The Journey to Trusting the Process

Welcome back to Beyond the Brand. In this first episode of 2026, Tracy Strader returns with honesty, reflection, and a renewed commitment to showing up fully—no scripts, no notes, just real conversation from the heart.

After a rocky holiday season and an unexpected pause to rest and reset, Tracy opens up about what it looks like to trust the process—especially when life doesn’t unfold according to plan. She shares the behind-the-scenes journey of launching the podcast, confronting vulnerability, finding her authentic voice, and choosing progress over perfection.

This episode dives into the power of commitment—starting with one small, intentional promise to yourself—and how consistency, not outcomes, creates real transformation. Tracy reflects on boundaries, time freedom, self-care, and the long-term choices that have shaped a life and career built on values, not hustle culture.

You’ll also hear a powerful reminder that the “luxuries” we enjoy are often the result of decades of intentional decisions, clear boundaries, and honoring what matters most.

If you’re craving balance, clarity, and permission to dream big in 2026—this episode is for you.

Grab your coffee, get comfortable, and let’s go beyond the brand together.

✨ If this episode resonates, screenshot it, share it to your stories, and tag @TracyStrader—I’d love to connect with you.

Transcript

0:02

Hey friend, I'm Tracy Strader, and welcome to Beyond the Brand. I'm all about real conversations, fresh perspectives, and those little aha moments that help us grow in business or life. Over the years, I've built a multi six figure online community by doing one simple thing. Bringing people together through open, honest storytelling. I've been coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs for nearly three decades. My passion is helping others find direction, balance, and healing, and creating spaces where people feel safe enough to just be real. So grab your coffee, get comfy, and let's go beyond the brand together. Hello, welcome to 2026. I hope your year is off to a great start. Mine was a little rocky during the Christmas New Year's holiday break. I typically use that time to plan and get prepared for the upcoming year and this year. Things didn't work out right to say the least. My timing as always, God's timing, right? So I have taken the last. Two weeks to get myself grounded. I came back from the holiday with a cold, and then I lost my voice, and so I decided, I'm just gonna take this two weeks and get myself situated, get myself well, and then jump back in to recording these podcasts. So this is me jumping back in. Last year I decided that I wanted to do the Beyond the Brand Podcast, and it took a lot of courage to take action, hire coach, and get started. As I reflect on the journey, there were so many things about starting the podcast that took me out of my comfort zone. One of those things was just hearing my own voice and viewpoints. I'm so accustomed to having one-on-one conversations with people and launching the podcast put me in a very vulnerable position. As I was learning the new technology and learning how to create the podcast and figuring out what I wanted to talk to you about, I decided that it would be better for me to write it out. I started with an outline, and then I started scripting 'em, and then ultimately I was reading some of them. And at the end of last year, I ended up hiring a voice coach. And what was interesting about her was that she only used my podcast as a tool to give me a voice analysis. I found it absolutely fascinating, and one of the things that she noticed was it sounded like I was reading something versus just being grounded in what the message is that I wanted to share with you. So in this podcast episode. You'll probably notice that I actually don't have any notes. I am not reading from anything, and this is me just being real with you. As I move forward in 2026, I wanna be able to do more of that and just share with you from my heart and whatever that is, that's on my mind that week. Today I wanna talk to you about trusting the process. Last year. As the year ended, I realized that I had my office temporarily at my husband's office in town. And the only reason I moved my office out of the home was because my grandson, what our son was living with us. And whenever my grandson would come. He needed a space to stay. So I moved into town and what I realized was that. I really enjoy having my office at home. And so I told my son, I said oh, and by the way, he had purchased a house that he'd been renovating, so I had told him that between Christmas and New Year's that I wanted to move my office back to the house, and so my husband and I worked. Right alongside of him to help him get the finishing touches on his house so that he could get in there and it was functional for him and his son. So that was a big push in December and now this first two weeks I my office has been. Moved and I'm getting organized and I'm decluttering my home. I'm making a lot of changes and I am learning to trust that process of prioritizing my personal self-care, my nutrition and exercise, and then my work It's been really eyeopening to see how I let some of those things go by the wayside. And when I talk about trusting the process, the big thing that I started doing last was walking. I just wanted to commit to myself. And walking was what I decided to commit to. So my initial goal was to, between Monday and Saturday walk 25 miles and I might take a day off here or there, but I just wanted to commit to something for myself. And I thought 25 miles in six days was very doable. So that's where I started. Then I decided, oh, it would probably be really cool to walk a marathon. And so the first Saturday in January, I completed my first marathon in six days, and now I just finished my third one, and that sounds cool, but. When I say trusting the process, what I mean by that is that I wasn't trying to walk to lose weight. I wasn't trying to walk to get in shape. All I was trying to do was be committed to myself people are recognizing and noticing a difference in my body and how it's toning up. And although I haven't stepped on the scale, I'm guessing that there's some visible results, and that's really cool. But what I'm focused on still is just moving my body and being committed to that. I wanna challenge you to figure out for 2026, how can you committed to yourself and what is that one thing that you're gonna commit to? And do it on a daily basis or a weekly basis. And then. How do you measure your success? We always want to figure out, okay if I'm in sales, for example, and I make 20 phone calls a week to set five or six appointments to close three deals. That's measurable, right? But if you just say, oh, I'm gonna make a few phone calls, or I'm going to go to a couple networking events and then follow up with a few people, it's never really measurable unless you understand the metrics. So it takes time to figure those things out. I always like to say seeing is believing. And when you have metrics in place, it's much easier to see the results because the numbers don't lie, right? If you know the outcomes that you're looking for and you wanna increase performance or you wanna increase the results. Of your work or some kind of a personal goal that you have, you've gotta break it down so that you can measure and physically see your success. Does that make sense? One of the things that happened to me most recently, I was on a phone call with a friend. And we were chatting and she knew that I was out walking and she made a reference that I have that luxury. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, what do you mean? I have that luxury? And it, what I found is it was a trigger for me because yes, I do have the luxury, but I've worked my tail off for the last 25 years to get to that. When I was in my thirties, I did not have the luxury of time freedom. I was working, I had a side hustle. I was going to school full time. I was a single mom with three kids navigating the oldest one leaving home. I had just found out that my daughter had been abused by her grandfather. So I had a lot of things going on, but throughout. That last two and a half decades, there have been certain non-negotiables that I've had in my life, and one of those was working from home. I thoroughly enjoy working from home. I get quiet time, I get to get my laundry done. I do my meal planning, I do my shopping, my fitness. And I've just learned over the years that I require more rest and quiet time. People think that I'm an extrovert, but I'm not. I am completely an introvert. And I've trained myself to be an extrovert, and so therefore it requires me more time to recover, and so I work diligently at finding balance in my calendar. How do you navigate that? Do you, are you like a hustler and in the hamster wheel, or do you. Find balance in your weekly schedule, your routines, that kind of stuff. Are you a planner? When I got my start I was 18. I had moved to Florida and I got a job. As a assistant property manager for an owner builder apartment complex, and my son was only at the time, he was 11 months old. And I had just moved here from Illinois, which is where his dad and grandparents lived and when I moved down here, the grandparents really wanted me to stay up there and live with them. They did not wanna be separated from their grandson. And I said, I really can't. I gotta move, I gotta get away from here. But I said, as long as he is, I. Under the age of six or seven when I would comfortably allow him to fly on a direct flight by himself. I will commit that. I will bring him to you for a week at Christmas and a week in June. So this job that I was applying for, I told him, I said, I need that two weeks a year. I don't care if you pay me or not, I just need the time off. And then I explained why and they hired me based on those terms. So since 1985, I have been negotiating things on my terms with my family being my priority. And jobs that I've worked, or the businesses that I've had, have all come with the boundaries that my family comes first. My kids didn't ask to be here, so I'm gonna prioritize them that has allowed me the luxury to dream big because at every time that I stood up for something that I believed in, there's evidence because I was rewarded what I was asking for, and then I delivered on what the expectation was from me to, to fill the position. As I begin to wrap up this week's episode, I'm curious, how are you dreaming big this year? Do you have a big goal, a big vision for your life or your work? What kind of changes do you wanna see come to reality? Do you have a plan or a strategy in place to help you get you exactly where you want to go? If not, I would love to help you brainstorm and imagine you living your best year yet. You could message me on Instagram at Tracy Strader, or you can just message me through Facebook Messenger, and I would love to help you navigate developing a plan to living your best life and accomplishing all the things that you wanna see come true. In your world, thank you, and I hope you have an amazing week and I'll be back on Monday. Thank you for joining me. If there is anything about this episode that resonated with you, please do me a favor and take a screenshot of this podcast and post it on your stories and tag me at Tracy Strader. I would love to connect with you. So thank you in advance and I appreciate you. I'll see you next week.