Standing Out: How To Get Seen, Heard, And Found In A Crowded Market With Tracy Hazzard From The Find Your Leadership Confidence Podcast With Vicki Noethling

With everyone flocking online, the digital world is getting noisier by the minute. And it is making it extra challenging to stand out. How can you break through the noise, get seen, heard, and found in a crowded market? Tracy Hazzard joins Vicki Noethling’s Find Your Leadership Confidence podcast to share her insights, especially in the podcasting space. She dives deep into what is going on in podcasting, why people fail, and what it takes to succeed in the digital marketing world. Doing more than producing a show, Tracy shares how you can tap into your binge factor and connect with your audience so that they bring back even more value to you through referrals. On taking the path with the least resistance, she then inspires women to grab the opportunities in front of them and own the power they hold in our markets and society. Tune in to this episode and learn more about thriving in the world of podcasting against it all.

Listen to the podcast here

The goal of the show is to share topics and guests that will empower you to grow as a confident leader and take your business or your life to the next level. I’m happy to have Tracy Hazzard as my guest. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She is a seasoned media expert with over 2,600 interviews from articles in Authority Magazine, BuzzFeed, and her Inc. Magazine column. She has multiple top-rank videocasts and podcasts like The Binge Factor and Feed Your Brand, which is one of CIO’s Top 26 Entrepreneur podcasts.

As CEO and Cofounder of Podetize, Tracy brings diverse views on what works and what doesn’t work in marketing and media from thought leaders and industry icons, redefining success around the globe. Tracy’s unique gift to the podcasting, marketing and branding world is being able to identify that unique binge a bull factor, the thing that makes people come back again, listening actively and sharing as raving fans and by everything you have to sell. Our title or theme for this episode is Standing Out: How To Get Seen, Heard, and Found in a Crowded Market. Please join me in welcoming Tracy Hazzard. It is nice to have you.

It’s nice to be here. I love the model of confidence. I think this is important. We hear a lot of leadership podcasts talk about leadership, but confidence is a lot of the game there. It’s a lot of what you need. You got to do things that build and have confidence. There’s a point at which having believing your stuff or confidence too much also isn’t good for you either. You’re hitting on something that’s valuable.

For me, confidence is an outcome. People think, “I have to grow my confidence. I have to learn to be confident.” It’s like, “No, it’s all these little things that you do that bring about confidence. It’s the skills. It’s everything.” That’s why I have an anti-aging and wellness business along with my speaking business and leadership because all of that is how you become confident. It’s all those little things.

When you have the machine running on things and you believe in your team, systems, philosophy or whatever that might be, that confidence is there. You’re reinforming it, shifting it, and all those things aren’t taking blows to your confidence every time that happens. It’s not going to blow your business up.

As a coach and mentor, I tell people, “I will believe in you until you believe in yourself and have that confidence and that growth.” Watching them grow and become confident is fulfilling. To me, it’s better than me doing something great because I see how much it’s changed their lives.

As a mom, that’s something that I think about all the time. I feel like I’ve been blessed and completely lucky in my life to have been so loved my entire life. This is something that’s important to me. From the moment I was born, I had people who believed in me and who thought I could be the girl who could own the world. I didn’t think anything of it. The day that I left my parents and went to college, I met my husband the same day. We didn’t get married that quickly. I had friends and a husband who believed in me.

I think about all the times that I have been lucky enough to have people who believed in me and unconditionally loved me. That’s confidence in and of itself when you know you can’t do wrong. I don’t think that I had to think about confidence. It was never an act of thing. They were building it for me all along just by being there and loving me. Something I think about with my three girls all the time is like, “Am I demonstrating that enough to them? Am I making sure that they feel loved and they feel that I believe in them and that they can do anything?”

I have 2 all-grown daughters and 2 grandsons, but that was a big part of me, spending time with them. I remember crawling on the bed with my mom and she just talked to us about things. Whatever questions we had, she talked to us about them. That was empowering. I wanted to make sure that my daughters had that feeling that they weren’t afraid to talk to me about anything because I think that is a big part of confidence in the things that we are afraid to talk about.

In business, that’s the same thing as well. I feel that personally. In business, we don’t talk about things that are going wrong. I did a coaching call with my clients where we talked about all the lies in the podcast industry over these stats, what’s important, and the numbers they throw out. Those lies do the whole industry a disservice. If we can’t be free to talk about those things, then we’re not going to improve them. That’s where we all hurt. We’ve got hidden secrets. I don’t believe in that. My job is to reveal them because if I reveal them, you’re going to be able to accomplish that.

You got to be able to tell them that your baby is ugly.

I learned that early on. I come out of the design and product world. Believe me, the market will tell you if your baby is ugly.

What’s going on in podcasting nowadays and where will it be tomorrow? This is important for me.

Podcasting slowed down. You can look at it two ways. You can lose confidence in the industry and in the media type. We’ve done this before. We lost confidence in social media advertising and blogging. There have been things over time that we lose confidence in from a marketing process. We say, “We’re not going to do those anymore. We’re going to funnel all our money into podcasting. We’re going to do this.” Podcasting has been around for a long time. It’s steady. When we look at the people who stick with something when it’s not trending anymore and is still succeeding, doubling down and doing more with it, that’s when there’s something there.

That’s how I believe in the podcast market. We invested in it. We have a whole company around it. What I see happening is that the people using it are working on their businesses, building their brands and doing these things, not the broadcast media model. I’m going to be clear and clarify here. We’re not talking about the people building the next serial murder mystery show. We’re talking about the people like you building a podcast that is supporting a business of vision, creating a network from that and building a community. That’s that model. The people I see doing that are growing. Their podcast’s SEO or Search Engine Optimization is growing on their website. Their website traffic is growing clients. Their leads are generating.

All of that is working for them. The number I saw was 19,000 podcasts. We’re talking about under 20,000 starting. That’s the lowest that’s been in about three years. That means that you have less competition to start up a podcast. It was a great time. The ones who thought it was trendy were already gone. They’re not even considering starting it. You start or dive in now. You do what you’re doing, which is pushing out more episodes than other people. You have a greater chance of visibility right now. This is a time for success, not only be seen, heard, and found but to be rewarded for the effort and commitment that you’ve made.

The thing about podcasting is like blogging, social media, like any of these things, those that are consistent and constant about it are the ones that are rewarded. If you think you’re going to drop, do this, it’s flashing the pan and it’s going to work out. That’s not where the money and the success lie. You answer your question completely. The industry is going to continue to stay steady, but it’s right-sizing itself. I think the media side is going to drop off.

When the Spotify of the world cannot make the money that they’ve made, invested in it, they’re not going to make back that return on investment or the iHeartRadio where they’ve invested into buying or launching new shows, and they only have like 1 out of 10 success each time they do it, they’re not going to stick with it. That’s going to benefit those that want to stick.

Some of my coaches are like, “You need to go out there and speak,” which I love to do, but I love interviewing people. I love being able to get people’s stories out there. It’s important that we get your stories out there and that we give you time to share your voice.

You’re a great interviewer because I’ve listened to the show. You’ve thought about your questions. You’re careful in what you’re thinking about and making sure that you’re curating for the audience. I guarantee you, it’s making you a better speaker because you’ve got more stories to tell. You’ve got more examples of whatever it is that reinforces your speaking message. You’ve got that. It’s fresh and new. Even if it’s not your client, it’s your podcast. You get to tell the story as if it’s yours. That’s making you better. There’s a success there.

We talk about success, but why do people fail in marketing, their launching of a product or even in a podcast?

This is something I’ve spent a long time studying because my original business or my work was in product design. We designed and developed 250 products in 1 decade. They were available at mass market retail. We sold them at Costco, Walmart, Target and under other brands. If you got Martha Stewart Living Furniture, you might have been buying something that I designed or you bought Better Homes and Gardens TV Stand that we designed. Our famous one is a chair that’s sold under the Bayside Furnishings brand at Costco. It’s a mesh office chair. That sells about $20 million a year in chairs. It’s a platinum record for product design. Not every product does that kind of number. We were a very small firm, a husband and wife firm designing these products.

We couldn’t afford to fail because we were getting fees and royalty. If we wanted to survive, get our next client and have time in between, and that happened, we needed the royalty. We had to have the products succeed. I studied this and said, “Where is the most opportunity for failure and how can I improve that?” When I say product, I’m using that loosely. It could be a physical product, your service or you. You are the product, too, the brand. If we get a better fit between that and the market, and we can test it out without spending a lot of money, we have a more likelihood to understand what’s needed.

I’ve spoken to a lot of inventors. That’s the classic of the product coming before they even know if they can access the market. You can invent the best thing in the world and no one will buy it because you have no opportunity to figure out how to find them to sell it to them. Anyone who goes out there and says, “I’m going to sell podcast coaching services to aspiring podcasters,” and has no community of speakers, authors or unearthed kind of thing has no chance of selling that because you don’t advertise on your LinkedIn profile aspiring podcaster.

Crowded Market: You can invent the best things in the world and no one will buy it because you have no opportunity to figure out how to find them and to sell it to them.

“I’m thinking about podcasting.” Hobw am I going to find you? If I instead make a business at a market around helping existing podcasters and you identify because you’re proud of being a podcast host, I have more likelihood to reach you. Now I have a better market product fit. What I found is that it’s not about the size, trends or competition in the market, but if I can access that market and then clearly my product or my service is needed by them, I have more likelihood for success. In fact, it turns out that I will have 8 out of 10 successes versus having a likelihood of having only about 1 to 3 out of 10. That’s what happens. That’s a magnified difference of that. It can 8X your return.

What does it take to succeed in the digital marketing world?

Everybody’s throwing in the trendiest thing, which they’re talking about and it’s like a short-form video. The reality is that short-form video doesn’t sell much. It might go viral because it’s easier to go viral because it’s 30 seconds long. You clicked on it and you didn’t even know it was playing before you’re moving to the next thing. There’s a higher likelihood for that to happen, but is there conversion?

I look at everything from the perspective of, “If this doesn’t have active users or return on investment for the number, stat, how things are working for you, then it’s not worth doing.” Vanity metrics are everywhere in the digital place. It’s understanding and knowing, “Where is that number that matters to me that is going to get me a return on investment for my time because that is way more valuable than the return on investment on my money? My time is valuable.”

That’s what I’m always looking for. Where can I find that? The thing about it is that there are some people out there who are great at this. We get frustrated when we provide genuine value into the world and we’re an authentic person with a great service program. We get frustrated because we see a lot of these crazy websites that pop up and then start selling things or these YouTube channels that are AI and not even real people, or Instagram. They are hawking stuff and have got millions of followers.

“How did this happen? They’re not even real.” You get frustrated with this and you’re like, “I give up. I’m not going to do Instagram or TikTok anymore,” or whatever that is because that’s there. It’s someone who understands something about the digital marketplace that you don’t. It’s a game, an algorithm or a bot that is controlling that. When you think you are too good to play in that like, “I’m authentic, I’m real. I’m good. I don’t need to do that for me to get followers,” that’s a mistake.

That’s when you won’t get followers.

We have to do both. Think about it from the podcaster’s perspective, if I can’t get Apple to find you because you can’t be found because I can’t spell the name of your show or when I type in the keywords, you don’t show up because you didn’t put in a description paragraph that’s long enough. That’s 4,000 characters. You didn’t play the algorithm search engine optimization game that is the podcast player and there is one everywhere. Anywhere there’s a type-in search, there’s an engine optimization or a bot.

Apple doesn’t serve you up. “I can’t find you. I can’t remember how to spell your name. I can’t do those things,” then even the people who are trying to find you specifically aren’t going to be able to find you. Imagine somebody who is out there searching. They’re looking for something. They don’t know what they’re looking for. This is why podcast listeners complain about discoverability because there’s not enough information. There’s no tracking on what you’re saying on every show in the Apple system.

“Apple’s not helping it. I have to do a better job on my end of understanding that’s the case and making sure that I title my shows better. I put keywords into my descriptions that I’ve got there and maybe even do some hashtags.” Even though the system doesn’t work on hashtags, the phrase will still show up. You’re helping people find you and the people who are looking for what you need. They find you, they’re thrilled, then they listen. They’re listening to you, so now your authenticity, expertise and all of those things are playing and that’s why they stay subscribed.

That’s why we say, “Binge listeners.” Those who binge on your show are likely to consume more, ask you for more things, buy your stuff, buy your book, find you elsewhere, or friend you on Instagram. It’s going to get you more because you did the bot, digital and service part right in caring about your audience and giving them what they wanted.

You got to listen to your audience. Why do I follow guru advice or take that killer course and still fill?

Courses are mostly done by people who’ve been, “Been it and done there oncers.” You’ve been at done it once and you decide I’m going to sell a course on it. That’s what happens. There are many of those. When you’ve only done it once, there is much you’re leaving out that you have that nobody else could do. I look at The Godfathers of Podcasting by Pat Flynn. I adore him. He has a great program. I didn’t take his course, but when I was starting my very first podcast, I listened to all of his podcasts and read all of his blogs. I watched dozens of videos on this.

What I discovered is it’s what they’re leaving out. This is how I researched to decide to make new products and decide to do things. I didn’t want to be a podcasting company. That wasn’t my goal when I started my first show. I was going to start a show on 3D printing. It was a show on 3D printing. It was totally crazy and a geek show. Nobody wanted to hear that. It was like a real niche audience. It wasn’t something like I was going to go follow someone’s course and model. I was researching to figure this out.

When I did it, what I discovered was reading between the lines on the ones who were successful. The thing they weren’t telling you is that they were doing 5 to 7 shows a week. I said, “If I don’t do all these other things they say to do, but I do 5 to 7 shows a week, I’m pretty sure I’m going to still succeed no matter what because less than 2% of the podcasters out there produce that much content. If I produce that much content, I’m going to trend, show up and it’s going to happen for me five times faster than the next person.”

Crowded Market: What the successful are not telling you is that they were doing five to seven shows a week.

That’s what we did. We started out with five shows a week. Once I built up, because five shows a week gets you to 100 episodes in a matter of 5 or 6 months, you get there fast. When I got to that critical mass point, I got sponsors asking for me. They didn’t care about my stats. They said, “You grew 100 shows in five months.” I would come and tell them, “We have 100,000 a month.” They’d be like, “Off the chart. Now we’re definitely advertising.” I’d be like, “Okay, then it’s thousands of dollars to advertise.” I would charge that dollar for it because they didn’t have any metric for what it was going to do.

What I’m looking for and thinking about is, “Are these courses skipping something that they want to sell you? They have a mission.” The gurus always have a philosophy, a mission, and they’re being front about it, “Who is not paying attention all the time?” I don’t like gurus at all. I have this good friend Shannon, who calls them dorus. There are those of us out there who will just do it. When we do it, we will happily share with you how we do it and what we do. Those are the people I want to find. There are some generous people out there.

“Are those dorus good at organizing it for you and putting it in a course?” “Not so much sometimes. It’s like content all over the place. Somebody’s got to organize it into chapter order if you’re ever going to make a book about it.” That’s the hard work of working with them. When you work with them, they accelerate you. I get frustrated by somebody who’s going to charge$1,000 or more for a course on podcasting. I give it away for free. Few people are capable of doing the work that it’s going to take to be successful that I would rather they spend their time, energy, and money making sure those are working than spending it on my course.

I know that they’ll reward me by coming to host on my platform because that’s cheap. It’s easy. They can come and join my community, tell other people about me and send me a referral. I have people who’ve never paid me for services but probably reward me with referrals on a monthly basis that I can’t think of enough. I have no way to reward them because they’re not consuming my services. They’re not even podcasters.

They were like, “Because you helped me figure out that this wasn’t going to work for me or wasn’t going to be right for me, now when a podcaster asks me, I tell them to go see you.” That’s awesome. That’s what I want. The courses and the gurus out there, you have to just understand their goal, what they’re selling, where they’re going with that and does that. It’s worth it if it aligns with where you need to be. If it’s counter to what you need, then move on because it’s going to confuse you. It’s sales. The course is sales.

My two courses are hands-on because, in the end, I want you to know and be able to do what I’m teaching.

If you can’t accomplish it, then your people didn’t succeed. I don’t care how many people paid for and went through a course. I want to know how many came out on the other side and successfully built one.

Is the deck stacked against women being successful in business?

I get asked this all the time because I’ve been pitching and taking investments for our company. I’m out there. I don’t think that very often I felt like, “It’s a disadvantage to be a woman here.” I don’t feel that way. Maybe it’s partially the way that I am. There are a lot of advantages we don’t take because we might be too sensitive to this topic. It’s, “I don’t care if I get invited to speak and pitch on a platform as the token woman. If that’s what got me there, I’m not going to complain about that. I’m going to take it and I’m going to show you why you should have more women like me.” That’s how I view the opportunity for something.

Am I going to turn down a women’s fund that wants to invest in me? Absolutely not. I’m going to go talk to them, be honest and do all the things that I would do as if I were talking to anyone. I’m not going to treat them any differently. It is a little bit in our perspective on how that is. We have to take all the opportunities to come to us and not say, “Just because those are only offered to women, I don’t want to be a part of that. Because those are only offered to men, that’s what I want to get into.”

I don’t look at it either way. I’m like, “I’m going the fastest and easiest path to where I can get success for myself, my company, my brand or whatever it is. I’m going to go into the least resistance model.” I don’t need to work that hard. I don’t need to bang my head against a wall and complain about it. I don’t need to change perspectives. By outwardly talking about it, I am living it. I’m changing it. My girls don’t think that anything’s in the way for them, then I’ve accomplished that. That’s the outcome.

That’s exactly why I got into my business. I teach 21st-Century Leadership because women are the change in the world. Women as leaders, and companies are recognizing it. I do Darren Hardy’s Hero’s Journey. In the very first section, he talks about, “If you don’t have some women in your top C-Suite, you need to go get some.”

We did those because we happened to launch a crowdfund during women’s month. It happened to coincide with that. We were getting a lot of press inquiries like, “Tell us your background.” We happened to be women-led and women-owned because my oldest daughter is my partner as well. She owns a share in the company. She helped build our systems process team.

She’s 27. In case anyone’s looking at that thinking, “How old could this kid be?” She’s 27. This is not like one of those, “Let’s give my kid a job.” She’s brilliant. Looking at that, because of the two of us, we own the majority share. We are the majority shareholders but we have fourteen different siloed teams within the company, production, web and all kinds of different teams. Out of those 14 teams, we found out we had 11 of them led by women. It just happened. It wasn’t planned. When we did our statistics to find out how men earning against women in the company, women earned more than men.

Simply the answer is to put more into your leadership and you have no problem with parity. Women are paid $1.30 to every man’s $1, like a $0.3 difference. It’s a parity. We had a couple more men in the leadership position. It would all balance out by now. That’s how you accomplish that. It’s making sure that the deck is stacked against them. It’s because you’re not giving access or you’re not going where there is the best access for you. Let’s make sure that you do that. It’s never blocked.

“That’s not always the easiest thing to see, but I’m not going to complain about it. I’m just going to go find it and do it.” Women are great at voting with their wallets, get great at voting with everything they have, and they will go and flock, give services, referrals and do all of those things to companies making things easier for them. At the end of the day, I learned from consumer retail that 85% or more of everything we buy at retail is bought or influenced by women. If you are not taking into consideration what they think, feel, rave about and recommend to others, then you are a moron. It’s not a niche market. It is your market.

Crowded Market: Women are great at voting with their wallets, with everything they have. They will go and give services and referrals to companies who are making things easier for them.

We have our last question before we Rapid-fire. What advice would you give to your twenty-year-old self?

I would say to my younger self that getting a support team in place early is helpful. I was an entrepreneur in my twenties. I never joined an entrepreneurial organization. I didn’t even know they existed. I didn’t belong to a business owners group. I didn’t do any of those things. I had a few advisors, but it wasn’t the same as not having someone you could talk to who’s right there with you building their company at the same place. I have a mentorship group, community, support in that way, and some people that I can trust who I can say, “I need a resource that has worked. Who do you know?”

I won’t have to be sold to. I can trust that I can find that. I can vet that. I’m still going to vet it, research it and go through that process. At least I got something that moved me a little farther along, helped me in that process and made me less skeptical about the choices that I’m making. I’m grateful to have a support system now. I wish I had it all along.

Whenever I first started, I thought, “Why do I need a coach or a mentor? I know what I’m doing,” then I got in with a group and I thought, “This is wonderful, having this community or family that you can trust whether they’re going to say to you because they’ve been there, done that.”

I work with my husband. It’s not fair for us if I’ve got visionary things. He’s got his own role in the company. I can’t be asking him and talking to him about these things. I’m in charge of this company. I’m setting the vision. I can’t always do that in partnership with him because it gets him distracted and worried.

I’ve got to have another community where I can bounce these ideas off and see where we’re going to go because his job is to focus on the next quarter or month. His role is in sales and tech development. It’s like, “We got to get this product launched. We’ve got to get this sales team growing.” It’s different. We do need to have that for ourselves personally, professionally, and for our company goals as well.

Rapid-fire, you can answer this in any way you like. I’ll give you a phrase or word and whatever comes to your mind. Product Launch Hazzards.

It’s my gift to the world. It’s a podcast. When I decided that I was not going to be designing products and developing products anymore, I wanted to give a gift to the inventors and product people in the world because I meet them at events all the time and they’re like, “I have this idea. How do I make it into a prototype? How do I get it sold? How do I do these things?” I was like, “Let me share my many years of knowledge with you, and let me give you this gift.” That’s what that is. I’m proud of it.

I didn’t want to make a course, write a book or sell anything. I wanted to give it to them for free and let them find wonderful resources and figure out what they wanted to do with them. I get emails every week asking me to like, “You recommended this resource. Are they still good? I got to this episode, are there more on this?” I love that people reach out and thank me, too as well for it.

My brother is an inventor. I can appreciate everything you’re saying. Best lesson learned thus far.

Hope is not a plan is our mantra around here. That is a serious thing. I was talking to someone on our team and I was like, “You can have that as a mantra, but at the end of the day, you still have to know how to make the plan.” Where people fall apart is that they have a vision, but they have no idea how to set the plan. They say, “I’ve got a team,” but a vision still has to involve a gated plan along the way. If you are able to lay that out, you can always rely on your team to be able to lay that out for you.

Maybe if you have a COO or that top level, someone whose job it is to work with you to lay that plan out, that’s great, but if you’re in a smaller company, chances are you’ve got all your doers at the other level and they don’t even know how to figure that out and how to create that even top-level plan so that they can fill in the details. They only know the details. They’ll take that on and you’ll wonder why it didn’t get accomplished. That’s why because there was X, Y and they only did Z.

My career before doing this was as a project manager, and that was one of the most frustrating things. When you go to the leader, product owner, whomever usually is a C-Suite, ask for their vision and they don’t have it, I’m a year into the project and they still don’t have it, how can I motivate, persuade or build trust if my team doesn’t know why they’re doing it? Vision is important.

Vision plan and the to-do list. Those are the components you need.

Benefits of contributing articles to magazines like BuzzFeed.

Here’s the thing that I love about it. I call it seeding. You’re writing a seed article. I use my podcast. I’ll record a podcast, a great interview. I have the blog post for that podcast on my website. It’s what we call a Verbal SEO Blog Post. It’s like a transcript but doesn’t look like a transcript. There are some keys in it, so Google’s fooled into thinking it’s a blog. I don’t think they’re fooled, but they don’t care because it still sounds good to them. They’re still happy with it. That’s the first place.

I take it and write an article over on Authority Magazine, BuzzFeed or Inc. Magazine. I would write them in all these different places. I would write an article that was under my byline. That would be my column, my byline. It says, “By Tracy Hazzard,” wherever I do that. I would write a 600 to 800-word article. That is summary. Link the video link, the podcast and the blog post to the episode. Whatever it might be, I would make sure that they could get more and find out more, listen to it, watch it.

That was always there over there the idea is that when we’re putting it out there, we’re going for somebody else’s audience. The next level beyond that is to say, “Now I want to drive a very specific audience.” Let’s say, “I want to teach chiropractors how to podcast. I want to teach all these niche audiences in different fields how to podcast.” I’m now going to take this article and write it in a way, use case studies and stories in one of my episodes where I’m featuring a chiropractor and write that specifically for a trade journal.

I’m not going to have a whole column there because I don’t want to write a column in chiropractic monthly or whatever it’s called. I’ll do that. For me, doing these kinds of articles got me speaking engagements. I’m speaking at the Blair Chiropractic Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina to about two Blair chiropractors in October 2022. How awesome is that?

When I dial that in, I do this for authors and speakers. I’m writing a twist on it, but it’s the same model because my method hasn’t changed. My philosophy hasn’t changed, but it’s using different examples and it’s helping you understand and interpret something you might read in a generalized way in a very narrow, specific way that resonates with you because you are in this field. You’re in this snitch.

I write, “My languaging is different,” because what you write for doctors is a little more technical than what you might write for speakers who want to have the visionary side of things. Your languaging is different too. That’s how I do this and I consider them seed because what they’re doing is they’re seeding the idea, “This is good for chiropractors. This is good for speakers.” That will lead generate for me in a greater way. At the end of the day, it leads generates back to the original video, blog post and I still got them. That’s why I love that model.

You talked about your two daughters and you talked about the fact that you have this business. How did you do balance between work and is there a balance or is it just a fallacy to have a balance?

I was on stage and got asked the question about balance. I said, “Balance is BS.” I said the word on stage. I blurted it out. I was like, “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” I got collapsed. I got photographed by some of the younger members there on Instagram. I got Instagram with a meme. I got turned into me for saying it. This is how I feel about it. I feel that balance is unattainable. I was a ballet dancer for most of my younger years. I thought I wanted to go pro. I’m glad I didn’t like that would’ve been the worst idea for me. It was definitely not in me.

I can’t stand on point constantly. I can’t balance in a yoga pose forever. I can’t do it. It’s not sustainable for anyone to try to achieve balance. Why even bother to do it? That sounds great, but it’s not there. What I instead look for is harmony. Some of my favorite bands and musicians. My favorite idea out there are all ones that are based on great harmony. The Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash. I’m dating myself about how old I am.

I grew up with lots of the ‘60s and ‘70s music from my parents. I love that. That’s beautiful. Indigo Girls are more my generation. Beautiful harmonies that exist there are why their music becomes timeless. When I think about that, that’s how I try to make my relationship with my husband and my three daughters. All the level of everything that we’re doing is, “Someday it’s your turn to be the star. You’re the lead singer. I’m the drummer today. I’m taking a break. I’m having a drum solo. It doesn’t matter where you play in the band. You sometimes get to shine and sometimes you’re supporting.” If we can work on it like that, then we don’t have all the pressure.

Crowded Market: You sometimes get to shine, and sometimes you’re supporting. If we can work on it like that, then we don’t have all the pressure.

The real bothersome part about balance is that it’s too much work and pressure, but harmony isn’t. My sink fills up with dishes. Someone will pick them up eventually because someone would like to get an allowance. It’ll eventually happen in my household. My girls are 8, 13 and 27. It’s a big span of ages. The 27 is not home. She’s married and off on her own. There will be this like, “I want to earn money. I want to go shopping at the mall.”

“That’s great. There are dishes in the sink and laundry that needs folding.” The answer shut that down, but very often, I’ll find it’s done and they’ll be like, “Can I have $10?” I’m like, “You can.” The rates have gone up. They’ve discovered that it’s more fruitful to work for my business. I had my daughter in there. She’s organizing all of our corporate records. She’s scanning and putting our complete corporate records digitally. She’s discovered that because it’s a business. We’re in the State of California. We have to pay minimum wage, which is higher than my normal offer from chores. I’m like, “I may not have to let these jobs be hourly. You may end up having a salary.”

I need to get her in my anti-aging business. She’s definitely ready for it. The last one is, what legacy would you like to leave behind?

I want to leave a legacy of help and support. I want people to feel that they got so much more value from everything that I gave them along the way, but they also felt free to go, “I don’t know about this, will this work for me? Is this still working today?” They’re going to get honest answers. There’s the honest side of that support that isn’t always there, but that’s where I want to play.

I want to feel that my legacy is they got the support they needed. It was honest for them and they were able to turn that into something brilliant. I love the idea of ripples and impact. If we create an impact in the world and ripples and something I said here touches one of your audience members and they take that home and they go create a new chore program with their kids, I’ll be like, “Ripples. Awesome.”

Please share it with me, so I know. I could maybe implement it back, but if this inspired you, I want to know. Even if I don’t know, that’s okay with me because I put it out there and I’m okay with that. I’m putting out there with my intention. I’m good with that. That’s where my business confidence lies, to tie this back to the beginning for you.

My confidence is I believe that you’re going to get something of value from me. It’s what I’m intending to do. It’s what I do. When you do that, you’re going to have success. I don’t need to thank you for it. I don’t need you to tell me about it. I’d love it if you did, but it’s not important because that success is going to create a better world. That was my job and my role.

That’s exactly why I do what I do. I want to leave the world better than I found.

That is important that we teach that to our children too.

I work with the youth to teach them to be better speakers and find their voice because I think, “Why should you wait until you’re 30 to figure out how to use your voice?” To see an 8 to 17-year-old whole demeanor and posture change whenever they become a confident speaker is rewarding.

We have a student podcast program. When I hear them, I think they’re better than some of the adults. They have more confidence. You can feel the growth in them. I love it. My thirteen-year-old found out that we have a policy here that anyone who would like to start a podcast who’s an employee can. She decided to start a show. She’s like, “I’m going to take advantage of all my benefits.”

I wouldn’t say she’s shy. She’s not shy in terms of how she is with her friends and everything, but I didn’t think she’d want to put herself out there because, from the time she was little, she’d be like, “Don’t talk about me on the podcast,” which is why I don’t say her name. She’s been putting herself out there and I thought, “Where did this come from?” It’s brilliant. I love my student podcasters. They are amazing because of it. I’m glad you’re working with you.

I’m going to take time for the readers. I’m going to share Tracy’s information.

Go to your podcast app because you put them in the descriptions for every one of your podcasts. You have all this information there. You are brilliant at doing that. I can just click.

You can go to Tracy’s website, https://TracyHazzard.com. Her email is BingeFactor@Podetize.com.Do hook up with her in either video or visit her website. If you go to their website, I’m sure she has all of the icons for you to click on, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and TikTok. She’s everywhere. You definitely want to check out Tracy Hazzard or The Binge Factor to be able to find her on social media. I’m going to let her talk to you about her free gift and explain how you can learn more about podcasting.

Podetize.com is a podcasting and production company. We have a little bit of everything for everyone at every stage. What I do is I am doing a lot of mentorship and training. I have master classes and I created a YouTube group. If you go to Podetize.com/Masterclasses, you’re going to go right to this YouTube channel or playlist I created that I give away to only clients who come through me for mentorships. You’re going to get some special things. I have things for speakers and authors in there. Every year I do social media strategy training.

These are some private training you don’t get unless you work with me. I thought I would give it here because I think there’s a lot of value that your particular audience would find there. I’d love for you to get value to it and from it as well. There are 7 or 8 videos. We’re always adding new ones to it. If you subscribe to the playlist, it’ll always make sure that if the new one pops up, you’ll get a new gift.

Thank you so much for doing that and for being a guest. It’s been fun. We went a little bit longer than I normally go, but I enjoyed talking with you. You gave great information, great tips and wonderful tools. I encourage everyone to go to your website to check out those master classes and also see what Tracy has to offer. If you are thinking about doing a podcast, or want to know more, email her or check out her website. Until the next time, please remember that life is a journey. It is up to you to enjoy the ride.

Important Links

• Tracy Hazzard
• Hero’s Journey
• BingeFactor@Podetize.com
• Product Launch Hazzards
• Facebook – Tracy Hazzard
• LinkedIn – Tracy Hazzard
• Pinterest – The Binge Factor
• Twitter – Tracy Hazzard
• TikTok – Podetize
• Podetize.com
• Podetize.com/Masterclasses

Watch the episode here

The Find Your Leadership Confidence Podcast With Vicki Noethling