You have control of your life. If you don't like working on your job, you can change that. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go out and help people. There are so many people that out there that are going through problems and you can help. But before that, you need to fix your problems first. To guide you through all this is Dr. Tracey Jones as she joins Bob Brumm of the Encouragement Engineering podcast. Tracey is the President of Tremendous Leadership and is here to talk about her book SPARK. Learn how to find yourself so that you can be successful. Join in the conversation today to be persistent and walk through the fire.
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Listen to the podcast here:
The Encouragement Engineering Podcast With Tracey C. Jones, President Of Tremendous Leadership
Our guest is Dr. Tracey Jones. Tracey is an author, speaker, veteran, international leadership expert, publisher, podcaster and the President of Tremendous Leadership. Tracey has a passionate lifelong learning and her career spans top positions in four major industries from military to high-tech, defense contracting and publishing. She's a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, a decorated veteran who served in the first Gulf War and Bosnian War, earned an MBA in Global Management and a PhD in Leadership Studies.
Tracey is an author of ten titles, five of which are children's books, which uses her rescue pets to teach character development to our next generation of emerging leaders. Tracey's company has donated over $1.8 million to local homeless shelters, recovery outreach, mission groups, disaster recovery organizations and scholarships to local colleges in the past years. Please, welcome to the show Dr. Tracey Jones. Tracey, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Tremendous Bob. It's an absolute honor to be with a purveyor of encouragement such as you.
Thank you for your service to our country. I appreciate it. I hope everyone else does it as well. I know going through that is not an easy scenario.
It was an honor. You are so welcome, Bob. Thanks for saying that.
Let's kick it off. Let's inform people more of who you are, how you got about where you are and then I want to get right into your latest book called SPARK. There it is. There's my copy. You can see it. It's a very good book. Thank you for that. I want to get into that and tell people about that.
Thank you so much, Bob. I'm a middle child. For the military children out there, I say that because that means I'm flexible, easy-going one. Nothing against oldest and youngest out there but I do think I am easy going. I go with the flow on a lot of things. I'm coded that way. I also imprinted at a very early age on my father. I had a wonderful mother but my father was a motivational speaker. I looked like him. I have a lot of his same temperaments. I am like a mini him, only a female version of him. I was quite fascinated with him. I tell people growing up with a motivational speaker as a father was like a cross between bootcamp and a sitcom.
From an early age, it was always a lot of fun but it was very disciplined. I can remember dinners when I was in kindergarten about, "What do you want to do with your life?" I'm like, "Daddy, I just want to make it to first grade." He is a pusher. He pushed, which was okay for me. Not every child responds well to that but I loved the challenge. "Do you think you could do that?" I'm like, "I'm up for it." Long story short, he exposed me to books and to an incredible amount of successful men and women early on. He let me know about how to lead a genuinely purposeful life, earn your stripes and give back. I got to sit and be friends with people like Ken Blanchard, Zig Ziglar, Norman Vincent Peale and Og Mandino. It was unbelievable.
These were my role models as a child. He always taught up. He'd always drag me to stuff even as a little girl and be like, "You can handle this." I handled it but growing up, he would always tell me, "Tracey, you have to go earn your stripes." I went into the military. He had spoken at this military school and he's like, "These kids are going to do something with their life." I thought, "I want to do something with my life too because I'm around all these people that are doing stuff with their life so let's do it." They got me into the Air Force Academy. I spent twelve years in the military. I went into high-tech. I moved to Austin, which was totally cool. I moved to St. Louis and worked for government and defense contracting.
My father transitioned to heaven years ago. It was time for me to come back home and pick up where I'd left off. I always knew in the back of my mind and I always hoped that I would eventually get to step into his role. I was like a little sponge. Every opportunity, every job, every industry, all over the world, I don't care if it's going to war, I'll be the first in line to volunteer because I had this desire to learn. He always taught me, "The more experiences you have, the more successful you're going to be in life. Even if they're bad experiences or you did something wrong. Fail often, fail early and then you get all the hard stuff out of the way. You're going to figure it out and you can go live with tremendous life." This is what I grew up with and why I am adaptable.
We need that in our society. It's a reminder to everybody that things are going to happen. No matter what it is, things happen to all of us. We have good days and bad days. We got to be able to adapt, overcome and adjust to what is in front of us. As long as we're on the green side of the grass, we got to keep breathing.
Somebody told me that. God loves you more than anything. That's not just my personal faith but my awareness. I know I am his daughter. The only reason my father loves me more than anything, who loves me so much that he sent his son to die for me and I'm still in terra firma, is because he has something he wants me to do here. Otherwise, he'd much rather have me home with him. I got to dial in and go, "If I'm here, I've been given this gift. I have to get to paternal life but we're living on this plane. What can I bring to the table? How can I live life as if Christ is in me because he is?" That's where I'm coming from.
In some of the parts of your book, a lot of it has biblical passages because it's based off of many of those concepts, which a number one bestselling motivational book you'll ever read is the Bible. What I like is there's an insight in there that talks about every individual is created in the image of God and gifted with the divine aspects, manifested through the mysteries of the Holy Spirit. That's a great segue. When I read that, I was like, "What a way to start off the book." It tells people, "You have greatness within you." Is that what you meant to kick people off and get them started in the book?
People say to me, "I don't believe in God." I'm like, "That's okay. He believes in you." Whether you acknowledge the truth or not, it does not make the truth untrue. If you have to learn one thing by now, it's that we're flawed, depraved, selfish and not all that smart, even though we're "evolving" to these higher levels. Let's get serious about this. The thing was, we are created in God's image. When we accept and own the gift of the Holy Spirit, all you got to do is ask. It's a gift. That comes into you and then you get this supernatural motivational agent that comes in while you're living in the natural world.
I grew up like so many of our readers out there in the church, Bob. The Holy Spirit was weird. That was in the Old Testament or the New Testament. It's Pentecostal or snakes fighting. It wasn't until I started my PhD and studying this. The Holy Spirit is the greatest motivator of all time. He's called our advocate and our helper. He groans for us. He does the heavy lifting. Talking about the book, there's the three-legged stool. You have to have your IQ. We go into knowledge. You have to have your book smart, study to show yourself approved.
You have to have your EQ, compassion, empathy, self-awareness and self-discipline but the other thing that I found, the leg that puts it all together or that gives you the way to live life in a triumphant way, not just getting through is your spiritual quotient, your SQ. That's where the Holy Spirit is dwelling. It doesn't come in until you ask for it but seeing as we're made in God's image, that's his ultimate gift to have us holy living within him. Can you do it without it? Sure, but you can't do it the way you need to.
It always amazed me. People forget that God's got a greater plan for us. We don't necessarily know what that is. We don't know the timing of it but accept that. Your life will be a lot. You don't have to worry about it. It's a gift and a promise.
He didn't speak the universe into existence. I think he can figure out how to take my business to the next level. I'm a scientist by trade. I got my PhD, but I know there are enough people that I have seen go the route where they do it on themselves. I don't care how much money, fame, power you have. We all are a vapor. We all leave this earth and that's it. We go back to dust, our bodies. What is the legacy? What is this? Without that, you don't land on anything. That's why so many people who supposedly have it all, they OD and commit suicide. Everything is vanity. You have to land on something where you are living in view of the eternal and then you understand why you were plucked from eternity into this body only to go back eventually, then it makes sense what you're doing here because otherwise, you're like, "What is going on?"
You go on in the book and you talk about positive habits with persistence. You mentioned Bing Crosby. He says, "You got to latch onto the positive and eliminate the negative." I love that. Being in positive perspective and all that fill us in on that piece because I think that's important for people to realize as well since we've been talking not only about biblical principles but some of the principles in the book.
The Holy Spirit is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. SPARK is an acronym. A is advocates in the course. I talk about the people that are there to support you. They're your biggest advocates. P is persistence. You can have all the dreams. God can speak directly to you in whatever form but if you don't get out and put it into action, it doesn't happen. Persistence is all about the blood, sweat and tears to make it happen, the joys and the triumphs too. It is a well-known fact. I don't care if you're an atheist, agnostic or Mormon. I don't care what you are. You are your habits and your habits are you. End of discussion. If you have horrible habits where you listen to nonsense, you think with your reptilian brain, you get triggered, you blame everybody, you expect the government to fix your ills and you're engaged in stinking thinking, you become a sum of all these parts.
Persistence is the baptism by fire. We don't like that. Can we just have the fun stuff? A diamond undergoes tremendous forces to shine. Gold goes through intense heat to burn off the dregs. You're going to go through the crucible of life. The beauty is when you have the right people, you have the right mindset, you take care of the shell, you build up your body and you have the Holy Spirit, you will get through it. That's a promise. We can look at all the trials and know that there's a victory through it. Adversity is the greatest teacher of all time. It's truly the only teacher. We don't learn anything from success other than how great we are and then our ego starts to step.
You'll go through persistence and trials for 1 or 2 reasons, either purity or maturity. You're either going to go through the baptism by fire because this is going to break you down to build you up. It's like going to a gym. I was in the military. When the call came that we're going to war, I want to go. Why would I have signed up for this if I don't want to go, put my training out, defend this beautiful country and the lives of our allies? The other thing that you're into the baptism by fire could be from maturity. There are universals in life that if you don't take care of, there will be consequences to pay.
In the book, I do prison ministry. You break the law and you get caught, you're giving up your freedoms. If you develop an unhealthy habit like drinking too much, you may shoot your liver and may incur a significant illness. Sometimes we go through fire because God's telling us, "You need to stop doing that. I'll let you do it because I give you freewill but sooner or later, there's going to be a price to pay." That's what I tell people. Persistence is, "How bad do you want it?" A lot of people don't want it. That's why they're thrown in the towel so easily.
It's interesting because people will say, "I want what you have. What you are willing to do is what I did to get what you want." They don't understand that piece. Persistence takes effort. It means getting up early, doing the work, working out if you're trying to keep your body in shape. It might be 5:00 in the morning or whatever it may be. Military is great at that with PT. It's early in the morning. It helps you oxygenate your mind. You're focused and ready. It also gets you going for the day. You have that energy, upliftingness in your body and keeps your body in shape for what you need to do the rest of the day. There's a theory behind it but people don't want it. "Do you mean I'm going to actually do stuff to get what you have?" "Yes, you have to do the stuff."
Nobody can do it for you. Nobody can do the heavy lifting but you. You got to own it. I'm glad you talk about the book because until people realize that, we're denying them the opportunity. We're not being authentic about what it's going to take to get there. Everybody gets to make the choice. They either want to pick up life and run with it or they relinquish control and let whatever happens. America is a beautiful place, not a perfect place but we sure are a unique culture. It's the only country that I have seen, which I've lived all over the world, that's diehard own it, bring it. I want autonomy and free enterprise. I'm so thankful for that.
The effort we put out as Americans, we do want to work. We have a history of that. It's interesting because you have a statement in there that your dad said, "Nothing works until you work at it." My dad was the same generation. They were blunt as a pickaxe. "Here it is. Here's how it works. If you want to eat, you're going to work. Don't be picky when it's dinner time and when it comes to eating because it's coming on once. If you don't get a plate, you're not eating and that's your problem." Tell us about that idea. If you get a chance, listen to Charlie "Tremendous" Jones clips on YouTube. You send them out with your newsletter. He's right there. No cloudiness. No floppiness. He lived it because that's how he came through the industry, hard knocks, literally knocking on doors and people saying no to him 1,000 times. It wasn't easy. He had that experience. Tell us more about that scenario, if you will.
My father is blunt as a pickaxe. I love that but he could get away with it because when you speak truth and love and the other person is open to receive it, it's almost like, "Did you just slap me in the face?" Sometimes he would slap you and they'd be like, "Thank you, Charlie." I can remember when he passed, people would call me and they're like. "Your father yelled at me. He made me cry because I stopped sucking my thumb." I'm like, "We need so much more of that." I grew up with it. I'm like, "Dad, I want a better job." He's like, "If you want a better job, do a better job and you'll have a better job. Job doesn't make you. You make the job." He was always about you. "You are the source of all your problems. Stop crying and fix yourself. Go look and find whatever it is you're looking for."
I want to share with our readers too. It wasn't only that he was a consummate salesman and worked until his very last breath but he grew up, Bob, in the Depression. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade, poverty, Deep South and not a good family life. He was abandoned to some caregivers or quasi relatives. By today's standard, it would not be allowed to go on what happened because people would be in jail. He still came from that resiliency and said, "Why are you whining? Most people get so upset because they think everything in life is going to go right. Expect it to go wrong and 99% of the time, you're going to be happy. No need to feel weird." He was pragmatic and so real. He was not a theorist. He was raw and from the trenches.
People understood it. Most people are hurting. Ninety-nine percent of the people out there have pain. He was a living proof that you can take pain and turn into it. People saw that in him. He would look at them when he would go into a room, hug them, love on them and speak to them as if they were the only person in the room. People often ask me, "How did he do it?" I said, "That's the biggest trait." He spoke to people as if he would see the greatness in all of them like when Christ looks at all of us and said, "When are you going to come with me? When are you going to see me as a child of mine?"
He saw that and people were drawn to that because it's in us. You just haven't accepted it. That was what made him so fabulous and also non-tolerant of the nonsense that people use as excuses. He would say, "No one is a failure until they blame somebody else." That upsets a lot of people. "I can't believe you say that, Tracey. You don't know." I'm like, "I don't know but I do know that blame is next to pride, one of the worst things that you can do. That's all I know. I don't know everything but I do know a couple of things."
You've lived through a lot. I know my dad was similar generation. In that generation, they went through hard times, Depression, usually their senior year, somewhere around that in high school or shortly thereafter. They got a trip to Europe or the Pacific on one in their hand.
You didn’t hear from them for four years, if you heard.
It was a truly different scenario. Our society doesn't understand. I was raised by that generation. I was the youngest. My dad was 47 when I was born. It was a shock day. My brother was a surprise and then came me. We learned that old school mentality. A lot of our friends, there's a different generation that their parents are part of, that didn't have all this. I appreciate how you grew up and what you learned. Another piece that's interesting talks about no pity parties. This is nothing compared to what Jesus went through. That's a realization we need to remember.
Whenever I would complain about, "I can't believe this person betrayed me or this happened," he's like, "Is this anything worse than what Jesus went through?" I'm like, "There it goes to Jesus again." That's why God went through it. When somebody has experienced what you went through, there's that camaraderie and empathy. He was fully human. He went through the best and worst of us. That's why we love and we promote books. You think you got it bad? Look at what other people are going through. You will, all of a sudden, count your blessings. One of the worst things we can do is start feeling sorry for ourselves. That is a tool of the devil and that's where the beginning of the end starts. Have your little 30 seconds, dab your eyes and get right back in the game. That's all you're getting.
It hurts. I've had horrible things happen to me. I got to deal with it and make better choices. The other thing he would tell me is, "When you go through it, it's not about you. Stop thinking it's all about you. It's about you helping someone in the future that is going to approach you, that is going through this and think that they're not going to make it. You can go, friend, you can make it. I was there." It's like going to war. You talked about Veterans Day. When you've been to war, you have this comradery. We live through it. When you've been through hardship, adversity or some kind of trauma, that makes you such a huge resource. We talked in the book ours were resources to other people. You can help them navigate their way through this, just like people help us navigate.
I saw a post in one of the social media channels. It was a local person, single mother raising an older child. She just simply asked for help. Seventy-three posts of people. "I'll cook your dinner. I'll get you your turkey." Ninety percent of the time, people forget it. Ask if you need help. It's not a pity party. We're all human.
People are there to help. That's why it's America. Forget the government, although the government is providing a ton of help but there are so many nonprofits and ministries. S&P in the book SPARK or Singularity and Persistence, that's what you bring to the table, your purpose and your drive but ARK, Advocates, Resources and Knowledge are the externals. I need help, mentors, people to open the door for me, resources, a website, capital, workers, logistics and knowledge. These are the external. The greatest thing that you can do and, in the book, I talked about it, is ask.
For so many years that I ran the company, I was like, "People probably expect me to be able to do it on my own because I went to war." I didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't until it all fell apart for the third time that I was like, "I'm done. I'm going to ask people." Everybody's like, "What do you need?" That's why I teach people, "Ask them." For example, for our readers out there, Bob, in pre COVID, I was not doing the show. I was thinking about it. I put something out there and you're like, "I want to be on it." I'm like, "If somebody asks to be on my show, I'm doing a show." Thank you for that because had you not asked, I would have been like, "People wouldn't want my show." Then you asked. Just ask.
Also, the guests you've had. You look at your guest list and it's a nice list. Thank you for having me on because I feel very small compared to some of those.
Don't forget, you're the one that started it all. It's faith of a child. The beauty is for our readers out there and I know we'll be out of this whole nonsense that's going on in the world soon but people are so much open now to reach out. Speakers aren't traveling all over the world. They're sitting there in front of their computer like this. They would love to talk to you and allow them to share their knowledge or be a guest on your show because people don't have to do all these expensive travelings. People are able to give you what you're looking for so much easier. That's a true blessing from the past months.
It's always good too because we're reminded as people don't like to do that. They don't like to ask for help. Everybody seems to be, "I'm going to do my little piece over here." We live in a neighborhood. There's a reason why it's called a neighborhood. You have neighbors and other people around. Remember, when we get storms here in Florida, a lot of times, you'll see neighbors start going out and cleaning up. They'll go over, help each other, pick up stuff or cut up lens if they have a chainsaw.
That's what you do because you know they're going to need the help, whether they ask or not. If you lose your electricity, you can take over this if you still have some to your neighbors. It's a nice feeling to be able to do that for somebody else and to help them out. People appreciate it. That's a great thing to be able to do. I loved one of these other quotes in the book and I've heard this in the Bible before too. It talks about, "Don't throw your pearls to pigs. Watch what you put into your head." That's so true. Tell us more about that.
We call it stinking thinking. A universal law is trash in, trash out. If you watch trashy TV, you listen to trash or you read trash, I would look at social media and media in general, you see people exiting in drugs because it's trash. I went off the news May 15th, 2014. I'm smarter and at more peace than I ever have been in my life. I love it.
The Hallmark Channel is a good channel, just in case you watch.
That's what's beautiful about podcasting. You can get down to talk to real people about real things and hear real truth, whereas that's canceled in a lot of other places. The point is trash in, trash out. Your mind is a vacuum. Even if you're sitting there quiet, you need to constantly be filling it with good things. A lot of our leaders have talked about the first hour of the day, they're doing their meditation, devotional or being quiet. You have to have time to Sabbath, take time to rest and recharge so you can get off the daily dust and dirt of the world.
Zig Ziglar has one of my all-time favorite quotes. He says, "They say motivation doesn't last, neither does bathing." That's why we recommend it daily. Every day, you have to guard what goes on here. Don't cash your pearls. I watch people get involved in arguments and I'm like, "Why do you even go there?" Even Jesus was like, "If you go to that town and they don't want to listen to you, you dust the feet off your sandals and you go away." Don't water dead plants. We get frustrated about it. I'm like, "Why? They're not picking up what you're putting down." There are many times in my life where I wasn't ready to receive. When you're ready to receive, that's who you should be drawn to. When you push off all that nonvalue-added stuff in your life, it becomes a lot more peaceful and a lot more productive.
One of the best things is when you said you got off TV in 2014. One of the most powerful things you have is that off button. We don't need to listen to the garbage. Your dad always promoted, "Hand somebody a book." You do the same thing. "Tracey sent me her great book." Read a book. There's so much more you can gain out of it, things like that, whether it's a PDF version, an online book, whatever it may be or audio books. There are all kinds of sources for that. Let's try it out and grow our mind. The stuff of the world can be very useless.
People don't even know what they think, where their values and convictions are but other people's values and convictions greatly stress them out and rage them. I'm like, "Somebody thinks differently than you. Why does that trigger you? I don't understand." That is the lowest order of thinking, if you want to call it. That's pure rabid dog, feral cat response. Higher order thinking is, "I can understand both points. I know where my value was. This was on landing. I respect your point too." End of the discussion. Anything you see out there in the news, media, movies are pure nonsense. A lot of it is sugary sweet. I'm not anti. I watch some stuff every now and then but limited. If you're doing more of that than the good stuff, you're going to start infecting your brain.
I have my guilty pleasures. I checked out. I watched The Office when I leave. That's therapy for me. Is there anything edifying about it? No but it sure makes me laugh. It makes me glad I'm an entrepreneur and I'm no longer in an office. I watch other things but very limited. I talked about K is for knowledge. The other thing is as far as book, I got my PhD and the greatest thing that taught me was if you can't cite the source, don't write it. Whenever I hear something or something comes across, I always go back and I look at who put it out there, who founded the research. Then you know their bias. That has led me to the path of if I'm looking for information, I will dig and dig than nobody. It can be called holy objective.
Everybody has their own biases, assumptions and blind spots. As much as everybody likes to claim they don't, you got it. You got to point everybody else's out but you can't see your own. That's part of the whole thing about biases, assumptions and blind spots. The whole thing with the research is do your due diligence, learn, study. I do get a lot of blogs. I watch a lot of different things. There are channels I subscribe to that I go, "What is this fact? Who put this out there?" Then I'll look at them. When COVID first came out, they had all these doctors doing all of this. I'm like, "Who is this person?" Come to find out they had a failed attempt at running for office, they had a new book coming out or they got blacklisted from their practice and yet they're hyping people up and getting millions of views. You have to be very careful about who you listen to and vet that.
People have their knowledge. They're made in the image of God. Use what you're given.
We have the mind of Christ. That means we can sort out the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the untruths. That's called discernment. That's the highest form of leadership. You don't just believe everything that's presented to you. You can't function as a leader. You have to be a savvy and shrewd thinker. "Gentle as a dog but why is this a serpent?" We have to be very clever when we come to rightly dividing the information that comes into our minds.
Tracey, where can people find more about you, what you do and your organization?
If you come on to TremendousLeadership.com, that's the best site. You can sign up. We have two free weeks of eBooks on there. Our show is on there. We have free webinars and tons of tremendous books, to include my latest SPARK or you can get on Amazon, whichever. The other thing is you can go over at my personal speaking website. It's TraceyCJones.com and all of our Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, all that stuff, if you send an email there, it will come to my global headquarters. I will answer it in 30 minutes, probably more or less. I'd love to hear from you. Connect with me on LinkedIn, all that stuff. We are here to advocate for one another and to be a resource for one another. I'm excited to be connected with all your fans, Bob.
Thank you, Tracey. I've gotten several of the books out of your organization. I have a bookshelf in my office and it's for people. If they want a book to read, it's there. There are several of them. A lot of them are the older books, Acres of Diamonds and some of those older ones that are small, quick reads.
For people in sales, we sell hundreds of thousands of these. It takes 30 minutes to read. This says that the only difference between success and failure is that success has made habits out of doing the things that failure won't. That's it. Here's patent if you do this. It takes five minutes to read. Just do it.
Notice the size of those. They fit in your pocket. You can take them everywhere.
Here's Charles Schwab, the actual investment. The beauty is you can get these and hand these out with your business card. My dad said, "Don't give them your business card. They'll throw it away." Sometimes they'll throw it away while you're in the room. Put a sticker in here but give them a little booklet and sign it. Nobody throws a book away. We got LinkedIn, Reagan, even once on speaking and all kinds of wonderful things. Those are our series of life-changing classics. There are 32 in the series of them. We sell them in little bundles or boxed up in a beautiful gift set. They'd make a tremendous Christmas gift for somebody too.
Tracey, thank you for your time. Thank you for your service to the country. Thank you for your knowledge and sharing with people. I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. I appreciate the smile you always have on your face because you are living a tremendous life. Thank you for doing what you do.
You are so welcome. Thanks so much, Bob. It's been a real privilege and an honor.
Thank you. I appreciate it. You take care.
You too.
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