You may not be a believer, but you are still made in the image of God. Once you understand the relationship between faith and success, you’ll experience supernatural gifts of clarity, teaching, and operations. In this episode, Dr. Tracey Jones sits in as a guest in Cyndi Garza’s podcast, Optimized Success.
Dr. Tracey shares with Cyndi her faith-filled journey of experiencing the lows and the highs. She’s had a detached retina, kidney stone, and COVID. But also, she achieved her Ph.D., raised a family, and published a book. As long as you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can conquer challenges and come out winning. Tune in, have faith, and succeed!
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Listen to the podcast here:
Faith And Success | Tracey Jones And Cyndi Garza
We are interviewing Tracey Jones. Unlike most keynote speakers, she brings a unique approach to motivation that includes a call to action. She is an author, speaker, Air Force Academy graduate, decorated veteran, international leadership expert, scholar and researcher. She is the President of Tremendous Leadership. She released her book, SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within. I'm so excited to talk to her about her book. Welcome, Tracey. Tell our readers a little bit about your story. I know you and I spoke a while back, but I loved hearing what led you to where you are now. Could you give us a little history and then share with everyone what's going on in your world?
Thanks to everybody for reading. A little bit about how I came to be where I am, I'm incredibly blessed that I was born to a family. I'm the fifth of six. I tell people I'm a middle child. For all of the middle kids out there, we're the adaptable ones or the ones that learned, "Everything is okay. Figure it out on your own." I had that going for me at the birth order. My dad was a motivational speaker, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones. That was the first big influence in my life. When I was a little girl, he would take me and let me sit under great speakers like Zig Ziglar, Norman Vincent Peale and Ken Blanchard. I would sit there and listen to these incredible men and women speak. He took me to a lot of Amway meetings and I would see this incredible energy, entrepreneurship, free enterprise system, books and success.
"Success wasn't about money. It was about making people have better lives." This was ingrained in me at an early age. Dad, as a motivator, was driven. I tell people it was like a cross between boot camp and sitcom. It was funny and exuberant. If you knew him, he had the most unbelievable sense of humor and love to laugh. Everything was goal-oriented and that everything you do in life should be bringing you to a better understanding of yourself, honing and refining you. From an early age on, I learned that life isn't fair, but it's glorious and, "Don't suck your thumb." He would give me words of wisdom. I would say stuff like, "Dad, what should I look for in a husband?" He was like, "Find something with pants on and pray."
He was this real wisenheimer, but he also challenged me to build me up, not to break me down. I remind parents to make sure their child is resilient enough to handle that kind of toughness because not every kid is going to go with the flow. I grew up with him and got exposed to a lot of wonderful things. This was back in the late '70s, early '80s. He took all our TVs and packed them up in the attic because he said, "You don't need to be watching that trash. You get a job," which we always had jobs. In summers, we started working in our early teen years. "You guys should get a job. You go volunteer. You can play sports or read books, but you're not just going to sit here and watch that stuff."
That was back when there was nothing on TV. We were like, "Dad, you're inhumane. We wish we could run away." There's no Facebook to vent to about how horrible our lives were, but looking back, now I'm so thankful. We would write book reports to earn money. We picked a biography and autobiography, something of substance. You don't realize that then because you're like, "Why can't I just be normal like every other kid?" You get it when you get into adulthood. You get the lessons that you learned because when you hit eighteen or whatever they're defining adulthood now, I've heard it has been pushed to 25, which is not good, but it doesn't matter. I don't care if you're 85. You can still learn this. He taught me lessons.
He went to a military school in New Mexico and gave a leadership summit there. He came back and he was like, "Tracey, these kids are going to make something of themselves." I was his guinea pig. I sold books with Southwestern for two summers door-to-door because he told me, "If you can knock on a door and make a cold call, that's one of the hardest things in life you're ever going to do." I was like, "Let's get the hard stuff out of the way early." I sold books and went to a Bible institute for a year because he said to me, “Tracey, before you go out into the cold, cruel world, I know you've been raised biblically soundly, but take a year of integrated Bible." I was like, "Okay, dad," so I did.
I went to the New Mexico Military Institute for a year and they got me into the Air Force Academy. I got my commission and undergraduate from there. I served in our military for twelve years in the first Gulf War and Bosnian War. I got out in 2000 and moved to Austin, Texas because I heard it was a cool place. Again, a middle child, "Life is a journey." Any door that opens, I'll walk through it because I would much rather fail than regret it. I don't like regret. I will try something and not do it and go, "Good." I can go to bed knowing, "At least I tried it. No regrets." I went to Austin, Texas into the high-tech and semiconductor firm for five years and then moved to St. Louis and worked for the defense industry, Northrop Grumman, and worked for the National Security Agency.
My father transitioned to heaven in 2008. I thought, "It has been twenty years, twelve in the military and eight in the civilian sector. It's time for me to come home." I was pivoting from the point of pain. You're supposed to pivot from purpose, but I was in pain because I was in these bureaucracies and the inner entrepreneur that I always thought was there because I'm an engineer. I was like, "You can't be an engineer and entrepreneur." When I was single for 25 years, I was like, "You can't be married to a human man and have Jesus as your man. You can't have both." Suddenly, it struck me, "You can be a left brain and a right brain." I came back home after he passed in 2008 and took over the house of his publishing firms. That's what happened.
From there, you've authored your book.
I've written ten books. The tenth one, SPARK, came out on September 1, 2020. That is a result of my doctoral dissertation. I earned my PhD and that was a long dream of mine. I always wanted to be a writer too ever since I was a little girl. It was quite providential that after being in all these engineering, regulatory and process-oriented fields, I get to come back to run a small boutique publishing company. I get to write books and publish them because I'm the publisher. I started writing books with my rescue dogs because I wasn't secure enough yet and I thought, "If a book comes from a dog, no one is going to say it's not good. It's just not possible.”
The dogs were my muse. Mr. Blue and Ruby Red wrote my first two books. I wrote a series of three children's books based on my rescue pets too because life lessons are the same no matter what age. It's just how you contextualize them. I wrote a book, A Message to Millennials, which is about the power of followership which is what my dissertation was about. I had a lot of young leaders say to me, "How do I become a leader?" I was like, "First grasshopper, you must become a good follower." The military taught me that. In the first four years as a lieutenant, you were to be seen and not heard. That taught me, "You may wear the rank. You don't know enough yet to even be heard." That's not to marginalize you. It just means, "Get in and do something before you get to comment." I'm glad I learned that because that was a very important lesson. I've been sharing that with kids.
You've said so many great things. I've been trying to take some notes and go back. Life is not always fair and glorious. It has taken me a long time to realize that we always want and think it should be that, but it's okay that it's not. It makes the other times special. I love that you shared that. You would rather fail than have regrets. It's not even failing.
It's the old, "I just found another way that didn't work," because you always gain experience. There are some things that I didn't do that I do have some regrets about. I had a couple of regrets early on and I thought, "I learned early." I make mistakes like everybody else. I try to make the big ones only once. When you learn, you modify your behavior. If I want to learn my lesson, I'm going to do something to change it. I'm getting much better about it. I learned to count the costs and that's the beauty of growing older. You get more comfortable and confident. You get more wisdom, a greater network, more experience and knowing that you can ride the ship as it's about to run ashore. I like being older.
That's another good one, "I like being older."
I feel so much like, "I'm finally figuring it out."
You're getting the clarity.
That's a beautiful word and one of my favorite words.
SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within
To be a good leader, you have to be a good follower.
Followership is a dirty word in society. It's like, "When you get married, you follow your marital vows. When you go to work for a company, you follow the standards of conduct. When you join a faith group or a nonprofit, you sign at it." We have to submit to all kinds of things in our lives and do it with honor, not to be put down. I let people that discipleship and submission are humility. You can't be a leader because nobody is at the top. Everybody has the pecking order of, even if you're a solopreneur, you're still in this vast sea of humanity that's cross-pollinating with one another. You have to learn that someday, you're going to be on the leadership side of the coin and another day, you may be on the followership side. That's a beautiful thing when you can do both and be at ease with it.
When others see you following, you're teaching them too. That's when you become that leader to them. They're following your behavior. Every time I hear your background, I love that it was militant and engineer and now, it's creative. The words that come out of your mouth, I love that word. That's cool. I don't even know if I've ever said that, but I do have favorite words that are so meaningful but to have that creative spirit to even think, "That's one of my favorite words."
I like targeting. You had once asked me and it could have been this thing, "The biggest lesson in achieving success?" You hit the nail on the head, clarity. In my new book, I say, "I don't pray for success. I pray for clarity or wisdom," because you hear about the spiritual gifts. My gift is the gift of complication. Like a lot of women out there, I will overanalyze, second-guess and lay in bed and doubt myself. Even me, I've been to war and I say things to people in a very tough way, but I still wrestle with it.
My biggest thing was when I finally dialed in. It's Jim Collins' Good to Great, The Hedgehog Principle. "What are you the best in the world at? That's number one. Number two, what are you passionate about? Number three, what drives your economic engine? I don't care how much you love it if you can't make a living at it or provide for your family. We're supposed to be providers, good citizens and taxpayers too. Everybody can part take in the beauty of living in America." That was one of the things, but I think of singularity.
I started a woman and veteran-owned S corp and it got approved. I got my EIN. I'm so excited. It's called T3 Solutions and the three T's are Targeted, Transformative and Tremendous. That was the first part of my career, going in, executing the orders and getting the bad guys. Transformative, as I started to realize, I'm a lot more left-brained than I thought and then bringing it all together into this tremendous blend of this is a tapestry that I've been able to live with so many people helping me.
Tell us about SPARK.
SPARK is the book that came out. It is the product of the research of my PhD, which was a case study on an organization that went through a crisis. It was a failed merger and eventually did come out okay. I interviewed the leaders and followers. I did a case study and I wanted to know if the leader did something to which the follower said, "I'm with you, chief. Who runs into the burning building and who runs out?" Crisis leadership fascinates me. Leadership is easy when everything is going great. I love a crisis because you get this clarity, distilling point and a transformative thing that sometimes, in peacetime operations, you don't get because it's good enough and don't worry about it.
SPARK is an acronym. I was in the military, so I love acronyms. S is for Singularity. That is the one thing that you're going to land on. P is Persistence. You just have to keep on. My father always told me, "Tracey, you can want to quit. Just don't do it." Those are the two intrinsic things that we have. I have to know exactly what I'm going to focus on, what I'm going to be the best in the world at and what I'm going to bring to the world. P is, "I can't quit. I have to give everything." When you know that, you become emboldened. A lot of the motivation and personal development things, where they fall short is that they get everybody all jazzed up and they'll say, "Be courageous. Speak your truth." You go out there and realize, "Just because I said it, put it on my vision board or law of attracted it, that doesn't mean it's going to happen."
You have the external piece, just like leaders need followers and followers need leaders. SP, you're singular and persistent, that's what I bring to the equation and then I need ARK, Advocates, Resources and Knowledge. Your advocates are your champions, benefactors, connectors and reciprocates. They're the people that want your success more than you. Resources are the means. I mean, "If I don't have the right website and digital marketer loading my book on Amazon, there are technical aspects of success that I need to have. I need capital." We all need money or else we can't. Even nonprofits, especially they need money.
K is knowledge. If you are not in a continuous state of learning every day, you're going to reinvent yourself to be a higher version of yourself. Knowledge is absolutely incredible. That's where you're pulling in, listening to shows like this and connecting with other great leaders. I got a PhD in Leadership, but every day I talk to somebody else and they're like, "Are you kidding me?" It's a beautiful way to say it. I hadn't thought of it that way, case in point. SPARK is about the Bruce Springsteen song, "You can't start a fire without a spark." Everybody wants to be on fire. I want the greatest fire, but before that, you have to have this source of ignition. What is the source of ignition?
Here I am. I have the C corp for twelve years. It's expensive, outdated and cumbersome. My dad had set it up. It was good then, but I'm like, "I can't write a lot of stuff off. I'm not women-owned because there are other trustees. What am I going to do?" I sat there for twelve years thinking about it. My husband finally said to me, "Will you please call my accountant?" He had been saying this to me for two years. I was dating him for two years, but I had known him. I was like, "No," because I can be so dichotomous. That's the engineer in me. It's set up as C corp.
He went, "Call Jim Watson," so I called Jim Watson. Jim Watson went, "You need to set up an S corp because then you can write it off and take your salary and the stuff that you're putting into the business." Anybody running a business out there, you know you're putting money into the business. I'm already paying taxes on my salary from the business. I was like, "I gladly pay my taxes, but I don't want to pay more than my taxes have to be." He went, "Tracey, it's not a big deal." I was like, "I had heard about these articles of incorporation." To me, this entails like an Atlas Shrugged, book of Legalese. I was like, "I don't have time. I can't do this."
Finally, I catch him on. I went, "How do I do this?" He went, "I can't do it for you." I was like, "That's it. He can't do it for me." He went, "Get on UpCounsel, which is a legal website. Just outsource. It should cost you between $300 and $1,200. They'll get it done in a week." I was like, "Come and say what?" He went, "Yes." I got on UpCounsel and found this awesome lawyer in New York City. He was like, "I used to do HR law and that burnt me out. Now, I help entrepreneurs form S corps and watch them sell." I can't believe it. He filed this and then he said, "By the way, if you have your DoD form when you're in the military, they'll waive the fee. Within two weeks, articles of incorporation."
I was like, "All those years I sat there, what was it?" My question that I always say there and go is, "What is it that finally makes you take action?" That's what SPARK is all about. There are five elements. A lot of times, I needed that initial thing that when Mike said that to me, "I'm going to form it," and then I persisted. In this case, it didn't take much persistence because it was quite easy, but I needed an advocate. I found a great lawyer. I needed the resources. I found that through UpCounsel. The knowledge now I know is he spent half an hour talking to me about how to file. He was like, "Get with your accountants. You do this," and then I can put a little sign on that I'm still Tremendous Leadership and Tracey C. Jones, but now I have this.
The book is about the five steps. I love words of exhortation, but my love language is not that. Mine is gifts of help, "If you want to love me, help me." That's how I am, "Help me get stuff done and I'll marry you right then and there." Words of exhortation are wonderful and that's important, but for him just to come in and tell me this. What I wanted was diagnostic for people. If you follow these five essentials, you will get to where you need to go. I promise you that. It takes time and you have to wonder when that catalyst is. I had been mulling over wanting this for years. The answer had always been there, but for whatever reason, on that particular day, I decided to take action. We're going to get people in the mindset of, "The solution is so much closer than you think, but once you get singularity and start taking action, stuff starts happening." That's what it's about.
I love the acronym. The word is great and what is behind it is so important. How can we get a copy of that book?
Faith And Success: Crisis gives you clarity.
It's at TremendousLeadership.com. You can get a hardcover copy and I'll autograph it. We have a series of seven Zoom courses that go along with it. You can get it on Amazon.com. We have the audiobook, eBook, paperback, whatever you want. I would be absolutely delighted if you get a copy.
We'll pick up a few copies and have a little contest or something with this along the path of promoting this book because I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm going to order it. I know that our good friend Terry had read it. Did she read the whole thing when she got the early copy?
When she interviewed me in the beginning, I had sent her the pre-copy. I'll put some extra copies in the mail for you too.
Thank you. I know what she had read. She was like, "It's spectacular. You have to meet Tracey." We didn't talk a lot about your faith being such an important factor in this too.
Thank you for asking that. I tell people this is the trifecta. In research, you always have three grounded legs. You hear a lot about IQ. I got my PhD. Capability is very important. No matter how much I want something, if I don't have the mental capacity or the cognitive skills, I can't get there. We hear a lot about EQ. My dad was the master of EQ, empathy, compassion, consideration and that ability to make somebody feel. These two things are incredibly important, but it is a cold, cruel world we live in. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. The Good Book says it.
I talk about the third piece of it, which is your SQ, your spiritual intelligence. As a born-again believer, I find it in my dissertation. I know I heard all about the imbuing, Imago Dei and God Sees. We are made in the image of God. That's my worldview. If you don't believe it, you don't have to believe it, but you still are. If you look at all the creations, you know where did this come from. The spiritual quotient is dialing into the power of the holy spirit, who is your biggest advocate and connector and knows what you want before you can even grow a word. I had grown up thinking the holy spirit was like snakes and people yelling. I was totally off. I got into a personal relationship with, "Although Christ is no longer with us on this planet, his presence in the holy spirit is." It's in me.
Once you realize this isn't about something standoffish, but this is an indwelling in you, then you get those supernatural gifts of clarity, teaching, operations and writing. There have been times I have had the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. I tell people I had a detached retina and cornea, COVID and kidney stone. My mother passed away and then I got my PhD. I got married. My book came out. There were times where I'm like, "That's it. No more." That's when I would turn it over to the holy spirit. I would start typing words so he would give me that piece. It was crazy.
That's what I've heard about writing a book. If you're trying to write it and it's not coming to you freely and openly, it's maybe not the right time. When it is the right time, you can't stop it.
SPARK goes into that. A lot of these things take time to bake and percolate. We have a lot of examples, both in the secular world as well as the biblical world, about where God is not a God of time. He is a God of timing. Keep the course. If it hasn't happened, it just hasn't happened yet. We unpack a lot of that. If you aren't a believer and I have a lot of people that aren't that have even read the book, the construct of SPARK is still completely sound. It's not heresy. Those five principles, regardless of your worldview, political view or paradigm on life, are essentials for every entity that ever has been or ever will be.
What's a big lesson you could share with us that you've had along the way? I know you've said several of them, but what stands out to you?
The biggest thing that I have learned is that you can't get it right without the right people. I know a lot of our leadership stuff out there puts it all on the leader or boss that, "You're not making it happen for everybody." There's this synergy like in marriage. There are going to be certain people that gravitate to you as a leader and certain team members that you are inspired by as a leader. Find them. If they're not currently in your sphere and can't be moved into your particular desired area of max performance or max co-inspiration, help them go someplace else and get it in.
I would read the stories about 1 or 2, Wozniak and Jobs. I interviewed Mitzi Perdue. She is the widow of Frank Perdue. Her father started sharing hotels about him and his partner. When I hear about these 1, 2 or 3 inner circles of people, you get this congruence of great minds. That's when I would say, "None of us is meant to go it alone. Even Jesus had his inner circle, a beloved John, James and his core nucleus." Find those people. If you don't have them, find them.
You need them because you can't get to the next level without them. Trust me. I tried it for 55 years. I was successful, but it was so hard and draining. My heart was so broken. I set myself up for so many failures, but the good news is God redeems all time. It's like it never even happened. "Here we go, off to the races again." I don't beat myself up. God doesn't remember our sins anymore. Don't you either. If you forgot them, let it go. We all make mistakes. Give yourself grace.
One of my employees called me and she wanted to hire this assistant. She went through all the reasons why and then she said, "I know it's a hard no and I'm good with that. I've already made the decision. I wanted to share these thoughts with you. I want you to know I'm okay passing it on." I went, "It's a hard yes." She went, "What?" I said, "You will never be able to go any higher than where you are right now unless you start adding people onto your team to go along with you. You can get so far on your own, but when you go any further, there's a hard stop there."
We weren't coded and made that way. I'm so glad you said it. That's tough because you're always torn as an entrepreneur between, "Do I have the resources when I've been out of the business?" If you find the right person who believes in you and isn't just transacting time for money and punching the clock, you are going to get somebody behind you to help you shoulder that load and begin taking hills you never thought you could take. Bring them on. Anybody with the right spirit and attitude that's doing this for the right reason, which is the good of your mission, is going to understand that even if it doesn't work out, something amazing is going to happen in the process and something tremendous is going to continue happening. I'm glad you were able to speak to her about that.
There are so many amazing things that do happen in the process. A lot of times, our path is much greater than we even realized. What does success look like to you?
Success looks like to me being at peace and knowing every day that I have used my gifts and time to the best of my ability. That entails getting some workouts in, exhorting some people around me, spending some time in the word, eating healthy and knowing that I did everything I could that day to live life to the fullest. I'm a big peace person. I want to be at peace. Whatever is going on around me, I got to know it is well in my soul and that to me is a success.
Do you journal?
Faith And Success: Once you get singularity and start taking action, things start happening.
I'm journaling and writing all the time. I blog and blogs are wonderful. I will tell people that my first book was four years of my journals and blogs. If you journal, you could publish a book. The cool thing is that if you look at your journal and we did this in our doctoral research, you're going to start to see common threads about points that you keep coming back to that you're quite passionate about. If you've got a collection of journals, start putting them into different things, times of sadness, breakthroughs or whatever you see.
You're going to start to maybe put together some great outlines of a great message. The whole point about journaling is it's wonderful to get it out there, but what's even greater than getting it out there is sharing it with other people so they can learn from what you went through. That's why I always let people know, even if it's putting it out there on Facebook. Every time we go through something that life has taught us, it's wonderful to share that with other people how we made it through because everybody is out there looking for camaraderie, a safety net or knowing they're not alone. There's a lot of wonderfulness to it.
We have an internal coaching program that we started to help people with their sales and grow their income. What we didn't realize when we started the coaching program was the bigger piece was the sense of community within it.
That's the advocates. That's why the good direct sales, network marketing and regular sales organizations work good because they have this coaching and collaboration piece, "We're not going to let you fail." I was always in a 9:00 to 5:00 clock-punching thing where we didn't do that. We had working groups. I used to marvel at that because my dad was in life insurance and you were all in this collective together. You would set up these systems to support one another. That's what true success and leadership are.
You being a successful author and owning your own publishing company, you journal. Somebody new wanting to start journaling, but they're struggling with it, any advice on that where to start? What do you think and write about?
Whenever I get stuck, I will read something. The best writers are also the most voracious readers. My PhD people are like, "Why are you getting that?" I'm like, "I want to learn to be a better writer." What that taught me, my critical thinking skills went to a whole new level the more you read because what makes you a great writer is not only expressing what you're going through because what you're going through a one-off. The beauty of writing is that you can make it generalizable or relatable to everybody else on the planet. Otherwise, some people are like, "That happened to you, but that's never going to happen to me."
For somebody that is sitting there, I would read what you like to read. I would set aside fifteen minutes and either get one of those recording things where you talk out loud. You can get all these dictation things that are so easy. Write about one previous thought you had never had. At the end of the day, I have a contentment journal where I write down 25 ways that God showed up that day because I was getting the next thing. I'm a Type-A driver and I'm like, "Shut up and celebrate the daily bread you've been given. Quit running over. There's the leading edge and the bleeding edge. I was already tripping the next week." Be in the present. When I think about that, that fills my heart with gratitude. That's a great place to start reflecting back on.
I'm going to do that, 25 ways God showed up now. That brings you that peace.
Everyone is like, "Nothing good is going on." I'm like, "Yes, it is. You're blocking the blessings. Stop it with that negative attitude, pushing everything away and being so self-focused. I get you." I'm not judging anybody. I was there. I do prison ministry. I go into prisons and we read books with these guys. Some of them are getting out, but we still read these books. One of the guys looked at me at one time and I talked it about in the book. He said, "Tracey, why don't you focus on what you do have instead of always on what you don't have?" I was like, "Yes, how about it?" Nothing like somebody behind bars for the rest of your life is telling you, "Are you done? I know you got problems, but in the grand scheme of things, stop it." I was like, "Call me straight out." I had the heart to receive. Otherwise, I could have walked out and never come back.
What do you enjoy most about all of this?
This is where my gift of complication happens. Bruce Wilkinson asked me that when I first came back to run the business. He went, "Do you want to read, write or run the business?" I was like, "All of them. I love everything." That is a blessing and also a curse. I love researching and writing. That's why I love your podcast. I love interviewing people as iron sharpens iron, hearing their perspective, unpacking issues, dialoguing with people, going to a deeper level and coming away refreshed. That, to me, doesn't get any better than that.
Who was your mentor?
I talked about this in the book too. I have a board of directors in every area of my life, financial, spiritual, physical, health coach and personal. Now that I'm married, I have a couple of wonderful, granted and married couples and a professional. I have a wide group of people. Everybody has an area that they excel in. I tend to pick somebody for each area of my life. I do recommend too professionally. I have wonderful people like you and Terry that I can pick up at the drop of a hat and say, "I need to bounce this off to you. That's so important." I talked about that in the book of advocates. I also have a C-level peer group that I'm a member of. That's very important to be amongst your peers and people higher than where you want to go. That helps me always to keep learning new things, hearing their challenges and hearing what they're doing. It's good.
I found it when I started reaching out to people outside of my industry because I got pigeonholed for several years inside my industry. I purposely started reaching outside of it all this knowledge and growth. All this goodness came to me by adding to my sphere. I respect the fact that you find mentors and advocates in all areas.
None of them are in my organization. I interviewed a lady from my C-Suite group. She was talking about a guy that she knew. She was a consultant for organizations. She had started her own company now outside of that. A gentleman who was a CEO, a longtime friend of hers, left a company that he had been with for 34 years and started his own nonprofit. He went back to all these people who loved and supported him and said, "I'm starting this. I would like you to support it." She and only one other person out of all the people he knew and took care of for 34 years responded and gave him something. It's a realization that the people that you work with are there because you work with them.
I'm not talking about a sales organization, network marketing or direct sales. In a 9:00 to 5:00 job, some people are like, "These people will die without me." No, they won't. The day you leave, somebody else is going to come in and they're not going to think about you anymore. Her point was, "Make the most important networks you're going to make or those that are outside of your current professional network." I even read a book on LinkedIn and that was the thing the lady said to me when you build your profile, "Have it diverse and colorful. Get outside your industry." I have never understood companies that don't want to bring in people that haven't grown up in that company because there's so much good stuff out there. That's the scarcity mentality, "They might go someplace else," but they're going to do that anyways if you try and squeeze them in.
That was a great point about, "Look well outside your sphere. Givers are always looking there to continue to give its reciprocity and it's a beautiful thing." There are so many people out there that are already successful. Successful people are dying to help other people become successful. Find and ask them. You can't receive if you don't ask. That's one of the biggest things. Once I got more clarity on singularity, my purpose and what I'm doing, I'm so much more at peace asking, "This is what you can do for me." Before, people would say, "What can I do for you?" I'm like, "I don't know. Pray for me." I want prayers, but they're asking what specifically, "Tracey, how can I connect to you?" Now, I'm like, "I need you to do this." That's why my book got to number one on Amazon for new releases that day because I asked people. Before, I would be like, "I don't know. I'm not worthy."
Faith And Success: The whole point about journaling is to share it with other people so they can learn from what you went through.
I also like reaching out to my competitors. That is so fun and then to build that alliance.
The whole world is connected. Everybody knows everything about everybody. You can see everything. There are no secrets. Find people. Remember, you're not competing with them. You hedgehog principle, you have the one thing that only you can do. Nobody is going to steal that from you. They can't become you. You're you. When you get dialed in on that, you don't have to look at other people. The other thing about the C-Suite group I'm in, everybody is free to share because everybody is like, "I speak on this. This is the niche I speak on." Everybody else gets to do their own thing, "Why don't you call Tracey or Joe? They may want to speak on that." Not, "I can't share that with somebody else." It's abundance in sharing.
What's your favorite book?
The Bible. I have so many. At any given time, I'm reading seven. I'm reading a book called Profit First and Michael Yousef's Saving Christianity?. Did you read that Profit First?
I haven't read it yet, though. It's on my stack to read.
I got John Templeton's The Humble Approach and How to Survive 911 Medical Emergencies. You name it. It's all over the place. The books that have changed me, one of the ones I keep going back to is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, which is about what it's going to cost to stand up in the face of evil and what it's going to cost you. If you don't know about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, what he went through, how he died and what he stood for, it's incredible.
The other one is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I find that one of the most profound books I have ever read. If you haven't read that, Viktor Frankl was a Jewish neuro-linguistics expert who went through the concentration camps and everybody he knew didn't make it out and he did. His whole thing was like, "Instead of asking life, 'Why am I here?' Life has said, 'I put you right here in this middle a concentration camp. What are you going to do about it?'"
Don't search for meaning. You bring meaning to every situation. If he found meaning in the midst of hell on Earth, how can we not find meaning in the midst of being locked down at home or a bumpy recession? I'm not sure of his background. I don't know if he was a born-again Christian or not. There are different things set on, but it is not overtly religious. It is all about the Imago Dei in all of us, "Why don't dogs and cats sit there and think about their purpose in life?" The fact that we sit there, wonder and ask life, "What's my purpose in life?" Don't you think that tells you that we're supposed to be uncovering our purpose in life? I thought that book was profound.
I'll have to pick that one up. It sounds so good. We did touch on a little bit in that. I've always found, often with women that I'm working with, we can have quick success in business and those wins. We tend to put everyone in front of us and don't incorporate a lot of self-care. You look like a woman who absolutely takes care of herself. Share with us some things you do to incorporate that self-care in making sure you're taking care of yourself first.
I was at the heaviest I had ever been. I was sitting at home. I had the wrong people on my team. I was in my dissertation and my health got completely away from me. I was single. My mom was getting sicker. It was a very sad time in my life. I had a health coach that I was coaching her. She coached me and helped me reclaim my health and not just to reclaim it but to get back to where I was when I was in the military academy. She sparked that in me. I'm a huge believer now in, "You have to take care of the body." Part of it was I went to see Joyce Meyer. She is in the mid-70s and looks phenomenal. She is lifting weight. She was like, "I'm not sick. My mom died at 92. She wasn't in the greatest of health her whole life and she made it to 92. We're going to be 120."
Her point was, if you're going to run the race, you have to take care of the shell. I was like, "I have to get serious about this." I went back to the gym and lost 50 pounds. I haven't touched Cokes, sugary stuff or carbs in two and a half years. My brain and body cleared up. I take time for myself. Part of it too is, when you get a little older, you want to reward yourself and do good things for your hair, skin and teeth to show confidence. I tell people, "Being prideful is different than being proud. We should be proud and put together." I love seeing people that are put together because it reflects that they care about themselves and not being ostentatious or immodest.
Taking care of yourself, nothing is worth losing your health over. I love my business, but nothing will compromise my health. That is one of the greatest next to my eternal life. In my physical life, I've been blessed with great health and I intend to take care of my body. The research shows 80% of the health care costs are caused by 20% of the people with poor habits, overeating, drinking, obesity, stress-related stuff and drugs. Our bodies are so resilient. They don't take a lot but take care of them. I'm big into supplements, oils, chiropractic care and all that good natural stuff.
I was talking with my daughter, who's always been health conscious. She was saying, "We're busy and life is so busy." That's one thing that's very calm for her because she knows, "I will always eat healthily. It's not a big decision every single day. It's already a decision I've made." Talk about learning that from others. I learned that from my daughter. That can be a peaceful part of your life once you make that commitment.
One of the things was I had a couple of big speeches coming up that we're going to be filmed. I remember thinking to pivot on pain. I was like, "I'm not going to have some camera angles that look like my butt is the size of Texas. I'm not doing this. I'm all for a healthy body image, but a BMI of a certain level is not healthy." Now, I pick up 50-pound bags of cat litter and I'm like, "What was I doing to my joints?" When you practice on it, it squishes your organs. It's not good for you.
I'm not shaming anybody, but there are certain things that are healthy that we need to call it for what it is. I said to her, "I'm done and I'm doing this." I have not cheated or fall off because once there was that spark, I was like, "I'm not going to show up at this event and have my picture everywhere. How can I talk to people about being disciplined and exuberant in their life if I don't look or feel disciplined and exuberant?"
Can you think of a particular a-ha moment that was a defining time in your career?
Going to war, getting to a military academy and getting my PhD. A lot of times, it was people that would pull me aside and say 1 or 2 things to me and I was like, "What?" It's different times where all of a sudden, something happened where the vibration hit my ear in a certain way. I talked about it in the book. One of the ones was when my dad, about a day before he was immigrating to heaven, I said to him, "I'm coming back to run the business." He squeezed my hand and said, "That's wonderful. I know you'll take it to places I never could." I remember that was all I needed. I don't need a lot. I just need to know that I'm barking up the wrong tree.
It's like with that health coach, "All you need to do is this, Tracey. Here's the book and manual." "I got this. I'm off." I have my coaches there if I need them, but I remember him saying that to me. It gave me confidence and self-efficacy that I thought, "I'm doing this." It's a couple of things people said different things to me in my life and encouraged me or said, "Have you thought about this?" It's like my husband telling me, "Why don't you call Jim and ask him about an S corp?" That was a big a-ha moment, "Do you mean you can do this for me and I can have this done in three weeks?"
Faith And Success: Nothing is worth losing your health over.
You're an implementer. That's for sure. I can tell you're a great listener and you take in what people are saying. You have great energy around you, but also you implement. Often, people will gain all this knowledge. It feels as though they're implementing because they've gained all this knowledge and they're learning, but they haven't done it and you are doing it.
My friend Rod Santomassimo has a great book called Knowing Isn't Doing. I love learning, but I don't want to be academic because that's theory. Grounded research is the application and you haven't learned it until you can apply it. Faith without works is dead. If you aren't out there making it happen, I don't care what you say you know. The proof is in the pudding. I'm very pragmatic and tactical about that. You can tell me all these things you're going to be intentional about doing, but until you actually do it, it's just talk and fluff. I love helping people get past that because that is one of the things that I'm good at. I'm like, "Tell me what to do." That's why I like the military. You won't like the military if you like to ask a lot of questions or say, "Why should we do that?"
Do you have a favorite quote?
I would say it's my dad's quote. I would hear it when I was younger and I was like, "What?" Robert Louis Stevenson's quote, "Comparison is the thief of joy." I love that because, as anybody, we say, "Their website is bigger. They're more." If you bless one life, that's all that matters. We're going to meet so many people that we had no idea that we touch and that keeps the pride factor low. The other one is from my dad, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones.
He said, "You're going to be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. As long as you keep reading tremendous books and hanging around and meeting tremendous people, you have to be intentional about it. Not just anybody, crappy books, bad books or books full of false truths and heresy. You got to engage your critical mind and be with people that are all in your corner. You will continue to completely transform into the next best version of yourself." It can't help but not happen. It's physics and science.
How great for you that you had a motivational speaker as your dad.
I didn't look at him as a motivator growing up. I thought he was a motivator to everybody else and a taskmaster to us. I think he knew it because he thought, "I'm going to tell you like it is until you're eighteen." We had a much different dynamic as adults, but growing up, I was like, "Can't you ease up a little bit?" I understood, "You got to be disciplined." That one he taught us. It was great and I'm so thankful for it. I reflect back now and think back about, "I wish I could have seen it sooner." He knew what I thought of him in my adult years and that he was my hero.
Is there anything I'm not asking you that you want to share with the readers?
You got it all. I also would say for our pet lovers out there, there have been people that have come into my life that have saved me from the edge, but animals too. I adopted my first rescue pup when I was so professionally and personally broken. I had no desire to go on. I found this little pup in a field and he helped me write my first book. God's grace shows up in many forms. I want to give a shout-out because I've gotten so caught up. I used to be so much about the animal stuff and people are like, "Who are you? You're Ruby or Blue's mom." I feel like I need to bring my animals back more in because they're such a part of my family.
I'm a dog lover. We had our dog for fourteen years. Early in 2021, he crossed the rainbow bridge, as they say. My husband sent me a picture and he was like, "Do you remember this?" He is so sweet. They do bring a lot of joy to us as you brought a lot of joy to all the readers. This was so fun. Your energy is contagious. I have an exchange of notes.
You're just like me.
It's all over the place.
I do the same thing. I'm like, "You should see my dad. Why can't it be organized like everybody else?"
I look forward to having a giveaway and sharing your book with everyone. I can't wait to read that. Thank you. I love you and appreciate your time.
You're welcome. I'm right back at you. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Tracey.
Important Links:
Mitzi Perdue - Previous episode on Apple Podcasts