The Leadership In Business Podcast Episode 128 With Tracy Hazzard From The Leadership In Business Podcast With Todd Westra

This is Todd Westrow with the Leadership in Business podcast where we take owners and founders of small to mid sized companies and we gain their insights. It's six questions in nine minutes because we respect their time and we expect you to spend all 10 minutes listening to the entire episode. So in question number one, in a few sentences, tell us who you are and what you do.

I'm Traci Hazzard and I am the CEO of Pottatize and we are the largest post production house of podcasts and we are, I am personally a prolific podcaster. I have five shows that I produced over the last six years and I am an ink columnist, a columnist for Authority magazine, Grit Daily. So prolific content here.

Wow. All I gotta say is intimidation. The other thing I want to say is, you know, Austin Powers, his middle name is Danger. I don't know if you knew that, but ladies and gentlemen, Tracy's middle name literally is podcasting strategist and former Inc Columnist, like, followed up by Hazard as a last name. This is intimidation.

The best decision I ever made was when I gave up 28 years ago my last, my real last name for my married name, which is Hazard, which is just too awesome a name to pass up. Right?

That's amazing. All right, so Tracy, you provide an awesome service for people like me and for people like me who want to do what I'm doing right now, and that is creating podcasts. And tell us a little bit more. I just want to dig in just a second for what are you actually doing for people like us?

So we do everything. We do everything but let you record, upload and be done. Our goal is to get you, Dean, heard, found and rewarded. Now this is not necessarily your typical reward. It might be rewarded with more leads, more publicity. It's a different definition for each person. And that's what I love most about this business is I love diving into all the different companies and the solopreneurs and helping them by being their extra team and also by helping them power their business.

I love it. So as you do this and you're providing this awesome service, you yourself are growing your business. What would you say, as a business owner is your favorite part about growing your business?

Well, I'd say, I mean, everything about growing the business is exciting. But, you know, I'm a how to girl, like at the core of it. I love to figure out the how to, how to get things to work, how to get from here to there. That plan it usually, you know, it really does come to me at night. So like that drives me and that passion for it, it is just exactly where I love to be. It's a grind in the beginning of something when you're proving it out and making it work. But when you're at that growth stage, I mean, there's a lot of fun in there and there's a lot that just I thrive on personally. But there's also some hard things. So don't get me wrong, there are some things that, you know, finding enough cash flow to support your growth can be really difficult.

All right, all right, so you just rolled right into our third question. Because everyone loves to talk about the joy of business ownership and the joy of growing their business. But as you jump in and like, you brought up the challenges associated with that, I generally find people drop their challenges into one of three buckets. It's either the people problem, the processes problem, or the tools. And you brought up a close fourth, which is the capital portion.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We're going to skip that. But.

Other than sacrificing your children, what is it about those other three that really seems to be your big bottleneck?

You know, for me, it's the people. So, like when we start out a company and it's just like, you know, your core, yourself, your partners, you know, and you're all in it together, it's easy to stay innovative, to stay nimble, to figure out what you know, how to serve your customers and to be passionate about that. But it's really hard to pass that on to the next level. And so right Now I have 60 employees around the world. And so and our teams are growing really fast. We're onboarding constantly, so there's a lot of buy in that has to a lot of energy around. How do you understand what our corporate culture is? Do we even have a corporate culture that we're working towards? Obviously we do, but we just didn't know what it was yet. So there's a lot of that that happens. So I'd say for me, always the people side. It's not that it's not rewarding, because it absolutely is, but it is challenging because we have to get people to think sometimes in ways that they are not comfortable, and especially because we reward free thinking, problem solving, those kinds of things which are not always typical. Some people just want a checklist and they want to know what they have to do and go in and go out. We're just not that company.

That's why most people are not entrepreneurs. There's no checklist.

That's right.

What are we supposed to do next? I don't know. So you have figured that part out and that is exciting for you. And I would have to agree. Having run a global business, having employees from different cultures, different countries, different places, trying to get them to buy into one master culture that the company is really trying to be is a challenge. So what do you do? What advice do you give to someone who's in your shoes right now, five years behind you?

Well, you know, I always approach everything that we do from. I call it the prove it first model. We do it. My husband and I used to design products that you buy every day at mass market retail. You can still buy our best selling office chair. Platinum record sales at Costco. Today it's a mesh chair, $99 and it's, you know, it sells $20 million. But we had to prove that that works first. Right. And so that's where I go with everything that we do. So if we think we can make this work for a new service, a new system, I'll put a core team against it and we'll prove that it can work on that and that we can get buy in from the production side, that we can get buy in from the customer side. And I look at it from those directions that we always look at something as like, it's like, let's take it to its prototype stage and then expand it out. If we try to push everything into the bigger corporate world, the bigger corporation that we have, our bigger system, we crush it and we confuse it and we stress everyone.

I love it. That's some fantastic advice. Prove it. Prove it, prove it. And then just freaking nail it. Right?

That's right. And you know what? The money flows faster when you've proven it.

So that cash flow problem gets solved.

Love it. I love it. I love people that cash flow their business with clients, not with credit.

That's exactly what we did.

Good. Good girl. Love it. So as you are helping other businesses, you know, a lot of people that I don't know that are in your circle of influence, that I may never know. I love to call people out on the podcast who are just killing it, don't even get any recognition anywhere for it, but just are in their own little bubble making it happen. Who's someone in your circle who's just doing a great job and deserves a little shout out right now?

Well, you know, I love the people who are behind the scenes, the ones you probably never heard of because they're so busy building their business, they're doing such a successful job. You Just don't hear about them. They're not flashy, they're not in the news. Right. So one of my favorite people in the world, and we bonded over being podcast hosts together about five years ago when we first met, is Aaron Young. He has a show called the Unshackled Owner. I've taken his class, the Unshackled Owner, which is really for the foundational things of growing your business and really growing your team and scaling it. And I use his job description model. I have my vision statement. Like, all of those things happened because of Aaron. And I loved the whole way that he operates and what he does. But he also introduced me to the coolest, most interesting people all the time. So in a week and a half or two weeks, I have an interview with Michael Gorton, who is the CEO of Teladoc, and he has this very cool story over someone threatening to put him in jail if he offered telemedicine. Like, you know, there's just so much amazing stories and other things. He knows these great company owners that he brings to us and to the group. So I just love associating with people like that who, who themselves are reaching out into new communities and getting to know people who are on the ground doing cool things. And then that's just a great example.

So that is a heck of a shout out. Like, that is powerful. So I'm going to get him all synced up on my LinkedIn post and everything like that. So he gets a little special pat on the back.

Absolutely.

Hopefully. And listen, Tracy.

I just love your name, like the whole middle name function of it. I'm just going to call you Tracy the podcast queen Hazard. Thank you so much for being on the show with me today. You have just listened to Todd and Tracy on the Leadership and Business podcast. How do people get a hold of you, Tracy?

Find me on LinkedIn taszard with two z's.

There are just so many fun ways to play with that. Tracy Hazard, thank you for being here on the Leadership in Business podcast. Have a great day.