When we have entrepreneurs around us, we could take advice from them and learn from their professional journeys. Dr. Tracey Jones discusses the importance of learning from mentors with Rod Santomassimo of The Massimo Show. In this conversation, they talk about loving work and enjoying life to the fullest. They also talk about self-efficacy, resilience, tenacity, and adaptive capacity as the most important factors in being an effective leader. Tune into this podcast episode, take wonderful leadership skills’ enhancement advice and learn to grow your own business.
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Tracey Jones Shares How To Apply The Lessons From A Mentor For Tremendous Results
Tracey, you are tremendous. You have a tremendous journey and story but before we get onto that, tell something about Tracey Jones as a teenager. Start there.
I was raised by a father who was a motivational speaker. Charlie “Tremendous” Jones so you know that my upbringing was not normal. I would beg with him, “Charlie, please be normal,” to which he would laugh and be like, “I can't. It’s not going to happen.” Growing up with a motivational speaker for my father was a little bit across between bootcamp and a sitcom. It was always hysterical.
My father had this unbelievable, lovely sense of humor but everything was an experience and an adventure but he was also incredibly driven. Everything that we did was it had to have a purpose and you had to find joy in it. Consequentially, I grew up that work and fun were inextricably linked. It's like, “You don't go on vacation. Work is a vacation. When you love what you do, it's all together and work should be a joy.” I watched him do this and we would go on family vacations.
He packed us all up in an RV and we would go from speaking engagement to speaking engagement. We would work long tables and then at night, we'd go play at the KOA campgrounds. We would sing songs and he would drove six of us kids’ suitcases, boxes of books and a Volkswagen camper pop-up top back in the late ‘60s from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania to Mexico City, Mexico and back. He was fearless.
We had the best time sleeping on cactuses, drinking the water we shouldn't have drunk, meeting people, watching him interact with cultures and touch people's lives. The other thing he did when I was a teenager, he took all the TVs in the house and locked them up in the attic. You would get arrested for that nowadays doing this to children. I was like, “I can't believe it.”
There wasn't anything even bad on TV back in the early ‘70s. Not that you could watch at your home. He's like, “You don't need this trash. Trash in, trash out. You can be working getting a job, you can read, you can be out doing athletics, working in the yard or something but no TVs.” I remember thinking, “This is cruel and unusual punishment. I can’t wait until I'm eighteen years old and I'm out of here.” I'm so thankful he did that. We didn't need it at that time of our lives. What we need is to be studying, interacting with people, practicing our instruments or anything other than sitting in front of the TV. that was also a zany thing that he did.
There it comes tremendous from that aspect. I couldn't imagine turning off the Wi-Fi at my house and my teenage battle about that because I’m doing that alone. I will take off the TVs but not the internet obviously. Tracey, you had an amazing upbringing and one that was certainly a safe environment of optimism and positivity. Would you say that's true?
It was also very pragmatic. My father came from difficult circumstances, flunked out of school in the eighth grade, extreme poverty. His mother left multiple times and by all standards, got the bad luck of the draw as far as nature and nurture but when he was a young man, he met my mother. He got involved with the life insurance industry. He found Christ and that was a trifecta.
After that, everything else was in the past, but he would take us when we were younger and we would sit under the tutelage of people like Zig Ziglar, Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale. I was a little girl and I would sit there, look at these men and he would say, “Tracey, you need to go out and earn your stripes.” What he meant was, life is great, but it's what you make it.
I didn't grow up with a solution of, “I just want to be fit. I’m the daughter of somebody famous and it's all going to come to me.” He's like, “These men worked hard and the reason men and women are listening to these is that they are bringing value to the table and their stories are triumphant. It was never easy.”
Even though it was very upbeat and optimistic, he really taught me a leadership term called self-efficacy, which is resiliency, tenacity, your adaptive capacity. He let me know my first life lesson was, “It doesn't matter what life throws at you. It's how you respond to it.” I am thankful for that. It was incredibly positive but it wasn't this Pollyanna, “Life is never going to slap you in the face.” He was very pragmatic about, “It's going to be tough. Every time you do the right thing, somebody is going to take you out of the knees. That does not matter. You stay focused, have the right support network, the right books and you will get there.”
You have mentioned the trifecta. He found Christ, he found your mother and life insurance. You were born to be pragmatic and optimistic but somehow, you found yourself actually in the Air Force. Tell me how you went from that childhood to serving our country, thank you, we are honored, being in the Air Force. How did you get there? What was that journey like?
I am my father's daughter but he is an automotive salesperson. I am an engineer by trade. I'm way more analytical and process-oriented. I was at school in New York at Holton College at Wesleyan School. My father had spoken at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico. This was before the aliens were around.
He came back, he had a flyer from there, laid it on the table and goes, “Tracey, these kids are really going to make something out of their lives.” Niemi is an Army high school and junior colleges like VMI or some of the other military prep schools. They are going to make something with their lives. He did the old challenge of, “I'm not sure if you could make this.”
I'm going to say this to my parents. If you have children that positively respond to that, that's always up for, “You think I can't. When you say I can't, I can't,” but that doesn't always work. They take that personally. He told me to sell books door-to-door with Southwestern growing up and I'm like, “Whatever you say you think I can't do, I'm going to do.”
He did it in an affirming way, not a destructive way. I went down there and I’ve got my Associates's Degree from Niemi and they said, “Where do you want to go next? Do you want to go to West Point or Annapolis because it was an Army school?” I said, “I know where they are from. They are from the East but I had fallen in love with New Mexico.” Talk about Landon Chapman and I was like, “This is so gorgeous.” We traveled out West a lot growing up. They said, “There's another place it's called the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.” I'm like, “Let's do that.”
I’m the middle child and I’m always very much like, “When the door opens, I'm not sure but at least I’m going to try it.” I fear to regret more than failure. I was going to give it a shot. I don't ever want to miss the opportunity I can handle if I can't cut the mustard but I'm not going to ever sit there and go, “I wish I would have tried that.”
I went into the Air Force Academy, got an appointment there and showed up a couple of weeks later. It was an incredible experience. I graduated from the Air Force Academy as a Lieutenant, got trained and working on fighter jets, the F-15 and F-16, and off I went into the wild blue yonder. It was a blessing to serve. I was in 1988 to 2000 first Gulf War, Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Bosnian War. It’s such an incredible experience.
We are all honored for your service and that's fantastic. Here you are with an incredible upbringing with your father, your mother, life insurance and Christ. You have an incredible career path with the Air Force but there's something more for you. There's something you are driving and I'm assuming at this point, to do something else. What is that fair thing? Why do you leave the Air Force? What made you driving it to do so?
I'm going to tell you this so your readers will know this. Every organization has bureaucratic elements and that need bloat, waste, nepotism, cronyism and frat. Even the military, church and family, which is a beautiful thing. Although I'm a process girl, I realized I also had the entrepreneurial seed in me. I would look at stuff and I would be like, “Why are we doing this? Why does this take so long? Why are these bad people allowed to stay in the organization when they are not all in?” That is not a bureaucratic mindset. I love the military but I only ever planned to do five years and pay my education back.
Here I am at year twelve point and I thought, “You get this calling from and a calling to in life.” I always tell people, “When you pivot, don't pivot on pain, pivot on purpose. If you pivot on pain, which I have done many times, that still works out and in the end, it all works out. It all comes out in the wash.” I had this feeling like, “I grew up with entrepreneurs. My father was an entrepreneur and someday, I would love to run my own thing.” After the military, I went into high tech. I wanted to defense contracting and all kinds of things. You go through the honeymoon period where you are like, “This is the greatest job in the world. I love these people.”
Somewhere within the 6-month or 1-year period, you realize this is the same crap that I dealt with at the previous organization and these people were even worse than the people that I didn't like before. I would say to my dad, “I thought this was the right industry. I thought this was the right leader.” He said to me, “Tracey, you have two choices in life. You can either work for yourself or you can work for somebody else. As long as you work for somebody else, this is always going to happen.”
He would tell me one of his little life-changing classics, “Tracey, don't quit a job because you hate the people. You are going to hate them wherever you go. Just stay with the people.” There was an element of truth in that but his point was, “Until you own your business, you are not going to feel like you own the business.” I was 23 and I thought, “He's wrong. He's a sales guy. He wasn't in the right industries,” but he was absolutely right.
Learning From Mentors: Your business will have your own unique aspects of it and your unique purpose and singularity. What works for everybody else may not necessarily work for you.
My dad was one of my biggest mentors. He would always say, “Rod, you will never be happier or potentially more successful and wealthier until you understand, and work for yourself.” He was absolutely correct. I fought him on it but I did the big company, big six, big consulting's and all those things.
It doesn’t mean bigger is better. Bigger also means a whole heck of a lot more waste and cost. It's two different sets of problems but I prefer the entrepreneurial problems and sleepless nights. It’s much better than I do the bureaucratic sleepless nights. It's a whole different thing.
I couldn't agree more. We are going to talk about a couple of things. One is the journey she's taking. We are talking a little about her new project called SPARK as well. One tends to SPARK but a lot more to come. A lot of value, a lot of lessons, you all need to start applying right away.
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Our next session is with Tremendous Tracey Jones. Think about what she shared so far about the upbringing she had, going across the country in the RV with her dad, being with the greatest motivational speakers of our time like Zig Ziglar, going to the Air Force serving our country for twelve years, and now recognizing that the entrepreneur life is a life for her. Let’s get to that entrepreneurial life. Tracey, welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Rod.
Let's get right into it. You leave the Air Force. Your dad has always said, “You’ve got to work for yourself.” What were some of the ventures you set out to do and tell us about that journey?
After getting out in the military, I went to high tech. I moved to Austin, Texas and that was cool because I wanted to work at the Fortune 100 company because that's where great leadership is. When they are full-on, Austin is an absolutely fabulous town. I love the industry but after a couple of years, you realize, “People are people. Problems are problems. Processes are processes.” Different acronyms but the same stuff, different day kind of thing. I did that for five years and got the urge again, “I’ve got to do something else.” I went moved to St Louis and I worked in defense contracting.
Now, I get to blend my Fortune 100 edge with my love for the military. Surely, this is going to be the pairing that I have been searching for my whole life. That was great and I did that for a while and again, about two years into it, I'm like, “The blush comes off the ropes because you are dealing with the same people, the same problems and processes.” It is what it is.
My father's health was failing in 2008 and he departed for heaven. Before he left this Earth and turned in his Earthly passport for his heavenly one, I came back from St Louis, Missouri every weekend and spent time with him. We haven't talked about me coming back to do the business but after 23 years of trying other things, I didn't know what was going to work but I knew what wasn't going to work.
I wasn't going to find another industry, country or set of acronyms. I was like, “Am I really making a difference? I'm earning a great salary but in the grand scheme of things, am I changing the world?” I thought not in the way that I want to do it. His health was failing. I said, “Dad, it's time. I'm going to come back and I'm going to run the business.” This is our whole succession plan.
He squeezed my hand and he whispered in my ear because he didn't have his voice anymore. He says, “Tracey, that's wonderful. I know you will take it to places I never did.” Two days later, he was in heaven. I tell people, “It doesn't have to be this long-drawn-out thing.” At that moment, I kept waiting for him to say, “Do you want to come back and run the business?” He never asked me and I thought, “That's not cool, dad.”
In the end, I thought, “What daughter would say no to her father on his death bed asking?” He knew if this wasn't my decision. When I came back and found out it's the same people, problem and processes that I would go, “Why did I promise my father that I would do this? It had to be my decision,” and it was. I'm eternally grateful for that.
For the readers, losing your father, especially losing any hero in your life, is gut-wrenching. It's hard because this is the man that gave me my self-esteem and taught me everything. How do you keep on going from that? I tell people, “Sooner or later, the baton has to get passed and that's when we have to step up.” He's still here. He's just on a long business trip. It prolonged through the hardship of you have just lost somebody. The best thing that you can do to honor their legacy is to pick up that baton. You grieve, you get out of it and you get right back to work. That's what really kept me going.
It’s a beautiful story. I can absolutely relate. I lost my dad a couple of years ago. One day he was here then one day, he was gone. It was shocking but when you lose someone, what you can do is go-ahead to be the best you can possibly be to reflect on that person and what they shared with you. Your father was a motivational speaker. All of a sudden, you have to become a motivational speaker. For our audience, what is the business?
I'm a Project Manager. I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm not a writer. I like to write. I'm gifted at writing. He did several different things. If you knew my father, you know this. We are supposed to stay focused but he was a publisher. He felt everybody had a book and you ought to have a book, and your message. They may not get to meet you face-to-face but a book lives on.
Look at the Bible, the number one book of all time. I didn't get to meet Jesus but I get to meet him through his book. He was a bookaholic. He was a book pusher so was a publisher. He was an unbelievable speaker but he also would do book distribution companies that wanted to do Book of the Month. He had hundreds of thousands of books coming through to encourage companies and organizations to get their employees on a recurring reading program.
Those are all the things that we are still doing. I always laugh when I say motivational speaking because I'm like, “I’m much more pragmatic. Here’s the stuff. I'm going to give you the tactics and the tools to do it.” That is what the business is. It’s Tremendous Leadership. It was executive books. I came back and I rebranded to Tremendous Life Books because books just aren't for executives only.
Back in his day, personal development crosses every boundary. If you are a person, you should, want and desire to be developed. We went to Tremendous Life Books and now we are doing more leadership training, speaking, and now it's Tremendous Leadership. Speaking, writing, getting people hooked on books, sharing transformative powers of books, all that stuff.
Take me through a typical day for Tracey Jones. Now, there's nothing typical based on what you have told me. In the entrepreneurial learning business that you run now, what does that look like? Are you on the road a lot? Do you have a virtual team? People are wondering and also entrepreneurs reading and going, “How does she do it? What's its supporting look like? How does she market?” Let's go rudimentary. There's the raw side of this. I get that it's important but let's get to the fundamental, pragmatic side. How do you sell yourself? How do you sell your business?
For the readers, I am on this journey as you like everybody else. I remind people, publishing a book is easy. Getting people to open up their wallets and buy them, is where the magic happens because everybody is like, “I published it. It’s such stupid I'm filled with dreams. If you publish it, people will buy.” False. “If you get your agents licensed, people will buy.” False.
It's the hardest thing in the world. I was up for a Zoom call. After this, I have dance lessons for my first dance for a wedding. I was at an elementary school with my rescue dogs because I write your children's books too on leadership development. Next, I'm going to be in prison doing prentice prison ministry where we have book reading clubs. I've got manuscripts to read. Thank God, I just finished my PhD so I'm not going to be doing schoolwork thing.
I would say the number one thing we have been learning is repeat and referrals. Everybody wants to buy these lists or go out and find these new clients. If we can just ask for referrals, one of my favorite books is Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited. It's right here, too. You work on the business, not in the business. This is so hard for me because I'm an operations person. I have to look at this book and say, “Tracey, the entrepreneur has to talk about wondering. What can we do?”
A lot of this is, you can't do it on your own, even if you have the greatest vision. If God came down from the mountain and said, “Rob, do this,” and you are persistent as all get out. You have to have the advocates, resources and knowledge to make it happen. You have to know, which marketers are worth investing in. You have to know, “Should you do time on social media or is this a complete-time suck of my resources?”
Learning From Mentors: There is something serendipitous about finding somebody to join your team because you can find many people out there. But you have to discover people that are critical thinkers.
You have to know what books you need to read because you have to stay self-motivated. There are a lot of times when I get up and say, “Should I take all the tremendous workpieces, put them in the box and wrap it up?” There's internal intrinsic motivation. That's why I'm always out connecting with people. I need to know, what are you doing to grow your business? Also, remember that's their business. Your business is going to have your own very unique aspects of it, your unique purpose and singularity.
What works for everybody else may not necessarily work for you. You will get the old, “We will do the Google Adwords.” I’m like, “I'm not selling alcohol, vacations or diamonds on Facebook. I'm selling books.” That's a whole different thing because somebody says, “I'm doing this. It might be the oldest. Do you see the bandwagon that’s in front of you? It's probably too late.” A lot of people are doing virtual things. I'm working to get more online podcasts. I'm working to do more events but it's work and process.
I heard a lot and I will break it down a little bit for the readers. First of all, repeat referrals. When I speak across the country and I asked folks how many pads clients they have? I'm shocked, nobody raised their hand. They go, “I have past clients.” In our world, it’s passed clients, which basically means that they are dead to you because you treat them as someone that you used to work with.
Our vision in Massimo and we share with everyone is, “No one has passed clients. We all have inactive clients. There are clients probably not active. Don't touch them. They are mine. It’s to our competition but it's a mindset and that’s an activity of how you engage and then increase those referrals and those relationships for more business.” I agree with you 1,000%. I did notice when I asked you about how you delegate.
I also agree with you 100%. You have to delegate all the responsibilities and build your team. I don't know if this was purposeful or not but I’m wondering it has to be. I heard that you said Advocates, Resources and Knowledge, which spells ARK. It's important to the team around you. Talk about the ARK. My team, we have 40 folks within the Massimo Organization. Most of those are our coaches across North America but a team of ten sales, finance, operations, marketing, some full-time employees, many independent contractors. How about in your organization? How big is it? What's that composition look like?
We started larger and have since really paired down. Industries, the publishing and speaking industry has really radically changed. When you are getting prone, I sold a huge piece of real estate years ago and I thought, “I killed the business.” I didn't kill the business. I sold a facility and everything I do can be now print on demand virtual. We are sitting here talking like, “I didn't even have to travel to speak.”
You have to get your mind on what the business is going to look like ten years from now and skate to where the pot is going. It’s the old Wayne Gretzky quote, “It's already slipped past you.” Now, I have one other full-time employee. In the E-Myth, we have the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician. We are out on the hunt for a technician.
What I'm going to tell you, years of bringing people in and trying to find that right person, there is something serendipitous about finding somebody to join your team because you can find a million people out there but you have to find people that have possessed two skills. One, they are critical thinkers, not a critical spirit but they are good critical thinkers.
In other words, they are going to look at you and say, “Rod, have you thought about this?” They are going to support you but they are going to be looking at, “Those inactive customers. Let me come up with a marketing plan about how to drip out until we get from a no to a yes because we all know that no is just a not yet. It takes fifteen touchpoints before somebody converts over.”
It’s somebody to process and do all that stuff. The second thing that you need to make sure that you have in addition to critical thinking is that they are all in. They want the success of the Massimo Group as much, if not even more than you do because otherwise, you are going to get employees on your team that is transactional. You want to find a team member. After years of being back, I finally found this person.
Now, we are in the process of growing and be very intentional about growing. Only bring somebody in when you absolutely need to because otherwise, you are going to take your time trying to keep them busy or find things for them to do. I have done it many times. I have stopped looking and I have let God bring that person to me. I'm having better success but we have a ton of contractors, too. I love independent contractors because everybody has the freedom to do what they want and that's a beautiful thing.
If you don't leverage other folks by now, in one year, you are not going to grow but contracting is an incredible tool resource for us all to use. We are going to break this down a little more but we’ve got to get to the SPARK in Tracey's life. We have a bonus section. Tracey told me she would have great content and she's right. We are going for the bonus section of the Massimo show this time. We will talk about the SPARK, what that means and get on personal with Tracey. There are some things she's doing that are pretty tremendous on her own.
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Welcome back to the Massimo show with the one and only tremendous Tracey Jones. We are going to talk about SPARK. Tracey, this is pretty big, is it not?
It is one of the biggest times of my life.
What happened and what's happening? We are already in your life.
2019 was a really difficult year. I lost my mother. She's at home with my father and brother now. I had some other setbacks but I came out of the four-year wilderness and into the land of Canaan. I came out of Egypt and Canaan wrapping up the end of 2020. December 13, 2020, I graduated with my PhD, a goal of mine since I was a child in leadership. Now, I'm a doctor, I'm going to be a Mrs. I'm getting married. People are like, “Are you serious?” Not that I'm unmarrieble but I'm just used to doing my own thing so people are like, “Are you kidding me? This guy got to have it together.” I'm like, “He's got it together.”
You went from Ms. Jones, Dr. Jones, to Mrs. Jones. Going forward now for the rest of this episode, I will call you Tracey but what is the surname? Mrs. Something else obviously, but it's not. It's going to be something else.
It's going to be Mrs. Jones but traveling to Mrs. Wheeler. We are still trying to iron all this out. I'm going to be Tracey Jones Wheeler.
More importantly, you are Dr. Jones. I'm just going to call you Indiana. How's that?
I’ve got the whole getup on my next show. I’ve got the hat. I learned to crack a weapon. We are having a Dr. Jones party.
Dr. Jones party, by the way for those who don't know what the heck Tracey and I are talking about, you need to google Indiana Jones.
I’ve got the whole gut up.
Let's talk about the next big thing. Everything needs a spark, a catalyst to move forward. Based on our research, I saw you have a project that whole concept is SPARK. We talk about that concept, a book publisher that your life books. You wrote a lot of books and now your latest project is SPARK. Tell us about that.
Learning From Mentors: The only difference between success and failure is that success has made a habit of doing the things that failure doesn't want to do.
It is an offshoot of my Doctoral research. In my research, I hit the trifecta of the intersection of a crisis event, personal motivation and followership. These are the three things. I tell the people that complain about their boss. “If you want a better leader, be a better follower. If you want a better husband, be a better wife.” Leadership is a dance and just like you talked about your business, we can't do it on our own.
I'm interviewing these organizations that went through a failed merger. It’s a merger that went south. Something that will probably happen in almost all of our lives. A merger, which looks so beautiful on paper and then you get people involved. People mean egos and personalities so it went south pretty quick. I’ve got to interview all these people. They come through it successfully but I’ve got to pick their brains and say, “What was scary about it? What was not? Why did some of you think it was the end of the world and others that you were excited about it? Why did some of you become entrenched and others of you become excited?”
Within five minutes and you are sitting down to interview people, I could tell, which side of the fence they were on. I realized, halfway through these interviews after stunning leadership, my whole life, there really is no such thing as leadership. It's all personality. You know that, Rod. As good as you are and as much as you can help people, if that other person has an attitude, a chip on their shoulder, what psychologists call an erotic personality, where they just are self-oriented, I call them SOPs, Self-Oriented Behaviors, there's nothing I can do or promise you to make you smile and come on my team.
This book, it's called SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within. We all have God's seed in us, whether you believe it or not, there's something unique about human beings. We can achieve goals, do the Wonders of the World, have the age of enlightenment, create companies like this, create wealth, love and all these other things. Why is it that some of us achieve greatness and others of us don’t?
The SPARK is an acronym. S is for Singularity. In my research, these people where their singular focus after the merger was on themselves and what was in it for them versus the other people that looked at what was in it for the health of the organization. Where you put your focus and you can only focus on one thing at a time. If you have people that only focus on themselves, they are never going to be all in.
P is for Persistence because you know as well as I do, it's your habits that will determine your success. A lot of people are like, “It's all about passion.” Passion fizzles after a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Persistence means no matter what, you are going to stay the course. That is the intrinsic stuff. That's up to me to bring the singularity and the persistence but externally, I need three other things.
The Advocates, those are your cheerleaders. Henry Cloud calls them quadrant four relationships. It's a book called The Power of the Other. These are the people that want your success more than you want it and going to call you on your nonsense. They are going to sit there and lift you up that are going to network with you, pray for you, pour into you and advise you.
R is again, the Resources. No matter how great I am, if I don't have the website, the marketing or whatever, to get the word out to people, if I don't have the CRM database to track my clients, if I don't have the right marketing tools, the right people, you can't get it right without the right people. It's not going to happen.
Lastly, K is Knowledge. Leadership is lifelong learning. I just finished my PhD at 56. I feel like I'm just starting. I'm figuring it all out. My dad always said that, “Tracey, everybody is good behind the ears until they are 55.” He's right. There's so much I didn't know. Stay in the books and stay learning because the environment changes and we change every day. We are the next best version of ourselves. What we had in our lives yesterday, there may be something different we need in our lives in the future.
Ecclesiastes talks about there's a season for everything. I am constantly looking at the business and saying, “There are no sacred cows. What worked years ago may not work now.” The only reason I know that is by staying around smart people and hanging around great books. My father always said that you are going to be the same person five years from now, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. When will I look at people that are in a rut or if it's not happening for me, I will say, “Who are you meeting and hanging out with? What are you reading?” If they say, “Not that I'm like friends, you are already dead. You are not stinking because you are not in the ground yet.” That's what SPARK is all about.
I love the acronym. Similarity, Persistent, Advocate, Resource, Knowledge, that's the SPARK.
It's metacognition. Every day you go through the cycle and that's living life. You never get it all figured out. Maybe you can sit back and keep your feet up for five seconds but put them right back on the ground and get back to running because somebody is going to be nipping at pieces of your business, you are going to have an employee issue erupt, somebody is going to hack your website or somebody is going to put some crap about you online from an interview you did, who knows but that's okay. It's all part of the game.
Tracey, before we start this interview, my wife walked into the office and she asked me a question. We are at definitely not a crossroads but we will go to the next step, which is great for us. It’s the next step as far as our business. From our business, we are in the next step of where we are taking the next journey for Massimo. Now, there's the next level for us.
You’ve got two choices in life, evolve or evacuate. There is no status quo. The minute we are born, our death puck start. After we clean, dust starts coming. Once the money is printed, inflation eats it away. You can't just sit in life. You have to be moving forward. That's what makes life worth living. We do it with the support of other people. That's when it's time for us to punch out, we can look back. It was incredible and the best is yet to come.
Let's talk about something here if we can because I'm pumped. You talked about looking at things ten years from now. It’s your dad's advice, which I agree with by the way. I agree with everyone should understand. It's who we hang out with. Even in high school, even when I'm 56, who I choose to hang out with, through the books I read but it’s also a podcast I listened to and the vlogs I watch. Is that all part of it?
I tell people, “Should I read or not?” You do whatever you want but some of us are auditory learners. Some of us are visual learners. I have to read it because the way my mind runs if I'm listening, I don't hear it. That's why when I sit at a speaking engagement, I have ten pages of notes because the research does say that, “When you write down what you hear, twice is likely to remember it.”
Some of us are kinesthetic learners. We have to be doing, I don't care if it's a TED Talk. I don’t care if you are listening to scripture set on TV. I don't care if you listen to a podcast. It doesn't matter. You think about the noise that's coming into your head and this is why it's so hard for us to get that first singularity.
You have to be quiet and if you are not a savvy thing, at least once a week, if you are not carving out at least 12 hours to 24 hours to turn everything off and just listen. Remember, if the God seat is in you, you need to shut up, be still, quiet and listen, and then you will hear what you are supposed to do next. I encourage people to do that, too. Take the input but how you process it is your own unique journey and vision. You will only know that if you get quiet and alone from time to time.
That’s absolutely awesome, Tracey or Dr. Jones. We talk about some quiet time and working on the business, they are correlated. You went full alien on me from going from Roswell, New Mexico to Baby Yoda all-in-one. You did it all in there.
My bridal shower cake was Princess Leia. If you look on my Facebook page and my fiancé has never even seen any of the Star Wars so I know it's love because typically, that would be one of my first-day questions, “Star Wars or Star Trek?” If you answered wrong, you are dead to me.
That is what we mean by passed clients. “You are dead to me.” People want more Tremendous Tracey Jones, Dr. Jones, Mrs. Jones. They want it all. They want more of you. How do people get more access to you?
Come to the website. First of all, TremendousLeadership.com or if you have any of our old books, executive books, tremendous light books our tremendous leadership, they are all the same mothership. Our Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, all that stuff is on there. You can email me directly, our phone number, we answer. This is the global headquarters here in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. It's the nexus of the universe.
If you reach out to me, I promise you, within 24 hours, you will hear from us. We have three webinars on our website and great books. I would love to publish and connect with you. Sign up for our eBlast, it’s 1 or 2 a month about where we are going to be next. You get three free PDFs of these wonderful little life-changing classes. That's great to hand out to your clients.
Learning From Mentors: Every day you go through the cycle and, and that's living life. You never get it all figured out, but you have to keep going.
I can't read a book, you can. This is one we will take half an hour. You can say, “We've got 31 of these.” It is diamonds. Books are tremendous as a man thinks. If you are not into reading, just take fifteen minutes a day. These are wonderful little gems. This one is our bestseller now. It says that, “The only difference between success and a failure is that success has made a habit out of doing the things that failure doesn't want to do.” That's it. That's persistent. For you guys, trying to grow that business, it's about growing the pipeline, cold calling. Passed clients are not dead clients. It's all those habits. You get on our website, we've got tremendous stuff and all kinds of things.
By the way, folks, don't think about yourself. You’ve got to go to the website. There are resources there for your kids, regardless of their age. Maybe teenagers or young adolescents. There are kids out there that need to read these books and just being like Tracey was when she was growing up surrounded with the right mental attitude. You all need to call Tracey. We are going to throw out all our electronic devices, no more Wi-Fi and put them in the attic.
You will live. Believe it or not, you will not die. I promise you that.
I don’t know if my twenty-year-old daughter would agree with you. Tracey, you have been absolutely tremendous. You are the content queen, you shed a lot of high-value things, that ideas where you get them out to the audience. I can't thank you enough. We wish you the very best. SPARK is going to happen for you. You are going to have a big day in your life, your next step and your next journey. God bless you. Thank you so much for joining the Massimo show.
God bless you, Rod. Thank you. Everybody, have a tremendous year, too.
Tracey, you all, my best. Take care.