https://www.listennotes.com/e/57e31de3f3a1486e8a302fa07b7f1eb0

Hey everyone, welcome to the Walk the Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on any of the podcast directories or YouTube, make sure to do yourself a favor and give us a follow. I would hate for you to have FOMO for missing out on the amazing guests that we're bringing on this year. So without further ado, let's get right into this episode. Tracy, for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to get to know you, get.

To meet you yet, tell us your elevator pitch. You know, who are you and what do you do? you froze and I didn't hear what you said.

No worries. No worries. So. So I'll just, like, pick up. Can you hear me now? Okay. This is. I need to start recording, like, bloopers and stuff.

This happens often.

My connection has been shaky for a little while now because I. I started getting more equipment, and then. My sister has all her stuff and then the smart TV. So my connection gets a little shaky at times.

Right, like that's the key to recording, right? It's like, let me have a, you know, like an EMP for everybody else and just- yeah.

That's exactly, I used to be able to, and then I log myself out of the app. There's like this one app, because for my cable company that also has my internet, I bought my own separate router. Good for you. And then there. And then I just forgot about it, honestly. So I need to do that in the future.

You gotta switch routers. Yeah, that's what we do here. We actually have our own set for the business separate from the kids and everything so that we don't have that problem. We actually have two internets coming into the house and the office.

That is super smart. I'll just pick up as if none of this ever happened.

Sounds good.

So, Tracy, for anyone who hasn't got the opportunity to get to meet you yet, tell us your elevator pitch. You know, who are you and what do you do?

So I am a podcast expert, and I'm gonna say it in the way that I am an expert in what we call brand casting, which means that you need to get your original message, your original ideas, your voice out to the world. You have a mission and a message, and you need to get that out. But what some of you don't realize is it's not just about the message. you also have to play the digital game. And that's what I'm an expert in, in optimizing and playing the digital game. And this is all controlled by bots and AI and all that kind of fun stuff that you've been hearing about. But we've been doing this for decades and understanding that you have to make that work. Otherwise, no matter how amazing your information is, it's not going to reach the right people. And that's what I'm an expert in.

That'S amazing. And Tracy, take us back in the time machine. What was little Tracy like growing up? What were your aspiration? What were your dreams? What was it like growing up in your household?

So I have always had what you would call high pattern recognition. And so I was lucky enough to grow up outside the country. I actually lived in South Africa at the height of apartheid at the late 70s. And it was such an interesting time to be there. But we were isolated because it was so dangerous as well. So we are isolated on a base. that my father was working on. And we, my mom would just take these classes because there was nothing else to do. And she would bring us along. And I was, you know, young, seven, eight years old. And she would give me a book and I would sit under something or sit around something and read. And so I was a heavy, heavy reader of books that was way beyond my age just because they were on the shelves and I didn't have access to a kid's bookstore and she She would do things like learn how to weave, learn how to basket weave, learn how to use a loom. And I would sit underneath there reading and my mom would say, this isn't working. I don't know what's wrong. And I would look up and I go, you missed a spot right there. You missed a heddle, which is what they call it. You missed a heddle. You didn't thread it in the right order. And she'd be like, how do you see that? And it would just drive her crazy that I could identify that. And a good example is a little later, my mom came home with these two candlesticks and candlestick lamps. and she puts them on the side table and she's so proud of them. She searched all over the store to find these two matching ones. And I look at them and I say, I just walk in the room and I go, those are great. But did you mean for them not to match? And she was horrified. She said, we spent an hour finding matching ones. I thought I had matching ones. And I was like, oh, no. See those patterns slightly off here. It's something that I've always been good at is being able to see that that gap, that missing piece, when things don't go well together, that pattern is a signal that something's wrong, that there could be an opportunity, right? Everything is in the gaps and the patterns.

Yeah, that's an amazing thing to point out at such an early getting age. It's like to realize that you have that skill and that knowledge in being able to recognize that. So let me ask you, When did the jump into entrepreneurship start to take place? When did the jump into podcasting start to take place?

So I have to say I never considered myself an entrepreneur till maybe not even nine years ago or something like that. I never considered myself that. I consider myself a business owner. I certainly considered myself an innovator, a designer. I went to design school. So I consider myself those things. But the entrepreneur title just wasn't something that I latched onto. It was a reluctant thing. So it happened where someone said, oh, you know, you probably need to network some more. And I said, okay. And I joined Meetup and I jump on and I see this thing called an entrepreneurs meeting. And I was like, okay, I'll go check this out. And that turned out to be the right place for me. And that's what I discovered is like-minded people and other things like that. And so that was a little less than a decade ago where I just sort of discovered my family, right? Like where I belonged. And so that really worked for me. But the transition for me from one thing to another has always been fluid. Like it's not something that I really think about. I feel like I'm always using the same skill set. In my case, it's like design and innovation skill set and I'm designing a business today or a podcast tomorrow. It doesn't really matter. It's all the same skill set. So it doesn't seem like off the cuff. But what really happened is about the same time that I discovered entrepreneurship for myself, I started a podcast and with my partner and husband, Tom, and we started a podcast in 3D printing because our core business at the time was product design and development for mass market retail. So we did a lot of e-commerce products, a lot of Target and Walmart and Costco, and 3D printing was a part of that. And so we thought maybe we could participate in this conversation of desktop 3D printing because we were already experts in industrial. And so we thought this would be fun. What could we do? Let's start a podcast. It's a little passive and not that, you know, I don't have to get on camera and have my hair done. Like, it just seemed easier. And live streaming wasn't a thing back then. So that's what we did, is we started this podcast. And so part of my going out into the entrepreneurial world was people would walk up to me and they say, you have a podcast. How'd you get a hundred thousand listeners a month? And I'd be like, They just came? No. I would list out. No, that's just, I say that kind of cheeky because that's what most people would say. They were like, oh, I don't know. They just happened. Because I started a podcast. It doesn't work like that. There was a lot of work put in and I knew it. And so I would say, oh, well we did a blog. We did the podcast. We would do video intercepts that would be like extras, bonuses that you would go to our website and you'd watch the videos. They were also on YouTube. And so you would watch the machine run when we were talking about a product or a design idea. And so that's how podcasting came about. And so as I was telling people what I would do, they'd say, do you think you could just do that for me? And I was like, and enough people said that where I said, maybe we need to start a side business on this. And that's how it happened. And so in 2017, we took our first 10 clients and it was just, we already had a team who was doing the stuff for us and we had a system and a process. And so we felt we could plug 10 people in and those 10 people within a year referred us to a hundred people. And so by year two, we had 100 clients.

That is amazing. So let me ask you, right, this idea of helping people out and word of mouth, so many people, they're trying to, and before we even segue into today's conversation, I think this is a good point to start because I think this message is super important because everyone is so, you know, on the get rich quick on the newest and best trends. And with marketing, it's one of those things where it's always something new. There's always a new strategy. There's always a new ad or algorithm update or new AI, especially now coming out with new tools and new features. And, you know, word of mouth referrals is probably one of the best ways to grow something, especially when starting out. And it's so overlooked because we're just kind of just force-fed this content marketing strategy, post a thousand videos every day, and one of them will land and boom, you're, you know, after like six months or so burning out, you know, one of them was like, what was that like, you know, getting those referrals and making sure that the people that you were willing to kind of jump on the ship while it was still, you know, still a pretty new ship in terms of that business model in terms of helping other people with their podcast, what was that like making sure that they were so happy, so satisfied with the result that they went out and told their friends, moms, sisters, family, cousins, brothers, and brought, you know, everyone else on board?

Well, look, we, we make it a system of referrals. So it is, I like, I teach an entire master class on this. It's all yours. I will make sure I give you the link so you can give it to all our listeners here. But there is a master class, an hour long master class on referrals that I do. And the reality is, is that you can't have great referrals if you don't deliver a great service. At the end of the day, that has to be primary. But it doesn't mean that you're not constantly growing. Like we're getting better every single day in the services and the business that we provide and our upgrades to our technology and all those things are happening. People are very willing to forgive it not being perfect if you're comfortable being transparent about that and if you are also, you know, owning it up when it doesn't work and working with them to get it better and using their input to make it better. They're usually very, very forgiving. But when you fill a desperate need, they are eager to refer because they know how hard it is. And we were filling a desperate gap and need right at that moment in time. And it just really made everything easier and better for them. And they knew that and they wanted other people to benefit from it. But we also incentivize them. So when someone refers a production client, that's not like SaaS, sales, subscribers, you know, $29 a month hosting. That's not, that's not what we're talking about. That's affiliate sales. That's a different model. But when we talk about serious referrals, it's usually a high-end program. And so in our case, if you are one of our clients and you refer a customer who closes with us and becomes a client, you get five free episodes of production in your system. That's about a thousand dollar value. And you could do an entire Just over a month's worth of podcast with that production and not have to pay. I have clients who don't pay at all. They just refer great people who become my clients. It's how it works. So when you can build in an incentive program that also makes them feel like they got value for that referral, that was something useful to them. It's not an Amazon gift card. It's not a bottle of champagne in the mail, although we do do that too. If they refer five people, they're on our golden list. We send them a bottle of champagne. But you know, making it a system is really critically important and making the incentives that they receive something very worthwhile to them. It makes it top of mind. And that's the really hard part about referrals. It's not only being of great service and making sure people want to refer you, but them remembering to refer you when they're busy doing their own thing. So how do we get that to happen? And that's the real interesting part about referrals and why We kind of developed it into a science. But the reality is, is that it's not like we chose referrals as our primary form of marketing. It chose us because we didn't want to spend any money on marketing. We were too cheap to do it. And also because I do have a mindset that there are a lot of what I call hustle. I've heard it. It's not my own term, but I've heard it and I like to use the same phrase, hustle pros out there. and the hustle Pros are these guys, and you're usually guys. I'm just gonna say that. But they go out there and they sell the hottest, latest thing. You know, they are the ones who created a chat GPT book by using chat GPT and are now selling you a how to use chat GPT, right? Like, and they just made it, but they don't really know how to use it. They just know how to sell the latest thing because the latest thing always works better when you're first into it. than it does a year in, two years in. When you get someone who figured out how to make podcasting work for a decade, they really know what they're doing. When you get someone who got in when nobody else was in, and of course they got hundreds of thousands of listeners and it was easy for them because nobody else was podcasting, they don't have a formula that's going to work for you by the time you get around to adopting it. And that's why we, I said, when you go in and you push those ads, and you push that marketing, lots of times there's not substance behind that. And it's always suspect. And so I didn't want to go into a marketplace. I wasn't really sure I was an expert in yet. I wanted to make sure that I was going to be an expert in it before I was going to go out there and tell people we have the answer. Right. And that's why we chose not to do the marketing, because I don't like to push out there. and, you know, fake it while I make it. No, that's not who I am. It's just not the way to go. It doesn't mean I don't have tremendous confidence in what we produce and what we do. I think you should have that. Totally have confidence in what you do.

No, you dropped so many nuggets in there. Oh my goodness. I love what you mentioned. This reminds me of one of the only things that I learned from college that actually applied to any of what I got going on right now. And I learned it in microeconomics. It's when you have the right incentives in place, people are extremely predictable and you found a way to gamify that entire process. And gamifying for me is I love the idea of gamifying because I played a lot of video games and a lot of people that grew up, I think, and at least for the past like 3 to 4 generations, it's like everyone for the most part played video games at some point in their time where there was Nintendo 64 Or it was some type of Wii or DS or Xbox or PS4, whatever it may be. Like, video games are such a critical part of, like, almost everyone's, like, childhood and, like, teenage years. Right.

We're sort of accustomed to the idea that it should be-- we should be rewarded, right? Like, the reward system is kind of built in. But sometimes, like, people misunderstand that. And when they say, I'm gonna gamify something, they just go and they create this leaderboard, and they-- I was on a podcast that did that. They sent out this like leaderboard information of like who got the most listens, who was sharing it the most so that it must be, you know, you must be better than the other guests on the show. And I looked at that and I thought, you just totally insulted me because I know that I, and I added such value and maybe I was only meant to talk to 5% of your audience. But I helped that 5% make tremendous gains into where they were going to go. So you just discounted the value that I added and turned it into download numbers for you only. So you just told me that you don't value your audience. They're just numbers. Yeah. So why would I now refer you to a better guest, to someone bigger than me, to somebody I know? I'm not going to help you. So you actually just disincentivized me to participate with you further by using the game wrong. And so leaderboards, those kinds of things, it's got to be an incentive. It's got to be a reward that means something to you and means something substantial to you in that, wow, I don't have to shell out another thousand dollars this month for my show. And all I did was type a little quick email that said, here's somebody to meet. Like that, I was like, I can do that all the time. So that's really where we want to make that happen. And then I like to surprise people. I think surprise rewards are a great model where it's not expected. My clients now expect to get five free episodes, right? Like they expect that it's a part of the process. They know that's what they're referring for. But when I send them this fancy, funny postcard that captures their attention and teases them about like, you know, how All kinds of things. Like we'll send them one and say, have a beer on us. Oh, well, we're not really buying the beer for you, but have a beer on us. Thanks for referring, but they're five free episodes in your counter. So they're still getting their episodes, but we send them the message in a fun, funny way. But then when they hit five, we actually send them a bottle of champagne. And then we send them this card and we say, oh, no, no, no, we're just kidding. It's actually in your mailbox. Go check. That kind of thing. So we really surprised prize them in the process and, and continue to make it fun for them to, and top of mind for them. Like I said before, like, that's really the difference there. When you gamify, it can't just be typical. Yeah.

And so let me ask you, I love where we're going in the conversation. So excuse me for, you know, going down this rabbit hole, but you mentioned incentives, too. So let's talk about it, because, as I said, this is something that I kind of picked up a little bit in microeconomics in college. I don't know if people are still teaching that. It was a gen ed class that I signed up for. It was required because I was in.

A school of business at the time. I try to encourage. Yeah, I say everybody should take it. I went to art school. We didn't have economics. I wish I did. Right?

Like, it's one of those things. Exactly. So let me, let me ask you. So incentives, what is an incentive? Like an act, like a good incentive? What is a good incentive? And what is the differentiation? the differentiation between a good incentive and a bad incentive. I mean, you kind of give us one with the leaderboard, but.

Well, first off, you really do have to understand your audience, right? So people who sign up for affiliate programs is a really great example. They have a very similar mindset, right? They want to make a buck. They want to do it without having to create something. They want to do it with you giving them everything that they need, and all they got to do is email it out. They're people, people. if you want to think of them like that, right? They're good with their audiences, they're influencers on social media, they send out newsletters, but they don't have original ideas, right? They're using, they're finding other great ideas that they think are going to be applicable, but what they understand is their audience and people. So when you think about people, people, what do they want? They want most, more social capital. They want, to be raised up in their community. How can you do that? So in that case, it's great to give them some affiliate incentives, add up money for them, but making announcement about you being the top affiliate, you doing something like this, you being amazing, your audience being so great, right? Giving them something that then incentivized them because it raised their authority and their value in their eyes of the community that they care about. that's what it is. But you have to really think it because it's not always the same for everyone, right? To me, I could care less. Like, it's just like, I don't care to have more social capital. It doesn't mean anything to them. I'm all about the value brought into the world. And so I want to work with really valuable partners. And so they've got to demonstrate value to me in order for me to be incentivized to share them. And that means that they have to care first. meaning that they can't ask me for something, they give first. If they show giving first, they're more likely to get my attention. It's just a different model of thinking, right? But you'd have to know that that's your audience, right? CEOs of a company are very weird, right? CEOs of a company, you'd think, well, they have money. They can spend money on everything. But they have expectations of things for free that you wouldn't believe. They want, 'cause they want, they get so many people asking and taking, and rarely do they get someone giving. And so when you flip that around, you catch their attention. It has nothing to do with them being cheap or anything like that. It has to do with the fact that they just don't know who to trust.

Yeah, no, I love that you bring that up because for me, one of the things that I learned from joining the real estate mastermind, when I was focused on real estate, is the idea of coming from contribution and whatever you do. And when I started teaching my social media classes, they were for, like, the first four or five, like, entirely for free. Like, I I didn't want. I honestly, part of me didn't feel worthy to be charging, like, so it was part, like, imposter syndrome. Part two, I never charged anyone for anything before, so it's like, I would have gladly done the classes for free. So it's like, I had to get over the awkwardness of that. And then three, it's just like, these guys have done so much for me. This is the least I could do, but it's like, Giving coming from contribution and realizing that in what is it? It's this quote I love. It's you do more than you're paid and eventually you'll be paid more than you do. And so many people believe that.

But I also think that we have a responsibility to recognize that when we take something for free and we don't give back, we've done something wrong. in the law of nature, right? In the law of reciprocity, we've done it wrong. So, as a taker of your course, if I didn't refer someone to you, if I didn't share you on social media, if I didn't do something to reward a great service to me, then there's something wrong there. But a lot of times, the biggest problem is that we don't go and tell them what they can do to support us. Right? So we give it to them for free and we serve and we serve and we serve and we forget to say, if you got value here, the best thing you can do for me is share my Instagram. The best thing you can do for me is to let people know about my paid course. You have to let them know what the best thing they can do for you if they got value. And we don't remember to do that enough.

Yeah, it's all about the ask, right? So let me ask you, how do we get good at the ask? Because a lot of times, especially when you're starting off, as I said, for me, it felt weird. It was awkward. I I didn't know how to say it, and I would come across, it's like, I'll give this amazing presentation. I'm super good off the COVID I prepared, and I'm so well spoken when it comes. I'm, you know, I got the slides, and I got the stories, and I got that information, I got the data graphs and everything, and then it's like, well, the course is done. Can you guys like And just I lose my words and I stumble and I stutter and it's just a big mess. At least it was a big mess until I started getting over that. But starting off, I didn't even, as I said, I didn't even know that that was an issue because I have never charged somebody. So it's like until it came time to ask for help, ask for something, and even it wasn't about charging, but asking for the next step, giving a call to action, I felt so weird at first. So how do we get good at the art of the ask, I guess you could say.

Well, first off, I personally got trained to sell, to sell from stage. Now, I don't do it at all like my coach. I'm a much more soft sell. It's just the way that I prefer it. I think it doesn't work for me and my personality, and it doesn't work for my audience to be a hard sell. But I trained to understand how that works because it gets you in that zone of comfort. If you're not comfortable selling, then you need to find a way to get comfortable, right? And either that means crash course it and go keep doing it until you feel comfortable doing it, right? Like that's a way if I can't afford to hire a coach to do it, go get a coach, try it out. Or really do start testing out the way you say things with people and do small asks. Because if we do small asks, It's we're going to condition ourselves to do it. So I actually, when I give an hour long or 45 minute presentation, I make three asks. Every single time I give a presentation, I make three asks. But I don't think of them like asks. It's not in my mind at all. I have three opportunities. That's exactly how I look at them. So about 10 to 15 minutes in is my first opportunity. I consider it actually an off-ramp. so in other words, if you're watching my presentation, I know my audience of core people who come and hire me to produce our podcast is someone who's too busy to watch the whole hour. So I know that. And so I want to let them know that I've told them the why, why this is important, why it works, why it's, you know, going. But I haven't gone into any of the how at that point in the in the offer.

Usually the origin story phase, right?

Right, it's usually at the beginning. Like here's why this is important. If this interests you, just go have them and you don't have the time, energy, like you don't want to learn how to do this yourself. You just want someone to do it for you. Go make an appointment. It's free. Make an appointment with my co-host and partner, Tom. Like just go do it. It's on the website. It's free. Just go make an inquiry. I want you to know you don't have to listen to anything more. he will custom talk that through with you. And you don't have to listen to anything else here. You do not have to learn how to do any of this. Like, that's how. That's an opportunity right there. I just got time. It's an opportunity. I got time. I am gonna have to trade it for money, but I'm willing to hear what that money is. So I'm gonna go take that off ramp. I'm done with the video. I've watched 10 minutes. I'm good. So that's. That's where that. So that's the first off ramp I give him, but it's an opportunity to save time. that's what I look at it is. It's always an opportunity to save time. Then the next one I give is an opportunity for, did you hear enough and get enough value from what you want that this is something you want to explore further? I want you to know that I'm now gonna go into the sales pitch and you don't need to do that. Like if you, you know, if you just want to go again, have the sales call, go straight with the team, get custom answers. instead of having to sit through the generic. And I always do that because it makes it sound like I'm talking to you. So I'm saying, I know you have individual questions and you have individual needs and I recognize you as an individual and what we do isn't cookie cutter, right? So here's your opportunity to drop out right now or you can continue to stay on. And so then I go through the end. So then my last offer is never at the same offer, right? It's never a jump off, have a phone call with the sales team. At that point, my offer is the low end, the low ticket, whatever it is. You've sat through the whole thing. I hear that you don't have money. I hear that you, you really want to learn how to do this. And I'm going to be honest with you, there's more work to this, right? You're gonna have to learn this and this and this. So here's my next opportunity to you. Come in, host with us. It's 29 a month. You get free coaching every single week included in that. It's like, you know, so you can show up and ask your questions live and have me help you directly. Come and do that. And I'll give you all our master classes. Like, it might be an offer like that. So it's given them a huge amount of information and given them access to me for very, very small money, small amount of money at this, in the scope of things. And so that's kind of where I would leave them, and that's. Still giving them added value for something that they spent an hour listening to.

Right?

Yeah. And one of the things that I really believe in is that if you leave too much on the table though, like if you are like hinting and teasing that you're not going to get that conversion at the end.

That's, that's super interesting. So I just did like my first like webinar where I structured it to have an upsell at the end of the presentation. like before it was just like, okay, how much information can I cram into an hour? Like there was no like, actual structure to it really. It was just like, hey, here's like everything I know about this one topic. So like Instagram. Okay, here's all I know about Instagram. That was my one hour presentation because I didn't know about selling or as I said at that stage, I was still super awkward. I didn't know how to ask or sell. So then I started learning about this stuff. So when I soft launched my course, I had it where the first like 45-ish minutes, 50 minutes or so. The first like 15 or 10 minutes or so, which is like me getting through like the back story how this came to God, why I do what I do, how I do it, kind of. And then the next like 40 minutes were just like me actually going through like the strategy, not the actual step-by-step tactics, but like the strategy to overview is like, okay, here's how we get it done type of thing. And then at the end, I was like, Hey, let me ask you guys a question. And if you guys found this valuable so far, you guys want to hear this super amazing offer I have created especially for you guys. And then I went into the pitch. And then I honestly, I feel like I came off awkward. It went so well.

Everybody does because you've come off of all this massive teaching into a pitch, right? And it feels weird. And in your mind, you're already going like they all they all stopped the video. Like they all jumped out, right? Like that's what you're thinking, especially, you know, if you're not doing it live, right? And so you're just thinking, like they're all gonna jump out, they're done with this. And that's why I don't like, because look, people don't work like that, right? I'm making my decision about you in the first five minutes. So I'm making a decision of like, do you have the kind of information I'm looking for? Because I have a need, whether it's a voice need or just a need that I haven't quite figured out what it is I need. but I have a need or I'm not going to go watch a webinar in a video, right? So I think I see the title of it and I hear something about you and I think, okay, maybe that's going to fill the need. But if you don't feel that need or intrigue me enough that you might be able to answer that for me in the first five minutes, I'm gone anyway. Now, if you get me through the first five to ten minutes of it and this is a desperate need, I'm sold already because I've been looking for somebody to fill this gap. I don't need to listen to the whole hour. That's the mentality that we're not tapping into when we follow these course programs. If we don't understand our customer base, that model of course program where we build it up over an hour and we build up their dopamine and we get the serotonin, like we got to do that. or we can't sell them. We have to get them out of their own way in order to sell them. And that's why it takes the whole hour. But that's not the way it is for a program that's so important and so needed. Your social media, like, I can't even tell you how many people will ask me for social media classes. Who do I go to? Who do I see? Right? It's needed. I. My one master class, even though it has nothing to do with podcasting that I fill with about four times as many people as my other ones is my social media ones. And some of them are basics, like, and they're grateful for the fact that I go back and do the 101. Right. It's not for the advanced people. It's for the 101s because they feel like so many people are going to the advanced tactic and not giving them the 101. Right. So they're grateful for that. Right. So this is a need there. But at the same time, there's also this, like, do I really need to do this? Like, you know, I'm taking this because I think I need this, but do I really even want to do this? And that's where you're gonna get to the end and they're like, that's too much work. I still don't want to do it. I still don't want to be on Instagram. I'm being forced to like, you know, you've seen those people, right? Like, and they're never gonna buy, right? They're never gonna buy until it's a desperate need for them. So in my mind, I built up this model where I'm giving them early opportunities and offers that are a little more geared for how much time they spent in it. And then the next, the final one is really just how to keep in touch with me and keep so that I can keep engaging with them because the upsells will happen on their own. They'll upsell themselves when they're really ready or they're done with trying to figure this thing out. And it's not because I held back. It's because they don't really want to do it, right?

Yeah. And as they get busier and busier, then less people want to do it. It's one of those things where it's like, most people want things done and then you could create it done for you thing, but then you also have to keep in mind if that's actually what you want to do, which is like for me, the done with you is like, I've been able to find so much more passion and fulfillment and excitement from that because I love the teaching aspect of it. So it's like, but knowing that I'll potentially be losing out on some clients because some clients, of course, Yeah, I'm able to recharge a higher price, a higher ticket, and work with some clients and less clients, and that just paid me more money. But it's like, I don't really want to do it. So like having that self awareness too, it's like, man, if they want it.

Done for them, I just need a partner up. Right where you fill that gap and everything. The problem is with done for you. And this is a huge problem with my client base. So I have a thousand clients doing done for you consulting. So the problem is, is that they still have to record at the end of the day. They still have to do something. Like they just want it done for them 101%. And I'm like, you still got to do your 2% on the other side, right? Like you, even though I can, I can make everything simple for you, I can't make the final choices of things. I can't pick my voiceover artist. I can't, I, I, I can't authorize that for you. You have to participate in the process. And if you're not willing to, then you have to accept the cookie cutter results you get. And that's what people aren't willing to do. So anytime you're buying a done for you, no matter how expensive it is, and I've hired expensive marketing firms, if you aren't participating in that process, it will fail. That's something that we have to understand. It's always done with us. It's just a magnitude of how much do I have to do with it done with me, right? But our mindset needs to be there because when you participate in the process as much as you can, like let's do it with reason, right? I know people are busy, so you need to build programs that are at whatever level they're at. But if you participate, it will be 10 times better because I cannot know your mind. I can't read your mind. No matter how good I think I am at it, no matter how great our AI gets at it, at the end of the day, people with original thought are always going to surprise you with the choices that they make, right? And it's always going to tell in differentiation whether or not they made their own choices. People can tell when I don't post on social media as me. they can tell the difference. They may not be able to say, oh, definitely that one, but it didn't resonate with them the same way as the one that I posted resonates. I know it because I have a team, a team that will do posts for the podcast because it's more. It's just like, here's a podcast. Here's what's good in it. Go listen to it. Right. It's not something that I need to participate in, but then I might, I might personally write an email, write a post in LinkedIn that says, you know, Hey, I read this article and here's what I think of it. Now people got my opinion, my view. I'm the only one who could write that. My team can't. They know the difference when they read that. And those will get more comments, more likes, more shares. It's always going to happen. The people know.

And I love that you bring that up because like for me, one thing that I've done for the course is to nurture everyone. So I'm gonna create like a value ladder later, but for right now, I'm just focused on there's newsletter and then there's course. That's it for now, right? I have, I'm an idea guy, so I get tons of ideas. So I was thinking like, I'm gonna do like a newsletter and then from there they go into the free Facebook group and from the free Facebook group, I'll teach them free master classes and then they'll eventually buy my book, which is just essentially my course that I just turn into transcript format and then the audio book and then, and I just created, and that's like, all right, I'm just gonna write this down. It's somewhere in my notebook somewhere. I'll come back to it in like a few months, but right now it's just course and newsletter and the newsletter part. No, like for my regular Gmail responses, I have like Compose AI, which is like a, and it always sometimes like I have it right emails for me, but for a newsletter, I'm in, writing each and every one of those fresh and during, like when I have that inspiration, like, you know, sometimes an idea is like, boom, this is a great idea. I'm putting it in. That is all me, 'cause as you said, I don't want to lose my voice because that is- Because your audience chose you, right? Exactly.

That's what we forget in that process is that we will get diminishing returns from our list over time. The more we systematize it, the more we sub it out to our team, you will lose that in the process. So keeping your finger in that is very, very difficult. And the bigger you get, I mean, look, I send out 40,000 emails a month. Like, I know that if my voice isn't coming through, what a waste of email sending. What a cost, like just cost of sending that is ridiculous. And if you wanna know why your open rates are so low and your click-through rates are so low, It's because your voice isn't there. It's a template and it sounds like everybody else's email and it looks like everybody else's email. So I deleted it even before I read it.

Yeah.

So this is where we go wrong if we're not bringing it. But if my original thought is in there, they don't want to miss it. Yeah. They don't want to miss what I'm going to say. That's the difference right there. And making sure that you do have multiple formats, I believe strongly in this. Look, I hate video. I, like, never on my personal time. I just mean, like, my consumption model is never going to be video. I record hundreds of videos a day. Like, you know, like, it is my primary form of communication to everybody else. But it's not my preferred method of consumption, because at the end of the day, when I'm sitting down, the last thing I want to do is listen to anything. And I don't want to take the time. If I'm gonna read it, I just rather read it. Like, let me give it. Have an article. Let me read it if I'm gonna have to read the captions. Right. And so that's why I just, it's not my preferred consumption of information. So I have a couple of, I'm going to call them like saved things in my flipboard. So for those of you who don't know what flipboard is, it's this kind of awesome like way of gathering a bunch of magazines together. So I do have subscriptions that I pay for that are in there and I have new ones that I scan and I choose publications all the time to like make sure they give me the headlines and I flip through my flipboard twice a day. and first thing, I don't do it first thing in the morning, but sometime in the morning, maybe while I'm having coffee or tea or something, and then, and I'll spend five minutes, and it's just a scan in case something like major happened in the world that I should know about that relates to my clients, and that's it. But at the end of the day, that's when I go through and I read anything I might have saved that caught my eye and do something like that. But that's my time. But I have this one publication that I absolutely love, and I love their articles, and they're all real, you know, like scientific, analytical based, there's always charts and graphs and all of this, other stuff, but they run a podcast and they don't run the podcast in anything but video format. So I can't listen to it. I can't just listen to it in my feed. It's not in my podcast app. It's only on their website. And it really is a video cast. And they call it a podcast, which drives me crazy. And they only have this video. There's no transcript of it. There's no nothing that happens from it afterwards to recap it. And I just was like, I really like that topic, but you just lost me at video. What a shame, because they're a big publication, they could afford to repurpose it. Even if it wasn't today, it came out on video first, and then tomorrow it's an article, or it's then the podcast a day later, right? But they don't do it because they see it as timely information, 'cause it's more of a news magazine. And so they see it as something, it's like video because it's now only. and they don't really think about those of us who just don't want to consume in that model. That's where we miss out. So we can have great newsletters and it catches our eye, but if they're not going to click through and watch the video that goes along with it or you don't have a video, what happens to the video people? You miss them by sending them a newsletter. So having that multimedia for them on everything is the actual winner. in the process. And that's what we don't realize. And it's where we leave the opportunity of the content we create on the table. It's also something, it doesn't matter when you do it, you could do it a year from now and it will still be residual value for your company.

I love how our conversation coincidentally came back full circle because we started this talking about your pattern recognition and your ability to see the gaps in different things. And we finish off this segment right here talking about your unique voice and how you could use that to come across to your ideal avatar and fill those gaps. Tracy, I had an amazing time talking to you today. Where can we connect with you? Where can we find you at if we want to know about all the amazing things we have going on?

Okay, so if you don't want to get my team and you want to get to me, friend me on LinkedIn. That's where I participate actively. So follow me there. There's definitely information, but I live stream out every single week on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Every Wednesday at noon Pacific Time, I live stream about podcasting. So you can check out all of our information there. But more importantly, you can always go to one of my podcasts. You can go to any podcast app, type my last name in Hazard with two Z's, and you five or six podcasts that you can listen to and check out. I can promise you that there will be something in there in each and see every episode about things that will be more universal and not just something of how to do this today. We are a lot of how to, but we're also a lot of universal principles that apply no matter what. And we always try to highlight those because the last thing I want you to do is waste your time learning how to do something that you'll only do once. So if it's not worth doing again and again, I'm not going to, I'll have a tutorial for you on my website, but I'm not going to teach it about it on a podcast. Not going to happen. I want you to take principles away that you can apply to any part of your business.

That is amazing. And go check out the Binge Factor. I was a guest on there, so make sure to go on there and go support, go show some love. Now it's time for our famous five questions. Maybe wrap up every single podcast episode. Question number one, what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life?

You know, my father has been a huge influence on my life and he always used to come home, he was a big executive in the oil industry and he would come home and he would tell us all these stories. But one of the ones that he always said, and this is such a silly thing, but at the end of the day it's actually profound. He was always horrified by all these people who'd get on a plane, especially women with too much luggage. and he once sat next to me and he said to me, Don't pack more than you can personally carry. And I thought that was the most profound and brilliant thing as I've gone through life. And I always, I would get on a plane and I'd be like, I could put my own bag in the overhead. I can do this. I can't do not pack more than you can carry applies to every part of your life if you really think about that. And that means that you can always stand on your own when needed.

I love how you brought that together. That's amazing. What is the most admirable trait a person can have? Admirable trait a person can have?

So there's a different, I don't know how to, like, the idea of caring for others, right? The idea of being a caring person is probably the most important trait, but I want to broaden that. to say that there's a lot of caring that's actually selfish, right? Like, you know you're gonna get a return off of that, or you know you're gonna feel good because you cared for, you know, I care for my dog and I know I'm gonna get so much love back in return. That's okay. But by looking at this as, I don't really need the return. It's nice that it happens, but I don't really need it. It's not my primary motivator. that kind of caring is a little bit different. And when we lead with caring, no matter what we do, I care about your results. I care about this more than I care about selling my program. I turn away people. That's a form of caring that matters more to people. They take that. And what I can say is when I've turned someone away or said, you know what? I don't think we're really a right fit for you. I actually probably got more referrals from that because there is respect that comes back with that kind of caring. So that is what we really want to do. We want to have this attitude of caring that is the most admirable trait that you can have.

What is the, sorry. If you had to change someone's life with one book, which book would you recommend?

This one is easy for me because I love this book and I love this author. Smart Cuts: Shane Snow. It is an older book right now. But it is one of the most brilliant, like, I'm going to say tech related books, but it's not about tech. It's about how people work and how tech interacts with that. And this idea of how do I get down to the essence of what needs to happen, the smart cuts so that I can do them minimum but get the maximum? How do I do that in a way that's really smart? And so it is one of my favorite books and he also has another one called Dream Teams. And if you want to know why I put Caring First, it is also in that book. So I would say follow that author, Shane Snow. He writes brilliant articles as well.

What is the legacy that you are trying to leave behind?

So this is really important to me. It is important to me that my legacy is not mine. It is important to me that my legacy is yours. that I provide the vehicle for more people to get their messages, their voices heard, their missions out there, that I do that and it is a vehicle for other people's legacy. That's all I care about at the end of the day. That's my mission.

And for anyone that wants to embark on their Walk to Wealth today, what is the first step you recommend they take?

Well, for me, a walk to wealth doesn't start with the wealth part. It starts with the walk. You got to take that first step. And that's so often I hear people who are sitting back with this, like, I want this, but they don't take any action. I'm a giant action taker. And if I can tell you how many times I might have stepped on the wrong path, But that wrong path taught me something that I could have never found any other way. And I certainly wouldn't have found sitting on my couch talking about it. Right? Taking that first step is the biggest step in the walk to wealth.

And it goes back to that old adage of the, the white belt is the hardest belt because no one ever gets started.

Right.

So Tracy, I had an amazing time talking to you today. We probably could have talked about like 10 different topics for 10 hours each individually. I'm super happy with how the conversation came together. And I'm super looking forward to just staying in touch with you. You have a lot of amazing things going on and I'm looking forward to my audience finally being able to listen to it once it goes live.

Thank you, John. It has been my pleasure and this is my favorite part of podcasting is that I get to follow up and have a second conversation with you. So I love our podcast swaps.

Yes, of course. All righty. Whoops. Whoops again.