Jennifer: 0:02

Welcome to the Starter Girls podcast, the show dedicated to the Starter Girl. She's an achiever, she's a creator, she's a magic maker, she's a dreamer and she is doing all the things. I'm your host, Jennifer Loehding, and welcome to this episode. All right, welcome to another episode of the Starter Girls podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Loejding, and I'm so excited about my guest today, Tracie Root. For over a decade, she has been serving and supporting women to set and get their goals in life and business. As the founder of the Gather community, she took her own goal, setting advice, by shifting in 2020, from holding and hosting in-person events in her brick and mortar space to creating a nationwide community of like-minded women who are growing and thriving together. Tracie guides women in business who are ready to shift towards their next exciting chapter in business by creating a structured, sustainable and successful business with decisive, bold action. So, Tracie, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here and I like bold.

Tracie: 1:10

Yay, me too. Thank you, jennifer. I'm super excited to be here too, and you have fun hair, by the way, too.

Jennifer: 1:16

So there you go with the bold. It is also bold.

Tracie: 1:18

Yeah, you know, I started dyeing my hair this color or variations on a theme back in 2019, when you know everything was really kind of starting to happen in the evolution of my business. And, of course, after 2019, everything changed with the pink stuff, right.

Jennifer: 1:37

I love it, I like it, I think it's fun and it's hair, and I think that's a great thing about hair is that we can change and do whatever we want, and we have the opportunity to do that because it always grows again, so we can keep doing it.

Tracie: 1:48

Yeah, yeah, and what you don't know since we're sitting here on, you know, cameras far apart from each other is that I'm also six feet tall. So you know, I was just at a conference this weekend and someone came up to me and was like I found you. No problem, you've got it going on, tracy, I'm a woman with pink hair.

Jennifer: 2:06

It was easy to find. Yeah, six foot in pink hair, I love it. Well, I'm five, four, so you, probably I would see you for sure. See me in my LA is how it goes, I love it. So, all right, so I want to talk about what you do. Let's start off there. So we talked about being bold and helping women in communities, so give us just an update. I kind of mentioned the profile or in your bio, but tell us a little bit in your words what it is that you do.

Tracie: 2:26

Yeah, so I've been coaching for about 10 years a little over 10 years and I started coaching because I was working in corporate. I had two little kids and I'd recently lost my husband to cancer my first husband and you know that's a survival mode, if there ever is one right. So I was figuring out how to move on from all of this survival mode, all of this tragedy, all of this hard, hard work of helping him, you know, go through his process raising to becoming a mom, raising two little kids they were one in four when he passed, so they were tiny and I was working full time in corporate America. And figuring out what the future held for me was a big deal in that moment and I decided I needed to finally take care of myself after all of this. And I started by hiring a health coach and I got excited about the idea of what is health coaching and what is coaching Period.

Tracie: 3:28

I ended up not being super excited about the health part, which is, of course, why I needed the help in the first place, because it wasn't my jam, but although we all need health, of course.

Tracie: 3:38

But the things that really attracted me were all of the emphasis on professional and personal development, the idea of your you know mind defines your future, that you get to make decisions that change your life and, at the same time, I was trying to figure out what would my life and my kid's life look like going forward, and coaching landed in my lap at the exact right time.

Tracie: 4:04

I decided that I would leave corporate, that I would learn how to be a coach full time, and I moved across the country to live closer to my parents and get to be that kind of entrepreneur, stay at home, mom, mom, printer situation when you know they were little and I was the only parent that they had.

Tracie: 4:25

But that was over or about 10 years ago, and over the last decade I have just continued to, to grab on to the opportunity to help women recognize that whatever they want for their future they can have, whatever they're dreaming about they can create, and that often things that holding, the thing that's holding us back, is ourselves and our own thoughts about what we can and can't do and what's okay and what's not okay. So be bold, make the choices that are for you so that you can be your best self, be the right you know person for your family and inspire the community around you. Yeah, so this is good. Yeah, yeah, it's coaching women, you know, in that way and then making sure that everyone realizes how important it is to have other people around you to lift you up and support you, because it's a journey and it's not always easy.

Jennifer: 5:25

It's interesting when you talk about this because you know I, on my other show, behind the dreamers, we really dive into the story, like what led you to where you are today, and you know it's. I always feel like we all have these stories, right, and I was talking to somebody in previous recording that I was doing before I jumped on here with you and we were talking about how, if you were to look at the where you were here so back up 10 years from now and look at where you are here and take out all the middle, you'd be like, okay, so what, you're here, how did you get here? Right, it's like all the middle that leads us here and the paths are never straightforward, right. But if you start connecting the dots, you start seeing how everything sort of overlaps, each piece of the journey, and I think you know the thing I really want to talk about with you is this community, because I think this is a big part of you know my background.

Jennifer: 6:08

I was in Mary Kay for 22 years and I was telling and I've said this over and over people that Majority of the times, the reason that women are staying in Mary Kay for the link that they are staying in is because of community.

Jennifer: 6:21

It's because they have a support system. And For me I never really understood or valued, I guess, the importance of the mentors until I looked back and really understood how they played a significant role in my life. Because having that community Even though I've never been I was never kind of like that girly girl that would sit around with all my girlfriends and be like that, like I just not that. I'm probably more to sit around with guys at a table and talk about guy stuff, you know but the having that community for me was instrumental because they gave me the support and believed in me when I didn't really have that for myself right like when I was going through the journeys of being a young entrepreneur up until we're, you know, 20 something. Now I'm in my 50s it's a that's a vast journey in entrepreneurial world. So I want to dive into that a little bit with you, talk a little bit about you know this community that you're doing and what you're seeing in this and how this is really evolving for you.

Tracie: 7:14

Fantastic. Well, so let me Back up just a little bit to twenty nineteen. As I said, that's when the hair went pink right. That was when I really started to get excited about these ideas that were turning in my head of what I wanted to create for my business going forward, and I wanted to start doing group activities, building community, and I was having a real hard time here in Santa Cruz I'm in Santa Cruz, california Finding a place or finding places to hold these events, these workshops, these gatherings that I wanted to create.

Tracie: 7:49

Things were really either really expensive or really like always booked, or very like not the kind of place you want to hang out, like the middle school gym. Like I, I don't need that space. Like it may be cheap, but I don't want to hang out there. So, being that my corporate background is an interior design and project management, I decided I would rent a commercial space and renovate it and create a place of my own. We called that place gather.

Tracie: 8:15

That opened in October of twenty nineteen, and so five months later, we had to turn off the lights and close the doors and wait and see what was going to happen and within just a couple of weeks, we said well, we don't know what's going to happen. We thought it was just going to be a couple weeks and we'll be back at our old jam. But I said, you know what was the whole point in the first place? Was it to have a room which I love like a super? You know is definitely lost of a dream to lose the room. But the point was to bring people together and, for the foreseeable future, where was that going to happen? That was going to happen online. So when I, when I honed my thoughts back into what's the mission Was community to bring people together wherever they are, to share ideas, to connect with each other, to lift each other up, to support the challenges that we all have in life and man, we were having a lot of them back in twenty nineteen.

Tracie: 9:16

So we took everything to zoom and, instead of renting the room and helping the people who rented the room have success, I created a membership and I help my members have success and we call that now the gather community and we have members all across the United States and Canada and it's way bigger and has way more of an impact to way more women and families and people than it ever would have had being a little thousand square foot room here in Santa Cruz. So it's become my mission to help women recognize that when they're together, it's the whole. Together we achieve. It achieves more, whatever that acronym is Right. We are better as women and as humans and as people in the planet when we have other people around us.

Tracie: 10:09

We are supported, we have the ability to recognize ourselves in others and them in us, and that's I mean, I didn't know I was planning on changing the world, but that's what changes the world. That's what ends things like what's happening in the Middle East right now the idea that I see you and you see me and we are the same even though we come from very different places. So community is just everything. And so now the gather community. Like I said, we've been three and a half years strong and growing and changing and evolving, and it's very fun and very exciting. That's awesome.

Jennifer: 10:49

Well, and you're right, I think that so often we kind of talked about this in a different episode, when we were talking about asking questions of mentors and coaches and when we don't do that, we get into doing assumptions about people. Right, and this is why I feel like we have so many problems, and even in the world today, because we make a lot of assumptions about people as a whole, groups of people, and I think when we break down those walls and we have this sense of community, it allows us to get to know other people. It's like I have a client in Spain right now. I have a young client that I actually she sought me out and I started working with her, I think in December of 2019, it was around the time all this was happening. I'm still coaching this. I'm still working with this client. I think I've become more of a mentor in this capacity for her.

Jennifer: 11:36

But it's really neat because one of the things I've said about her is, even though we are generational apart, we are in different parts of the world, we still have similar values in the way we look at business and how we operate things and goals and stuff like that, and so it's very neat to me, when you have these communities that you can really, when you get to know people, break down these walls and you really start to understand there are a lot of common things that we share. We may not agree on every parts of things, but there are common things that we do share. And when we can get to do that and stop making those assumptions, I think that's when we really can have the growth. You know what I mean.

Tracie: 12:11

I think you use the key word there, which is values, right, when I had a mentor a long time ago who basically said values will unite us and it's the politics and it's the history that divides us. So you know, if you focus on what it is that's actually important to you kindness, generosity, patience, love you know all of those key core values that we hold way deep inside you find that we end up having those in common, even when other people are doing things that we would be like how could we possibly have anything in common? Well, they're also trying to do what they think is right for their family or for their mom or for their community. And, yeah, our actions may be different, our perspectives are different, but ultimately, if you go all the way down to those core values, they're often similar.

Tracie: 13:08

And it's not that we have to agree or support the actions of people who are doing things that we don't believe we would ever do, but if we ask questions and are curious. Are you a Ted Lasso fan? Right, I'm not familiar with him.

Jennifer: 13:24

I hear this name a lot. I think I need to check it out.

Tracie: 13:28

You need to watch it. In fact, as the third season, final season ended, I immediately went back and watched the whole thing again. It's wonderful, and one of the things that happens is there's this whole thing about be curious, because if you're curious, you're gonna ask questions to learn more about the other people around you. And at that in the show there's a conflict and he's like so if you were curious about me, you would know that I'm about to kick your ass. So it was, and it's this whole scene. So I don't wanna give it away. But the idea of being more open and recognizing like I said, recognizing myself in them and them and me allows us to recognize what we have in common instead of only what we have different. And it matters it, just it matters.

Jennifer: 14:21

And I think that goes with really the idea too. If we wanna reach this out a little bit with this whole idea of being growth-minded, right, like I feel like when you come from a place of wanting to be growth-minded, you're curious about things, people, life, experiences. It doesn't mean you agree with everything and you're gonna take part in everything, but you gain to. For me, it's about trying to gain understanding of why Somebody makes a decision that they make, why somebody does something that they do, why did somebody choose that particular coach, that particular community? Why did they make that business decision?

Tracie: 14:57

You know, right, and and if you look at like the big corporations and the famous CEOs out there in the world, it's like why would they do that Instead?

Jennifer: 15:07

of going.

Tracie: 15:08

That was dumb, or you know, whatever your you know reactive opinion might be. We can use Elon Musk and Twitter X, whatever as a perfect example. I think most of us are like why, why would he do that? Why would you change your name from Twitter to X? Why would you do these things? And you know, I don't know that we're ever gonna get the answers to that. But the more we're asking, the less judgmental we're gonna be, and the less, yeah, judgment, the less judgmental we're gonna be. I think we'll just leave it at that, because that's huge. You know, we don't need people judging us. We are the worst judgmental people of ourselves. But what if we asked ourselves I wonder, what, like? What is it about that situation that made me show up that way? I just came off of a conference this past weekend and I was just talking with the friend of mine and saying you know, it's been.

Tracie: 16:02

It was interesting to watch myself at this conference where I went in with an intention of how I wanted to show up and be with all these women that I had never met. And then in the moment, how was what was I actually doing? What was my action? And then afterwards I was like, I wonder, like what was I tired? Was I nervous, was I scared, was I embarrassed? Like what? What was it behind Certain times of the weekend that made me act in a certain way? And it's a learning opportunity For me, for myself, and now I can also extend that to other people whom I wonder why they would choose that you know that X, that Y, whatever it is, and we get to understand each other better when we ask the questions.

Jennifer: 16:46

It's very good. It's very good. So tell us a little bit about this community then. So you're doing these zooms, is this like? Are you having like weekly, monthly events? Tell us a little bit. Kids, our audience may maybe they want to plug into this, I don't know. Yeah, come on down.

Tracie: 17:00

In fact, we have way more events that most people Like I'm the only one who can make them, to make all of them, because everyone else is just like, wow, that's a lot, yeah, but that's the whole point is, I want to offer a lot of opportunities, so we do things like Business Connect networking we have. So actually, let me back up. We have some things that are for the general population, where you could it's free or low-cost ticket. We have some things that are intended only for our members and our membership has different levels Depending on if you're looking for promotion, invisibility or participation and like networking community. Everyone gets community, of course, because that's what it's all about, but there's a lot of different Kind of ways of looking at it, and some of the things that we do across the board are business networking, personal networking, like community nights where we usually we have games. We also do co-working for our members every week To give everyone an opportunity to have some friendly accountability to get some stuff done.

Tracie: 18:06

We promote the workshops of our creator and contributor level members because my goal is to help them have more visibility and help them grow their circles. We hold multi speaker summits where our members are the speakers, at least four times a year. We just had one Two weeks ago. Went super great, 12 speakers, great time. What else do we do?

Tracie: 18:32

We host workshops of our members as like are promoting them, the gather community and Jennifer Lenning present workshop ABC and when you come and show up and do your teaching, but I am the one who's doing the promoting and bringing the people into the room, and so it's personal, professional development, all kinds of different topics. We've got business, we've got wellness, we've got energy workers, we've got you know anything kind of in everything from a topic standpoint, and the point is to bring women together to learn and to grow and to, you know, improve your life by being in a community of women who also like the same. Yeah, I love that's what we do, and so in any given month we have not including the co-working which is every week we might have 5 to 8 different events. Plus, we also promote, as I said, the events of our members, so they also have things that you know.

Tracie: 19:31

I don't manage their calendars, but there's always at least 5 things a week going on somewhere in the community that we Send out to our list and promote so that people know what's going on, so they can learn more about, you know, taking care of their money blocks or Busting through fear, or learning how to be a better speaker, or better sales skills, or, you know, video visibility, whatever. Whatever it is that you're looking for, tending to lean on the business side of things, entrepreneur side of things, because that's what we all are, but also, you know, in a lot of personal ways as well.

Jennifer: 20:07

Yeah, no, it's great. It sounds a lot. I mean, you know, when I talk about this, this show started with a lot of my coaching is it's? It's leadership? It's about how do I make the entrepreneur Really strong in all capacities of their life, and I pillars that I follow through that. But to your point, you know, it sounds like a lot of what you're doing is similar to that and that you're bringing this awareness to them on how to be effective in all these different areas. As a entrepreneur, and so I love that.

Tracie: 20:36

Is going to kind of focus in that direction, right. Whatever their, their kind of wheelhouse is, is going to be the thing that shows up. So for me, wanting women to be bold in their life and in their business, I attract and promote women who are helping others show up, step out, be more confident and build their businesses and have a more fulfilled life. Yeah, and so the people around me also do that. I do, we all do it together. I love it and that's community.

Jennifer: 21:05

Yeah, and you kind of just said what is bold, and I like. What does that word represent for you? That's what I want. What does that word mean to you?

Tracie: 21:11

Because I like well when I'm teaching it in a workshop standpoint, I or doing like a speech or whatever. I will use it as an acronym, because I grew up here in Silicon Valley, that's where I went to college, it's where I did my corporate stint, and so acronyms, you know, are a great way to keep yourself on track when you're doing a talk or a workshop Right, so bold, basically, will start with what is the dream that you're going after and how do you build the path to that vision?

Tracie: 21:43

Right, so be as for like build or build the path, got it? Oh, is really the best letter out of all of them, because that's about being open to discomfort and to fear and to new ideas and to doing things in a different way that you've ever done, to getting help, like all of the ways we have to allow ourselves to grow is kind of covered by L? L because I teach workshops and I promote so many women who do a lot of teaching is what do we do with all that learning? We have to leverage what we've learned to get to D, which has to do with action. Right, let's do what we plan, what we say we want to do. Let's actually do it with bold, decisive action.

Tracie: 22:32

So bold from a structural standpoint really stands for me. Figure out what it is that you're going after. Make a plan to get there. Know that it's going to be challenging. If it's not challenging, it's not the right goal. It's just kind of something you're already doing. If it's not challenging, you're not growing to get there. It's just kind of maybe you've already done it before, so you know, allow yourself to try something new and bigger than ever and take all the things that you've learned. You know, if you're listening to a podcast, you probably have listened to other podcasts and you've probably gone to other people's classes and bought classes and read books and all of those things. What are you doing with it? Right, and because I find a lot of women are really excited to listen and learn and have a hard time stopping the listening and learning for a minute and actually getting into action.

Tracie: 23:30

It's something that we all, you know, those of us who are selling products or services. When are you doing the selling right? If you're in a class again, right? I was in a class this morning. You know, I actually talked to my coach earlier and I said you know what? I just saw you this weekend. We were on a plane together yesterday. I saw you this morning and we have coaching scheduled this afternoon. I said can we reschedule that, because I kind of feel like we're good for now I need to go do instead of leverage what's happened recently, instead of getting more coaching this afternoon on what I already have my whole plan.

Jennifer: 24:06

They used to happen to me when I would.

Jennifer: 24:08

You know, in all the years I was in Mary Kay, I went to so many, you know, like we had conference the big conference in July, we had a leadership conference in January, and then we had we had a March conference. I would go to these big conferences and we'd be there for days and by like the second day I was ready to just go to work, like I didn't want to hear anything else because my brain would just get overloaded anyways, like I start getting too much information. And so I started actually, you know, midway through I started figuring out that, instead of getting so boggled down and trying to take in so much information, I would just pick up on that one or two things, one or two things I need to get. I wasn't going to take a bunch of notes, but get the one or two things I need to walk away with and implement those into my work. And it really released me from that whole getting boggled, because I think that's what we do. We get it sometimes, take all that information, we're soaking it all in lots of it and then we just get stuck.

Jennifer: 24:57

Where do we go Right?

Tracie: 24:58

And that's where a coach, I think is great because it can help you navigate Right, and I think also yes, totally agree with everything that you said and I think that we also get kind of addicted to the, to the inflow in some way, and then we're not sure how we should get started. So then we like have to go figure out how to get like it's a never ending cycle.

Tracie: 25:21

Right, it's a never ending cycle of the, the learning without the doing, unless we notice it, right? So you have to notice your own tolerance. And you know the other thing about those conferences and very familiar, you know, the. The system I started in is was started by people who were very steeped in Mary Kay in the past and everything. So it's a lot similarities and it's great.

Tracie: 25:45

And, yeah, you have to decide okay, what. What am I going to do next? Yeah, and you know so, ever since I started coaching women in business, that's always been my focus is what's the plan? Right, and like, you may have the goal, but what's the plan to get there? And is it actually so using smart goal formulas and all of that stuff? What's the plan to get there? How are you actually going to do it? What's going to block you? And what surprised you and already blocked you and like, got you going back to figuring out what your plan should be? Again, right, it's so easy to allow ourselves to to think that we need to learn more in order to get started and and that we're not ready. Yeah, we don't know enough in order to have success. And you know I always end my, my workshops with reminding everyone that they already have everything that they need inside them. They don't have to learn another single thing. They have to go start, yeah.

Jennifer: 26:48

Get into action, I agree. So this has been great, tracy. I agree with you on all of it. Sometimes we, yes, we get boggled down with the needing to learn, but I think the big takeaway here is about the community and really the importance of finding your community. Who know you, know where, where that is finding your community, I think, is huge, and so I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your knowledge with us.

Tracie: 27:06

Absolutely.

Jennifer: 27:08

What you're doing. If our audience, somebody wants to reach out, find out what you're doing with the? You know this group and what you have. Where do you want us to send them?

Tracie: 27:14

Yeah, the best. There's two different places. That one easy one is you can come to my website, tracy rootcom Easy to see because you see my name right there, tracy rootcom. The other place is, you know, our, while we have a membership factor of the gather community, we also have, you know, it's not public per Facebook definition, but in everyone's and welcome Facebook group and it's called the gather community with Tracy root. So, again, very easy to find.

Tracie: 27:41

That's probably the easiest way to engage in what's happening with the gather community when you come in there. Of course it's a Facebook group, so we ask you a couple of questions, including how can we reach you to give you stuff outside of Facebook, because you never want to put all your eggs on Facebook and but at the same time, we promote everything that we have going on there. We have all of our, all of our members and a lot of other people are there. It's the best place to kind of get your understanding of what we have going on. And, of course, you can always ask questions and reach me directly there. Feel free to send me a friend request as well and we'll connect Perfect.

Jennifer: 28:18

All right. Well, this has been great Tracy. Again, thank you so much. Appreciate it and congratulations on all your success. It's awesome, Thank you so much.

Tracie: 28:27

I really appreciate your time and having me on Absolutely.

Jennifer: 28:30

To our audience. Of course, if you enjoy the show, head on over to Apple, give us a review there. You can hit that subscribe button on YouTube so we can keep sharing all these incredible, as I say, stories, because it's not so much stories but information and content to help you guys be better leaders in your world. And so with that, I do want to say take care of yourselves and be kind to one another, and we will see you next time.