January 21, 2025 • 14 mins
Episode Summary: In this episode, Tracie Root shares the story of how Gather evolved into The Gather Community, exploring the lessons learned along the way—from transitioning from in-person events to creating an online community during the pandemic, to overcoming obstacles and building a supportive space for women to thrive.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How Tracie transitioned from a corporate career to becoming a coach and entrepreneur.
- The journey of creating an in-person space for community events in Santa Cruz, California.
- Challenges faced during the pandemic and the shift to virtual events.
- The realization that community is not about physical spaces, but about connection and support.
- Key lessons on building a community, taking bold steps, and navigating uncertainty.
Actionable Tips from Tracie:
- If you can imagine something and believe in its value, go create it—whether online or in person.
- You don’t have to know everything to take action—start with what you can, and figure it out as you go.
- Embrace the unknown and keep moving forward, even if you stumble along the way.
Memorable Quote: "Your bold and brilliant future starts in your imagination. Then you make decisions based on what you imagined, and you take a step in that direction."
Bold Moment of the Episode: Tracie’s bold decision to pivot from running in-person events to launching a virtual community during the pandemic, which ultimately expanded The Gather Community across the globe.
Connect with Tracie Root:
- Website: https://www.tracieroot.com/links
Join the Bold and Brilliant Podcast Community: Stay connected, share your thoughts, and be part of a community of bold, brilliant women! Https://www.tracieroot.com/podcast
Rate & Review: If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform! Your support helps us reach more listeners and keep the bold stories coming!
Thank you for supporting The Bold and Brilliant Podcast!
Find out what's up with Tracie by connecting on your favorite social media channel, and with The Gather Community by joining us at an upcoming online event or receiving our mailing list. Go to:
https://www.tracieroot.com/links
to find upcoming events, workshops, courses and more!
We're just getting started, so I hope you subscribed, and please leave a review so we can start building some podcast-momentum!
xoxo
Your host,
Tracie Root
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Audio Only - All Partic (00:00):
Welcome to the Bold and Brilliant
podcast, where women leadersshare inspiring stories about
the daring decisions they madeto shape their businesses, their
lives, and their careers.
Today, I have a short soloepisode for you, telling you the
story of how Gather became TheGather Community.
(00:24):
I'm Tracie Root.
The founder of The GatherCommunity and the founder of The
Bold and Brilliant Podcast.
So let's dig in.
I have been a coach since 2012 Iwas a project manager for a
consulting firm working on siteat large corporations in Silicon
Valley I decided that I neededto take control of my personal
(00:46):
health and wellbeing, and Ifound a coach to help me do
that.
This was my first realunderstanding of what coaching
could do for a person.
And while the health part.
Of what I needed was reallyimportant to me.
The things that resonated for meat that time were the focus on
(01:07):
goal setting personaldevelopment, understanding your
own mindset, and that you candecide what you want out of
life.
When the opportunity arose forme to become a coach, I stepped
in with both feet within sixmonths I decided to leave my
corporate job and become a coachfull time.
(01:30):
I learned how to be anentrepreneur over the next
couple of years, because that'snot a light switch that you can
just turn on and know how to.
Work for yourself.
If you've never done it before,within a couple of years,
working with clients one on oneand having a small team where we
would do group trainings andactivities.
I realized that I wanted toteach specifically goal setting.
(01:55):
Structure in your life, in yourbusiness, how to get what you
wanted out of your own life.
And I wanted to do this one onone with clients.
So that's where I started myentrepreneurial journey of
getting from there to here.
Ever since then, I've beenworking with clients in these
(02:15):
ways, helping them understandhow their choices.
Form their futures and also howto build community around
themselves, because when we havecommunity around us, we are way
more likely to be successful in2018.
I had a thought that I wanted tostart doing group.
(02:36):
Activities in person, the firstevent that I scheduled was a
vision board workshop.
This was exciting to me becauseI love art.
I love collage.
I realized that I had been doingthings like vision boards ever
since I was young.
(02:57):
My high school photo albumincluded not only photos, but
clippings from magazines, quotesfrom people, words.
I would take clippings out ofmagazines and paste them next to
my pictures.
Things about, Hey, gorgeous, oryou're beautiful, or achieve
(03:18):
your dreams because this wasreally knit into my own DNA, I
wanted to bring it to otherpeople in a structured way where
we could have fun creating art.
That helped us believe inourselves and what we could
accomplish that 1st vision boardworkshop happened in 2018, and
it was really hard in thatmoment to find a location for
(03:42):
that class to happen.
I live in Santa Cruz,California, where there's a lot
of small business.
There's not a lot of availablespace.
It's quite expensive, as youmight imagine, and to rent a
room where I could hold thisvision board workshop proved
(04:03):
really challenging.
Many of the spaces that Iencountered were either really
expensive as a base, likehotels, they were not only
expensive, but they wanted youto buy their food, get catering,
pay for water, basically.
Other places that I found.
(04:24):
We're like the back of a pizzaparlor which is a perfectly fine
place to have a pizza party, butnot to create the kind of
mindset and thought processesthat I was hoping to do with my
clients at this workshop.
And same thing went for thelocal community centers.
(04:46):
They were very kind of middleschool gym vibe.
And that's not really where wewant to be imagining our
brilliant futures.
So I decided since my corporatebackground and education was in
interior design and projectmanagement that I would create a
room of my own and make it havethe vibe and the amenities and
(05:11):
be in a location that would workfor the things I wanted to
create in my business.
I found corporate, somecommercial real estate.
I found a space that didn't workout.
And then I found another space.
I was determined to make thisspace work.
(05:33):
There were things I needed tolearn though, things like zoning
requirements.
I wanted to be in downtown SantaCruz.
I didn't know that in a downtowndistrict, the city really wanted
restaurants and retail.
But I wasn't going to berestaurant or retail.
I considered having retail justto make this process easy, but
(05:54):
it wasn't the purpose.
So I had to figure out how toexplain the space to the city's
zoning commission, where theywould let me do my business at
this location.
Luckily, that all worked out.
It was all very simple actually,but it was a mystery for a long
time until I figured out how togo through the steps.
(06:16):
We got approved in zoning.
It was very exciting.
Literally no one was there atthe zoning commission, except
for myself my husband my realtorthe commissioner and their
assistant, but it happened.
I was very excited.
We signed the lease and we beganrenovating the space.
Now, did you know that when yousign a commercial lease, you
(06:37):
don't start paying money rightaway?
That was very strange as someonewho'd only ever.
Rented residential apartmentswhere you have to pay not only
rent starting on the day youmove in, but a deposit before
that.
You don't do that for commercialspace.
It's very different.
So that was also a big learningcurve.
(07:00):
This lease was ginormous.
I had to have it reviewed by anattorney because I had no idea
what I was doing.
Thankfully, I had legal shieldand I could have an attorney
look at that.
I learned so much as we wererenovating, I learned about,
what contractors would want tocharge, what I could do myself,
my family.
I really created this space.
(07:23):
We did all of it ourselves.
Ikea cabinets installed thefloor painted.
We did so much for the space.
Ultimately, we completed it justbefore our grand opening party
on October 13th, 2019.
(07:43):
Now, when I say that date in alive room where I'm speaking,
people all go, Oh no, 2019,October.
Well, that's right.
Five months later, we had toturn out the lights, sanitize
the door handles and waitbecause the pandemic lockdown
(08:06):
had begun.
I live in California.
We were very locked down for along time.
Over the next couple of years,we tried to figure out how this
whole thing was going to work.
The space gather is what wecalled it.
The space was only a piece ofwhat I was trying to accomplish.
I didn't know it in thebeginning, but once we had to
(08:28):
close down, I realized.
The goal was never to have aroom in a town.
I mean, it was fun.
It had a great vibe.
I had a nice sofa.
We had wifi, coffee, water, allthe tables and chairs, all the
things that you need to have agreat event space.
And we had networking and we hada music event and book readings
(08:50):
and we had chamber like luncheonthings.
But when we couldn't do that inperson anymore, I realized the
truth, which was the gather wasnot about a room.
It was about bringing peopletogether in community to support
(09:13):
each other in life and business.
So when the lockdown began andwe all were at home trying to
figure out what was going tohappen next.
I opened up my zoom room andsaid, I don't know what's
happening and you don't knowwhat's happening, but why don't
we come on zoom figure it outtogether and support each other.
(09:35):
That was the first coworkingsession we scheduled in the
beginning of the pandemic.
I've been doing them every weekever since for four years,
because gather, is not about.
A room, the gather community isabout bringing people together
in support of their lives oftheir businesses of what they're
(09:58):
trying to accomplish and andmaking sure that those circles.
Of influence, those circles ofconnection continue to grow no
matter where you are.
Now it's 2025.
It's been a long time since thatlockdown happened and we are 100
(10:18):
percent back in person excepteveryone understands the value
of connecting to people acrossthe planet way more than they
did back in 2019 and early 2020.
We thought that certain things.
Were in person.
We didn't network on zoom, butwe do now we have in gather
(10:43):
community.
We have networking.
We have co working.
We have workshops.
We have multi speaker summits.
All from the convenience.
Of our own home offices on ourzoom screen without having to
pay for hotels and travel.
There are hundreds of peoplethat I've met across the planet
(11:05):
that I never would have met hadthis not happened.
That to me is one of the greatgifts of the pandemic is being
able to meet people.
All across the world that Inever would have met otherwise.
And so why do I tell you thestory about gather to the gather
(11:28):
community?
There's a few key things that Iwant to recap.
One is a community is whereveryou build it.
It can be online.
It can be in person.
It can be a small group.
It can be a large group,whatever it is that you want to
create, you can.
If you can imagine it and youfeel like there's value there
(11:51):
and people would get a lot outof it, go create it, go make it
happen.
You can do that.
What else do I want to shareabout gather to the gather
community?
You don't have to know how to doeverything in order to make
things happen.
There's so much that I didn'tknow about creating a room in a
(12:12):
city.
And there's so much that wedidn't know.
About how to navigate a globalpandemic and keep our
businesses, not only surviving,but thriving and growing.
When we don't know what thefuture holds, it doesn't mean
that we have to stop.
It means we have to keep goingand understand that the future
(12:36):
is a mystery.
It always has been.
We just thought we knew what wasgoing to happen, but now we know
we may not know what's going tohappen and that's okay.
We're going to figure it out aswe go.
We're going to leverage therelationships that we have, the
knowledge we've gathered, andwe're going to take risks.
We're going to be bold so thatwe can create that brilliant
(12:59):
future that's in our minds.
And that's really what I wantedto share today, that your bold
and brilliant future.
is based starting in yourimagination and then you make
decisions based on what youimagined so that you can take a
step in that direction and thenanother that next step you might
(13:22):
trip a little bit and that'sokay because when you trip you
might scrape your elbow butthat's okay.
Get back up, put a little sip ofwater on that elbow and take the
next step again, because whenyou take bold steps toward your
brilliant future, you are notonly going to be moving forward
(13:47):
in having that progress, butyou're also going to feel
motivated and self encouraged,and you're gonna be ready
personally and professionally.
And that's what it's all about.
So thanks for listening today tothe bold and brilliant podcast.
A quick episode here for youfrom me to you to help you
(14:10):
understand a little bit aboutwhy this podcast exists, why I
do what I do and how you canconnect with me and the rest of
the gather community I hopeyou'll join us.
I hope that you'll listen tofuture episodes.
We're just getting started here.
So be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite listening platform and
we'll see you at the nextepisode.
(14:31):
Thanks.
Welcome to the Bold and Brilliant
podcast, where women leadersshare inspiring stories about
the daring decisions they madeto shape their businesses, their
lives, and their careers.
Today, I have a short soloepisode for you, telling you the
story of how Gather became TheGather Community.
(00:24):
I'm Tracie Root.
The founder of The GatherCommunity and the founder of The
Bold and Brilliant Podcast.
So let's dig in.
I have been a coach since 2012 Iwas a project manager for a
consulting firm working on siteat large corporations in Silicon
Valley I decided that I neededto take control of my personal
(00:46):
health and wellbeing, and Ifound a coach to help me do
that.
This was my first realunderstanding of what coaching
could do for a person.
And while the health part.
Of what I needed was reallyimportant to me.
The things that resonated for meat that time were the focus on
(01:07):
goal setting personaldevelopment, understanding your
own mindset, and that you candecide what you want out of
life.
When the opportunity arose forme to become a coach, I stepped
in with both feet within sixmonths I decided to leave my
corporate job and become a coachfull time.
(01:30):
I learned how to be anentrepreneur over the next
couple of years, because that'snot a light switch that you can
just turn on and know how to.
Work for yourself.
If you've never done it before,within a couple of years,
working with clients one on oneand having a small team where we
would do group trainings andactivities.
I realized that I wanted toteach specifically goal setting.
(01:55):
Structure in your life, in yourbusiness, how to get what you
wanted out of your own life.
And I wanted to do this one onone with clients.
So that's where I started myentrepreneurial journey of
getting from there to here.
Ever since then, I've beenworking with clients in these
(02:15):
ways, helping them understandhow their choices.
Form their futures and also howto build community around
themselves, because when we havecommunity around us, we are way
more likely to be successful in2018.
I had a thought that I wanted tostart doing group.
(02:36):
Activities in person, the firstevent that I scheduled was a
vision board workshop.
This was exciting to me becauseI love art.
I love collage.
I realized that I had been doingthings like vision boards ever
since I was young.
(02:57):
My high school photo albumincluded not only photos, but
clippings from magazines, quotesfrom people, words.
I would take clippings out ofmagazines and paste them next to
my pictures.
Things about, Hey, gorgeous, oryou're beautiful, or achieve
(03:18):
your dreams because this wasreally knit into my own DNA, I
wanted to bring it to otherpeople in a structured way where
we could have fun creating art.
That helped us believe inourselves and what we could
accomplish that 1st vision boardworkshop happened in 2018, and
it was really hard in thatmoment to find a location for
(03:42):
that class to happen.
I live in Santa Cruz,California, where there's a lot
of small business.
There's not a lot of availablespace.
It's quite expensive, as youmight imagine, and to rent a
room where I could hold thisvision board workshop proved
(04:03):
really challenging.
Many of the spaces that Iencountered were either really
expensive as a base, likehotels, they were not only
expensive, but they wanted youto buy their food, get catering,
pay for water, basically.
Other places that I found.
(04:24):
We're like the back of a pizzaparlor which is a perfectly fine
place to have a pizza party, butnot to create the kind of
mindset and thought processesthat I was hoping to do with my
clients at this workshop.
And same thing went for thelocal community centers.
(04:46):
They were very kind of middleschool gym vibe.
And that's not really where wewant to be imagining our
brilliant futures.
So I decided since my corporatebackground and education was in
interior design and projectmanagement that I would create a
room of my own and make it havethe vibe and the amenities and
(05:11):
be in a location that would workfor the things I wanted to
create in my business.
I found corporate, somecommercial real estate.
I found a space that didn't workout.
And then I found another space.
I was determined to make thisspace work.
(05:33):
There were things I needed tolearn though, things like zoning
requirements.
I wanted to be in downtown SantaCruz.
I didn't know that in a downtowndistrict, the city really wanted
restaurants and retail.
But I wasn't going to berestaurant or retail.
I considered having retail justto make this process easy, but
(05:54):
it wasn't the purpose.
So I had to figure out how toexplain the space to the city's
zoning commission, where theywould let me do my business at
this location.
Luckily, that all worked out.
It was all very simple actually,but it was a mystery for a long
time until I figured out how togo through the steps.
(06:16):
We got approved in zoning.
It was very exciting.
Literally no one was there atthe zoning commission, except
for myself my husband my realtorthe commissioner and their
assistant, but it happened.
I was very excited.
We signed the lease and we beganrenovating the space.
Now, did you know that when yousign a commercial lease, you
(06:37):
don't start paying money rightaway?
That was very strange as someonewho'd only ever.
Rented residential apartmentswhere you have to pay not only
rent starting on the day youmove in, but a deposit before
that.
You don't do that for commercialspace.
It's very different.
So that was also a big learningcurve.
(07:00):
This lease was ginormous.
I had to have it reviewed by anattorney because I had no idea
what I was doing.
Thankfully, I had legal shieldand I could have an attorney
look at that.
I learned so much as we wererenovating, I learned about,
what contractors would want tocharge, what I could do myself,
my family.
I really created this space.
(07:23):
We did all of it ourselves.
Ikea cabinets installed thefloor painted.
We did so much for the space.
Ultimately, we completed it justbefore our grand opening party
on October 13th, 2019.
(07:43):
Now, when I say that date in alive room where I'm speaking,
people all go, Oh no, 2019,October.
Well, that's right.
Five months later, we had toturn out the lights, sanitize
the door handles and waitbecause the pandemic lockdown
(08:06):
had begun.
I live in California.
We were very locked down for along time.
Over the next couple of years,we tried to figure out how this
whole thing was going to work.
The space gather is what wecalled it.
The space was only a piece ofwhat I was trying to accomplish.
I didn't know it in thebeginning, but once we had to
(08:28):
close down, I realized.
The goal was never to have aroom in a town.
I mean, it was fun.
It had a great vibe.
I had a nice sofa.
We had wifi, coffee, water, allthe tables and chairs, all the
things that you need to have agreat event space.
And we had networking and we hada music event and book readings
(08:50):
and we had chamber like luncheonthings.
But when we couldn't do that inperson anymore, I realized the
truth, which was the gather wasnot about a room.
It was about bringing peopletogether in community to support
(09:13):
each other in life and business.
So when the lockdown began andwe all were at home trying to
figure out what was going tohappen next.
I opened up my zoom room andsaid, I don't know what's
happening and you don't knowwhat's happening, but why don't
we come on zoom figure it outtogether and support each other.
(09:35):
That was the first coworkingsession we scheduled in the
beginning of the pandemic.
I've been doing them every weekever since for four years,
because gather, is not about.
A room, the gather community isabout bringing people together
in support of their lives oftheir businesses of what they're
(09:58):
trying to accomplish and andmaking sure that those circles.
Of influence, those circles ofconnection continue to grow no
matter where you are.
Now it's 2025.
It's been a long time since thatlockdown happened and we are 100
(10:18):
percent back in person excepteveryone understands the value
of connecting to people acrossthe planet way more than they
did back in 2019 and early 2020.
We thought that certain things.
Were in person.
We didn't network on zoom, butwe do now we have in gather
(10:43):
community.
We have networking.
We have co working.
We have workshops.
We have multi speaker summits.
All from the convenience.
Of our own home offices on ourzoom screen without having to
pay for hotels and travel.
There are hundreds of peoplethat I've met across the planet
(11:05):
that I never would have met hadthis not happened.
That to me is one of the greatgifts of the pandemic is being
able to meet people.
All across the world that Inever would have met otherwise.
And so why do I tell you thestory about gather to the gather
(11:28):
community?
There's a few key things that Iwant to recap.
One is a community is whereveryou build it.
It can be online.
It can be in person.
It can be a small group.
It can be a large group,whatever it is that you want to
create, you can.
If you can imagine it and youfeel like there's value there
(11:51):
and people would get a lot outof it, go create it, go make it
happen.
You can do that.
What else do I want to shareabout gather to the gather
community?
You don't have to know how to doeverything in order to make
things happen.
There's so much that I didn'tknow about creating a room in a
(12:12):
city.
And there's so much that wedidn't know.
About how to navigate a globalpandemic and keep our
businesses, not only surviving,but thriving and growing.
When we don't know what thefuture holds, it doesn't mean
that we have to stop.
It means we have to keep goingand understand that the future
(12:36):
is a mystery.
It always has been.
We just thought we knew what wasgoing to happen, but now we know
we may not know what's going tohappen and that's okay.
We're going to figure it out aswe go.
We're going to leverage therelationships that we have, the
knowledge we've gathered, andwe're going to take risks.
We're going to be bold so thatwe can create that brilliant
(12:59):
future that's in our minds.
And that's really what I wantedto share today, that your bold
and brilliant future.
is based starting in yourimagination and then you make
decisions based on what youimagined so that you can take a
step in that direction and thenanother that next step you might
(13:22):
trip a little bit and that'sokay because when you trip you
might scrape your elbow butthat's okay.
Get back up, put a little sip ofwater on that elbow and take the
next step again, because whenyou take bold steps toward your
brilliant future, you are notonly going to be moving forward
(13:47):
in having that progress, butyou're also going to feel
motivated and self encouraged,and you're gonna be ready
personally and professionally.
And that's what it's all about.
So thanks for listening today tothe bold and brilliant podcast.
A quick episode here for youfrom me to you to help you
(14:10):
understand a little bit aboutwhy this podcast exists, why I
do what I do and how you canconnect with me and the rest of
the gather community I hopeyou'll join us.
I hope that you'll listen tofuture episodes.
We're just getting started here.
So be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite listening platform and
we'll see you at the nextepisode.
(14:31):
Thanks.
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