Leave Nothing To Chance

 

Growing your leadership team, you make sure that you connect with high net value people to improve your net worth. How do you do that? Join your host John Solleder and Tracey Jones, as they explore leadership and working with people. Tracey is a passionate, lifelong learner whose career spans top positions in four major industries. She emphasizes that you have the power to generate a tremendous amount of value for your organization too. What are the opportunities in leadership that you could nurture to attain success? Tune into this episode so you can gain a lot of valuable insights about deep understanding in the generation of wealth!

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Leadership To Seek With Tracey Jones

I appreciate this young lady. I’m going to introduce and tell you about her being here. At 3:30, I woke up thinking about this call and I had to check to make sure I didn’t mess up on the Olympic Wrestling, which I did. I woke up to do that and I grabbed my phone like I always do out of impulse, and I’ve got a text from Tracey that she was in the hospital in Philadelphia with Roscoe, her dog, who unfortunately is not doing well.

We will keep well Roscoe in our prayers. For those of us who love our furry friends, we can all relate, Tracey. I’m sorry to hear that news. I appreciate you being here, being the trooper that you are. You have been up all night. Having said that, let me tell you all a little bit about Dr. Tracey Jones. She is an author, a speaker, a United States veteran, publisher, podcaster and international leadership expert.

She serves as the President of Tremendous Leadership. She picked up the reigns from her late dad, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones way back in 2008. She’s a passionate lifelong learner whose career spans top positions in four major industries. From the military to high-tech, to defense contracting as well as publishing. She’s a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy.

A decorated veteran who served in the first Gulf War as well as the Bosnian War. She’s an MBA in Global Management and a PhD in Leadership Studies through Lancaster Bible College. She is a faculty member of the Prestigious Institute for Organizational Management, as well as being awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters, an honorary PhD from Central Penn College in 2017. She lives in Pennsylvania. She’s a proud Pennsylvanian. She will tell you that if you want to debate it. Her husband is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy.

When the Air Force and Navy play football every Fall, they stay on opposite sides of the house. I witnessed that because I made the mistake of calling her at half-time, not knowing the game was on. I found out things were pretty intense there. I didn’t want to get in the middle of a divorce. What was that movie? The War of the Roses. It was Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Tracey, thank you so much for being here. I know you were up all night. Thank you once again for everything you do. I’m going to be quiet and let you share some of the leadership tactics that you have developed, learned, and lived most importantly, over these last number of years.

John, I so appreciate that and it’s exciting we are triple digits all over the world. Thank you for being here as John explained. I’m still operating from what I’ve got up. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. There was never a moment where I thought, “I can’t be here because this is a time of replenishment for me, too.”

If I talk a little slower than I usually do, that’s why because I’m a little tired, that makes work to most people’s benefit though, because I tend to go pretty quick like a lot of Pennsylvanians. John, when he initially approached me about this, the topic that he put on the flyer was, “Leadership now and in the future.” I thought that was interesting because a lot of people out there look at different things and they say, “That was then but this is now.”

When you bring out the best in people, you get people that bring the best out in you. Click To Tweet

You’ve got different generations. You’ve got Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Xers. Everybody is walking along this path where we go, “That was then but this is now.” That is what is going on in the world. What I want to open my comments with is to say, “That is true and that is also not true.” When it comes to leadership, leadership working with people.

Those core tenants of how you build top-notch teams, bring out the best in people and get people that bring the best out in you, that’s the truth. That’s immutable, timeless and since the dawn of civilization. What does change though is the context, politics, regulations and the what’s going on in the world. The one thing that I would share with you, and for those of you that grew up, I’m a tail-end Boomer.

I will tell you where I grew up in and when I grew up, my worldview about capitalism, free enterprise, and the creation of wealth was that it was a noble, righteous thing, and it was the way that you could do the most good for yourself. You could earn your wealth and you can make the world a better place because you could take that wealth and you could donate it or channel it where you wanted to.

It’s very important in the context that we realize that there is a swath of the population of the world that may not hold to that truth. That’s neither here nor there. It just means that when we talk to people about an opportunity such as this entity, this organization, this product, people would snap up an opportunity like this. Same with insurance sales, same with anything commission-based because people knew you could be a cog in the wheel or you could earn your own wealth.

If you thought yourself a great value, you could generate a tremendous amount of value. It seems like now, that’s almost poo-pooed on. You hear about the Occupy Wall Street and the all, the 1% almost as if trying to achieve great wealth, great success, getting to the highest peak you can, it’s not a good thing. What I want to share in opening this is to be aware that when you are talking to people about an opportunity such as this, you want to make sure that they understand the beauty of the free enterprise system. There are a lot of people now that look at all the things that made a lot of great things in the world, including this country and go, “That’s not the way it has.” Almost a revisionist thing.

You really want to understand who and what generates wealth and believe it or not, a lot of people out there don’t. Whenever I hear somebody say, “I’m not sure why you are worried about it because the government will pay for it.” Right away I know, they don’t understand how to create wealth and where wealth comes from.

As you are pitching this product, as you are growing your team, you want to help people understand the beauty of the free enterprise system. I grew up with that. That was the greatest thing in the world. You work for somebody else until you had enough seasoning, capital or intestinal fortitude so you could go and forge your own path. My father always told me that growing up.

 

I worked in the military, defense contracting, high-tech, and all these different places in these big bureaucracies. I would get a couple of years into it and I’m like, “Dad, it’s the same thing.” It’s the same doo-doo with just a different day. He would always say to me, “Tracey, when are you going to learn? You can work for yourself or you can work for somebody else but as long as you work for somebody else, you are always going to hit that wall because it is not yours, and you are not free to create you and as much wealth as you want.”

I fought that and I’m like, “You are wrong.” Guess what? He was absolutely right. It wasn’t until my mid-40s where I finally was like, “Enough. I have tried it their way. I have tried every industry all over the world. I’m going to let my entrepreneurial chops out there. I’m going to see if I’m brave, courageous and creative enough.”

The world is created to grow and blossom, entrepreneurs, because that’s what makes the world go round, people that want to achieve greatness, and then they want to pour greatness back into the world. Do you know what kills the planet? Selfish people. People that want to get something, take something or redistribute something from somebody else, the takers of the world.

When you are talking about leadership now and in the future, I want you to remember because you listen to some of the stuff now and if you are not grounded in the truth of the free enterprise system and that it requires right enterprising people, you cannot be in the free enterprise if you are not enterprising.

Enterprising means you are industrious. You are not a clock-puncher. You are not a navel-gazer. You are not just sitting there fogging the mirror until you retire. You want to go out and you want to create an enterprise. You need enterprising people who value freedom and not necessarily wealth, and multiple streams of income are great but you get into a business like this.

First and foremost, for the same reason, I came by to run my little entrepreneurial company because I want to do what I want to do. I want to be intrinsically true to migrate as purpose. When you are talking to people, you want to make sure that they are in that mindset. If they have not grown up with a parent that maybe had their own business or understand how wealth was created, how taxpayers fund the government or they may not understand the whole system that 90% of the wealth generated at least in America is through small and mid-sized businesses.

I didn’t know that until I’ve got into a small business. I thought bigger was better, big around the world. Not true at all. When you are talking to people about leaders and coming into an organization like this, you want to make sure that they get the foundation of the beauty of the free enterprise system. There’s nothing like it.

We grew up with it in school. We learned about the titans of the industrial revolution. All the different people, the Carnegies, the Schwabs, all these guys that created jobs for so many other people. Even Guinness who started Guinness beer. They had this vision and they created a tremendous amount of wealth for other people and it just built on that. We grew up hearing that.

If you thought of yourself as a great value, you could generate a tremendous amount of value. Click To Tweet

Not everybody in the generations coming up is quite so familiar with that. As a matter of fact, they might have a negative opinion of, “Capitalism. That’s a dirty word. You are trying to oppress everybody else.” For leadership then and now, just make sure as you are approaching people that they understand money makes the world go round but whose money is it and who generates that money?

People must understand this and they understand that there’s a way to do that. That’s the first thing that I want to talk about. Many years ago, I wouldn’t have said we had to go there because this is what was taught. You were a company man or you were an entrepreneurial man or woman. That’s where it was and everybody wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I still maintain as a result of COVID, people still have the entrepreneurial imprinted in them because we all are put on this planet to do something uniquely gifted that only we can do. That doesn’t come out when you are a cog in the system and nothing against the big bureaucracies but you are not free to be yourself and generate what you want.

After that first point of just understanding the context of leadership, the second thing that I want to talk about is there’s a science to making this work. There’s a science to getting rich. We even have a little book called The Science of Getting Rich, and I’m going to give a shout-out to one of our attendees Dean Gibson right here. He has his name imprinted on there. Isn’t that pretty cool?

What I want you to understand is for leadership, everybody thinks there’s a magic bullet or, “I looked at this person and they sold ten million books because they did this click funnel and all this stuff.” There is a science to getting rich. There’s a secret to success. That means that you do things in a certain way and that’s what this little booklet is all about. How do you know what things to do in a certain way? You read the books. How do you learn how to cook a great cake? You read the cookbook. How do you learn to be a tremendous success in an entrepreneurial industry? You read the Wisdom of the Ages about the greats that have gone before it.

I love the fact the Keith in the intro hit on one of my favorite words, habits. “Show me your habits and I will show you your level of success.” A lot of people are like, “Tracey, that’s old school,” but there’s no getting away from it. I can’t do the work for you and I can’t create the motivation in you. This is what you have to do. Here’s a phenomenal little book the New Common Denominator of Success came out a hundred years ago.

It clearly states that the only difference between a failure and a success is that success has made a habit out of doing things that a failure doesn’t want to do. You may look at Foster, John, Keith and be like, “If I was as blessed as them and everything they touch turns to gold, then I would be a success, too.” The beauty of this little book lets you know the things that you find hard to do so does Ms. Tracey, John and Keith. Do you know what the difference is? They say, “I don’t care how I feel about it. I’m going to make a habit out of doing it.” The other point that leads us too is, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. One of the greatest little booklets of all time, as a man thinks.

 

A lot of people will say, “I don’t feel like it. I’m not feeling it. I don’t feel like I can be successful in this. I don’t feel like inviting people to an event. I don’t feel like showing the product,” and feelings have no business in growing your business. You want to identify with your client how they are feeling. Maybe what would it feel like to be in charge of your health? What would it feel like to have an enhanced robust immune system versus killing it with immune-suppressing drugs or vaccines? That’s where you dial into the feeling but you look at these, thoughts control your feelings, feelings control your behaviors.

The second thing that I want to share with leadership now and in the future is, it is elementary. Just like the Law of Physics and Law of Thermodynamics, they are Universal Laws to success. There’s a Law of Choices and Consequences. It’s a fact of it and a lot of people in the world think, “It’s going to happen to me because it’s going to happen to me,” and they ignore the science and they the past precedence that has been set because they don’t want to put the work into it. They don’t want to cultivate the habits of prospecting, selling, showing, calling and follow-up. That’s the second thing.

When you deal with finding out the right recipe and your right cookbook, and I want to share this with you because Dean brought this up, we do an online course, we talked about when you find something that you want to do, you follow the recipe book. That’s why I’m always pushing books because I never came up with these. I love that John said, “She will share something she came up with.”

I have never come up with an original idea in my life. I thought I did once but I was wrong. It’s all the truths from these great books that I just put together. In one of the books that we are reading in our course, one of the authors, Cameron Taylor, talked about how in order to be successful, you need to follow the recipe of somebody successful.

The thing was, somebody in our great spirit of the discussion said, “That’s not always the case,” and Dean Gibson brought this beautiful point up. He said, “It’s not just about the recipe but it’s about how the cook prepares it, and the level of experience and expertise you have.” Do I want to read Russell Conwell, the Founder of Temple University? Think he knows a thing or two? Absolutely.

Do I want to read James Allen? Greg Alberti gave a speech in an insurance company and it has been a best seller. We sell tens of thousands of these every year. I want to talk. I want to read the success recipe book for people that have done it. One of the things that Dean was talking about was that you need to have somebody that has not just the book because you have all met people that had the book knowledge. “I should be making this much money if I just do this,” but there’s a level of finesse, expertise and experience in it. This is one of the things that I have found. You guys have probably seen this. You have seen the people that try and bake a cake, and you want to do this cute little hedgehog cake but this is the reality of what happens.

This is where experience and the more habits you do, the more experience you get. In the beginning, you end up with this weird-looking thing. Here’s my favorite. I always see this one around Easter. There’s a good one. Do you want to build a snowman? Somebody tried. I followed the cookbook. I love this one, the lamb. I see this one come up for every Easter.

Show me your habits, and I will show you your level of success. Click To Tweet

At least they tried but this is where we all start out. This is where you develop those habits. The last point I want to bring up is, understand the beauty of the free enterprise system. All of us are built to be free. We have this Imago Dei, this freedom, this creative spark and this energy in us that does not do good, smushed and under subjugation to somebody else.

First of all, understanding the free enterprise system and helping people that did not grow up understanding the mechanics, beauty, and reality of the righteous creation and use of wealth. The second thing is the science of getting rich and being successful in leadership is all about doing things a certain way, and how do you know that certain way? You read the books, read the success book.

We want to hint on that for leaders too and why I love your organization, I see you guys are always in books. You are always figuring out ways to do it. You cannot be a leader if you are not a reader and that’s the fact of life, that’s also a universal truth. Lastly, I want to share, my dad always said, “You will be the same person five years from now, except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read.”

We talked about the books you read. I want to talk about the people you meet, and you have probably heard this but the older I get, the more I know this is 100% leadership gold. Your network is contingent on your net worth. Your net worth is going to be a conglomeration of your network and you have heard Jim Rohn say it, “You are a compilation of the five people that you spend the most time with.”

As you are growing your leadership team, you make sure that you connect with a high idea, high network value people so you can improve your net worth. I don’t have to know everything but you have to know everybody and that is networking. That’s the beauty of what you guys do and that’s why we are all in this call.

Second of all, when you are talking about your network, finding the right mentors, that is going to change your life and blow your business up. When you find somebody whose tail lights you can follow through the fog, that is when you are going to dial in and be able to go and follow the path that somebody is carving out for you. Make sure that the people you are hanging out with, that you are spending the most amount of time with are people that are further along than you and are going to be able to pour into you, and then you want to do them proud.

If you have somebody that is mentoring you, you want to show up for them in a way like you haven’t ever shown up. I get some people that are interested in joining a team, they are hot, and then they get cold or they just drift off. If you are serious about being mentored, you need to go all in. Don’t waste your mentor’s time. The more you align with them and the more you are a little sponge that absorbs everything that they have, the more and the faster you are going to grow into your leadership position.

 

The other thing about mentors and I interviewed a lady on the show, she used this analogy, “Think of yourself as a bottle of fine wine. The older we get, the finer we get.” We are that bottle of wine. Here’s the label of our best version of us. I can only read the label from the inside out. Your mentors will look at you from the outside in and they will see that label and they will be able to look at you and say, “John, Dean and Diana, I see this in you,” because we can’t see it.

We can’t see it. A lot of times, we can’t get of our own subconscious, stinking thinking, failures and fears. Something that was told to us early in life that we hold onto, these weird childhood things that pop up at the strangest times. When you connect with the right mentor, they are going to see it already in you, going to recognize it and going to call it out. Like a beautiful wine that gets better with age, they are going to pour into you and make you sweeter, more robust, full-bodied and of a higher value.

When we talk about leadership now and in the future, certain constants are always the same, the people you meet and the books you read. You cannot get it right without the right people, and your net worth is irrevocably tied to your network. Do you want a higher net worth? You need to up your network.

Second of all, read the rule books on how to be successful. These guys on these calls have the expertise and the experience. Don’t go out, try and reinvent the wheel. There is a system that works. That’s why there are people way at the top of this company that is incredibly successful in all walks of their lives, not just from a monetary standpoint. Those are the two constants.

The last one is we need to reignite people’s love of the free enterprise system because that’s the only thing that allows people to serve freely, to be given an opportunity for what they have poured into and it’s the only thing, quite frankly, that’s going to save this planet from destruction. It’s the only thing that ever has, it’s the only thing that ever will. With that, I want to thank you for the opportunity to just share some leadership truths with you. I hope you’ve got some value in it and I hope you have a tremendous sharing, thinking and learning with one another.

Tracey, first of all, thank you so much. We have a little special here. We have one book promo with some of the books Tracey mentioned. You can get these books. Tracey’s new book SPARK is one of the best, if not the best book on leadership I have ever read and I have read them all. I have read all the leading ones. You are going to love it. The book that Keith and I wrote, the book that Foster and I wrote, which is more specific to network marketing. That will be there. Tracey, before you go and I know you are operating on fumes. You look great. You look a lot better and I do.

You guys bring it out in me. It was sad but I prayed to God and I said, “Lord, give me the words, give me strength and make my eyes not so puffy.” Being here is an ointment to my soul, so thank you.

Find the right mentor that would carve the path for you. Click To Tweet

Before you go, two really quick things. For many years, I read the Investor’s Business Daily every day. I don’t anymore. I don’t invest as much as I used to. I remember, it was Will O’Neil was the Founder or maybe it was the publisher but he always said, “How do you think is everything?” That’s what you just said.

You either see the world as an opportunity or you see it as, “Everything is terrible. Everything is falling apart. I can’t do anything.” How do you see it? If you are on this call and you listen to these calls regularly the Leave Nothing to Chance and you are doing all the other things that you are doing, you are not thinking that way.

You are not it. We’ve got to get to those other people. The other point is this, and you know this with your military experience and all the traveling you did all over the world. I wasn’t in the military, but I have traveled to some places in the world, where people would love to be in the United States, Canada, the UK or any of the countries, frankly, that are represented on this call compared to because we have the free enterprise system in those countries.

We see people who will crawl through rivers with snakes, bugs and all sorts of things that can kill them. We saw people who left Cuba many years ago that took boats with bullets flying overhead. One of our distributors who’s on here, his wife, shared with us her family story that they did that to get to places. If we are born here in North America or the United Kingdom for that matter, we just take it for granted.

“We have free enterprise. I can go out and be Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mary Kay or whoever it happens to be.” We just take it for granted and right on. It’s like, “Free enterprise system has freed more people in this lifetime and this experience than anything else.” Tracey, thank you so much. Let me give you the last comment here and we will move on and let you get some rest.

Why I was in the military and the whole thing was freedom isn’t free and that’s true. It took a soldier’s blood to defend in any of you that have defended your country’s way of life. The free enterprise isn’t either and it is under assault now. We need to reclaim it and let people know, “This is the only thing that’s going to enable us to move forward.” Thank you for bringing that up.

Tracey, thank you so much for being with us and get some rest and we will be thinking about Roscoe, too.

Important Links:

• The Science of Getting Rich
• Wisdom of the Ages
• New Common Denominator of Success
• As a Man Thinketh
• SPARK

About Tracey Jones

Many keynote speakers can be entertaining, but Tracey brings a unique approach to motivation that includes a call to action, complete with tools you can put to immediate use. Tracey is able to address the root issue you need to be targeted, and jump-start the transformation you need to become tremendous.

Author, speaker, Air Force Academy graduate, decorated Veteran, international leadership expert, scholar, and researcher, Tracey C. Jones is the President of Tremendous Leadership. She has released, Beyond Tremendous: Raising the Bar on Life, to help others move beyond the ordinary to generate their best identity, and A Message to Millennials, encouraging the next generation of leaders by teaching the importance of followership.

Her latest book, SPARK: Five Essentials to Igniting the Greatness Within, includes her doctoral research. With the research she has done, and her lifelong pursuit of learning, she is always looking for opportunities to help businesses invest in their employees with training, coaching, or Continuing Education Credits.