Reframing What Success Means To You with Tracy Hazzard from The Successful Thinker with Corey Jahnke

Imagine you're a mid level manager who makes just over 100,000 per year. You have three kids. Your spouse is the light of your life. But stress, tension and finances have taken a toll on your personal and professional life. You find yourself in a constant struggle to connect with the people you're in charge of. Leadership does not have to be like this. If your life is like this. We invite you to join Cory Janke in the Successful Thinker podcast as he shares simple, real world and easy to implement Sol to becoming a successful leader. Get ready to harness the power of the human mind and amplify your success. Here's your host, Corey Jenke.

Hello successful thinkers. Welcome back to another episode of the Successful Thinker podcast. Now today, I'm truly honored to have the guest that we have with us. As you know, one of the principles of being a successful thinker is that we don't believe in the idea that you have to learn how to do more with less. In today's corporate environment, what you really want to do is learn how to do more by becoming more. And this person's name, Tracy Hazard, and she has really put it out there as to how a person can be a lot of things to a lot of people by leveraging the people that she works with and the people that work for her and systems. She's really great at helping set up systems that make a person like me, for example, able to have a podcast. Tracy is an authority magazine and Inc. Columnist and the co host of the top ranked podcast feed you'd Brand, which is one of CIO's top 26 entrepreneur podcasts, product launch hazards for inventors and E sellers, WTFF3D, print innovation and the Blockchain Venture Exploring Podcast the new Trust Economy. Recently featured on Larry King now with a constant stream of content and products from her brandcasters authority platform, which is called Potatize and I use Potitize myself. And I'll tell you, they've really put together an awesome system here. Tracy influences and casts branded content and $2 billion worth of products and innovations all around the world. Tracy, welcome to our podcast and thanks so much for being here.

Oh, thank you, Corey, for having me. I'm excited to be here. I love your topic, the Successful Thinker. I just love that.

Well, thank you. You were somebody who really gave me a lot of confidence that the Successful Thinker had a lot of value out there. Can you tell me, you know, a little bit about how you got started into having so many plates in the air?

I don't know if I ever just got started or I just was always like that from birth. I think that. So I'm going to admit this on air and my father will probably hear this and laugh. But from a young age, my nickname was Tracy Dew, and the do part was because I would be saying, no, Daddy, Tracy Do. Like, I was always doing stuff. And so I think that that has just been an inherent part of who I am, that, oh, I want to try that. Of course I'll do it. And so it's just that sort of curious personality and also just feeling completely capable and confident. That is something definitely my parents instilled in me really early on.

Well, that's amazing, because one of the things that we believe is that you have to keep going and then figure it out along the way. I think it was JP Morgan who said, go as far as you can see, and then when you get there, you'll be able to see further.

Yes, I believe that, too. I just don't live in a world of impossibility ever. It just doesn't occur to me that it's not possible to learn something, do something, try something. And I just don't think that failure matters. It's never mattered in my life, ever. It's always just an opportunity to learn something new.

I like that. I don't think that failure matters because, you know, it's a funny thing. I'm pretty much an expert on falling on my face.

There are a lot of us out there, believe me.

Yeah. And I'm still here at 53. I feel like, too, a lot of times when I was going through something, it seemed painful at the time, but, boy, I feel a lot stronger now.

Than I ever did in the design world. It's through failure that you see the possibility for invention and opportunity. And so if it doesn't fail, you don't actually know if it's going to be good enough or not.

Oh, wow. That's really a great way to look at that. So that's kind of your thought process. Right. We're going to step in and then we're going to fail. And then where do you go from there?

So reality is that I don't really look at it as like, oh, we're definitely going to fail. I just don't worry about it if that's the outcome, because that's a yes or a no. Right. So it is an outcome. So it means try something different. So I look at something as going into it. I pretty much approach everything with a bunch of research at the Very beginning. I believe strongly in research, whether that's just reading up on what the industry's about or what your particular thing you want to learn is, listening to podcasts, watching videos, whatever that is. I believe in really great. Creating a very broad basis research of understanding to start out with. I think when you come into something completely cold, you're actually going to make misjudgments about failures so you won't understand, oh, that was a failure of something I attempted that didn't work out. Instead, you maybe make a rookie error and you're like, oh, that's not worth it. And so you make the wrong choices in that process if you don't have at least a basis of understanding of what you're about to jump into. So I believe in that strongly to get that underneath you.

Yeah. So do your homework first. So that when you fail, if you fail, then you know what lessons are to be learned from that failure. Is that it?

Right. Yeah. Because if you don't learn that, then you can't see where that opportunity lies. Where do I want to innovate? Where do I want to do something different? It's usually like very small percentage of changes you can make to something that really has an exponential result for you. So to find that tiny little percent of adjustment that is going to make a significant difference or make something inventive and innovative, you have to have enough knowledge of the rest of the 96% to really get there.

Oh, you know, that makes me think about what Brian Tracy talks about. He said that whenever he was going to start a new business, he would go ahead and just really, literally consume everything that there was to consume. And I see a lot of people out there who say, well, some people say opportunity is everywhere, but I sure don't see it. Maybe you kind of described a way that people can see it more.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I see opportunity all the time when I design products. So I design products that you bought every day at mass market, retail, Costco, Walmart, Target, that kind of thing. And that's the core of what I did for 27 years. Now I do a lot more podcasting. As you know, that's. The content is a lot more of my world today. But prior to that, when I look at the products out there, the biggest opportunities are when you read a review that describes how it failed them, how it didn't fit, how it doesn't work. When somebody breaks something, misuses something, that's an opportunity for improvement in quality. So that always is opportunity in that looking at the negative space, I would call it. Right. Looking in the things that went wrong instead of saying, oh, this product's not worth it. Instead looking at that and saying, wow, how can I make this better? When you look at the world from that perspective, all you ever see is opportunity.

You just described one of my favorite concepts, which is, you can either be a problem solver or a problem creator in this world.

I so agree with that. I think I tell that to my daughters frequently.

Yeah. And so what you're doing is you're approaching life from a success orientation. How can we make things better than when we found them? So that must be really a core value for you to really give us a context of what your values are. Can you tell us what the word success means to you?

Yeah. You know, it's not an end goal. And I think that's part of why I look at that as different words. And I think it has such powerful meaning, because for me, success is a process onto something, so it's not an end goal in and of itself, and it has such different meaning for every person out there. So to me, if I'm energized, if I'm excited about what I'm doing, if I feel like I'm in my element, that's successful. It's not about money. It's not about having a house. It's not about any of those things. Some of the most times that I felt the most successful were something I did for free. And I come off of it and I go, wow, I just got to do exactly what I wanted. I just got to be exactly who I am and show that off. And I just got to live to my full potential. To me, that living up to its potential is success. And that, to me, is the same thing with a successful product. When I make a product, we have a product that we call our platinum record, like as if you were an album creator. But our platinum record is a product that sold for seven years at Costco, and it sold for $99. So it was an office chair that sold for $99, which is a really inexpensive and hard thing to achieve. But it sold for seven years straight and did more than $20 million a year for our client. And I consider that absolute success, because every single person that bought that loved that chair. They used it, they sat on it, they used it again and again, and the chairs lasted way longer than they should have for a $99 share. So I know I was successful in everything I set out to achieve. But the success is really why Would Costco keep it in if it wasn't working? And so that bought and used again and again is my product criteria for success. And so I think of it the same way. If I'm selling a coaching package, if I'm selling potties, if I'm selling any of those things, if it's bought and used again and again and people rave about it, then I've done my job.

Oh, outstanding. Because one of the things that I truly personally believe is that so many people are giving away a large part of life, waiting to get there, instead of walking along the road and smelling the mindfulness that's all around us, all the great opportunities that we have to help people, and the way that we can indeed have these repetitive business successes as we go and growing them into bigger and better things sometimes. And how do you do that when it comes to, like, your relationships and so forth? What makes you feel successful that way?

Well, you know, that's a really interesting question. I want to just say briefly, though, that I live in a world of vision and future, right? Because that's what being a designer, that's what being a creative is. It's like, what is my future going to look like? What is my business going to look like in the future? So I do live out there as a visionary. And it's really important, though, as a visionary, to make sure that you don't miss the present. Because when you miss the present, you don't serve people well. You don't deliver today, you're like, I'll deliver that tomorrow. So I always want to do that. So that I think translates into my personal life really well, because I've got kids, I've got a puppy. You cannot afford to not be present with them. Right. They don't allow it. They will call you out on it, poop on your floor. That's what puppies do. I've just discovered if I'm not paying attention, they're like, that's it. They will force you back into that. And I think that that for me, that has just been the ongoing thing is having myself surrounded by kids and family and fun and pets. And you doing all of that keeps you totally grounded because they won't take it. They're not fans. You're supposed to be their fan, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. So that, to me is success, though. If they're happy and they're well adjusted and they're living up to their potential, then that, to me is successful as a parent.

That's fantastic. It sounds to me like you've Found sort of an insulator against what I like to call personal dissatisfaction that plagues a lot of entrepreneurs and product designers because, you know, you're always never really satisfied with what you're doing today because you see the future out in front of you.

That's so true. It is. It's very true that that's. There's a lot of that, especially with visionaries. I see it all the time with a lot of the people that I work with, and I have found a place for myself with that. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't creep in for everyone. Like, you know, gosh, I'm not achieving the success that I thought I had or I just didn't. Why didn't we come away from that trade show with enough clients? Like, you know, there's always that goes on their mind. But instead of delving into that, what I like to do is just look at that and say, okay, so that was the result. Now what was the missing piece? What didn't happen? What can I fix next time? And when you live in the opportunity of adjustments, of fixing, of flexing, of pivoting, of doing whatever is necessary to improve. So continuous improvement, and that's the world that I like to call it, that's what we do with products. We're always improving the product. It's never done. And when you live in that with yourself as well, you look at that, it's just an opportunity to improve.

Oh, that's beautiful. Because that keeps you sort of pulled back from the future into the now with an eye going forward.

That's right.

Oh, that's wonderful. So how do you go about strategically setting up then, say, the next three months, six months, that way?

We're big planners here. Hope is not a plan. It's kind of our family motto, our business motto. We don't believe in just hoping that things will work out. So it requires a plan. Now, does that mean that you're going to stick to that plan and it's so narrowly defined and all that? No. We also believe in constant adjustment. But if you don't plan things, if you don't think about that, then you may miss opportunities. You may not have the cash flow you need. Your business may not be sustainable. And so if you're not continually planning. So we plan on a quarterly basis, we plan on a yearly basis, and we plan for three years out. We try not to go beyond that because too much changes in industry and technology today lessens more than three years. It's just not achieved. It's just conjecture.

Absolutely. And one of the things I think that I've noticed that the Potitize team does a very nice job of is statistical analysis or keeping an eye on what are the actual results. Is that something that you focus on?

Yes. But you know, the number's different for everyone. And so that's really where you can't just say, oh, my podcast is statistics. So I have a brand new podcast that started called the New Trust Economy. It's on Blockchain and I started at the end of January and within one month I was asked to be on the Larry King now show. If I looked at my numbers, no one would ever invite me on the show. I didn't even have a thousand listeners because I never promoted the show. I started it, but we didn't have a promotion plan. Our promotion plan wasn't going to start until March. We were just in a way, pre launching. But I happened to interview a guest who was going on the Larry King now show who's. And the producer saw it and said, oh, let me invite her. We need a woman on the panel. And her interview was very insightful, so let's invite her on. And so that's how I got it. And so I look at success as a different model. If I look just at my numbers, that wouldn't mean something to me. That wouldn't have a direct effect on my business, on the publicity, on the things that were really important to growing my brand and growing who I am. So it's different for every person. And that's really where we get to these statistics and numbers. Yes, it's important to pay attention, but I think you got to know your one thing, the one thing that matters most to you and to your business.

Brilliant. You got to know your one thing. Now that's a tremendous, tremendous thought because one of the things that you've kind of architected for me already is what successful thinker Seth golden talks about, which is the idea of shipping. So what you did, the way I understood you, is you shipped this show, trying to figure it out as you go, and all of a sudden an opportunity presented itself that you never thought, at least probably never thought was going to be there.

That's right. Well, and in a way, sometimes that's what a show is for. When we originally first started our very first show, it was an experiment and I treated this one the same way. It's a learning journey for me. So I have been working in the blockchain for only about 10 months, maybe 8, 10 months. Somewhere in there but it's part of a future plan, part of the three year plan for our productized business. So I'm in a knowledge gathering way. And so what I found was a fast way to gather knowledge is to interview people, right? To pick their brain to get to know them. And I can serve them as well by giving them publicity because I know how to do that. So by providing a service and getting an opportunity to talk to someone who's I'd like to learn something from. That's my extensive research, that's my deep research. And so it's beyond just the general knowledge. Now I'm going deeper into understanding how can I now take this and utilize it? Who should I model? Who knows what they're talking about? Who could I use? How can I build my team and how can I get the answers that I need for, for this long term vision future that I have that I believe is going to be the right thing for me. But I also have to adjust and learn whether or not that hypothesis is true. Is this going to be right for me? Is this going to be right for my business and is this going to be right for my clients? So that's what it is for me. So that's why I never considered or worried about the number of fans or listeners because it was really the experience of doing the interview that mattered to me the most.

You know, you just did something that I think is a wonderful quality of successful thinkers. Not once did you say, I asked myself, how much money could I make from this?

Oh yeah, never. You know, that's not a first thought ever in my brain.

The impact is a great word because unfortunately a lot of people, that's where they're going, how much money can I make from this? And obviously you could probably speak for hours about how it always takes five times as long and ten times as much money. And if that's your goal point, you're not going to, right?

Well, you know, it's not like I don't pay attention to the money and the numbers and the margins and things like that. I always do. Because you can't launch a product into the mass market retail world and lose money. That's ridiculous. You'll never be able to sustain that very long. So my goal is always to make a sustainable business, make a sustainable product in terms of revenue, right? In terms of cash flow. So that requires understanding. Like in products you have to have a 70% margin. Most people don't reserve that much. They think If I make 50% on my money, I'll Be good enough. Yeah, but that doesn't allow you growth. It doesn't allow you lag time for how long it takes retailers to pay you. Like, I know that data. Deep down, I know those financials and those numbers. So they're there and they're inherent in an evaluation of whether or not something is going to work or not. But at the end of the day, if the market's not going to pay it, if it's not worth that value, then it's a no go, just don't do it. But that's because not enough people are going to be able to buy it or access it. So it is an impact decision, not necessarily just a financial one. Am I going to make enough money off of this? No, it's thinking about are enough people going to use it, buy it, be able to use it and be happy with that and not break the bank. And so thinking about that is the way that I look at it.

I think that's just really wonderful. Because what you're talking about is how can I use what Bob Berg calls the second law of the go giver, which is really about how many people can I serve adding more value than it costs to produce this product? And so that's a tremendous thing. And what the audience isn't seeing is your amazing smile when I talk to you about the value. And when you're talking, you're just really into the person. I feel like you can visualize that audience. Is that a picture in your head or am I misinterpreting that?

No, I'm always thinking about the audience. Whether I'm writing or I'm speaking or on a stage or I'm talking on a podcast. I'm always thinking about that person that needs this message the most and how can I reach them. So I'm actually, before I come on your show, I think carefully about your show and I do some research and I listen to your show because it matters to me that I understand and am serving your audience, not mine, not the person I want to connect with, but your audience. Because that's my job here, that's my role, to come on as a guest and serve you first. And if I do that, it always serves me in the end. I mean, it attracts the right people. And so I'm always thinking about that. But I'm also thinking about, like, if I say something here that impacts somebody and they take that and they walk away and they make a change in their life that has a ripple effect out there. And so most people so narrowly Defined as, I have 1,000 listeners, I have 10,000 listeners. Right, that's it. But those 10,000 listeners. Have 10,000 listeners or people, they may impact. And that is always what I'm thinking about, is that ripple effect happening. And if I am only thinking about me, that's a limited. That's a limited ripple. That's a small pebble.

That's really great. You know, when we wrote the Successful Thinker, we wrote it about Cynthia. So whenever I'm doing the podcast or I'm writing an email or I'm doing the coffee with Corey's in my mind, that's the only person that I'm talking to. And, you know, you can feel her waking up today with those issues. And when you do that, that is what gets me through those sticking points. When you're tired and you're frustrated and maybe you had a bad day over here and you want to come into this space. So obviously it takes a lot of energy to be Tracy Hazard. How do you go ahead and maintain your energy and do self care with all the things you've got going on?

Okay, so my life coach will be the first to tell you that I'm horrible at self care, that I don't do enough. But, you know, I mean, I run at a high energy pace. That is who I am already. I'm energetic, I'm passionate. It's kind of who I am. I. But I don't take enough breathing time. As we noted before we were talking. I work late at night. I don't sleep enough either. Right. But I have actually worked on that. And that is the number one thing that I've changed in my life in the last, I'd say two years. It's been about two years now where I changed that, where I was not sleeping hardly at all. And I really had this mindset that I couldn't sleep since a child, that I was an insomniac, and that my brain was running on fast and it wouldn't allow me to sleep. And then about a little more than two years ago, I started transcendental meditation. And when I did that, within 20 minutes, I felt like I completely fell asleep there. Like, I was like, wow, I shut my brain off completely. And so I said to myself, that's no longer an excuse. If you can shut your brain off in 20 minutes, then there's no reason you can't shut your brain off for a whole night. That's a bad paradigm you've been setting for yourself. That is a bad mindset. Let's Remove that barrier and. And from that point on I fall asleep and I go to bed every night so I sleep nice and soundly. And I think that is the biggest change in my self care that has happened for me. And making time for my family, that's more important to me. And while for a lot of people that's a drain on your energy, like, you know, it's hard to be a mom, but I look at that as that's what actually re energizes me. And so if I have a choice of my time, I'd rather not sleep, not meditate, I'd rather spend it with my girls. So, you know, hey, that's a choice that I'm making at this stage because I don't want to miss a minute of their time when they're this age. So my girls are almost 10 and almost 5 and my oldest one is 24.

So yeah, that's really great because one of the things that I've seen in the pharmacy is people who are now actively involved with their grandchildren because they just plain missed it with their children.

They missed it. Yeah, I hear that all the time. And I have loved how active my parents are as grandparents. Like they don't miss events even, you know, like horrible violin concerts, like, stuff like that. They show up and they don't want to miss a minute of it. But I also never felt like my parents missed a lot of my childhood either. My dad was a big oil executive and he was busy, but when he was with us, he was present. And I take that as the same model that I want to live here is that when I'm with my kids, I'm there for them. I'm not still working, I'm not on my phone, I'm listening to what they have to say and we're spending quality time together. That's relaxing, that's beautiful.

Because that's really a cardinal rule of the successful thinker is to be all in wherever you are, so that you're all in while you're at work. And it's no longer selfish because you know that you're going to be done with that, put it away so that you're all in with your family.

That's right. And you know, I think that most people skip out on. One of the very first people I interviewed for my column in Ink magazine was John Asaroff. And I asked him this question. I was like, John, my brain is really, really crowded and busy and I'm afraid I'm missing the important inventions, important thoughts, the important Innovations. I'm afraid I'm missing it because my brain has so much noise in it. And he said, well, do you hear your ideas? And I said, yeah, I do. They come above the noise. And he said, well, then you know how to listen with your brain's level of noise. Every brain is different. And so as long as you hear it, as long as you're still hearing, it, doesn't matter how busy your brain is, doesn't matter how busy your life is, as long as you still hear it. So I think when you take those breaks, when you spend time with your family, it allows your brain to kind of shift. And almost immediately after, when I sit back down to work, I'm like, there's that thing I couldn't work out. And it just gave us that opportunity to wash that through where I was putting too much processing into it.

That's fantastic. One of the best ways I solve problems is take a shower or go to the movies.

Yeah, A lot of people, it's the shower. I agree with that one.

I think you just said it. A mind in tension and a mind in stress really doesn't function at its highest ability. So I think that's wonderful. I wonder though, at those times when you get really stuck, how do you find the resources or the people or the things that you need to do to keep going?

Well, I'm really the luckiest woman on earth because my partner is my husband and he's always there and we have great mind share. And so whenever I'm stuck, I know that he will be able to pick up and help me see a new perspective. And I'm that same thing for him. And so we consider it co creating. Right. So the really great part is that it's not like a normal company where you have to justify that you don't have an ulterior motive or that you have to build trust. We've been married for 27 years. We trust each other immensely. We have the same path, we're going in the same direction. And so when I'm stuck, I can count on a really great perspective that isn't going to undermine who I am and what I am or be this kind of position where it's too vulnerable to admit that. And that happens when you're in environment like a pharmacy, as you talk about. Right. You don't want to admit you don't know something to your coworkers, but sometimes you have to in order to move through to that next place. And so I'm lucky that I can do that. That I can be that person and vulnerable and it doesn't affect how he sees me as the CEO of this company. Right. It doesn't change that at all. So that for me is my place. He's always my first go to and we always use that mindshare and it's also a shorthand for us because we've been working together for so long that I don't have to go through the long explanation of how I got to this thought or got this crazy idea. He's like, okay, let's hear it out. It's like all in. Let's hear it out. Right. And so that's why that really works well for us. But I find that you have to have advisors. Like, there's just some things that I can't talk about or we stress our family. Right. So I have business things that I have to work out, whether it's how am I going to get more cash flow in so we can grow faster, or how am I going to get do this? And they're involved in the day to day. So doing that, you have to have outside resources, you have to have mentors, you have to have people you can go to. And I have people I trust that I've worked with again and again. And that's where I think it's really important. It's not. You pick up a book and you think, oh, this person's a guru. I don't believe in that. I believe in results. So they may write a good game, they may speak a good game, but at the end of the day, if their clients aren't getting results and if I haven't gotten successful results from them, that's not an okay thing. It has to be something that's completely repeatable with whoever they're with. And so. Or admit that this only works for technology companies or this only works for coaches. Be honest about where it works. It doesn't just work for everyone. And so are you the right coach for me? That's the question that I'd be asking, have you been there, done that again and again in my industry or in the area I need you most for?

I think the greatest day of my own life was the day I realized I didn't have to know everything.

Isn't it a relief?

Well, that's just it. And I think you're hearing more and more podcast interviews, seeing more and more magazine articles that talk about, you know what, if you're doing this right, you're not trying to do it by yourself.

Yeah. I mean, that's where my podcast product launch hazards for other product launchers is to point that out. There are 25 experts and plus four new people I interview every single month that they may never have heard of before. Like, we just did an episode with South American sourcing. I have never sourced a single product in South America. I learned something on that call. And so when we expose ourselves to these other people who are doing other things, we start to see, wow, there's so many rookie errors in doing it yourself. There's so many problems that come up with not seeking advisors, that the right advisors are accelerators. And time, especially in this marketplace, timing for your products, timing for your services, timing for your content. Like, all of those things are essential. If you're not getting it out today, your opportunity might be missed tomorrow.

Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that happens is that when we realize that we're a player on the team, we're able to keep our own value front and center.

Yes.

So, like, for me, I work at this hospital with these incredibly, incredibly smart young pharmacists that are so good at clinical pharmacy that it just about makes me wonder why I'm even in the room. But then there are times where they'll call me and say, okay, we've got this lady and we need you to talk to her because we don't know what to do with her. So it was a while before I really realized that when you take that into any business and just realize that, you know what, if I'm okay with my talents and I'm okay letting them complement my talents because they have these talents that our weaknesses, then you come to find out that everything works like that. There's always somebody that loves to do Excel spreadsheets.

That's right.

And so using those people actually does a couple of things. What do you think those things are?

So it's an interesting model. So I like to live in both place where I am an expert. Right. Obviously. And I can add a lot of value to people and provide that. But I also like to live in a place where I'm learning something and I'm putting it into perspective. And that part of it was why I did start my blockchain podcast, because like I said, I was learning, I was experimenting. What I do know that I'm good at is asking good questions. And so as you ask good questions and you start to frame that into the mindset of how can I be a service? How does this apply? How can I utilize this? What you find is that ability to take these pieces that other people are so great at and put it together into a package that just makes a wonderful product, a wonderful system, a wonderful company. When you look at that. Or even a wonderful book and viewpoint. Right. When you look at that altogether, that in and of itself is an amazing skill set. And so being able to assemble the right teams and build all of that is of a higher power than actually having the skill itself. And so I always think back to all the stories about people who build these companies, and they're not an expert in anything like Henry Ford, and he would have. I've got all these people at the touch of a button, and I just have to ask them, what's the most important thing in this engine? And what are these metals? What heat does this metal go to? Why do I have to know that just because I run this company, I assembled great people.

Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. Because one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is delegation.

Yep.

And I find through my experience, and I wonder if you will agree with this, that when you delegate, you actually empower if you do it right.

If you do it right, you empower. And that's hard for a lot of people to learn. Look, a lot of us are control freaks about stuff. Right. Well, only we can do it right. Or. And I find that the businesses that are the most cash strapped or the most. They have hard cash flow cycles Right. Where they go up and down all the time. They get freaked out about that. Like, they can't hire accountants. They're afraid to expose themselves is really what it is. They're afraid to be vulnerable and have somebody else solve a problem for them.

And.

And that's where empowerment happens. When you say, look, this is where we are, this is our challenge, and I'm trusting you to find solutions for us. I'm trusting you to find a path. When I brought Alexandra, my oldest daughter, into our business, I was worried. I was worried we weren't going to get along like her dad and I get along, that we were going to have a lot of issues in the office because our brains are very similar. And so I thought, but only very similar on the system side of things. But I found that when I empowered her and I trusted her, she went to town to a depth that my brain was not capable of. And that was the brilliance of it. She took us and accelerated us a year ahead of where we could have done, because I empowered her and I trusted her. And it gave me an opportunity to expand all the things that I could work on and all the things that I do. So if you think that you're giving away something by delegating, it's the wrong part. It's the wrong way to think. If instead you're going to get something, you're going to get an opportunity to expand your bandwidth in areas where you're brilliant and you're going to give someone an opportunity to utilize the bandwidth you had in ways that they're brilliant and they will find expansive ways for you too. That's how I always look at it. It's a gift.

I'm here to tell you that that was a brilliant decision on your part because your daughter Alexandra is one of my all time favorite people.

I so appreciate that you have been such one of our fans because you see the brilliance like I do and.

It'S really great to be able to send an email to a person and hear back that she gets everything you're saying. And even though you probably only sent half of what you were saying.

Yeah.

So I think another thing is that when you're doing that, you're freeing up your time to do something that you can really do well. So, for instance, I live in the Arctic Circle and we have created a record of the most amount of snowfall in February in Wisconsin in like the last 100 year.

Yeah, I saw the weather there recently. I think you guys were getting like snow bombs. Like, it looked crazy.

You've never seen anything like it. It's really, really wild. And I normally don't talk about the weather, but the reason I bring it up is this afternoon I will be writing a check to the man who took care of all of that for me and a lot of people I've seen out in their driveway for hours and hours and hours on end to write that check. While he's doing that, you and I are doing this and hopefully helping exponentially more people than I could have if I was doing my driveway. Do you run into that kind of singing business in any kind of.

Well, you know, Tom and I ran into that really early in our relationship. So we were both working for other companies. I worked for Herman Miller, the office furniture manufacturer out of Michigan. And I was doing a lot of traveling and I would come home on a weekend and he was working out of the house because he had his own business designing, and he was successful at it, but he was working all the time. And so I come home and the house would be a mess and it would be like we're going to spend our weekend cleaning toilets and vacuuming floors and stuff like that. I looked at Him. And I said, we're not going to stay married if that's the way things are going to go. Like, this is not going to work for us. And so from that day forward, we hired a cleaning service. And it was hard back then. I think I made $38,000 a year. Like, I made hardly anything. And we could barely afford the cleaning people. But it was sanity and time together. And we learned that lesson really early on how critically important it is for us to preserve time for the things that we really value and for the things that we can be amazing and excellent at. And so that's that first time. And when you realize, yeah, you're spending money, but you're getting back time, and that's way more valuable.

Outstanding. Well, you know, I gotta tell you, I would love to talk to you probably now for the next four hours or so, but in fairness to your time and to the time of our listeners, we're going to end for now. But I was wondering if you could give the successful thinkers one really great takeaway. What do you think that should be?

So I think we get caught up on the idea that we need to be successful. And that's not necessarily a need. Like, I don't think God put us on this earth or Mother Nature, whatever you believe. Right. I don't think that that's why we're here, is to be successful. We're already set up to be successful. That's inherent in who we are. What we need to think about doing is living up to our full potential. Are we using all of our gifts? Are we exploring everything we can? Are we expanding ourselves and the people around us? And when we approach it from that perspective, then we are living up to being successful. And so looking at it as the opportunity to do more, be more, as you put it at the very beginning, I wake up every day and there's a to do list. I'm showing you my to do list. It says, get things done at the top. It's a little more polite than my normal list, but it's short. As you saw that. There's only like 10 things on that list. Actually, there's like nine. But the next page of it is my to be list. Who do I need to be today? And I need to be powerful. I need to be present. I need to be whatever that is. But when you put yourself in a mind of how do I need to be? All those other things happen and success just comes.

Fantastic. Tracy, how can people find you out there in the world so you can.

Find me so many places. So I'm going to say if you Google tracy hazard with two z's, you will definitely find me. LinkedIn is kind of my preferred so if people want to reach out to me and just want to stay connected, stay connected on LinkedIn because I post the most there so you'll get more of who I am and what I'm sharing. But you can from there you can find my columns and my podcast. You can find all of that. So that's also an easy place to start.

And of course, because of Tracy's wonderful daughter Alexandra, there will be lots of clickable links at the end of the podcast here for you to find Tracy Tracy reminded me of an interesting thing that I want to leave you with that Les Brown talked about. Les Brown said that the best way for a man or a woman to die is to be surrounded by their family at their funeral and holding their hands and everything. But what if the ideas and the gifts that you were born to bring were standing around you at your funeral saying, we came to you and only you could have given us life and now we have to die with you. So what that means to me is if you need to be more invested in someone in your personal life, or more connected to people around you, or more tune with your business partners, you might want to take some extra time and take Tracy's advice and really ask yourself, is what I've always thought success was? Is that true for me? And until next time, I want to thank you for tuning in today. I want to thank Tracy for her amazing wisdom and I want you to always remember successful thinkers that I believe in you.

Thanks for joining us this week on the Successful Thinker Podcast. To connect with Corey and stay up to date on the podcast, please visit www.thesuccessfulthinker.com or subscribe to Coffee with Corey, a series of daily short coaching videos discussing mindful leadership one cup at a time. Your Coffee With Corey subscription includes a free downloadable ebook called the Successful Thinkers Complete Guide to Inner Peace. As a bonus for signing up, sign up at www.thesuccessfulthinker.com coffee or www.coffeewithcori.com.