We were lucky to catch up with Tracy Ekeocha recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tracy , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Indulging in personal development, I’d say, is what I do differently from the industry standards. Most companies and people do not emphasize enough or even talk about personal development. I was fortunate to have amazing mentors that helped me understand the importance of it. I did this by reading several self-help books and attending 50+ conferences/seminars for 10+ years. This form of self-education helps you become a better communicator, increase self-esteem, increase self-awareness, and overall enhance emotional intelligence. Which, in return, improves skills and performance in the work environment. It also helps with relationships outside of work, which helps with a better quality of life. Improving your personal life outside of corporate America is incredibly vital because that also can have a huge effect in the workplace.

Corporate America can be a very cut throat and toxic environment. People tend to have the mindset to look out for themselves and step over others to get ahead. Which can create a cancerous culture within an organization/company. Therefore, it’s important for people, especially in leadership roles, to grasp the idea of personal development. If your leaders are not working hard outside of work to become a better version of themselves it’s highly unlikely their employees will do the same. Everything rises and falls on leadership so I decided to lead by example and do the little things to get ahead.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Being in sales and a content creator was something I never really wanted to do. I got introduced to the sales industry in grad school by a fraternity brother. I was hesitant at first because I associated sales with selfish, manipulative people that are not trustworthy. When in reality, the best salesmen in the world are the ones that are the most genuine and trustworthy. Once I realized and understood that it changed my perspective about sales. Especially when I realized the type of money and lifestyle you could obtain from it. The idea of not having a cap of how much money you can make and getting paid for how hard you work intrigued me.

Last year I stated I wanted to get into the Tech industry and I’m proud to say I’m doing just that. I’m currently selling logistics software to enterprise businesses. I’m not a tech savvy person so jumping into tech was different at first, but it’s exciting because the opportunities are limitless. Austin, Texas is becoming a big Tech hub and I’m going to capitalize on that industry.

As for Tik Tok, when I got introduced to it, I honestly thought it was for teenagers, but the pandemic happened and I got extremely bored. So, I started making Tik Toks for fun and within 7 months I went from 50 followers to 79,000 followers. My content is all over the place and I do not have a specific niche. I post anything from positive uplifting videos to very random goofy content. My friends always say I’m and id*ot so why not show the world via Tik Tok lol. In all seriousness, when my following grew, I saw an opportunity to make extra income as a creator so I began to take it seriously. I posted more and started going live to engage with my audience.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Yes, the books that significantly impacted me would be “How To Win Friends & Influence People”, “The Dream Manager”, and “Tribal Leadership”.

The main message in “How To Win Friends & Influence People” is when you change your behaviors it can change the behaviors of the people around you in a positive way. This book educates you on the philosophies that help you better understand and relate to people. Which helps you become more likable and improve your relationships. What I love the most about these principles are they will not work effectively unless you are genuine with it. Overall, the best leaders influence behaviors through leadership and this book deeply helped me with that.

Tribal Leadership demonstrates how leaders can evaluate their organization’s culture on a 1-5 scale (1. Life Sucks, 2. My Life Sucks 3. I’m Great 4. We are Great, & 5. Life Is Great) and then implement these specific philosophies to elevate the culture to a higher level. The easiest thing a person can do is be negative and it’s up to us, the leaders, to change that way of thinking within people. Either you are being affected by the environment or effecting the environment. True leaders positively affect the environment.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

As cliche as this sounds, I’d say to focus on GENUINELY helping others win. We live in a society where everyone listens to the same radio station, which is Wii FM (What’s In It For ME) Radio. I read a book called “The Dream Manager”, and it really highlighted the importance of helping others and being a servant leader. It explains how organizations can achieve extraordinary results by helping their employees accomplish their dreams. Most managers only care about helping employees accomplish their goals at work, but true leaders help people fulfill their dreams in life. That means helping them get where they want to be, even if that involves them leaving the company. When managers implement this the employee turnover rates drop and morale increases because they know their manager actually cares. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I apply this mentality at the workplace, with my Tik Tok community, and just in general on a day-to-day basis. It just creates a positive culture that people want to be around and stay around.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: tracystrippin23
• Youtube: tracyekeocha8474
• Other: My Tik Tok account is Tracetok23

Image Credits
Togaa Media