How Loving Unconditionally and Being Loved Yields Confidence - Tracy Hazzard : 106

Can the power of love and creativity be used to overcome life's biggest hurdles? Tracy Hazzard, my guest today, certainly believes so. Harnessing her innate creative spirit and the nurturing love of her parents, she shares how she transformed obstacles into opportunities, ultimately leading to a fulfilling life and successful businesses. 

Tracy has had quite the journey as an entrepreneur. She's all about innovation, taking risks, and adapting to new technology. Together with her husband, they've created amazing businesses based on their creativity, bright minds, and extraordinary teamwork. Tracy tells us all about how she went from the textile industry to working in the tech industry. Plus, she shares some really helpful insights and lessons she learned along the way.

But Tracy's story isn't all about business; she talks about how creativity and personal life come together and the dynamics of working with her husband and balancing their schedules for quality time. She reflects on her role as a mother, drawing parallels between the love she received from her parents and the nurturing environment she provides for her three daughters. So, join in this enriching conversation to uncover the transformative power of love, creativity, and positive perspective.

Let's enjoy Tracy's story!

To connect with Tracy: linkedin.com/in/tracyhazzard

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Transcript

Daniela SM: 0:00

Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my podcast, because everyone has a story, the place to give ordinary people, stories, the chance to be shared and preserved. Our stories become the language of connections. Let's enjoy it, connect and relate, because everyone has a story. Welcome, I am thrilled to introduce you to Tracy Hasseur, an amazing person who knows how to tackle life challenges with love and creativity.

Daniela SM: 0:41

A while back, I came across an interview she did with Alexan Filippo from Podmatch. I couldn't resist leaving a comment. We ended up connecting and having a magical conversation. Her positive energy, insightful feedback and inspiring words captivated me, so I invited her to my podcast and she invited me to hers, so it was a mutual invitation and I had so much fun being at her show. She is such a grateful hostess and elevated me in such a way I felt like a star, a way that only Tracy can. I wanted Tracy to share her story because, like me, she had a pretty good life so far and I truly believe that everyone has a unique and interesting story to tell, not just those who have faith adversity. In this episode, she is sharing not only her story and her fascinating work experiences. She also shares how creativity and personal life comes together and the interesting dynamic of working with her husband and balancing their schedule for quality time. So let's dive in and hear what Tracy has to say. Welcome, tracy, to the show. I am very excited that you're here today.

Tracy Hazzard: 1:59

I'm so excited to be here. I've had so many wonderful conversations with you. I was like, haven't we done our interview already? Because we've already gotten to know each other, and that's my favorite part about doing this. That's true.

Daniela SM: 2:09

Since I met you, you have always been so helpful and so caring, and I am very grateful that you're here, because I want to know more about you and your story.

Tracy Hazzard: 2:18

Well, I think that's fascinating thing. Like I don't always think of it like a story, because to me a story has like a beginning, middle and end, and I don't think there is an end, Like that's the kind of thing, Like it's a continual thing for me, and so I always look at it as like the never ending story. Have you ever seen that movie when?

Tracy Hazzard: 2:35

you were a kid, right, it's this never ending story. That's what our lives should be like, and so I always think about that and so when I think about when you were talking to me about the idea of telling my story, I was like where do I start? Because to me it's been, in a way, very continuous since the beginning. I feel like the most blessed person on earth all the time because I have been loved from the day I was born. My father tells a story about basically insisting that he and my mom have kids and like being very pushy about it and wanting to have kids. So I knew I was wanted even before I was conceived and that's a beautiful place to be. But my mom and my dad and both of them, I love them absolutely, like they just are just amazing people.

Tracy Hazzard: 3:22

The day they dropped me off at college and I went to Rhode Island School of Design and you drive up this big hill and trying to unload on a hill with all your stuff is quite, you know quite something. The day that I left college, my dad cries as he's leaving town and says goodbye to me, and you know like you can't get feel more special on earth than when your parents just get all teary-eyed because they're leaving you and they feel sad. You're excited for your opportunities and you don't shed a single tear, but they feel sad about it and as a parent now I understand what that feels like. Right, but they do that. And then that same hour that my father leaves, I met my husband in a dorm room meeting.

Tracy Hazzard: 4:00

Now, he did insult me. He called me a Valley Girl which, coming from California, that's like a huge insult in the 80s to call somebody a Valley Girl. But he did it and he did capture my attention. And a couple of days later I met him in a dorm room with a mutual friend and he was playing guitar and we became really good friends. And so the reality is is that I went from my parents' house and being completely loved to really meeting my husband and being loved. Now, 31 years of marriage, we've known each other 35.

Daniela SM: 4:30

Wonderful. So I want to go back to the fact that, yes, the stories as a beginning and middle and an end, this one could be part one for your life and then part two later on. Yes, and then being loved, and exactly that's. I remember when we spoke the first time. We're talking about all these stories that everybody have trauma or some kind of difficulties, and then, when we have everything going well for us, that we feel like, oh, maybe we don't have a story because we don't have anything dramatic to share. And that's why I remember inviting you over to share, because you are an optimistic, a positive, and things go well for most of us too, and we still have stories. So that's that's the reason why you want to tell your story today.

Tracy Hazzard: 5:14

Yeah you know, this is what I think. I think that we have to suffer to learn, and I don't think that that's all that there is right. Look, if we looked at all the things that go wrong as speed bumps along the way, then everything seems surmountable. They seem like, oh, we can get over. We can get over a speed bump. You might need to just, you know, put a little more gas on and and bump yourself over it. Right, those things are, are able to be overcome a hurdle, like if you're, if you're running and you want to do hurdles right, they're a little higher and you got to get a little more skill to jump over them, but you can still make it over them. They are still something that you can overcome.

Tracy Hazzard: 5:53

But when we look at something as this mountain that we cannot overcome it, we can't imagine how it happens. That's when we hear this story in our head about all these, all these things that are wrong, all these things that are obstacles, all these things that are in our way, and we have to rally something down deep. But what if you had that rally all the time? What if you always had the ability to look at something and go? I see how I can get over that. Let me make a try Now. You may not make it the first time, you might fall halfway down, but because you look at something as an opportunity instead of as an obstacle, it changes your whole outlook on what's possible in the world and and I believe that it comes from being loved.

Tracy Hazzard: 6:37

But I also believe that it comes from being a designer, because I went to art school, because I'm a designer by trade, because I have this view that I am a creator. It means that there's always an opportunity for creating something. There's always a way, there's always a creative method, there's always something around this. There's always the possibility of that where someone who isn't a creator they don't necessarily have a path and maybe they do in their field, like, maybe they're extremely a creative writer or something like that, and they know they can write their way out of anything. They can write great copy, they can make great emails, they can do all of that but maybe they don't see outside of that how they do that in their business, how they do that financially, how they do that in other areas. My particular view of the world is that everything has the ability to be created differently, to be created in a different way than it exists today. We make improvements. When we do that, we don't go backwards, like the whole opportunity of creativity is that we're moving it forward.

Daniela SM: 7:36

Right, if there's something wrong with it, let's fix it. I do believe that just having love was very helpful, but I feel like you also came with that to this world, to that kind of power and way of thinking. Do you have any siblings? I do.

Tracy Hazzard: 7:49

I have a younger sister, and is she like you? No, she's very different.

Daniela SM: 7:53

Yeah, that's what I think, that, yes, you study design, but I also feel like it's some kind of your soul that you came with that, that it makes it be the way you are thinking.

Tracy Hazzard: 8:04

You know what. You're absolutely right. I mean, I think there's certain things that I think there's God-given talents, if you want to call it that, whatever it is that you believe in that. But I feel like there are those things that we come into the world with Now. Sometimes we don't recognize them and we don't take advantage of them, and it takes us an extremely long time to tap into that, or something really happens to us that is a catalyst to making that happen.

Tracy Hazzard: 8:28

I was lucky in that I discovered it in a sense early on. I have what you call high pattern recognition, which means that when I look at something, I see the pattern that is happening. It's what makes me a great designer, specifically a textile designer. Right, because I create patterns, but I see it in something. So if I look at a carpet and something's not right, like somebody made a mistake in it or the repeat isn't proper, I immediately key into where that point. It's called dissonance. Where it's not continuous, it's not doing the proper thing, it's a point of something being wrong or out of rhythm is basically its definition. And so if it's out of rhythm, that's an opportunity for us to understand why something's not working. And so when I was really little, my mom learned how to weave.

Tracy Hazzard: 9:12

We lived in South Africa for a couple of years when my dad was on a project and a job assignment. It was in the height of apartheid, so it was a really interesting time in South Africa and he was on the job all the time. So lots of the stay at home moms would bring us along after school and other things and they would learn how to do different things and weaving was one of them. And she had a loom and I would sit below it and read it. I was a really big reader, like I would read just about anything. Still to this day I'm a huge reader.

Tracy Hazzard: 9:41

And I'm sitting below her loom and she says I can't make this work and she's getting all frustrated and I look up and I say, well, that's because you missed a heddle, which is where you put the thread through and it creates the pattern. And I said you missed one. And she said what? And I was like, yeah, see, here's the pattern. And I'm underneath the machine looking up at it and I can see that.

Tracy Hazzard: 10:02

And that's what my parents always tell the story, that that's the sign that I had this ability to recognize the rhythm of something, the pattern of something, really quickly and easily, and I can tell you people are astounded by it. Sometimes I'll do stuff like oh, did you mean for those not to match? And they'd be like what they don't match, like people don't even realize it. But that's something that is just readily apparent to me. And when you have high pattern recognition, what you realize is that there is a pattern to everything. And when you understand the pattern, there's actually a comfort level to it. And when you understand what's not in rhythm, what's not in pattern, you either know what you can fix or you know what to avoid, because something doesn't feel right, doesn't look right, isn't going to go right, because it's something's missing.

Daniela SM: 10:51

I like what you said the God-giving talent. So you did have this one, but not everybody have you met a lot of people that have this pattern recognition talent?

Tracy Hazzard: 10:59

I've met some and over time, but what they do is that it's something that you have to tap into and use and if you don't use it, you don't learn it and it's not. I think any kind of thing is that way. No one becomes an Olympic athlete without practice. It just doesn't work like that. You can have longer arms, like I've heard of swimmers who have longer arms, longer legs. They have the actual physical power to be better at a sport than others, but if they don't practice it's never going to happen. So you have to take your God-given talent and not just trust that it's going to all work out for you. You have to practice.

Daniela SM: 11:39

So what happened when your mom discovered that? What did they do to develop your talent?

Tracy Hazzard: 11:44

First off, my mom. Let me take the class. She was like, oh, come join. And so I was always taking classes, always trying things, always doing things with her Became something like that. I felt better when I was using it. I asked for opportunities to use it, opportunities to paint, opportunities to create things. Who's just sort of came out of it. But luckily I also came from a really creative mom. She's an abstract artist in Laguna Beach, california. She's just amazing and her work is beautiful and it has decades upon decades of work that she put into her art. That shows, because anyone who puts work into it, it has a different depth to it, and so that's what I really took away from this is that she was a great artist from the moment I met her, and she's even greater now because she never stops putting in the work and what other things do you notice that, as you're growing up, that your pattern recognition was helping you with?

Tracy Hazzard: 12:37

I was a good student because when you have pattern recognition, you read stuff you're like oh, what are they trying to tell me? What's the answer to the question? So, like you can easily discern these things, pull it out. I think this is the key.

Tracy Hazzard: 12:49

Look, we're moving into an artificial intelligence world right now, and in an artificial intelligence world, the machine does the pattern recognition for us. And when we don't start to put those pieces together in our brain, we don't make the human leaps, we don't make the human innovations, we don't connect disparate things, because a computer will only connect the obvious things. They're only going to see the pattern from things that are like 80% of the people select this. So that must be the answer. They're making those choices for us. But what about that 4%? What about those interesting things that only humans can put together in their mind and say I think this is what we should try.

Tracy Hazzard: 13:32

I think this is where innovation happens. Those things can only come if we're doing our jobs in that model of things. So I think that in the future, this is the area that human interaction is going to be great at, and all those little pattern recognition things that should be a standard part of figuring stuff out. Let the computer do it. It's going to give my brain, your brain, everyone's minds, the opportunity to be more innovative, expansive, creative thinking, putting all of these interesting things together and coming up with new ideas and solutions that no one's ever heard before. Because you have more time. You have more time to contemplate those things now, more time to develop that skill within yourself.

Daniela SM: 14:14

And also going back to you, what challenges do you have with that challenge?

Tracy Hazzard: 14:19

The challenge for me is focusing it, because I see it everywhere. It's too easy to not try to fix everything or try to adjust things or try to suggest things. It's really hard to focus that and make it. I'm going to do this one thing right now, but at the same time it's also how do I get enough input? So every day I read about six different journals. So I don't read them from cover to cover, I do skim them. I have them all preselected, even if I'm able to just do it on my phone and not do it in person, because I do like to flip through a book and flip through a magazine on occasion. But because you get different, you stop at different places when you're doing something physical than when you're scrolling. But I do that every single day. I try to consume six different journals and each one of them is different. They're just different. Some are science, some are digital, seo, search and optimization. Some are geeky, techy stuff. Some of them are about finance, some of them are about world economies, different things like that, because all those different ideas start to come together into something and my brain will start to build the patterns from that and say this is what's going on in the economy. This is what's going on in the digital world. How do I make connection to make sure that my business is going to be able to go forward, that my clients will have all the skills and all the things that they don't need that are pricing structure I mean silly things like that but our pricing structure is in line with where the economy is going. All those things go through my mind. So trying to think about which one should I fix today, that's the biggest challenge for me, right? Which one should I work on at this point in time?

Tracy Hazzard: 15:56

I once interviewed a guy who has more than a triple digit IQ amazing guy and I said to him what's the biggest problem in the world where people fail? And he said it's timing, making that now is the time for something versus something else. Making that decision and making that selection is key to success. Sometimes you're ahead of the time and you're too soon and you fail because you're too soon, and sometimes you're behind the times and you miss the boss right? And so he said that's the biggest thing. Determining that for myself is a really hard thing, because how progressive is the thought that's going on in my mind and mainstream is it. Is it time for it, or is it too soon?

Daniela SM: 16:39

Well, thank you, that's a very insightful comment. So, tracey, let's go back to university. You met this wonderful man and now is your husband. And what happened then?

Tracy Hazzard: 16:48

Tom and I quickly learned that we could be great collaborators together. I have the habit of he calls it hitting him over the head with a brick. So we were one day sitting in what they call the pit at RISD it's this basically hamburger greasy pit of a burger joint in the basement of a building. We were sitting there and he was discussing what was going on in his industrial design. So he's a product designer, an industrial designer, and I was studying textile design. So they go hand in hand. Think about furniture covered in fabrics, right, we easily had collaboration, or in the early days, and and or I was great at color design. That that's one of my expertise areas is picking colors. What product doesn't need color? So there was great synergy between our thought processes and we like to talk about our projects with each other. And so one day I say to him something and he's like oh my God, I never thought of that before. It was like you just hit me over the head with a brick and now I'm awake Not unconscious awake, you know like it just really hit me.

Tracy Hazzard: 17:48

He is so absolutely creative when he's focused, when he gets that strike of an idea, that thing that he needed to hear, to shift where he's going. He's so amazingly productive. He and I together have over 40 patents. The best part about him is we don't just have a bunch of patents. Those patents made money for us or for our client. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to say. A lot of people file them and then they don't do anything. They're a bunch on a shelf. Ours actually make money for people because they were ideas that were worthy of taking to taking a market and patenting and all of those things. And that only comes when you really make something very useful and Tom is amazing at that.

Tracy Hazzard: 18:27

And so all throughout our lives what we do is we have this ability to run things off of each other and say various things that kick off an idea, that get us going. But we don't have to start from the beginning and that's the beautiful part. We have absolute trust between each other. That no idea is a bad idea. That no one's going to scoff at anything. That you have a hidden agenda right, because we trust each other. We're also on the same path in life, right. We want the same outcome. We want to have a happy life. We want our children to grow up and be happy, and we're on that same path together. So there's an inherent amount of trust to everything that we say and do with each other.

Tracy Hazzard: 19:07

So, when we may have these conversations, you're not listening to them with all your guards up. Think about it like that how many times do people have collaborative conversations with you? They might be partners, they might be people who are mentoring you, but you still have your guard up. Are they asking me for more money or are they really sincerely have my best interest at heart?

Tracy Hazzard: 19:28

We don't have any of that which allows the flow of things back and forth to be really simple, really easy to absorb, easy to think about, and we also don't have this judgment that happens, which we've developed over time and that didn't happen in the early days of like I told you what you should do and you didn't do it. Like that doesn't happen anymore because we know that are. I know that my idea alone, or my, is input for him to take to the next stage. It is not a final. He sometimes can't do what I suggest. It's not physically possible the laws of physics to work like that, products can't be manufactured like that. But he hears it, he takes it in and he develops it into something absolutely beautiful, amazing. It comes back through me and I market it and I do what I need to do with it, and but we have this, this opportunity between the two of us to be greater together.

Daniela SM: 20:25

Yeah, what amazing story. And I feel like very unusual, because not many people go to university and meet the future husband right away, or the hat, that connection, that is like you were perfect person together. You know, it is incredible.

Tracy Hazzard: 20:41

Yeah, you know. Look, it's not like we thought it was gonna work out like that. It just did, and it's not like it's not work. You have to put the work in all the time. You have to make them feel loved. You have to understand their love language our love languages are not the same and so, like you have to get that and you have to provide that. You can't be selfish about it. It has to truly be a partnership and something that you work at actively, every single day together. That's something that we respect each other. We value each other's skills. We also let each other be our own person. So, you know, I never feel Like I can't go and speak on stages and I'm taking something away from him. He doesn't feel like I'm taking something away from him either. That's an amazing human being, right? Someone who makes you better, let's you be who you are and supports you and all of that, but doesn't feel any resentment that took something from them. That's never how we feel about each other, and that I mean that's a beautiful human being.

Daniela SM: 21:42

Yes, and you probably learn also the loving and the communication from your parents, as you said that they were so loving.

Tracy Hazzard: 21:48

Yeah, you know, this is the thing is like. My husband comes from divorce family, but he also had grandparents who were together, so he had role models and what he saw was that loyalty, that love. That's what I'm looking for, that partnership, that's what I want. But he also, at the same time, saw a really independent, amazing mother who went to MIT and did all these amazing things at a time period where women didn't do a lot of that. So he saw the value of an independent woman and so he also valued that in me and I grateful for her to have led that have been that role model for him as well, because now we have the best of both. Yes, that's awesome.

Daniela SM: 22:30

And Tracy, you wanted to study textile. What was your goal when you started?

Tracy Hazzard: 22:35

so when I went into textiles I thought it was going to go to New York and was going to design fabrics that were on Fat in fashion or on a poultry. And really quickly though, I interviewed for a few jobs in New York, but I really quickly got interviewed for a job in South Carolina for company called Millican, which is one of the largest textile manufacturers in the world, and they had this great opportunity automotive upholstery which is unusual, like it's a really industrial type of upholstery. But their department was growing, they were getting computer aided design machines, and so that was going to be something that I didn't really think I was going to love it all my life and I wasn't a big car girl at the time but I am now. I do love cars from that experience, but I thought I was going to learn a lot from that organization and then realizing that there were so many different people, realizing that there were so many departments there that you could transfer to, and so I actually really did quickly transfer into the office furniture upholstery department and we moved up to western Michigan and I worked with Herman Miller and steel case and Noel and all of these great names and big brands, and then eventually, I left the textile company to work on the other side and worked for Herman Miller.

Tracy Hazzard: 23:44

So it was just one of these things where I found my calling in office furniture, because the connection between the patterns around you and your productivity actually is really high. Like you know, when you work in a beautiful space, you feel better. Yes, definitely, that's. What I wanted to work towards was to creating that sort of externalized idea that makes you more productive, more comfortable, more Collaborative, like the environment actually does that with you. So it came textiles and then the furniture itself, and so I've done. The majority of the design work that I've done in my life has been in furniture.

Daniela SM: 24:22

Okay, wow. And then what happened when you move to somewhere else?

Tracy Hazzard: 24:26

Life happens, you have babies and you know life. Life moves on and you try some different things and companies don't always work out and you go on and you move things. But Tom and I found out pretty early on we enjoyed building a company together. So we Built a company in the in the late 90s, early 2000s, around technology, around stylus pens for handheld computers and at that time is the palm pilots, and we learned a lot about building a company, having people work for you. That actually was really difficult for us because you had to focus all your innovation on only one type of product and we really wanted to do something a little bit more expansive. And so eventually we ended up consulting again and so we could design many different types of projects for different types of clients to kind of it fed us in a little bit more creative way, and so eventually that's where we ended up but you know a lot of that along the way is this idea of I'm going to accept the challenge that's in front of me. I'm gonna try this new thing. Maybe it will take off, maybe it won't, but not being risk averse is was something that we just kind of both had. We were big risk takers. So building a company and worrying about whether or not we could afford or mortgage really didn't occur to us. We were just going to build a company and of course it's going to be successful in some way, shape or form and we'll make our mortgage right. And you know that doesn't always happen. The economy happens. Nine eleven happened in the middle of our business. You know, things occur that cause a hiccup along the way, but when you look at it like a hiccup, when you look at it like a speed bump, it's not insurmountable. And so for us nine eleven could have been a gigantic failure point.

Tracy Hazzard: 26:02

Luckily we had diversified our business prior to that, so we were in multiple channels of business. While we had a couple of channels that contracted, one kept going and so we were able to pay our bills and keep going, came through that into a better place. We sold our company. We made back five X for our investors, so they were really happy with that and we moved on. But we did get out of it because the stress of that business was a little too high at that point. We spent all this time building up. Nine eleven happens and then we have to rebuild it again, and that seemed like I'm not a big fan of doing something again. I really want the new challenge, and so it's just kind of a part of my personality that I really like a continuation of the challenges. Perfectly good, but to have to redo things is just not in my nature. So when we had an opportunity to sell it, we both agreed that was the right thing for us to do, because we're gonna have to rebuild it all again post nine eleven.

Daniela SM: 26:55

Wow, that's interesting, and so you have a lot of business. You have been a consultant. You work for companies as well. Now decided to still have a new company, or what have you?

Tracy Hazzard: 27:06

Yeah, so we've been consulting, for we I don't know. We were consulting for maybe five years yeah, about five years when we decided to start a podcast because we were looking at the next iteration of our business. We were looking at what its challenge was gonna grow. And one of the things coming into the world and Tom and I are big tech adopters like we always like to address new technology anything that we design either might need to use that technology or might need to accommodate it right in some way, shape or form. So if it's like we're gonna have all this equipment on our desks I got a design a desk that works with that. If I were now live streaming, and we have to design something to handle that. So I'll always thinking and looking at that, and so one of the things that we saw, and something that we had been using in our business behind the scenes, was 3d printing, and so 3d printing fascinated us. Tom was really fascinated by the idea of 3d printers being like on the edge of everyone's desk and you being able to just pop out your own products at the end of the day. But what we knew as product designers was that there was no way that was happening without assistance. It's really hard to design products that don't like, fall apart, that don't cause damage, that you can't get hurt from. They have to be engineered and designed and so they're also beautiful. I'm not gonna be interested in printing it if it's not beautiful to begin with. So all of those things needed to go hand in hand. We said this is great, but they're gonna need product help. How can we put a part of this movement that helps these 3d printers, who might be tech geeks in their garage, learn about the design side of things, learn more here? How can we participate in the process?

Tracy Hazzard: 28:44

And one of those things was I had been listening to a lot of podcasts. It was another new input method, so I read a lot, but I was starting to listen to a lot and I said let's start a podcast. And Tom said well, how about video? Because you know it's visual. And I said you have a video, so costly, so time-consuming I got to have my hair done like it was just like an ordeal right, and at that time live streaming didn't exist. So Video wasn't as casual as it is today, and that was a difference for us. We said, okay, we'll do podcasts, but we'll occasionally do like a time-lapse video or some kind of product video and demo things, and we'll We'll add that to our channel.

Tracy Hazzard: 29:21

So we started this podcast called WTF, ff, and FFF is fuse filament fabrication, which is the geeky term for 3d printing. In about five months, we had a hundred thousand listeners a month Wow. And everyone in podcasting was like, what are you doing? Like, as you know how hard it is to start a podcast, now it was easier. This is almost now nine years ago Well, just over nine years ago actually that we started the podcast.

Tracy Hazzard: 29:47

Everyone was looking at that, going, what were you doing? Like, can you help me learn how to do this? So I would tell them what we did and they would be that's a lot of work because, remember, you got to put the work in right, you got to figure out what's working and we were podcasting five days a week. We were doing a produce show, we were having it edited, we were planning all of the topics out. We were, we were spending quite a bit of time on the show and other people were like I don't want to do that much work. Here's my credit card. Would you do it for me? And so, because we had a consulting business and because I had developed this system and a team as a To keep producing our podcast, I said we have a little capacity, we can take a few people.

Tracy Hazzard: 30:28

Before you know it, we had ten clients and we said that's it. We can't take more than ten or we have to grow it. I need to, I need to set a system in place to handle these ten clients. We built a portal to take in their episodes. We, like had to build systems to be able to handle more than ten because they were chomping at the bit to refer us. So, about a year and a half after we took those first ten in, we had a hundred clients and we spun our business off into its own entity and we have what became potatized.

Tracy Hazzard: 30:55

We had that back then and so in 2017 mid-year that's when we started actually may the right now, while we're recording. So we're at our sixth year. That happened because of people who were just like I have a need. Can you feel it? After we started that in 2017 and made it its own entity, one year later, we shut down our consulting and design business because we were too busy. So we kept them both open and the the consulting business, the design business. Our royalties Funded the start of our potatize. So we were able to self fund it without any investors, without any push To to be a certain way to do it a certain way. We could do it our way and we did that because we could fund it, because we had these royalties. We had commissions essentially from the products we designed.

Daniela SM: 31:39

Yeah, a clever couple for sure. When you were podcasting, you were not making any money.

Tracy Hazzard: 31:44

We didn't make money off the traditional sense. We did make money off our show, like we would take in advertisers, and we would. We would recoup our costs. So we were personally doing that, but that wasn't necessarily the focus. What we realized is we made more money off of the clients that came from listening to our show. We made more money from the guests that we had on our show who would then hire us to consult with their business. So we made more money off of all of these other methods.

Tracy Hazzard: 32:10

And so when people would come to us and they would say and here's a pattern recognition, a model, as they would come to me and they would say, hey, I've got this business and I've been thinking about starting a podcast, but I don't know how I should structure it, what kind of podcast should I do? And I'd be like here's the model out of these 25 or so that I have seen, heard, found, that will this one, I think, will work for you. Let's try it. And we built in these layers of return on investment from the shows that had nothing to do with Advertising, because most shows will either never qualify for advertising or should never take ads Because it competes against what they have to sell themselves.

Daniela SM: 32:52

Wow, that's fascinating. So you have these podcasts and you started to have clients, but you also decided to have another podcast.

Tracy Hazzard: 32:59

Yeah, one of the things that we decided was that each year as we started podcasting, the industry changed. So when we started podcasting nine years ago, it was a really different ecosystem. There was less competition. There was less of all these, less tools than you have today. Things worked differently than they do now, and so we decided that if we were going to be the best counselors to our clients, we were going to have to start a brand new podcast every single year. So each year we would start one and we would try out the model of it and see how it would work and and do something. And, of course, we wanted the podcast to have a life, because if I'm not excited about it or interested in it, it's going to be hard to keep podcasting.

Tracy Hazzard: 33:41

After the 3d print one, because we were closing down our consulting business, I had a lot of contacts, I had a lot of methods that we used to design products and I wanted to share it with the world. So we created I think it's a almost 200 episode series. So we did it for a couple of years and it's called product launch hazards Big hot hazard for our last name and we basically shared all of our partners, shared all of our methodologies for designing, shared our thinking about our philosophy around what we did, and we just put it out there. And so today, people still reach out to me every single week asking for something from that web podcast and I just refer them to someone. I say go listen to this episode and you're gonna have the best copyright attorney you could ever find. Or go listen to this episode and you're gonna understand why you probably shouldn't patent that. I just send them to one of those episodes and or send them to an expert that I interviewed and send that Interview so that they can build trust quickly. Because they trust me, because they listen to my show, they can now build trust quickly with that. I created this rich referral network by doing that and it was a give back and now I don't feel so bad about walking away from my design. I still serving my community, so that's like one of them we did.

Tracy Hazzard: 34:55

Another one was on. I was very curious and interested in blockchain and cryptocurrency and and web 3 and wanted to understand it. I met someone who was afraid to start a podcast by herself. She had the perfect last name Profit with 2f's and 2ts and, I'm hazard with 2z's. So we did a profit and hazard and we called it the new trust economy, and it was an interesting model in starting a new podcast, but starting with a co-host who I didn't know well we were just became friends.

Tracy Hazzard: 35:23

How does that work? What did I learn from it? And I put out some episodes and some other things about how to break up with your co-host, because it doesn't always work out. You have different models, different missions, and so I learned a lot from doing those types of shows, and so we do that.

Tracy Hazzard: 35:36

But the two shows that I keep doing all the time are the binge factor, which is where I interviewed you on, because I like to interview amazing podcasters doing different types of shows so that I can continue To see the patterns of what's working and what's not working, what they're doing and what they're not doing. Sometimes I share those as tips. And we do a Another show called feed your brand, which is a tactical Tactical ways to grow your show, to market it, to build a website that goes along with it. Like we cover all kinds of things, and Tom and I do that show together. So it's the one thing that we get to do together each week and we have it in a model where we're coaching our clients and doing our Podcast at the same exact time, so we get to do two things at once. So we show up every week, we keep recording and we get to at least spend one hour a week together On our in our business, which we don't always do because our businesses are so busy right now.

Daniela SM: 36:27

So so then you have a guest and then the two of you go horde.

Tracy Hazzard: 36:30

No, we don't have any guests on feed your brand, we only cover topics, the binge factor. We have guests and that's where I only do those interviews. Tom doesn't.

Daniela SM: 36:38

Yes, Well, that sounds interesting and feel like you are so adaptable and so need of change all the time and creating Something constantly that you always gonna be young and always going to be busy.

Tracy Hazzard: 36:49

I Like the always young part. You know. I think that that's the thing is that we get, we feel old fast, when we feel no longer relevant. That's really what it is at the end of the day. When my grandfather couldn't drive anymore, that was the decline for him. I clearly saw it. It was necessary we needed to take his car keys away. He couldn't see as well anymore. This wasn't a good thing, but he lost the freedom and socialness that he had, where he could just go wherever he wants. We could pick up a buddy on the way, they could go have coffee together and he felt isolated and no longer relevant. And that's what I think. If we don't keep trying new things, experiencing things, getting new inputs, new ideas, then we're not going to be relevant. We're going to feel irrelevant quickly, and I do think that's the key to feeling young.

Daniela SM: 37:44

Yeah, especially with all the technology as well. I have the same feeling. I can't know about technology what is new. I don't want to always be able to use it and always learn and practice.

Tracy Hazzard: 37:53

Right, and here's the thing you have a mindset to go out there and experiment and try things. You're not going to adopt everything, but you're going to know enough to know wow, that was a lot harder than I thought it was, or that really fits me. I could keep doing this. This is good for me, right? But we wouldn't do that if we didn't experiment.

Daniela SM: 38:10

Exactly For me. I love change.

Tracy Hazzard: 38:13

Most people don't. This is amazing aha about yourself. You are comfortable in change. In fact, you seek it, you want it, and I feel the same way. My family moved a lot when I was younger. As I mentioned, I lived in other countries. I lived in South Africa so because of that, I was comfortable with the idea that I got to be the new girl at school. It didn't scare me. And so when you're comfortable with change and you love to travel I know that because I've had you on my show and we've talked about that right, that travels always about change, right, you're always in a new place. You got to navigate something new. It feeds something in you to be able to do that. It feels accomplished, but it also feels like it's input. It's experiences that we need that are really important, and I'm one of those people too. I need a lot of change in my life because I need to mix it up, because it stimulates me, and when we are stimulated, we become the best we can be, and it's interesting that you mentioned about school.

Daniela SM: 39:08

I only went into several different schools between kindergarten and preschool. When I hear stories about oh my God, I have to change schools and I was always a new kid Even in movies, it's always shown as a negative thing. But now that you said it's true, it's actually cool. You're going to be the different one, the new person.

Tracy Hazzard: 39:26

It's an opportunity, right.

Daniela SM: 39:28

Yes, exactly, exactly.

Tracy Hazzard: 39:30

Yeah, but kids have a hard time seeing that like that. In all fairness to them, it feels traumatic.

Daniela SM: 39:35

Yes, I feel like it could be hard. That's true, it depends on the age, and so you don't sleep because you're always thinking about things and what will be the next thing.

Tracy Hazzard: 39:44

Well, no, I actually do. I had trouble sleeping. Most of my life Felt like I was an insomniac. I have said it to many people I've troubled shutting my mind off. I had this aha at some point that I could meditate, and in meditation I shut my brain off Like it was was practicing transcendental meditation and it worked really well for me that I could do that whole 20 minutes and I feel my brain would feel refreshed. Afterwards I didn't feel like it was so busy in there that I you know, I couldn't hear. I couldn't hear my own thoughts, I could hear my mantra. So like I felt like it was working for me and I thought, if I can do this, I can fall asleep. There's a connection point here. This is not it's not physically impossible for me to fall asleep. I thought, okay, but I need to do this like a design of experiment, because that's who I am right.

Tracy Hazzard: 40:32

So when my husband and the kids went away and I stayed home to run the business for a week over a winter break, they were going to go skiing and it's I'm not, it's not my favorite thing to do, and so I thought I'm going to stay home and I'm going to figure out how to sleep this week. I'm going to go to bed early. I'm going to make sure that I go to sleep. I'm going to figure this out and over the course of that week it was like every night went to bed, was able to fall asleep, was able to make it happen, because my mindset was in this place, this, this isn't impossible. This is possible. I know I can do it. It's not a fundamental flaw in my brain. Now, it took me a while to figure out how to do that once my husband came home and was snoring in bed with me, but I was able to keep that going, and so now I have a.

Tracy Hazzard: 41:20

I have a process. I kind of create downtime your environment. I have this really hard crunchy pillow. That's whatever my kids call it, the crunchy pillow. It has buckwheat seeds in it and it works perfectly for me because it keeps that like uncomfortableness of things shifting and moving too much for me. It's perfect for me. I love it and nobody gets too close to me. That's just like I have my space. Nobody wants to lie on it. It's like, you know, the dog doesn't want to come up here. I was able to figure out a process for myself to make that work and it's been like heaven in this later part of my life. I'm sleeping.

Daniela SM: 41:54

Wow, all these years you couldn't sleep until then like no longer go then.

Tracy Hazzard: 41:59

Yeah, it's like almost 50 by the time I figured it out.

Daniela SM: 42:02

Wow. And what else have you managed to relearn? Or learn to yourself that you thought it was difficult, or that other people think that it is difficult?

Tracy Hazzard: 42:10

You know, there really isn't anything that I don't look at as I'm a how to girl. A how to is not difficult. There's always a method. So if you understand it, it's no longer a mystery. It's not going to be difficult. The question is is are you willing to pay the cost? Because there's always a cost in your time, energy, money. Whatever you want to look at it, there's always a cost to doing something.

Tracy Hazzard: 42:33

So that's, I think, the biggest decision point it's this worth it to me to learn? Exercise has been one of those things for me is like I'm willing to go walk my dog as part of why we have her right. I'm willing to go walk my dog, take that time out. I'm willing to walk to the school. Am I willing to like go to an aerobics class? No, like I'm not willing to jump around. Am I willing to jog and run? My body said no. They said it didn't like it.

Tracy Hazzard: 42:56

In the first few months I tried that. I thought, oh, this will be like a moving meditation. But it got to be too much on my knees and my ankle and I was like, okay, that's not it for me. I don't want to put physical stress on me because that stress I don't need. I didn't have that before. So I'll take it a little easier.

Tracy Hazzard: 43:13

The finding something that I'm willing to pay the cost of the time, energy, money for, and figuring out what that is for me, hasn't been always great. So I instead tackled my diet and that's how I got healthier. So I said the exercise just wasn't a great fit to my lifestyle beyond walking. But I can handle my diet, and so I improved I ate more vegetables, changed up my diet. That's the trade-off you make.

Tracy Hazzard: 43:36

The reason I don't ski as I go to go back to that story is because I wasn't willing to put the enough time in it to be good at it, which means that my family, who's way better, my husband and all his siblings, and everyone started out on skis at like, out of diapers on on skis, so they've had their whole lives to be great at it. I was going to have to devote a tremendous amount of energy to being good enough to ski with them. Otherwise I was going to be on the bunny slope by myself or in a class by myself, and that wasn't worth it. If it wasn't going to be this family social thing for me, then I didn't care to do it. It didn't excite me enough, and so that's why I don't ski.

Daniela SM: 44:12

But then for you it's easy to learn anything because you just figure out a pattern and so, okay, you figured out, okay, this is a pattern, this is the time that could take, how willing I am to do it. And then you decide is that more or less your, your technique?

Tracy Hazzard: 44:27

Yeah, decide. But here's the thing that a lot of other people do. A lot of other people think, because I'm highly capable, that I'm going to do it all myself. Now there's an aspect of that like I wanna, I'm not going to spend money on an expert, on a coach, on a system, on a process somebody else's thing Unless I'm sure I want to do it. So I will experiment by myself till I figure out it's worth doing what's I'm there.

Tracy Hazzard: 44:51

I think one of the biggest mistakes many people is that they don't get a teacher, they don't get an expert, they don't get someone into support that Azure learning something. You don't have the possibility of seeing things that are gonna come at you. You don't. You are going to see all those road blocks, all those speed bumps, all of those other things. That's why you hire someone. You hire a great coach, you hire great mentor. You hire someone who's going to teach you some of those things with the understanding that it's gonna help you avoid that, so you can keep going forward yet you can keep finding what you're looking for, so then you can bring yourself into it faster. So I look at it as I decide if I wanna do something, if I'm worth paying the price for, and then at some point in that process I will get an expert but for example, with the sleeping you didn't need an expert but you found, like, the proper pillow.

Daniela SM: 45:39

You spend money on stuff that will help.

Tracy Hazzard: 45:42

Well, I did. Yeah, I spend money on stuff, yeah, exactly. But I did hire an expert because I it just happened in a different path, because I paid for and trained in transcendental meditation, which taught me the thing that I needed. So it gave me the tool that my brain can work like this right, so game that. But I did also in this case like I read a couple of books that on sleep and tried some of those techniques and they worked. If they had not worked I probably would have gone to the next level because it was important to me. I was at that point in realization that I was burning the candles at both ends if I didn't get more sleep, that that was going to degrade my health To the point it was gonna harm my longevity with my family. So it was important to me. But luckily, those first set of tactics- work.

Daniela SM: 46:28

Yes, wonderful, wonderful, and I know question I have is of which your husband. So you said okay, you meet once a week for the podcast About what about you also perhaps have meetings because you have to meet all the time to share the ideas that you have. So do you have like Monthly meetings, weekly meetings? How hard does it work?

Tracy Hazzard: 46:46

so we do it in a casual way. So now there's a lot of people who work together as a couple and they say we don't discuss anything after six pm. Once we hit dinner we don't talk about work. The creative process doesn't work like that and tom and I learned that early on. Sometimes it happens on sunday at midnight at like an idea strikes and we need to have a conversation about it.

Tracy Hazzard: 47:07

Now tom is no good after nine pm. If I try to have a conversation with them after nine pm it will be a half a conversation. I will be talking and he will be sleeping like he cannot stay awake and function at that hour. If he tries to talk to me before eight am, I am not at my best. So you learn those things about each other and you try to work it in. So his thing is that a lot of times he'll bring me a tea in the morning.

Tracy Hazzard: 47:31

I'll be getting ready and doing my hair and my makeup and things like that and I'll sit and we will have a conversation about our day, about some of the things we want to try out. This morning we spent an hour doing that because neither one of us had early phone calls and this morning we spent an hour mapping out our plan for incorporating artificial intelligence into our platform. It's not like I haven't been thinking about it and he hasn't been thinking about it separately for weeks apart. I was traveling, and so this was our first chance to get together to talk about it. We just laid out the whole entire plan this morning in an hour together, so it was really super efficient time that we spent together. I got my tea and I got already for our interview, so I get worked out right.

Daniela SM: 48:14

It was a really great use of time and this is what you were getting ready to not like. You sat on a table. Take a paper. Computers no.

Tracy Hazzard: 48:21

We don't really do that. I mean, we will do that next. Like the next level is, we're gonna get out the white board and, like, draw it all out and then take some photos and send it to our coding team. So like will do stuff like that at the next stage and we will plan those and have a meeting for that. When we're just bouncing ideas off of each other and really saying is this what we want to do? And making a decision about whether or not we're gonna move for sword with something.

Tracy Hazzard: 48:42

Sometimes we like to do it in that casual environment because it creates the collaboration necessary. It's not overly serious and distracting. We're having this conversation and then do we take it more serious as we move forward. That's how we make decisions. You know the decision level comes in there. So Fantastic, yeah, but we do have downtime and personal time. I do want to make sure everybody is really clear on that. We have a lot of personal time. We have a lot of fun together. We enjoy being together. We love watching movies. That's one of our favorite things to do together is to watch movies. We like geeky sci-fi stuff. You know we have similar taste and things like that. Yeah, we have a pool and we hang out there and we enjoy each other's company, yes, wonderful.

Daniela SM: 49:24

So your best friends make for anything. So that's what is the most important thing. And Tracy, how is it, tracy, as a mom? And having this god given talent that you have, how are you as a mom?

Tracy Hazzard: 49:35

so I have three daughters twenty eight, fourteen and nine and all of them were born at the inception of a different business. So my oldest was born and we started our our business for stylus pens for handheld computers right after she was born. So she grew up in it like she would total around and assemble pens and do some things. Everybody knew she was part of the business. And then our middle one we had our consulting business got kicked off as Literally while I was on the table delivering her and we had our first client just as soon as I came home from the hospital and the podcast started right before Vanessa, my youngest, was born.

Tracy Hazzard: 50:13

So like we have had like all kinds of creative flow from having children, but they are comfortable with the way that our lives run like this. And one of the stories that I tell is my, my middle daughter. When she was like five years old, there was a staples office supply store that was closing. It was like the store was completely closing and we went in there and we were gonna buy a few supplies and I said this is the last time we're gonna be able to go here, the stores closing. And she looks at me and she says where will they sleep? Because we sleep where we work and she didn't.

Tracy Hazzard: 50:48

I never even thought of the idea that you would live somewhere else and go to work, realized her worldview is different and I think that's the key to. My daughter is like being brilliantly amazing, and my oldest is. She's just absolutely nothing she feels Is out of bounds for her to figure out. Everything is able to be figured out, so whatever gets thrown at her at her work, she can Figure out how to do it. I'm proud that that's what she took away from all those years being around the business. Every viewpoint that this shifted because of that Creates opportunity. But the youngest, yeah, is me. She is exactly me, probably more technologically advanced early on, so I don't know what that's gonna do to her Like. So I always joke that our sole job as parents is to keep her focused on making sure that all of those skills and energy and everything she has is put towards good. That is our only job is to make sure she puts it for me doing good in the world, like we don't have to do any other guidance, just that.

Daniela SM: 51:56

Wonderful. Yes, and I'm glad you say that, because I also think it is important we don't To teach them. The things that we want is just see what their talents are and make them polish those. Yes.

Tracy Hazzard: 52:09

Yeah, she's just really highly capable and whatever sparks her, she's competitive, which is an okay thing to be like. I'm competitive, I like. I like the competitive. It gives you energy, it gives you a reason to go do something right and it doesn't have to be nasty competitive, but like good competitive, like it healthy.

Daniela SM: 52:27

It makes me feel energized when I'm competing at a high level with Other people and also you have shared the love that you got from your parents and you have also share that with your kids, right that's right.

Tracy Hazzard: 52:38

yeah, exactly, we share this idea that doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter how you change, I'm always gonna love you. That's a really big thing, and I think that's hard for us to trust is human beings, because there's so much in our lives that takes Love away. But when you have someone who says I'm never gonna take that away, nothing Could take that away. That's power, because you live in a place when that can't be withdrawn, so you have the power to be who you are yes, wonderful.

Daniela SM: 53:07

So full circle. We started with love and we end with love. And I am so grateful, tracy, that you share your story, because we all have stories. We don't have to have bad things happening to us to have a wonderful story in a wonderful life. That you do, thank you thank you, it's so true.

Tracy Hazzard: 53:23

I'm so glad you are doing this podcast. It is just amazing because everyone does have a story. Thanks.

Daniela SM: 53:30

I hope you enjoyed it. Today's episode I am Daniela and you were listening to, because everyone has a story. Please take five seconds right now and think of somebody in your life that may enjoy what you just heard, or someone that has a story to be shared and preserved. When you think of that person, shoot them a text with the link of his podcast. This would allow the ordinary magic to go further. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening.