Episode 68: Building Resilience and Leveraging AI w/ Tracy Brinkmann

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Hello, hello, welcome in. If you're here listening to this
podcast, that means you're destined for something great,
and we both know it to be true. So without further ado, welcome
to the Dark Matter Podcast. Hello, hello, and welcome back

(00:36):
to the Dark Matter Podcast. It's your host Dev, and today
we've got another guest in TracyBrinkman.
This one I'm super, super excited for.
Tracy is the host of the Dark Horse Entrepreneur AI Escape
Plan and Your Success DNA to topranked podcasts pulling over

(00:56):
300,000 monthly downloads. His journey is nothing short of
extraordinary, from military service to addiction recovery,
from losing his 18 month old daughter to rebuilding his life
after divorce and bankruptcy. He went on to lead major
corporate marketing teams, launch multiple businesses, and

(01:20):
now helps entrepreneurs turn a week's work into a weekend's
income using AI driven automation.
He's proof that your hardest chapters can be your strongest
leverage points and I'm so excited to dive into the episode
with you. Welcome to the show, Tracy

(01:40):
Brinkman. Hey Devin, how you doing?
Thanks for having me aboard. Yeah, I'm super excited.
So I mean, even through the intro, we can see here that
you've lived through lost addiction and starting over more
than just once. And what was the moment you
decided that your story wasn't going to end in survival, but in

(02:05):
purpose? Wow.
It's probably, I've probably written that reintroduction of
life twice. Certainly after the the death of
my daughter, I decided, you knowwhat, I'm going to be the man
she could be proud of because she was going to be looking down
from on high from that moment forward, right?

(02:26):
There was no hiding in the darkened quarters of life where
your your children can't see you.
So that was certainly one of thefirst times where I rewrote what
was going to happen next in my world and it and it worked.
And then probably be, oh gosh, 13 years later when I was

(02:47):
sitting down at the microphone for that your success DNA
podcast and all of a sudden I got hit with this imposter
syndrome moment because here I was a podcast at that point was
probably 7 years old and doing OK.
You know, I, I wasn't going to get rich off of it, but it was,
I was doing all right. And I realized, wow, I'm getting

(03:09):
on the microphone saying here's all the great things you could
do to make your life amazing. Meanwhile, I'm going through a
wicked divorce and bankruptcy and you know, so I felt that
wash over me and I hung up my microphone for a while.
Hindsight being 2020, if I wouldget that feeling today, I would
lean into it and open my heart and share that vulnerability

(03:35):
with my audience because I wasn't comfortable enough then.
I am now. But I'm also in a lot more
confident position in my life, so hopefully nothing like that
happens today where I have to dothat.
That's such a powerful moment. And I do think that it is
extremely relatable that, you know, you're kind of sharing

(03:57):
value, whether it's a podcast oryou're a coach and you're, you
know, providing content online and something is brewing on the
back end. So I love now that you see that
you would still go through it. And I guess you mentioned here
you're in a more confident situation.
But what if you weren't in a confident situation?
What would you have needed to hear or to see or to maybe learn

(04:18):
about yourself, to know that youcan share some of these things
and share that you're not perfect and you're working
through these things even as a figure of authority?
You know, I think for me, it would be sharing what I had
experienced that worked, that brought me to where I was and
also opening the door to say, hey, this works.

(04:40):
However, life can still throw you a, you know, a curveball, a
pie in the face, whatever phraseyou want to pick to use as that
metaphor. And what you need to do is like
what I'm doing right now is I'm,I'm focusing on what I want to
do, what I need to do next, rather than hiding in a hole.

(05:02):
Cause I've done the hiding in the hole thing and I've dumbed
the, you know, let's dive into drugs and numb yourself thing.
And they don't work. Well, it's about the best way to
say it. And so I, I think that's
probably what, how I, if it would be to happen today, that's
what I would do is I would lean into it and say, here's what I'm
going to do. I'm going to go back and re
listen to episode 1234 and take my own advice to take that next

(05:28):
step forward. My.
Girlfriend. She always says this line of,
you know, entrepreneurship is the best form of personal
development 'cause you can really, you know, put yourself
in the uncomfortable situation is it seems like it you really
use discomfort as, you know, thefuel to really motivate and
inspire and empower people. And so you mentioned your

(05:50):
success DNA that's been going onfor seven years.
I started your success DNA in 2007.
What was why did you want to start that?
Like what was the motive behind it?
Yeah, it's funny is I'll step back 'cause it.
I'll tell you the story that gotus there.
Obviously we mentioned a couple of times the the passing of my

(06:11):
daughter and she was 18 months old and this was after I had
recovered from addiction and started to build my life back up
and my corporate career was doing OK also.
Now I have this dark moment where my daughter passes away.
And I had an older daughter who was, I don't know, she think she

(06:32):
was about 3 at that point. And so I didn't want to fall
back into what could be, you know, addiction all over again.
I could, you know, just easily fall back in and numb myself.
So I threw myself forward into personal development and this
would have been in the 90s, you know, so all the big names that
we know today, you know, AnthonyRobbins, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn,

(06:56):
they were at their their peak and they were doing these
stadium filling events and toursaround the country.
And I was in Atlanta. So they always came there.
So I went to every one of those events possible, which is all
well and good, but I took the next step that some don't and I
took action off of what I learned.

(07:17):
And I thought, OK, I learned a little over here and I learned a
little over there and I can't really apply that yet.
But here I took all the things that I could and started
applying them and they started having some really positive
actions in my life to the point where I got 5 promotions in
three years at Coca-Cola North America in the headquarters,

(07:40):
which is unheard of. Well, this prompted a few of my
peers and some of my superiors to go, what are you doing, you
know, who do you know was actually a question I got a
couple of times more teasingly than anything else.
And so I started sharing what itis I had been learning from the
big names and the books and the tapes and everything else and

(08:03):
how I had been applying it, which got a couple of folks to,
you know, reach out to me, say, well, could you coach me?
Could you teach me what you're learning?
Hey, I'd be happy to. And that started, you know, the
the burgeoning of a coaching career.
And I really enjoyed that. I got a lot of fulfillment out

(08:23):
of helping another person open up and, you know, shine their
light as brightly as they as they possibly could.
Mind you, I wasn't doing any of the work.
They were doing all the work. I was just giving the advice and
the guidance and you know what Ithought was would work well for
them. That let me go, wow, that was
kind of cool. And then YouTube came on to the

(08:47):
scene. So I tried that and I was like,
the technology for me wasn't quite there and I felt kind of
janky on it. However, there was a platform
called Blog Talk Radio, which was purely audio and they
connect you with folks around the world and they even gave you
a free phone number that people could call in like a talk radio

(09:07):
show. And now you're actually
interacting like you and I are right now.
And I was like, I was totally vibing with that.
So I did that for a little whileand then decided, all right, I'm
going to lean way into this and launched your success DNA, which
is a purely professional development podcast.

(09:27):
And in all the years that it's been around, and like I
mentioned, I did hang up the microphone for a period of time,
never once brought someone on tointerview them.
This was all the I'm just sharing with you what I learned
and what I think would work for you.
And I think you should try. So that made me lean into
learning more and more and more and more so they could always

(09:49):
have good content to share. Long answer to your short
question. You know, I love that and
there's so many things I want todive into, even like the
coaching and, you know, feeling like, you know, I wasn't doing
the work, they were doing the work.
But I love that because that's how it's supposed to be.
And even in my experience, I felt like I was doing more of
the work for them. And it's a coaching program.

(10:09):
You know, we were in my last business.
It was a coaching business showing coaches how to build
their own business. And it just got to a point
where, you know, they weren't doing the work that they needed
to do. And I'm just like, I felt like I
was dragging them. So I absolutely love that that
was how it worked. And I feel like you probably,
you know, achieved more transformation within your
clients as well because they're actually doing the work.

(10:31):
Now. A question to that because you
said something and they're so powerful and it's so true.
And I think it's so relevant in today's day and age because
there's podcasts now more than ever.
There's Youtubes, channels and videos and you can get
information everywhere right now.
There's so much information absolutely everywhere.
But you said you went to all these seminars, but you did
something that 90 to 95%, I would even say of people don't

(10:55):
do, which is actually implement the information.
And I feel like that hits hard. How did you implement it?
Like what was the thing that youdid to really start taking
action? I know you started the podcast
and you just start applying in your life to get the the
promotions, which again, incredible.
But like, was there a specific thing that you did to really
apply? Because I feel like there's a
block for a lot of people there.For me it was it was kind of a

(11:18):
three-step three prong approach.A step one is I leaned into
journaling a lot back then and even now you pretty much will
find me with a notebook. I've graduated to a hardcover
notebook. That's what something pops into
my head. I'll write it down South doing
that. While I was doing the learning

(11:39):
parts, I was scribbling notes and ideas and thoughts that were
coming out of these, you know, these amazing teachers mouths
and I was converting it from my head through my hand and turning
into something tangible. I think it's one of the cool
things about writing down your ideas, your thoughts, your
goals, your dreams, your even your fears is now you've taken

(12:01):
it out of your head and heart and you've already started to
turn it into something tangible.Then I could periodically and
would every couple of weeks, go back and kind of rescan some of
the notes I've taken and go, OK,here's the problem I'm facing
right now, or here's the goal I'm striving to achieve right
now. And here's something I thought

(12:22):
about two weeks ago. I totally forgot about that.
So it was a refresher course on a course I'd taken or a thought
that I had. So from the journaling to the
rescanning. And then it was all about doing
the goals. It's one thing to say I want to
marry a beautiful woman. It's a whole nother thing to sit

(12:43):
down and write down what do you want her to look like?
What kind of values that she need to have?
How do you see it happening? You know, where do you think
you're going to meet him? What's the plan?
Here's something that I find completely amazing and I was
probably guilty of it in my first wedding.
But how many people spend 200 hours planning a wedding, but

(13:07):
only two hours planning the nextfive years of their life?
There's something, you know, it's, I know some of us like
yourself aren't going oh, wait aminute.
He's right. We have this big amazing moment
in our lives and it's significant.
And don't get me wrong, I love it.
And we, so many people will spend 200, maybe 300 hours

(13:32):
planning this event, but they won't spend any more than a
couple hours planning what's going to happen after the event
is over. And they come back from the
honeymoon and have a whole life that they would hope it'd be 20
plus years in front of them. So to sit down and write down a
few goals that you'd like to accomplish this year, next year,

(13:53):
in the next five years. And heck, go ahead and think 20
years out, you know, the furtherout you go, I think the more beg
the goals might be of the more, you know, erasable.
How about that is because they're going to change, right?
You would have asked me it when I was 20 where you want to be
when you're 60. I would have given you a

(14:14):
completely different answer thanI would give you today, if that
makes sense. Definitely.
So journaling is is incredible. And that kind of goes hand in
hand with, you know, it's kind of like self discovery, you
know, personal development, journaling, I feel like.
Or do you do meditations and youknow, visualization,
manifestation, all that sort of work as.

(14:35):
Well, I have dipped my toe into all of them and and do I'm going
to call my version of all of it.But yeah, I mean, it started
with journaling and then I went into, I took, I'll call it a
course. Actually, I'm looking at it
right across the over in my bookshelf where you would tap
into your dreams. And so one of the things that

(14:58):
this this teacher taught you wasto have a journal or something
right next to you. And because I have such sloppy
writing, I actually kept one of those little bitty micro
recorders right next to where I would sleep and I'd wake up and
the dream was still fresh. You know, we've all had
experience. That moment when you first wake
up, you're like, I had this amazing dream or had this

(15:19):
terrifying dream, but 4 minutes later you're like, what was that
dream about? Right.
So I would wake up and even withfoggy, you know, words click
record and just like speak into it what the dream was and then
turn it off and fall back to sleep.
And, you know, and do that when I would wake up in the morning

(15:40):
as well and then turn around andre listen to that and, you know,
write that into my journal. And you start tapping into, I
think, parts of your brain that get untouched except for when
you're in that Theta wave moments when you're kind of
falling asleep or in the kind ofwaking up where you can do a lot
of learning. I believe it was the CIA or

(16:02):
maybe some of the Russian forcesI've read about that would use
that fatal wave section of time before sleep to teach their
operatives foreign languages in weeks, not years or months.
So it, it really works and it's been used across multiple three

(16:22):
letter agencies. So it was kind of tapping into
that and I've, you know, read some things and gone.
Wow. Here's a funny one.
Before my divorce started, this would have been a probably about
five years. I had woke up and spoken to the
to the tape player and then converted that into my journal.

(16:44):
But instead of writing it out, I've kind of drew what the image
was I was talking about. And the image was me walking
into a sunset and I would have been hand in hand with a female
next to me. However, the shadow being cast
by the sun showed 2 figures, butthe actual person walking away

(17:07):
was only one figure. And it's, it was almost, you can
interpret that probably 75 different ways.
And as my life progressed, it was to me, my loneliness that
was happening in the now divorced marriage.
And that was my brain saying, this is how you feel.

(17:28):
You know, they're there, but they're not there kind of thing.
Does that make sense? Doesn't make sense.
It's this is I actually love this conversation.
I love, you know, the direction that you're taking with this,
because I feel like there's there's so much of this.
And I feel like even just going back a couple segments ago where
you said, you know, a lot of people because like this is

(17:48):
gold. And I really want to highlight
that a lot of people spend 200 plus hours on their wedding, but
then not spend that on their goals and, and what they want to
look at a life. So how much do you feel is in
preparation? And I know you mentioned like
goal change, right? Just like our values do, but how
much is it in like planning or having a chief aim, something to

(18:11):
like work towards over, you know, just allowing things to
kind of come because this is a conversation Jess and I, my
girlfriend have, can go back andforth on.
Because for me, I always feel like I don't really know where
I'm going, but things always kind of work out and it kind of
like takes me there, even if it's like a vague thought.
It's like, Oh yeah, I wish I hada business.

(18:32):
And then, you know, five years later, it's like now I have a
business. Here's a great metaphor in in I
used to live like I mentioned, Iused to live in Georgia and
there's the Chattahoochee River,which is the major river going
through Atlanta. But if you go up north, I
believe the city is called Helena.
They have the, I used to go up there for the Oktoberfest every

(18:52):
year and that's where the the rain waters and the melting snow
all start. The Chattahoochee.
The Chattahoochee literally you could walk across it with two
feet in the early spring and it's crystal Clearwater.
So that's the start of what endsup being this major river.

(19:12):
And what starts directing it arethe mountains and the hills and
the formations of the the Georgia landscape.
So if we look at this as your life and your thought of I want
a business, OK, so I'm standing in Helen now and I'm thinking I
want a business. And that's your first few drops

(19:34):
of water that you're dropping in.
And as you start following that down, other things start coming
down off the hill for you. And some of it you're like, oh,
Yep, this, I need to take this in because that's going to be
part of my business. Oh, yeah, that's not working.
I'm going to leave this on the shore side because that's not
the kind of business I want to be in.
And before too long, you're downin Atlanta and you're rafting on

(19:55):
a 30 foot Deep River that you know is a major artery for a
major city. So the difference for me is if
you're just, I have a vague thought, I do want to have a
business, don't know what it needs to be in.
And you just let that go. As long as you keep that thought
going. You go from Helena down to
Atlanta in five years if you'd like to speed that up.

(20:19):
Right. And you want, you know, those
Rapids you want, you want to getyour raft early.
Well, now you're like, I want tohave a business.
Well, let's go ahead and talk about that, shall we?
Let's let's take a couple of hours and write down, well, what
am I good at? What do I need to home?
Where do I who do I want to serve?
And that's a big one for me is when I started the second

(20:40):
podcast, a dark horse entrepreneur, I wanted to serve
entrepreneurs, which is a niche,but it's still pretty big,
right? It's not very narrow.
And then as it went on, like, OK, this is it's doing well, but
let me narrow down to my online entrepreneurs because they have
very specific concerns and needsand focuses better still pretty

(21:06):
big. And then about year and a half
ago, maybe a year ago, I startedrealizing, you know, most of the
folks I'm having these conversation with are parents.
So I narrowed down to my parent entrepreneurs.
And that's when I just, wow, this is it right here.
You, you could, it's almost likeyou, you hear a bell and that

(21:29):
resonance in, in your chest. If you're near that bell, you
can just kind of feel that vibrating inside.
I started feeling that kind of feeling.
So to come back to what you weretalking about, yeah, you can
have an idea. I'm going to have a business.
But if you start giving it a little bit of, you don't need to
do 47 hours a day or anything, just give it a little attention

(21:51):
every week or so. Hey, this is what I was
thinking. Yeah.
We said no, it's not quite working, let's go over here and
try this instead. It will still happen.
It'll just happen a little faster.
Or if you sit down and just say,OK, we're going to spend this
weekend, we're going to map thisout and then we're going to
start taking the steps on the map knowing full well that, you

(22:11):
know, step 17 is probably going to change, but we've got our 1st
20 steps mapped out. Let's go ahead and start, you
know, trucking down this road. What a beautiful analogy and I
and I absolutely love that I as like as you're explaining it,
I'm seeing it and I'm seeing howthe story unfolds and
incredible. I absolutely love it And I guess

(22:32):
that kind of leads me into this,right.
So it's really interesting because you've built businesses
and you've rebuilt yourself. Which one was harder and why was
it harder? You know, I think I'm going to
use the harder part is self reflection, building yourself.

(22:55):
And it's more, and this is, it'sprobably going to be different
for different folks, more for mebecause you have to turn around
and look back into the dark chapters of your life.
You know, sometimes I've called it the abyss of my life and make
some honest assessments. I don't have to admit these

(23:16):
things to Devin or anyone else except for whoever I feel like
exploring it with. But I have to admit it to
myself. And man, sometimes that is the
toughest person to be honest with.
Dude, why did you get hooked on drugs?
Well, because I was stupid. No, because you were a dumb ass.

(23:37):
Just go ahead and say it. Go ahead and you know, don't,
don't pat yourself on the back for getting yourself out of it.
Let's step back and find out whyit happened in the 1st place,
right? And then while you were there,
what about all the opportunitiesyou had to walk away that you
didn't take? What were those?
And they were all personal reasons.

(23:57):
And so only you know them. And sometimes you know that
having that conversation, like Michael Jackson said, with the
man in the mirror, is the hardest one to have.
And that's the person you're going to have to start with.
Because at the end of the day, that's the only person you were
born with. And it's the only person you're
probably going to die with is that man or woman in the mirror.

(24:20):
And you know, until you're standing at the pearly gates or
whoever you believe in addressing your creator, it's
that's the toughest person to answer to.
And I think that's where religions get it right, is if
you can look at your creator andadmit your faults and how you're

(24:40):
going to do better. Well, OK, well, let's go ahead
and do that with the person in the bathroom, you know, in that
piece of glass that you call me here in.
Do you, what do you think about the idea of, you know, when we
do get to that final moment seeing like that higher version
of our self or like the perfect being, like do you believe in
that? Like how much do you believe in

(25:00):
seeing that there is there was like a, a path to our like
happiest and most fulfilled version?
Do you believe that? Do I believe in being able to
see my path? I want to make sure I understand
the question. So there's like this, this thing
where people say like when you get to your final moments right
before you pass, you end up seeing basically yourself almost

(25:23):
like you're looking at a mirror.But this is like the perfect
version of how you're supposed to come out.
And then you kind of reflect on the choices and the decisions
that you made against, you know,maybe what could have happened.
Like, do you believe in that sort of?
I believe that there's a moment at the end of your life, whether
it's that moment where you're inyour life is about to cease or

(25:46):
whether it's you're standing in front of your creator and you're
reviewing your life. And they may make you aware of
here's what I had planned for you and here's where you went.
Doesn't mean what you ended up doing is better or worse than
what was originally on the on the agenda.

(26:10):
But yeah, I think there's times in your life.
I mean, I've had a couple of, I'll call them near death
experiences. Or it's like, oh, man, that
could have been the end of it right there.
We're in that split second of a moment.
Quite a few things go rushing through your head if you've take
the time to reflect on them. Is that good?

(26:30):
It is that bad. Yeah.
So from that sense 100% I know when when Krista passed away, I
literally held her in my arms and rocked her to sleep when I
called it one last time, as you know, as as she passed away
because we had to disconnect thethe life, the life elongating

(26:53):
machinery from her. So I rocked her to sleep.
So a lot of things were flashingthrough my mind and in my
imagination as I was talking to her and thanking her for the
lessons that she taught me and making some promises to her in
that moment. So yeah, I'd be, I think I'd be

(27:13):
remiss to think that when my life ends, I won't be seeing
something, whatever that might be, right?
So interesting, right? The like where things could go
and and the path and all that stuff, because then the
conversation goes well is then is there a specific path that we
should have taken and all of those things, but.
Here, that leads me. Here's the thought, because a

(27:34):
lot of folks will ask this question and if you've listened
to a number of podcasts, which I'm assuming your audience has,
someone will ask their guests, if you could go back and change
one thing about your life, what would it be?
And I've, you know, I've had this, this conversation with my
now wife. And fortunately or

(27:56):
unfortunately, I wouldn't go back and change anything because
now does it. That's not to say that I
wouldn't want to go through drugaddiction again and I wouldn't
want to lose my daughter. I wouldn't want those things to
happen. However, all of those things led
to who I am today. And because I am happy and

(28:19):
confident in the man I am right now, I couldn't change any of
those things because then that path deviates, you know, 1° in
1990, you know, is 470° different of a life in 2025, you
know, So I mean, since Krista passed away, I've had another

(28:41):
daughter. I got another one now and met an
amazing woman that I'm completely open with.
I just which one of those moments could I change to make
my life better and still be as confident as I am?
I don't know, you know, And it, it reminds me of one of the
original Star Trek movies were Captain Kirk the protagonist in

(29:07):
in the movie or the bad guy in the movie was kind of this
prophet kind of person. I wanted to say Jesus, but he
wasn't really a Jeezy. He was like a prophet.
And you were trying to get to the promised land in a Star Trek
kind of way. And then he had this ability to
take people's pain away from them, right?

(29:27):
Whatever pain that you're holding onto in your heart or in
your mind, he could take that from you, which gives you this
euphoric, ah, this is perfect. I feel great.
And he was doing this for all these people.
And that's how he got his followers and Captain Kirk.
And I can still remember the scene very vividly.
You can't take away my pain. My pain made me who I am.

(29:52):
And it's like, wow. It's like this epiphany moment.
Like, did you really hear that, ladies and gentlemen?
Because it is. If you're willing to look back
at your pain and learn the lesson from it, good or bad or
indifferent, then the pains has served you.
You've gone through the pain anyway.

(30:13):
You may as well find a way to freaking make it serve you
right. Well, I think that's a very
confident. I feel like that's a leader way
of looking at things, right? It's very confident way of
looking at things. Now, I know you talk openly
about scarcity thinking, you know, and why do you think right
now scarcity is? I feel like, do you, would you
agree with it being that there'sa lot of people that maybe act

(30:35):
and think out of scarcity right now?
I do think there's far too many people thinking and acting out
of scarcity. I could even go down the
conspiracy theory path of it's being pushed out into narratives
from whatever body you want to point your finger at.

(30:56):
It could be corporate America, it could be the government, it
could be whatever. Because I think that we as human
beings, we're easier to control when we're in fear.
And when you're in a fear mode, you're thinking of scarcity.
Oh my God, I need remember 2020,the whole toilet paper thing.

(31:18):
What a crazy nut job that was. I was actually working for a
client who was a redistributor of a number of different brands,
one of them being Kimberly-Clark, which of course,
many of us know creates toilet paper.
They were never short of toilet paper in their warehouse.
They were struggling to keep up with the demand.

(31:40):
But there was always toilet paper in these warehouses.
And they have 20 of them across the country.
So when there was no place in their warehouses where they were
out of toilet paper, but that wasn't the feeling out in the
world. So for whatever reason, that
thing picked up and just ran like crazy and shelves
everywhere were devoid of of toilet papers.

(32:02):
And I was like, what is going on?
So, yeah, I believe that there are those out there that want to
keep us in this perpetual state of of anxiety, whether it's fear
or otherwise, so that we are making poorer decisions.
Because if anyone out there, andthey're welcome to e-mail me and

(32:26):
challenge me on this easy to contact, we'll give links to
that later on that if we could. Anybody out there can just
pause, take a breath, look around, and I don't mean look at
Ron, all the rest of the lemmings running around like,
you know, chickens with their head cut off.
But just look around outside of your norm to see is it really

(32:49):
that bad? Is it really awful yet?
Yes, it's awful to be out of toilet paper, don't get me
wrong, but is it really? Wait a minute.
What is this all about? Because I can tell you I lived
about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee, so it was kind of
rural, but it wasn't in the sticks.

(33:12):
I'm now in the sticks. I moved four hours away from
that, and it takes me 30 minutesjust to get from my house to the
freeway. So I'm in the sticks, and I was
having a great conversation witha gentleman who's Amish, who
runs a local store out here, andwe were talking about that same
period of time. And in the 2020 timeline, he

(33:32):
goes, yeah, didn't affect me at all.
People came in here, bought stuff from my store like there
was no big deal. And he had no problems getting
the products he needed from his suppliers because no one was in
a panic mode running to him and saying, Oh, my God, I need to
buy all your toilet paper because there's a nationwide
shortage. They came in.

(33:52):
They maybe they bought a few extra rolls.
OK, good. They were good to go.
So there was, you know, it curtailed that panic.
He's like, yeah, I've still got toilet paper here.
And guess what, ladies and gentlemen, we know how to make
it would be something they wouldhave told them.
So if I can't get it, I know howto make it.

(34:13):
So there's that too, you know? And so it's, yeah, I'm, I'm off
on a tangent here, but you get what I'm saying.
I do and and I almost feel like the conversation code two
different ways here. It can go in the way of, you
know, conspiracies, which sometimes I do get down those
rabbit holes and things. But I also know that it is very

(34:36):
interesting. And I think this is something
that I've definitely preached a lot too.
It's, you know, if you don't like the things that you're
seeing, just change the things that you're looking at, you
know, and I think that that's that's the reality of it, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's here's a great,here's a great story for that.
So picture this if you would. Ladies and gentlemen, you're
walking with your friend. New York is really great for

(34:59):
this. A lot of times when you're
walking through the New York Cityscape, they'll be fences up
and I'll have little holes in the fence line to so that you
can pause and look through thereand see what they're building.
So imagine you're walking anywhere in your neighborhood,
in some other neighborhood, evenNew York City, and you and your

(35:20):
friends stop to look through oneof those holes.
Now you stop at the first one and they have to go 12 feet
further to stop and look at the second one.
You're both looking at the exactsame thing.
Maybe there's a big old cement truck parked by those two holes
where you can see past the cement truck and you could see
the big, beautiful landscape that they've cut the hole out

(35:42):
and they've got the pipes going up.
You can say, oh, this kind of thing's going to be like 50
stories tall. Meanwhile, what your friend can
see is a hubcap and some lug nuts and they're like, what the
hell is this? They're putting this big old
parking lot here. What's going on?
Same experience, 12 feet apart, just a perspective, right?

(36:06):
And instead of, you know, comingover and say, did you see what I
saw? And looking through your hole
from your perspective and going,oh, I see what's going on now.
And even vice versa. Well, what's he all pissed off
about? That's not what I saw.
Go over and look from their perspective.
Oh, I see what he was saying. He was looking at this, the

(36:26):
truck parked right here. He can't see all the beauty on
the other side of the truck because it's parked right there.
We'll come on over here and let me show you what I'm talking
about here. You know, so it's sometimes it's
just being willing to share yourperspective openly with another
person or maybe you're the otherperson that needs to come over
and see the other perspective. You know, you got to go from

(36:48):
both sides and that leads you right back to what I was talking
about earlier. If they keep you focused on
being fearful or anxious, that keeps you from doing that.
You know, you can talk about allthe issues that are screaming on
everyone's, you know, social media feeds racism and this,

(37:11):
that or the other thing everyone's all screaming about.
Well, is it really that bad? I, I say that as a, as a white
guy. So I, I don't, you know, I can't
have the perspective anyway. But I grew up, my dad was in the
military. We moved all over the place and
we know every creed, color, nationality and religion joins

(37:32):
the military. So I grew up with all these
people. So I, I look around and going,
that's not the perspective I grew up with.
I never saw anybody being held down by anybody else unless it
was the drill Sergeant trying tomake you do push ups.
I I don't know. So I, I love that and I
appreciate you sharing that because again, perspective is,

(37:54):
is so big in today and in your life, right?
And in the reality that you see.And I know you mentioned
earlier, you started with the podcast and is very vague in, in
terms of entrepreneurs. And then you once you get clear,
very crystal clear on you want to actually help parents, parent
entrepreneurs, you know, really escape for the for the parent

(38:14):
right now, I feel like their perspective is, you know,
they're at their job, they have limited time, they have limited
energy. They don't really know how they
can start putting time towards building a business on the side.
Like what would be that first real step that no one talks
about for a parent who wants to escape that 9:00 to 5:00?
Oh my gosh, I do an episode on this every week on this very

(38:36):
topic and then a newsletter twice a week on the very thing
it it. It's different for different
folks, but the best way to answer this question is to have
them pause for a moment and think of the problems their
friends, their peers come to them for solutions.

(38:58):
You could do the example of how did you get your kid to eat
those vegetables? How do you get your kids to eat
those vegetables on a regular basis without them screaming and
squabbling? OK, well, there's, there's a, a,
a method to the madness that caused that to happen.
That's not happening on other people's tables.
Or how do you make your grocery bill manageable and still feed

(39:22):
your kids, you know, effectively.
Well, there's probably there's definitely a mom out there that
has done that and doesn't is notthe one complaining when they're
sitting in their little parents circles about their grocery bill
because while they're not happy with how much money is at the
end of the month, they're definitely have figured out how

(39:43):
to make it work. Another one is a mom that was
like she had three kids and she was planning the 3rd birthday
party in that year. I once again, probably for the
100th time, had went to Google'sGoing Party planning checklist
and. She had the epiphany to saying
you know what, I keep going and searching for this.

(40:05):
Why don't I just create the solution and offer it to those
that I know and then end up selling it and she end up going
into chat. She knew nothing about AI at
this point. No coding experience, not techie
at all. She went into Chat GPTI think
she also went out to YouTube anddid a little OK on how do I
create one of these And within 72 minutes was what she told me.

(40:30):
She created her first party planning GBT and started selling
it because she had a problem that she was tired of relooking
for the solution every year to come up with ideas.
So she created the solution and then put it out there in the
marketplace. And I think she made eight, if
you remember correctly, 800 bucks the first month it was out

(40:51):
there. So really it doesn't take a long
time. You know, it's not like you're
she didn't have to go create an LLC and all that noise.
She found a problem and this is entrepreneurship one O 1 for
those that are in the space. She created a solution for the
problem. That's it.
And here's the thing, if someoneis coming to you frequently

(41:15):
asking the same question, and I had this experience and you're
like, doesn't everybody know this?
That is your space right there. And I, when I was back in my
Coca-Cola days, I built my firstcomputer and taught myself to
program when I was 1819. Yeah, and so it's like second

(41:36):
nature, so many things for me. So Lotus 123 came out and that
becomes later on Excel. So I've been using Excel from
its early days, you know, just so for me, my fingers are flying
around creating formulas and doing hacks and keyboard
shortcuts and the whole 9 yards.And I remember at Coca-Cola,

(41:59):
someone goes, could you teach people to do that?
I'm looking at them like, what you don't know how do this is
because it was simple stuff. It wasn't like, you know, I'm
doing, you know, index matching and V, look up this and I'll put
in some complex form. I was doing some of the basic
things saying here's what you need to do is you do this over
here and you get your totals andyou do that.

(42:20):
And they're like, I think you need to give us a class on this.
And that was my first epiphany moment, like, OK, not everybody
is as very well versed in this as I am, so I need to step back
and, you know, teach them at that level.
So whatever it is that you're good at, you're probably taking

(42:42):
it for granted. And people will keep asking you.
So that's usually the first place I lean into them.
It's OK. What do people come to you for
advice for? And it's usually links right up
with the other coaches. Call it this.
What is it you're passionate about?
I don't even have to say you're good at it.
Because if you're passionate about it and you lean into it,

(43:04):
you're going to get good at it. And as you well know, you don't
need to be a guru on a topic. You need to be 123 steps ahead
of the person that's asking you for help.
And if you're just that couple of steps ahead, A, you can
really relate to them because ithasn't been so long that you've

(43:26):
forgotten what they're going through.
And B, you know the language that they're still speaking.
Because as you progress through phases of live, phases of
business, phases of experience, you, some of the things get a
little cloudy. Some of us will remember a lot
of the things about I remember when, but usually we remember

(43:50):
the good stuff. It's not all, you know, you
remember the stuff's on the extreme.
It's the stuff in the middle. Those folks are really focused
on. I need to fix this.
So you you kind of forget about that and you feel a little
disconnected and they have a harder time relating with you.
Oh, that guy is so amazing at that.
I could never reach out to them.For them to teach me, you know,

(44:14):
they want someone reachable, youknow?
And there's like me, I would never reach out to Anthony
Robbins even if I thought I could afford him because he
teaches dignitaries and movie stars and doesn't mean he
couldn't teach me what it is I wanted to learn from him.

(44:35):
I just feel so out of his circleright now.
There was something about Zig Ziglar I always resonated with
and I did reach out to him a couple of times and met him at a
couple of the events and very approachable guy.
So is Jim Rohn. So there's the two different
swings in, you know, all three of those guys way up here on the

(45:00):
pedestal, personal development, right?
But one of them I looked at and I thought I could never reach
out to you because I know who you reach, you know who you
spend your days with, and it's not me.
And I don't feel like I'm there yet, you know?
Does that make sense? It does.
It absolutely makes sense. And I think that's even now,
right? Again, another thing that a lot

(45:22):
of people that I come across, you know, are running into where
it's like they want to be a figure of authority and they
want to show that they're doing all these incredible things.
But sometimes in doing that and saying like, I only work with
people that are doing 100 grand a month, you miss out on like
other people that, you know, could really use that help and
are like almost ready to do that.

(45:43):
So it's a very interesting point.
I love the story that you shared.
And I want to ask a quick, you know, question to this because I
love that idea of look at what real world people are asking you
for and then create the solution.
Now, of course, as we just, you know, finished talking about the
scarcity mind, how do you so someone goes and they realize

(46:03):
that there's a gap in the marketplace.
They realize they can do it, they create it.
But then, you know, how would you encourage someone to then
take that first step and ask them?
Because some people, they do, you know, tense up a little bit
when they, they start trying to ask for money, right?
Well, here's I would even step, take a step back and say, all
right, you've, you've seen the the gap in the marketplace.

(46:24):
You have an idea before you create anything let's you, you
can go one of a couple of ways. If you have the ability, like
maybe you have a Facebook group or whatever you're part of a, a,
a, a big arena of folks, reach out and say, Hey, would anyone
be interested in, don't say it like this because it sounds so

(46:46):
damn salesy, but you'll get the gist of what I'm talking about
here. Reach out and say, is anyone in
need for your idea? Right?
Or here's what's even better is you could create this simple
little, I'll call it a landing page.
You could use an e-mail autoresponder to create this

(47:06):
like kit.com and create yourselfa little landing page.
That is the wait list for your idea.
OK. And you want to go to wherever
your potential buyer would congregate online or offline for
that matter, and share ideas that would lead them to mention

(47:29):
this potential solution. OK.
Or go in there and find the comment threads that are like
talking about this problem. And if there's none out there,
there's probably nobody in need of this solution, right?
So you, you've spotted the problem.
So wherever you spotted the problem go, hey, I think there

(47:51):
might be something in the makinghere.
Would you jump? You know, and then you send them
to the wait list. You're not asking them to buy
anything. You can even go over, go so far
and say, you know what, here's what I want to do.
I want to create the solution tothis problem, but I need 10
people to tell me that they would try it.

(48:12):
I'm not looking to charge you anything.
I'm just looking to get your feedback because ladies and
gentlemen, believe it or not, you may have an app idea and
you're like, I don't know how tocode an app.
Tracy. That's OK.
She didn't know how to create a GPT and she did it in 72
minutes. There's this thing called vibe
coding. I don't want to take us down
another rabbit hole, but you could literally go to a platform

(48:35):
and say, here's what I want you to create, right?
And speak into the microphone and then it will create it for
you front end and back end. So here's what you do to
continue on that say, hey, I just need 10 people to try this
solution. And if no one signs up, well,
then you, the only thing you've done is you've wasted 10 minutes
of your time reaching out to folks trying to get them.

(48:57):
If people sign up, now you've got some interest.
Well, now you go ahead and you create the bare bones version of
the solution. And the reason I say bare bones
version is because you want their feedback and here's why
you want it. Even though you're the quote UN
quote expert, you're going to not see problems that they're

(49:20):
having that they may not have articulated in their complaints
online, right? So let's say let's go to the
party planner idea. Maybe people are talking about
man, it's I hate party planning.I just, there's so many options
out there. I search for it online and I get
27. Right.
Well, how do you solve for that?Well, maybe you let me give you

(49:42):
things within that narrow 5 mileradius, 10 mile radius.
Oh, what's your budget? What are the age groups?
So these are the things you're going to plug in there and
they're going to tell you. Yeah, but my kids is afraid of
clowns. Oh, well, I didn't think about.
Let's exclude certain things. No clowns, no animals.

(50:02):
I'm allergic to horses. Do not bring a horse around me
because I will punch you in the eye.
No, I'm kidding. I will break out in hives.
So. So now you're thinking, oh, I
would have never thought of that.
So I'm going to put those on there too.
So you're going to create the bare bones.
They're going to test it and they're going to come back with
those kind of suggestions. You're like, oh, those are great
ideas and you're going to implement them and you're going

(50:25):
to have them check it out again.OK, cool.
Until you get to the point wherethey're like, man, I'm going to
use this on the regular, whatever the regular is.
Now you can ask them how much doyou think this is worth?
How much would you pay for Devinfor this solution right here.
And be honest with me, if it's only worth 9 bucks, cool.

(50:45):
Tell me 9 bucks if you believe it's worth $199.
I want to know that too. So now you're getting real world
inputs on how to make this thingthe best idea possible without
putting all that work upfront and being shot down out of the
gates or spending resources on ideas that are probably great

(51:07):
ideas, but the market isn't ready for them yet, right?
You're going to have all these ideas because you're further
along on the path and they're back on Step 2.
And you've already created this thing in your head and you're
like, I've used it in my head. I know I've got all these
solutions. They're like, I don't care, just
do that for me. OK, cool.

(51:28):
That's what I'm going to do for you, right?
And so then you'll start gettingthat feedback loop.
Plus you now have people that will say, yes, this thing is
awesome. I've been using it for a month
now and it hasn't cost you anything except for some effort,
right? That that would be the first
path I would I would OfferUp. Yeah, I love that it's, it's the

(51:51):
testimonials, right? It's a social credibility,
social currency, right? And and just really testing it
with the MVP, the minimum viableproduct.
So I know again, AI is even a big part of your work today.
I want to ask this. So where do you see AI actually
like leveling the playing field for small creators or people

(52:14):
that have like a side hustle? That's a great question.
I think for me it's, it allows them to birth ideas faster.
And here's what I mean by that. So there's all kinds of great
copywriters out there. And if you can get the good
hooks right, they're always talking about you need to have a

(52:36):
good hook. You got to hook them in the
first couple of seconds and thenyou got to give deliver some
content. Do you have to re hook them
again? Then you got to give them a call
to action, you know, and the, the poor mom and dad's out there
going, Oh my God, I what am I going to do?
OK, well, just go to your favorite AI tool, ChatGPT,

(52:56):
Gemini, whatever you choose and say, hey, here's what I'm
thinking about doing. Or you know, maybe it just gives
you, here's what I do. I'm a mom, I've got 4 kids.
I've you, you put in all this. Let me step back even further.
Ask the tool to ask you the clarifying questions.

(53:16):
It needs to fill in the blanks for you to complete whatever
task you're trying to create. So let's say my daughter bakes
sourdough bread. She does.
She loves it. OK, I'm getting ready to start a
a cottage based sourdough bread business.
What do I need to do? You don't know what you don't

(53:36):
know. AI knows what you don't know,
but it needs to know the context.
So you've just given it the context and you've told it to
ask you the clarifying questionsthat it needs to give you the
best output. And it's going to go through and
ask the questions. OK, cool.
Now I'd like you to create me, Idon't know, a week's worth of
social media content. Are there any additional

(53:58):
clarifying questions you need answered?
Boom, going to start doing that.And as you start having this two
way conversation, it's going to learn more about you.
You're going to learn more abouthow to prompt it.
And there are even times when itsay, you know what?
I want to create a lead magnet for this MVP we were just

(54:19):
talking about. And it could if you just did
that and told it what it was youdid or even gave it access to
the the tool itself, you can go learn about it.
It'll give you a lead magnet. If, however, you did something
like, all right, here's what I want you to do, I want you to
create a lead magnet, yadda, yadda, yadda, just like I
explained. Or if you need more information,

(54:42):
give me the perfect prompt to give you to create an enticing
lead magnet that's going to havepeople just trembling over my
front door to get this lead magnet.
And it will go and it will create you this amazing prompt
you would have never thought Create.

(55:03):
Do two things. One, take a minute and read how
the prompt is structured and you're going to Start learning
how to actually interact with the AI.
At that point, you know, you're going to want to do things like,
you know, give it a roll, give it a context, give it how you
want the output laid out and andgive it a stopping point that
went to very important one. So many people don't give it a

(55:23):
stopping point and it creates pages and pages are like, Oh my
God, I can't read through all this anyway.
And then put the prompt in and then like come back with with
the feedback. It's really about, it's like
having a conversation with a coach, right?
Or having a conversation with your best friend.
You wanted to be nice to you when you needed to be nice to

(55:46):
you, but you wanted to whack it.You upside the head when you're
being a dummy. OK, so tell it that, right that
make sense? Yeah, and I love that answer
too, because you're right. Like there's we could even go
into, you know, prompt engineering and all that stuff
because you're right. Like a lot of people are using
chat, but they'll say, hey, build me this thing and then
just build something and then they just take it forward.

(56:06):
But yeah, if you knew how to askthe right questions, that's one
of the favorite things that I learned of, hey, I'm trying to
build this thing. Ask me questions that you need.
So that way we can make it perfect.
And yeah, again, golden gem for everyone here, Tracy, this has
been incredible. Thank you.
Yeah, I was getting ready to sayI had this assembled across this
GPT that creates, I'm going to call them hooks.

(56:31):
It called them some. It called them attention
hijackers, which is basically what a hook is, right?
And it does it from 9 different psychological aspects, you know,
the brain teaser, the hidden truth aspect.
And you know, and this GPT wouldtake whatever ideas.
So tell me about what it is. So if I wanted to do a social

(56:54):
media post, I want to do some social media post about the bald
eagle in my backyard. I'll put that in there.
And it would give me like 30 different attention grabbing
hooks, things I would have neverthought of.
And what's really cool about that is I will read through
those. And as I used it more and more,
my mind started coming up with my own Tracy version of these

(57:16):
hooks. So yes, I'm relying on ChatGPT
or AI to feed me to prime my ownbrain to think like this.
And then there was another one that helped me build called
Actions. OK, cool.
Now I've got the two toughest parts.
I've got the hook to get your attention and I've got that CTA,

(57:38):
which is, you know, that make that buyer click or pull out the
wallet or whatever it is. Now all I have to do is fill in
the valuable content in the middle, which is what I want to
focus on in the 1st place. And that's where AI really helps
us out. The points where you're
struggling. I'll call it the grunt work.

(58:00):
Let AI help you out and let AI help you out to the point where
you're learning how to do it better than you can do it now
and still relying on it to help keep training you, right?
Because eventually you're going to go, oh, I got a great idea
and you'll see it gave you a similar idea, like I'm going to
go with mine because it's human and it's me, right?

(58:21):
And the same thing with the CTAS, you know, let it train you
with the content it has from allthe amazing copywriters that
have been out there in in this particular example.
Right. I love that that's again another
golden gem for for the listeners.
And I think that takes me to, you know, the second last
question here, Tracy, for the listeners at home.

(58:44):
And we got to this point of the conversation, what is like a
lesson, a big take away, something that you would want to
leave the listeners with when they get to this point, this, if
at all. I mean, all of this was
incredible, but this would, you know, really put the icing on
the cake. I'm going to lean on something
that started changing my life back when I was 16.

(59:06):
And I learned this from all people.
Bruce Lee, not personally, unfortunately, but from his book
called The Tao of Yikondo, whichI bought because I thought it
was going to help teach me to fight like Bruce Lee, which we
saw in the theaters. And it was amazing as a kid, but
it was really a book chock full of philosophy.
And the philosophy I want to leave you with is absorb what's

(59:28):
useful, discard the rest, and here's the magic and add what's
uniquely you. So if you've gotten anything of
value out of this podcast or have any of other of Devin's
episodes, absorb what's useful and discard the rest.
I'm not saying throw it away. Maybe you just put it up on the

(59:49):
shelf and then you add what's uniquely you.
I can come back to when I was talking about sort of doing
coaching with the folks that were leaning in and asking me.
It's because I absorbed what I thought was useful at the time.
I put the rest of it up on the shelf.
It's still up on my shelves overhere in my bookcase.
And then I add something that was uniquely me.
So you keep doing that through all the parts of your life,

(01:00:12):
business, relationships, spirituality, you're going to
come out on top. Love that.
I think that was one of my favorite final send offs.
So powerful. And Bruce Lee, we love Bruce
Lee. So yes, Tracy, this has been
incredible. For the folks at home that want
to learn more about how to work with you or your podcast, things
like that, where can they go to to find you?

(01:00:35):
The easiest place to send them 'cause we don't have two
podcasts, but I want to give them one call to action.
Let's send them to the dark horse.
Entrepreneur.com and all the socials will be across the top
and then if you wanted to check out the other one, it will it
will refer you over there as well.
Incredible. So that link will be in the
comments section will be the first link.
I highly recommend going and checking out what Tracy is up

(01:00:58):
to. Tracy, this has been incredible.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
And yes, for the listener, thankyou so much for tuning in.
I hope you got as much value outof this as I did.
So of course, feel free to sharethe show, subscribe, all that
jazz. All the links will be down
below. Appreciate you as always.

(01:01:19):
I'll catch you on the next one. If you enjoy today's episode,
please like, comment, share, subscribe to it all.
You know, I appreciate it. And as always.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 68: Building Resilience and Leveraging AI w/ Tracy Brinkmann

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