How do you become a tremendous leader? In this episode, we examine leadership from several angles and perspectives to answer that question. Mike DiCioccio interviews Dr. Tracey Jones as they discuss what it takes to be a tremendous leader. Tracey examines leadership, followership and what you need to learn if you want to become an effective leader. Tune in for more insights on leadership and learn what it truly takes to be a tremendous leader.

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Learning How to Become A Tremendous Leader With Dr. Tracey C. Jones

Our guest is nationally known for her leadership expertise, as well as her ability to connect at a core level with her audiences. She brings with her four decades of experience across four different industries, including graduating from the US Air Force Academy, serving as an officer for twelve years. She certainly practices what she preaches, and is a lifelong learner earning her PhD in leadership in has an MBA in Global Management. Profits from her company support that tremendous trust, which has provided over $1.3 million in donations both locally and globally over the last years. Her latest book is titled Spark: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within. Welcome to the show host of the Tremendous Leadership Podcast, Dr. Tracey C. Jones.

Mike, it is such a tremendous honor to be here with you. Thank you for this privilege.

I learned so much from preparing for your interview through your books. In your website and all the information that you've been doing, I'm inspired by everything that you've been a part of. I got to give you a little shout-out. I had received a surprise gift. This wasn't planned. I didn't know this was coming. A lot of times, when I have a great guest on, I'll receive their book in the mail as a thank you and that's always an amazing thing. Every time I get to read them, I don't always get to read them before the interview. In this case, I did not get to read that before the interview, but I like to give you this shout-out because you picked these books that were these little mini-stories here that are the classics, though like Milton Hershey, Elbert Hubbard, and John Wanamaker.

Tremendous Leader: For leaders, you have to know yourself first before you start looking for that team that's going to resonate with you and that you're going to really get, and you're going to form that collective bond with.

I want to share with the readers that Tracey and I had a couple of conversations previous to saying, “This would be great if we record and get it on the show.” It all came together naturally. I want to say this collection. It's right up my alley. I want to thank you for taking the time to do that and thank you for the idea of surprising me with these classic books. We are going to set us up for a great interview. Thank you again, Dr. Tracey Jones. I appreciate your time being on the show.

You are so welcome. Thanks for bringing them up with the readers.

You guys can check them out yourself. They're all available on TremendousLeadership.com. That's Tracey’s website. You can hop on YouTube and watch this as well. Thank you for that leadership library. Let's kick this thing off and talk leadership principles right out of the gate. Sound good?

It sounds tremendous.

You're like, “Softball question, right out of the gate. I guess we could do that. Real creative, Mike.” No, but you are a better student and leadership for years. I know you've read every book under the sun, most likely on leadership. I love to lean on your expertise so our readers can soak this up. What characteristics and qualities, in your opinion, make the ultimate leader?

First of all, leadership is highly contextualized. In other words, based on our coding and experiences. I was in the military, my imprinting of leadership and who influenced me is going to be different than people that weren't in. The first thing for the leader is their self-awareness and self-discipline. Those are two of the top emotional intelligence qualities. For leaders, you have to know yourself first before you start looking for that team that's going to resonate with you, and that you're going to get and you're going to form that collective bond.

I would say awareness of what does it for you and it's called implicit followership theory. What that means is that you, I, and everybody out there is a leader. It's even picking a spouse. You've got certain traits and characteristics and things that jive and resonate with you. You have ones that are like mixing oil and gasoline. That is not a good thing. For leaders, I say, “Let's look at other people and what we can do to make other people what we think they should be.” That rarely works. That never works long-term. It's a temporary fix.

For leaders out there, do as much as you can to understand, just like your favorite book or TV show. What's your favorite leadership theory? Dive into it and understand you as a leader what brings out the best in you. They're going to be certain people in your life that bring out the devil in you, the beast in you, and other ones that bring out the best in you and that's what you want. Those who bring out the best in you.

Build a team around your leadership style or do you feel that people can learn these different leadership styles and apply them to them? I just want to make sure I understand. There are some natural giftedness and certain people that have a built-in leadership, they could build upon it, but also, they need to be reflective on who they are as leaders so they could build the right infrastructure.

It's almost a blend, but Mike, we all have our most authentic leadership style. You can learn a lot of different ones. I got my PhD in leadership, so I studied them all, but there are certain ones that when I read, I'm like, “That resonates with me.” I took the book smarts, and I dialed that into understanding the science behind why the self-motivation did or didn't happen with certain people in my team. The more you understand the grounded research and why it happens.

For example, if you have somebody running a nonprofit or a church, they are probably going to have more of teaching or what I call a pastoral leading style. More of a shepherding where they're going to be leading with that type of persona, vocabulary, and resonance with the flock, so to speak, but then you've got other people, you've got the patents, and the people that are in crisis leadership. In the military, for example, it's going to be much more directive. You just need to understand what works for you.

We're entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial mindset and leadership style are vastly different than the 9 to 5 leadership style. I've worked in big bureaucracies for twenty years. Now, when I bring people on my team, I got to make sure if you came from that world, you can make the pivot to understanding what the startup's everyday world looks like. From a leadership and followership perspective, that is vastly different than the 9 to 5 mentality.

The thing that was jumping on at me when you're saying that is how important it is to be authentic. If someone is more of the relational leader as opposed to the director role of a leader similar to what I would expect in the military where someone's just going to call you out, tell you what you did wrong and what you need to be doing right now. Move on as opposed to, "I need to connect with Mike before I can deliver him this next assignment because if he doesn't know why we're doing it on a big scale, he's not going to be bought in. This can take a little bit more time working with Mike." Two different styles, but if one leader was trying to be the relational person and that's not in their makeup.

It's like a football coach who tries to be tougher than they are, and the team is like, “This, not this guy, right?” Some people can relate better and they don't have to scream at their team, but the team's going to perform at a high level because they're connected. It's like Marv Levy with the Bills from Buffalo. You could tell by the shirt and I got it all over. I got Bill's mugs behind the camera here. He didn't always yell at the guys to get respect, but he probably read all these books because he was a great student of leadership. He was one of the most respected coaches of all time. That hammers home your point.

Tremendous Leader: Do as much as you can to understand what your favorite leadership theory is and really dive into it and understand yourself as a leader.

You hit the nail on the head. The 5 Love Languages, if you haven't read it, it's a brilliant book. They have it for singles and they have it for everybody because there's going to be certain things that people do for us that we love and certain things that don't do it for us. There is a professional love language style too and just like there is an implicit followership theory, there's implicit leadership theory where the followers or the players are going to resonate with certain coaching styles. Leadership is about unpacking that.

I was in a Horseneck wine training program with a friend of mine and for any of you that aren't love horses, they're incredibly intuitive creatures. Part of this was we had to take the horse and lead it across a couple of things that the horse would not typically want to do. Me loving animals, I was in my kinder gentler come on horsey scratch in his ears hanging on him loving on him. His name was, Wow and he's like, “No way. I'm not going with you.” I'm like, “Come on. I'll give you carrots. I'll give you sugar.” The team watching me, let me do this for a couple of minutes, and then finally came up and whispered in my ear and said, “Lead the horse. The horse wants you to lead him,” and I did. I led him. He pulled a little bit, but then I showed my confidence and he followed.

That was such an epiphany for me because I tend to be on prior military. I grew up with my father, who was like, “There's no thumb sucking, just get out there, dust yourself off.” I was a tough little kid. In this kinder, gentler world, I lost some of that, and you need both. Resilience. Tough love is still love. That was a wonderful reminder that my most authentic self is. I'm going to tell you, you may not like what you hear, but I love you too much to let you suffer, and I'm gone let you fail.

That's a tough thing for leaders to do because when we look at leader people on our team that fail, we take that personal. Bob Berg has a great comment. He says, “We are responsible to people, not for people.” As a leader, that's one of the hardest things to realize how much rope you give them and how much do you do you come in and do it, but it's a two-way street. They're watching you and they have to be willing to be developed, coached and lead because if they're not, you cannot lead that horse to water. He isn't going to drink.

That's one of my favorite MIKE'D UP moments on the show. It's important. I love Bob's quote as well that you're not spoon-feeding someone. You need to work in a way that's going to connect for them. You're setting them up for success. You're not just giving them success. That's what I gathered from that quote as well.

This horse, you can use that as an example of how everybody needs to be allowed in a different way. If you're more coddling, that's not the style and the way that the person on your team is going to resonate with them. Second, the third thing I got from what you said is don't judge a book by its cover and we can add on these books over here. Readers, Tracey's got this bright smile on her face, and she's a warm, loving, and kind-hearted person. She doesn't look like this tough military hard butt that's going to tell you the way it is.

She grew up in this situation where her dad was tougher on her, which built her this thicker skin and has helped her. We're going to talk about her dad in a minute, but that has allowed her to be a great leader. She has the ability to be more versatile because of all that. She's got the toughness in her. She understands discipline, yet she understands the relational and socializer skills of a great leader as well. Talk about concocting the perfect leader. I said the ultimate leader. I think I'm looking at one right now.

Mike, thank you so much. I need to pull that and have that in my new bio.

I’m trying to earn this gift somehow. There's an awesome quote on your website. I saw it and I was like, “We got to uncover this. It's pretty cool." I want to transition to this here. It's your words. I'd love you to elaborate on this idea. It's, “Every idea should be simplified, but not diluted. Context is critical when communicating vision and values.” Can you elaborate more on that?

This gets into higher-order thinking and critical thinking skills. Something that is sorely missing in the world nowadays. It always has been, but now it's the same as it was. It's amplified because of the interconnectedness and phones. Everybody gets to have a talk as an expert and chime in with a tiny little sliver of information. Whenever you hear anything, or you somebody comes to you with, “Did you hear this? What do you think about that?” You see somebody doing something in your organization and right away, what is in our brain? It's the Summer Olympics. We get the gold medal in jumping to conclusions because we automatically know what's going on in that person's heart and why they did what they did.

I read a book by Brant Hansen called Unoffendable. For our readers out there, I would highly recommend it. That and Henry Cloud's Power of the Other changed my life. Unoffendable means you're not God. You don't know what's going on inside somebody's head and heart, so don't jump to conclusions and don't be easily offended. Isn't that music to everybody's ears out there?

That should show up with everyone's next tax return. With your next tax return, you should get that book.

What it says is chillax. One of the little books you're going to read in that booklet is Charles Schwab's and he says, “Don't get ruffled and offended with every little minor transgression everybody does." Give people grace. Get the information. There's something in leadership called a sense-making strategy where leaders fail is when they assume. They're looking at something and like, “I know exactly what happened and why that person did that.” You don't know anything about it. It's the old, "Until you walk a mile in somebody's shoes, don't you dare weigh in on this."

If somebody asks you for input, or they're doing something directly in violation of your rules and regulation, that's a separate story. That is compliance. I'm talking about getting to the motivation of why something happens. In leadership, you have to pull back the layers, get with somebody and say, “What happened there? Why did you do that? What were you hoping?” Understand where they're coming from because everything that I have thought was as it seen turned out not to be as it seems, and I'm like, “Why did I send that email out? Why did I respond that way? If I would have taken a couple more minutes and got the rest of the story.” With the way the world information ages, we can always get the rest of the story. Leadership, people be like, “A good leader does this.” That's nice, but that's like saying we're going to get rid of poverty. It's such a nice overarching utopian goal but let's talk about the reality. It all depends.

It's not black and white.

It's never black and white. You got to unpack that. The different books, people, and mistakes I make all teach me that I am a slow learner, but I'm working on it.

One of the things I thought too is you talking about simplifying the messaging. John Maxwell, something I heard him say one time, another great leader, is he puts the cookies on the first shelf so everybody can get it. When he's writing a book, or he's doing a speech, he's not trying to be in this repressive over everyone's head level and scientific to try to impress the smartest people in the room. He's putting it on the first shelf, everybody can eat, can have some of it, understand it and consume it. That is a great way of summarizing what we're talking about here.

My dad would say the SIB KIS principle. See It Big. Keep It Simple. Einstein had a quote too. "If you can't explain it to a four-year-old, you don't understand it well enough." You just want to keep it dialed into that overarching purpose and keep it simple. The other thing that you hit on was when you're unpacking things as a leader because you've got all these moving pieces and you're trying to make sense of it, you're trying to make ethical decisions, but you want to dial into the root cause analysis. I learned this in the military.

I was in aircraft maintenance on jets and when a jet would come down in a non-mission capable, we had to troubleshoot it. We had to find the root cause because if you've fixed it and it flew again, and you had a repeat or recurring issue, that dinged your flying safety and mission capable rates, it’s because you fixed something, but you didn't address the root cause of the issue. That taught me in leadership. You think you know what you're going to deal with, but take some time, dial back and peel back.

Another great book is QBQ! The Question Behind the Question and dial back and say, “This is happening. Now, what? So, what?" Until you get to the core of, "This is what we're going to fix.” When you do that with your employee, client, author, or whoever, you can unpack what is the root of the miscommunication, fear, enmity, and whatever it is, and unpack what's causing the bone of contention.

That could be a book on marriage. I was married for six years and I see it with a lot of people and in business as well as trying to fix things, surface-level issues, items that everybody knows about, but not necessarily taking as much time. Sometimes I’ll dig a little bit deeper. I've seen it happen in counseling. I've heard stories and seen things like that don't sound right where they're trying to fix what's presented, and not that core issue that stems to question behind the question and until you get there, all this other stuff can get fixed. Here's another analogy thinking about the foundational crack. Every time there's a storm, the basements are still going to get water and have damage. That damage is long-term damage. That's an analogy that comes to mind, but I think it's true. Here's what we're going to do. We talked about your dad a couple of times. We're going to dive more into him.

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Tremendous Leader: There are going to be certain people in your life that bring out the devil in you, the beast in you and other ones that bring out the best in you.

We're back in action with Tracey. You guys can connect with her directly on social media. Her websites are TremendousLeadership.com and also her site is TraceyCJones.com. A couple of times, we've talked about your dad. I know how important and integral he was in your life to who you are today. I want to go right there. Your dad the late, great, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. He had an incredible influence on your life. Can you please share a little bit of some of your favorite memories that you've had with your dad and maybe a moment that he taught you that you always remember and it's stuck in your head forever? Just like a cool teachable moment that you remember your dad having with you.

For the readers out there, if you haven't ever heard of them, if you go to Tremendous Life Books on YouTube, I have archived all of his speeches. He came from humble beginnings. Born in the Depression-era in Alabama. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade. His mom left him. Deep poverty. Lack of education, but this unbelievable adaptive regenerative spirit, and I tell people he met my mother, Gloria in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He found life insurance and he found the Lord. Those three things were the effect of everything that he needed. He rarely talked about where he came from.

As a matter of fact, it wasn't until one day before he passed, Mike, that he shared with me how difficult his upbringing was. I’m talking about teachable moments and I'm like, “Dad, why didn't you ever share this with me?” He said, “Because that was in the past and that was gone.” It was incredible for me to hear that. He just went on. His favorite quote that most people know him by is that you'll be the same person five years from now except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. It's on the cover of the box. If you have this desire to meet tremendous people and read tremendous books, you too will have an unbelievable tremendous life.

I tell people that growing up with a motivational speaker for a father was a cross between boot camp and a sitcom. It was always a lot of fun, but it was incredibly always focused. He used a lot of humor. I can remember as a teenager I’m like, “Just why can't you be normal? Can I date? Can I watch TV?” He's like, “No, these are your formative years.” He took the TVs out of the house and when we were kids. He's like, “Trash in, trash out. You can volunteer. You can play sports. You can get a job. You can write book reports but you're not going to sit here and waste your hours.” Could you imagine that even now? He was always working as a joy and we're here to give back. We earned allowance that way. We read great books that he picked out and we do book reports.

The one thing I had as a child is he took me and I said yes because I got him, I am him. I imprinted the tremendous genes hard, not only in how I look, but I got his leadership style. Not every child would resonate with the tough, tremendous love, but I did and he would take me. We'd sit and go to these meetings. As a little girl, I would listen to Zig Ziglar, Norman Vincent Peale, Mark Victor Hansen, and Bob, and I saw these unbelievable people just sharing with other people how everything you want in life you can have with the right attitude, a strong work ethic, and with your faith in your advocates. That was an incredible upbringing that I have.

I wish I could have the opportunity to meet him, but I think that's so powerful. In his last moments, he revealed a little bit more about his tough background, but didn't allow it to live itself twice, which is a good message that I don't think about often. I don't know if our readers think about it as much as they could or should in that. If you had a problem, a tough situation, and you dealt with it, I’m not saying don't talk to people if you need some help with it, or don't hide it that it's riding away in your soul. Your father chose the time he wanted to maybe unpack some of it, which are right at the end. You didn't have to hear it, live it and feel the pain because he already experienced that when he was a little boy. Why does his daughter have some of those same scars that she didn't need to have?

I didn't know that my grandma did this. I didn't need to know that. All I knew is that I didn't hear a lot about it. You sense as a child, but all I knew was that in the past. Here's how he relived it, he always said, “Tracey, things don't go wrong to break you down, so you give up. They break you down to build you up, so you become sweeter and more empathetic. Pain makes you bitter or better.” This traumatic upbringing made him one of the most tender-hearted sweet, yet tough people.

He would look at me and because he was a broken, abused underdog, he resonated with people and that's 90% of the people out there coming from a place of hurt. How he used that pain is he allowed it to make him sweeter. He didn't have to go on a blah, blah fest about, "Let's one up who had it worse than their life." He just looked at people and let him know, "I get you and that's okay. You can get through this." It's this tough, bad thing that happened made him into a beautiful, kind, gentle spirit and made him the motivational speaker. How can you motivate people if you don't understand their pain, and you haven't come through it? That's why he was impactful and powerful.

Most of the greatest people that we've studied in these books, and it's not only in business and entrepreneurship, it could be in athletics, the school system, and change-makers of the world is the best way to put a lump, everybody, together. People that are doing great things to make change and impact for the long haul not only within themselves in a lot of it. You see that adversity. It's what people typically learn within themselves and then they turn around and use it to help others.

That's where it gains power because pain makes you bitter or better. That's talking about that adversity factor is, do you turtle up, lay down and you're on the mat beaten down forever or is it a moment in time that you can learn and say, “How did I get here? Why am I here? Why do I not want to feel like this ever again? What can I do so I don't feel like this ever again?”

Once you have that magic moment of getting yourself from that moment to something better, you want to turn around and say, “Who else can I help get out of there?” Most of the time, that is a lonely place. There are not always people reaching out saying, “Can I help you right now?” They don't even know. Mike, Tracey, and our readers don't always know what you're feeling at that moment.

Once you feel it, it's like, “How can I help other people get out of here?” That's what your dad did with you. He did it through his books. He did it with his audiences in every opportunity he had. You're doing it. I want you to know and remember I know what you're going through. You're not looking for the pat on the back. With the books that you have written yourself and published through your company, the books people can find on TremendousLeadership.com are all set up so people can continue to learn through the things that you've personally learned from your father. Here's the thing too. It's not plagiarism when you learn a lesson from a great book, and then maybe you talk about it in your book, but it's through your lens and your experiences.

Magic happens and that's why it makes it real. Your dad had these stories. He was learning from the greats, but he also applied it to his own story, which is why it resonated with the readers. You have a newer book. It's your second latest book. It's about Millennials, and it's helping them out, directly educating them on what their parents didn't tell them. That's in the title of the book, and also what their employers need them to know. Can you share a few key examples both on Millennials, on what their parents aren't telling them, what you're referring to in that statement? Also, a couple of things we can learn about what their employers need them to know.

Tremendous Leader: How can you motivate people if you don't understand their pain and you haven't come through it?

It's the whole thing about leadership and followership. My father wrote in Life is Tremendous the seven laws of leadership. The seven laws of leadership also apply to followership because if followership is beneath you, leadership is beyond you. The military was outstanding at teaching us this. They break you down to nothing. You're not even a name. You build the team, and then that's where leaders are born out.

A Message to Millennials is about the two things that I find is that a lot of people grow up now and you think that the universe revolves around you. I'm all for healthy self-esteem and self-confidence, but we are put here on this planet to be part of a collective both from an evolutionary standpoint, alone sheep as a dead sheep and from a theological standpoint. We are all made with the imago dei seed to grow together in fellowship.

What I would tell to young, emerging leaders is, "When you get in there, don't start thinking about, 'This isn't me.' You don't even know you. You think you know all the answers, but you don't even know the questions that are coming your way. Be open. Experience at that young age is the most important thing that you can get because you're going to learn what you like and what you don't like. You don't even know the talents that lay latent within you yet because you haven't had a chance to get on the mat and show up yet, but there's a lot. Take time. Take seizing."

The other thing is to be willing to accept feedback and constructive criticism. We are born in a generation that is enabled to put nasty things behind a screen and not deal with healthy conflict where you share with somebody, not the whole rest of the world, what's going on. You are open to receive so you can take that and build that into you. That's two of the things.

One, when you get into a company, it's not about you. I used to think it's just about the military. I saw my life over the military. When somebody is paying you, you are there to support their collective mission. Understand that first. Everybody thinks, "It's me and they got to cater to me." Nope, that is not how life works. When you start your own company, you can then be the boss of everything and we'll see how that goes.

Second, be open. My dad always said, “We're born with thin skin and a hard heart and we need to have a soft heart and a thick skin.” That's a lot of problems like, "I can't believe my boss said this to me." What do you mean? Do you think you know more than them? They've been here for more than twenty years. That's egotistical and narcissistic to think that you are new, and yet you already know everything better than everybody. You got to be humble. We want leaders to be humble. Followers need to be humble because you cannot be developed if you are not willing to be led and taught. That's the biggest thing I would share.

I have never heard it articulated that way and that's hitting home with me. I'm thinking about myself. I hope everyone who's reading this can think about how they can take what you're teaching and apply it to themselves. There's a lot of reflection there. A lot of times, ego can get in the way of greatness. You see it with athletes all the time where they have a couple of great seasons. Their egos are too big and now they're having trouble with their coach or they're out of line as far as where they're supposed to be on the team. Team understanding in that aspect are gone.

The other thing I'd say is if a leader ever did something where it's questionable. Maybe you don't like what they said, they said something that's completely out of line, or they did something that you know about that you don't agree with. Something that breaks down trust a little bit. You can question them. Rather than I'm not saying question everything about him, there still may be some good. Everybody can decide on how this applies to someone who may be thinking about when I make that statement. It's like a book, you can read a book.

I've said this many times on this show. If there are twelve chapters, and ten of them are strong and help you but two of them talk about things that you're not comfortable with. You don't necessarily agree with. It's against your principles or something that you learned and knowing your core. That's not something you're willing to change. Don't throw out the whole book. Take those other great things from it.

If you're an employee and your boss is coming down on you, and you clock out and say, “I'm going to do things my way,” or they don't know what they're talking about completely, that's not right either. It is rare that someone is going to be in that position of leadership, or if it's the owner of a company, whatever it might be, they typically have so many experiences that we can learn from if we're dialed into it. I don't want to go off on a tangent. Finish the thought and put a bow on it.

First of all, leaders don't know everything. One of the things that I look for in followers, one of the keys to followership is critical thinking skills. Not a critical spirit like you said where you check out. "I'm mad at my boss." I see that even in churches and I'm like, “Lord, if anybody should be beyond this childish behavior.” As you said, in marriages, it's the kiss of death. "I'm done. I'm sitting in counseling. I'm not going to talk to him anymore. Forget it. Just leave.” That's important for the employees. Get with the boss and say, “This came off like this. Did you mean that?” Sometimes they're human too. They may say something that they didn't realize came across. They may be having a bad day. Let them know.

I'm not talking about if your boss is telling you to do something illegal, immoral, unethical. That's a no-brainer but these are the nuances. You said it. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a DSM psychological illness called dichotomous thinking, black or white. I love them. I hate them. I hate my boss. My boss would piss me off. We can't be like that. It doesn't give people grace and it acts like you're the judge and jury of everybody. If you don't like your job and you can't support your boss, tell people.

You may not like them, but you can't fight them. If you are fighting them, get off the payroll because now you're a bigger problem than anybody else. People would come to my dad and say, “Charlie, I'm quitting this because I hate my boss, or I hate the people I work with.” He's like, “You're going to hate him wherever you go. You might as well stay with the ones you know.” It's that old '60s song if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

People are people. You think that you're going to go green grass, send them the next job, a better boss, and you fail to realize there are certain elements of the human condition that are always going to annoy you. Is it worth leaving your job over? I don't know. Only you can make that decision, but no annoyance gives you the right to check out and not show up and deliver with excellence every day. If you can deal with a boss that annoys you and perform with excellence that's on you. You keep gaining experiences because this isn't going to be your boss forever.

Don't throw it all out and say, "This is stupid.” Stop. That's dichotomous thinking. I struggle with that too because this isn't my first rodeo and hence, I can be, “I've seen a thing or two,” and then I'm like, “Tracey, when you say those words, your pride is starting to get in the way and you're going to miss your blind spot.” That’s great insight though that you brought up about. To our readers, I have walked off of places not without leaving in two weeks’ notice where I look back on, I'm like, “Why did I let that get under my skin so much?” It wasn't that big of a thing but for whatever reason, I was so pumped up and offended at the time, hence, I should read Unoffendable that I let it stew and simmer and get to me. It was my biggest limitation.

I've done it myself one too many times where one thing starts the process. Another Marv Levy quote is, "Once you're thinking about quitting, you've already quit." If you're at a job or position and something's under your skin and you're already done, you're toast, then any growth from that point on is going to be limited to non-existent because you're already clocked out. If someone's giving you great insight, but in your head, you're gone. You're already on Monster Jobs, or Indeed and you're looking. There's very little you can do to get that person to come back. If they had any level of greatness prior to them clocking out, it’s difficult to get them back. It's almost at that point you just make it happen because you're dragging everyone down with you.

You are, you're taking a paycheck, and you're stealing from the company at that point because you're not engaged. We call it OBE in the military, Overcome By Events. You're gone. You can tell that in relationships. You look at somebody and say, “Let's try and work on this marriage," and their eyes are flat.

If you ask them truly when this thing was over, sometimes people would be like, "Three years ago," but they didn’t get a divorce yet.

My dad also would always say, “Tracey, sometimes I feel like quitting." I would say, "You cycled through life. You can feel like it.” I love that you said, “Don't think about it.” All feelings emanate from thought and there are days where I feel untremendous and I’m not sure if I want to do this, but I don't let that thought of quitting take root. As you said, as a man, think, “Push it out. Get rid of it and get right back in the game because thinking about it, they're already gone.”

This is my thought, theory, or whatever. I haven't read this, or it's not something calculated based on previous events. I would say the only way to get someone back, whether it's in a relationship, or that person who's thinking about the next job, is you have to start back with the foundation all over again. All that trust and their love for the game needs to be rebuilt.

I’m thinking about myself in a role that I had where I left the company because I always say the fulfillment was gone. My trust in the leadership was gone and wavering. I was thinking about the next steps. While I did that, I still performed, came in with a good head on my shoulders, but there was that love of the game that was gone. Even if I was putting in an effort and was still at 100%, when you're mentally and emotionally clocked out, even if you're trying to put 100% in, it's difficult to do that.

For me to be able to put a true 100 plus % again, I would have needed to reestablish key relationships in the company and with leadership. It's like you got to go back to that. In marriage, if it's not over completely and the pilot lights are not off for both partners, what foundational things can be built on? Every little thing that started from however long they've been dating to marriage, where those gaps are? There's a little crack in the facade that you got to go back in and repave. Otherwise, you have all these cracks, and eventually, what's going to happen is it's going to be a demolition scene where it all comes down. That's something I never thought about. If you're mentally clocked out, you're already in that decision. The only way around would be to build that all back up from the ground up.

Tremendous Leader: If you're not able to do that a hundred per cent of the time, we're not trusting that this chair or business or relationship is going to be sturdy enough to stay.

That's what the counselor said. I heard this Christian counselor saying at a women's retreat, “Why are you complaining about the man in your life when five years ago you were praying for God to bring him into your life? Something happened. He answered your prayers, but you got to put into it.” Mike, you hit on the second thing for followership, in addition to critical thinking skills the other thing is all in engagement. It's like being pregnant. You are or you're not. You're not a little bit. There is no almost. You're either in or out.

If you go back and for people contemplating, "Should I stay or should I go?" If you're going to stay, you need to go all in. You talked about those little cracks because your employer is going to sense it. You're going to be well, "I'm all in, but I'm still going to go on these interviews." It's like a burn the ships thing. It doesn't mean that a year from now, you can't go, “It is time to leave,” but you cannot patch something and get back to where it was once good if you're not. It's saying you're in love with somebody or married, but you're still dating people on the side. That tends to never work out well because it's a commitment.

There's a weak link. I think of a machine that's all moving and all the pieces need to be extremely strong for this thing to work. If one of the legs of it, whether it's a stool, is weaker or not dialed in all the time, it could potentially go down. The whole thing is going to come down because of that one stool, that one leg. If someone's coming in, it’s either you're going to be the sturdy leg we need here or if you're not able to do that 100% of the time, we're not interesting that this chair, business, or relationship is going to be sturdy enough to stay. It's not like you can't rely on it. I'm going to call it half-assed or any level. There's always has to be half. It can be 75%. It could be 25%. It could be 2%. It's not enough. Less than 100% is not enough to get the qualified job done.

That's your next book.

I have a fun question and then I have a summarized question to hit drive home on it. The fun question is you obviously served in the US Air Force and it was in Roswell, New Mexico.

That's where I went to school the first year, in Roswell, New Mexico, before I went to the Air Force Academy. That was a school.

Roswell, Germany, England. I did my homework. I knew you bounced a little bit and that got my attention, but what got my attention was because I'm a geek with Roswell. I'm into these UFO stories. It's historically reported. I'm not making this up. I don't have the tinfoil hat on right now, but the RAAF, which is Roswell Army Airfield, captured a UFO in 1947. There's a McDonald's near it that's shaped like a spaceship. It's just to have fun with that moment. Is there anything you can share about that you're able to say? For example, blink three times if you've seen a UFO in person.

You are funny. Anyways, I love being in Roswell. I was a huge X-Files fanatic. Science fiction is my all-time thing. I could remember when I was a kid. I would donate money. I forget what it was, but it was a search for extraterrestrial life. Total nerd. Always play the astronaut. I get it. I went to Roswell. I tell people, it's before the aliens were there.

I would go to Nellis Air Force Base when I was an active-duty military and my ID said Indefinite. I'd go to the Star Trek, the Quark Bar in the old Hilton and everybody was dressed up as Star Trek figures and people would be like, “You're in the military.” I'd show my ID and it said Indefinite and they're like, “Who are you?” I'm like, “I can't tell you. I have to kill you.”

I'm all about this. I do not know anything about it but I will say this. I'm glad you asked this. I read a book as a young girl. C.S Lewis is one of my all-time favorite authors. One of the little booklets in your package is on C.S Lewis. He wrote a book called The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) is all about a science fiction journey where somebody is outside of Earth on a planet that has not been marred by sin.

The silent planet is Earth. I'm a Christian. You're going to hear my worldview, I believe in the Genesis creation that God spoke the world into existence, and he made Earth uniquely habitable for us. He also made everything else, but He created this for us, his chronic creation, and He breathed his breath into us. That's why we're here talking about these unbelievable things and why we're not dogs from goo to zoo to you kind of thing.

We have this intrinsic motivation. We suffer pain. We can do great things. We die for each other. That's an interesting thing that not my dogs have, and I love my dogs, but we have the imago dei, the God seed. Other things have God's imprint, but we have his spirit in us. If we've accepted it again as followers, you have to be willing to accept it. We have the choice. You accept it or you don't accept it.

I choose to accept it because I would like to have the creator of the cosmos in me. That's a no-brainer for me, but everybody gets to have their own thing. In our silent planet, I go to John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten son.” There was only one manifestation of God in the form of Jesus. Therefore, he came to Earth. There aren't 100 other habitable living people out there and if there are, then they haven't fallen, and they're not in this state.

Only from a biblical-theological standpoint are going to be in heaven and we're going to be able to fly all over the cosmos here when we die, if you have accepted that. Out of the Silent Planet by C.S Lewis, a man can't communicate because we have been marred by sin. We're the silent planet. Now, everything's going to be back to redeem. There's going to be a new heaven and new Earth. It's going to be back to the way it was, like you said. Let's get back to how it was in the beginning when we were in complete fellowship with God. That is going to happen, but right now, we're in this broken state.

God's living out his love for us by telling us, “It's a brief time that we're in these newt suits before we go back to the way it was.” I would say they're going to look out there but they're not going to find us. I still maintain and as a geek and fairly analytical mind, I don't see how nothing came from nothing and yielded this. You could give it seven gazillion trillion years. If you started with nothing, it's like saying I got a fridge full of food and if I let it sit there for 7 million years, eventually a five-course meal is going to evolve. I don’t get it.

I agree with a lot of what you said there. I was curious about not even so much the creation of our planet but the existence of things from another system. If this is the universe my notepad right here, what we know is if I did the black pin drop of my notes, that's what we know about. It's interesting that there's all that other space we don't, but this was a little fun thing, because you were at Roswell, and I thought maybe you've heard something.

Who knows if God created everything?

CIA put 50 years of documentation out on the internet, clickable and I looked at some of it.

I’m going to check it out.

I wish I could go on myself so I could go and read all this stuff because who has time for it but it's interesting that there are written documents that are government-based and out there. Some of the videos that are interesting are where they have guys that are doing this stuff in the Air Force that are tracking anything in the air. They can lock onto an object and they can understand what speed it's moving at. Our aircraft can move at a nice speed. Things that they've seen from other countries, they we have an understanding of what the capabilities are of our allies and our enemies, no problem.

There's this thing they lock on to and I'm sure everybody reading to this has some understanding that this has come out. If not, Joe Rogan has a guy from the military, or whatever. You should look into it. This object goes from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen and is gone. It's not even close. It's 100 times the speed or whatever it is that anything that we've ever seen. It's a sizable object. It's a speck on our scale but they know that an aircraft-sized object. Interesting things like that. It's not even at this point, “This guy said or he said. She said.” There's video evidence of it now, which is interesting. The thing is, we don't know who's in the ship and where it's from. Is it someone on our planet? Is it some weird another parallel universe? I don't know. I'm not saying it's going against the Bible at all.

I don't want to go into this whole thing about the Bible. I'm a believer myself. Everything that was maybe written in there encapsulates what we're learning from the teachings of God through Jesus. I don't know if maybe God intentionally left things out or didn't tell the story for whatever reason. Who knows? There are great specific things that are included in there and it's a book. Maybe there's more that can come from that? Does Jesus come back and continue on more? We're ready for it. That's one of the things I heard.

We'll wrap up the conversation because this is so much fun, but one of the things I heard too is that there's a task force that knows a lot that they're not willing to share with us yet because either these other beings or this task force doesn't feel we're ready for it yet which is interesting too. Who knows? Maybe they're not coming here because they don't feel we're ready to hang out with them yet. Interesting. I wanted to go there for a minute. That was fun.

I wish I knew more.

She did blink a few times while she was responding. You guys can look into that as much as you can. I'm going to play the slow-mo and count how many times she blinks. Imagine yourself as the author of your own story. You are the protagonist. You get to write the ending. Whatever pages or chapters you feel you're at, everything else is blank. God willing, you live to be 100 years old, whatever it is, long fulfilled, prosperous life, and you're already doing that now, but let's say you get to write that for many more years. What would you like your legacy to be if you can define it?

Probably similar to my father's legacy and that would be to fall deeper in love with Christ. Every day, if there's one thing on the thing is to get to know. As with any relationship, the more you get to know God, the more intimate you can be with him, and he loves that because he's in us. Just like your spouse wants a relationship with you or one time did, we want that too. I will also say in my legacy I would love to help people get all the experiences that they had in their life out in book form. I love helping people get their stories out because, Mike, we're not going to be here forever but a book lasts forever. I'd love to do that.

I would love the legacy to keep coming and developing people to understand the transformative power of living and reading. I'd love to keep making money for that so I can keep giving money in the trust back to organizations, scholarships, homeless shelters, addiction shelters, and young people. I want to keep giving back, either through books or through financial resources. The righteous use of wealth. I want to be a good steward of all God gave me so that I can bless as many people as possible. However, he blesses me with that. At the end of the race, I wanted to say, “Good job, Tracey, you kicked butt. I gave you a lot and you made a tremendous amount out of it.” That’s what I want my legacy to be.

You're doing it.

Thanks. Mike.

Why I love doing this show is I have the opportunity to speak to cool people like Tracey but it's not that she got this neat story. She's doing something big with it. It's not her purpose. It’s not she's successful, or she's living in her father's footsteps at all. It's all the other people. We talked about it briefly for half a second at the top of the show. There's a trust. Profits from her publishing company go into it, it's called the Tremendous Trust and over $1.3 million have gone to great causes. She is heart-centered here. It's not again this financially free situation so she can be sipping Mai Tai somewhere. That's a great lifestyle, but she's on purpose to serve in many more meaningful ways. That's why having you as a friend is tremendous. Any last words you'd like to give our readers before we part ways here?

Mike, thank you so much for the honor, and like I said for anybody out there reading, thank you for reading. If you feel that you're not worthy or good enough, you are. Understand that you are loved, you are counted as value and it's up to you to get out of your way and be open to that. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mike, for the honor and your comments. You blessed me this morning.

I definitely see being on the show again. We could pick this back up anytime. There's too much to talk about. This was an icebreaker for the readers. I love to have you back soon. Give me a call anytime. You're awesome. Check out TraceyCJones.com and also TremendousLeadership.com and all for social clickable in the show notes. Thank you, guys, so much.