increased it to 280, but I'm still not there. Right. I'm a. I'm a long tail post person. Right. And so it's just not for me. It's never been for me. But I have to be on Twitter because of Inc. My ink column requires us to tweet out all of our articles as part of the platform. So I have a Twitter handle, and I get trolled there all the time when I write articles I write controversial articles on. I mean, I don't think they're controversial, but people think they are. When I write about artificial intelligence or AR, VR, virtual reality, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah.

So it hits people's hot buttons about job losses and all kinds of stuff like that. And, you know, fine. But I'm not in it for the conversation. So I don't participate in the conversation there. I participate where I'm really comfortable. I'm really comfortable on LinkedIn and Facebook, and I know I can have a conversation there. So as long as you're going to participate yourself. Like, I'm not a fan of hiring a firm and letting them do all the posting. There's a certain amount of posting you need. Like, I want my episodes to go out and I want people to know they're there, but when I want to say something, I want to say something. And so I don't allow that happen in my process. And I think it has served me well. I have a much smaller community than most influencers, but my community has been with me for a long time. They're active and engaged. I ran a webinar this past couple of weeks. I ran a series of three to help people plan their content for next year. I had over a hundred people sign up and 50 people showed up at the busy holiday season. And everyone was like, oh, don't you want hundreds of people? I'm like, no, I got 50 people and I got 30 plus minutes of questions from them that to me, I'm adding value. I know I'm adding value. And I'm interacting my community. I can do that with the size it is.

Right.

If I had half a million followers, I couldn't do it.

Right.

And then the value wouldn't be there. So I'm a fan of smaller communities, but very dialed in. So that you're helping each other.

Yeah.

And then just getting to be you.

Yeah. I think it's huge that you do have the interaction in your own account because I think people appreciate that more knowing that it's you and they get more in touch with it because you do follow other accounts and, you know, it's not that person. And it's still fun to follow, but it's like, I really wish that it was this person in their live account, so I can. I don't know, you get more of a personal thing with it.

Yeah. Here's an example of how well my community knows me mostly because of the podcast, but my 3D print community knows me really, really well. And we have a Facebook page called 3D Start Point. And I have a company that manages some of the postings on there because of the website, because I have a fully managed website over there. And so Tom and I have come out and spoken. My family was in Newtown, Connecticut, so they were, you know, the shootings that happened with the children there, and 3D printed guns were emerging on the marketplace. And we felt we had to come forward and say something. And we did it again because my Sister was at Route 91, so she was one of the people shot at. She survived, traumatized, but we feel we had to say something. And bump stocks are in the news again because they just got banned. And 3D printed bump stocks were being offered on the marketplace everywhere. So Tom and I came out and we said, look, we're not making a political message, but we want you to be aware these things are probably not designed safely, so that's number one thing you shouldn't be doing. But I, as a designer, I question whether or not you should design something that can do harm. Like, is that a good idea? And so that's the way we approach the episode. We did not approach it from a ban guns, like, take guns away or anything, but a post appeared on our Facebook page that was like clickbaity saying something about guns. And my community started private messaging us and messaging commenting within this post saying, tom and Tracy must have been hacked. They couldn't have possibly posted this.

No way. They would post that.

They knew our voice. And when I saw it, I flipped out and I fired the firm. Right. Because I was like, you didn't even take the time to listen to any of our episodes. That's what the shows. Our audience knows more than you do about what we do. That's not okay. And I fired them. And so that's where you really can do harm to your brand and your business. And it's better not to post than it is to post something that goes against who you are and what you think.

Absolutely. That's amazing. So, Tracy, what are you guys up to now? Do you have anything in the works?

You know, we've just been debating, like, our sort of new year plan for the next year, and we think these things through every year. I mean, that's kind of part of our process. Tom and I both believe hope is not a plan. You got to have one. And so we think these things through, and we're actually considering shutting down our design business altogether in the next year and focusing completely on brandcasters.

Really?

Yeah. And this year, we've already scaled back a lot, so I've only taken a few clients that I thought were fun, like, just to keep the creative and have fun. But I think that we're at a stage where our business is getting so big that we want to grow it faster. And so in order to pour fuel into it, we've got to be all in. In a different way than we've been already.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So that's what I see on the forefront for Us, I see brandcasters and Potter ties.

Can you just go into that real quick? Because I have so many people that say they want to start a podcast. They have absolutely no idea what to do. I try to coach them a little bit on what to do, but you guys are really the pros at it and you make it so easy. Where literally all I have to do is press the record button, send it to you guys, and it's done. So what is your advice on podcasting and how to get that going?

Yeah, so, I mean, I think there's two sides to it. So there's people like you who you've got a great business and you're busy and you just need to push the record button and all of that. And you've got others who are in these sort of startup tester businesses and they don't know what they're doing, and maybe they. They don't know if they've got the right audience. Do they have the right show? They need some strategy and coaching help. They also really don't have the funds to be able to pay someone to produce it for you. So they. They're in what I call the DIY model. Do it yourself. And so we have actually services for both of them, and it is the DIY one that we're growing next year to really help those people who want to start a podcast but don't know what to do, but really don't have the money to let somebody just do it for them.

Yeah.

So Brancasters is there for those who believe that I'm going to pay some money to save time.

Yeah.

And I still think we're not that expensive. I think we're pretty reasonable for what we do. But that's the idea of the model, of what we do there. And we're just going to take care of all that tech and all the hard part. But on the DIY side, we don't want you to have to deal with some of the tech, so we try to take it out of there. So we actually created this way where you could, if, let's say you've got a great live stream and you've done tons of live streams, and you just want to take that and turn it into a podcast. Right. And you don't really care about that highly produced, edited podcast side of it. You just want to put what they call bumpers, intros and outros onto your audio track, strip off your audio, put that on there and produce it into a podcast. We've got an automated system to do it now, and it's just come out this month. And so we're moving into more services like that. We have a full course. It's actually free for anyone who hosts with us. We've always had it there. Just people didn't take advantage of it because it's a lot of work to launch a podcast. You got to put some time and energy in. But we have it there. It's the exact same things we do for our clients. We give it out in a course for free. Next year, the book will come out to support that. And Tom and I invented a new microphone for next year.

Did you?

Yeah. So you don't have to have a cable.

Oh, I like that.

You don't have to hook to your computer what you do if you want to do video.

Right. So cordless mic.

Cordless mic records for you so you can do field interviews.

Ooh, that's really cool. One of the best things you guys do too, is you produce the podcast, but you also transcribe the entire episode into a blog post. I think that helps my podcast reach a lot more people because some people just do like to look at the blog posts, and that's not my thing at all. Like, you guys take care of that. I'm not interested in typing all that out. And you guys do a phenomenal job. So you're hitting every avenue.

Well, you know, this is the thing is that what we don't realize is that Google has changed over time. Google controls how people find us. Right. People are googling the pain, the problems. Right. You know, they're coming to you from pain. Right. The best chiropractor for back pain. You know, the best chiropractor to help my golf game, whatever it might be. Right. But what Google's doing that's interesting is they're creating something called relevance. So if I like to read, they're going to give me a blog post first. If you like to watch videos, they're going to send you a video first. So if your content isn't in all formats, blog, video, audio, then you're not going to get anyone who types in best chiropractor. And so you're not going to get them. They're only going to serve up the content that's relevant to what I like to view or listen to.

Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's helpful. And then also there's locality. So you've tapped into locality because you don't even have to type New Jersey. You're going to get the people from New Jersey. They're Automatically going to send you over. Dr. Hayford, you know, across the country, even though she's got a great podcast, they're going to send you first because you're local.

Right. That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, Tracy, what is one piece of advice that you would like to give the audience that's really resonated over with you over the years? It's really hit home for you.

So my dad has been one of my mentors throughout my life. Right. He's always been there. He was an executive, as I mentioned, in an oil and gas company. And so he's been my example of, like, how to be a leader and how to do that. And early on, he taught me something that I don't think he realized what he taught me, but he taught me that I had to carry my own luggage. So when we were little, we had to carry our own luggage on the plane. You can't pack more than you can carry. And I think too often that we try to take on way, way more than we can carry, way, way more than we can do. And in our overwhelm, we don't serve our clients well, we don't serve ourselves well. We don't serve our health well. We don't do things well because we are taking on way too much. And so my dad taught me that early on. And it's something I try really hard to live by. And I can tell you, it's the hardest thing. The hardest thing I do every single day is try to figure out how to pack lighter.

Right, Exactly. So, I mean, that especially rings true with you. How do you pack lighter with something that you want to continue?

Well, you know, I mean, that's why I looked at this and said, we got to divest ourselves of part of our business next year. Right?

Yeah.

I need to pack lighter because I can't be all me. And I need to be 100% me for my business. I need to be 100% me for every one of my clients. So how can I do that? And you really have to sometimes make the hard decisions. You may have heard this before, but to decide is to cut. Right. To cut out. And making the decision about what to cut out of your business, out of your life, saying no more. In a way. Right. It's really hard to do. It's really hard. I'm a mom of three girls, and it's really hard to say no to any of them.

Yeah.

But sometimes that's exactly what you have to do.

Yeah. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for coming on. You're a wealth of knowledge in the networking and branding department. Really love this episode. Where can people find you online and just get in touch with you in general?

So if you want to find out more about the brand, casters and all that, FeedYourBrand Co and Feed your Brand is our podcast for those aspiring podcasters. And then on the product side I have another podcast. So I run three podcasts. By the way, Product Launch Hazards with two z's because Hazards last name Product Launch Hazards is my podcast for podcasters and that is going to stick around next year because I have 20 experts in all areas of product launching there to service people. So I created a community that can help you whether I'm there or not.

Beautiful. All right, Tracy, well thank you so much and I will talk to you soon.

Sounds good. Thanks so much for having me.

You're welcome.

Thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, subscribe, give us five stars and leave a review. It really helps boost the podcast and spread the good word. My chiropractic practice is located in West Orange, New Jersey at Montclair Upper Cervical Chiropractic. You can also find us on Facebook at Montclair Upper Cervical Chiropractic. All of my information is on my website@drkevinpeca.com Dr. Kevinpeca.com you can subscribe to my YouTube channel at DrKevin Peka for podcast episodes, patient testimonials and educational videos. I have daily affirmations and inspirational quotes on Instagram at Easel Affirmations Easel L Affirmations. And if you have any questions, feel free to email me at drkevinpeca at gmail com drkevinpeca@gmail.com thank you everyone and have a great day. Cheers.