Episode Summary

In this conversation, Tracy Johnson, CEO of InitiativeOne, shares her journey from a nursing career to leading a successful consulting firm. She discusses the evolution of her role, the growth of her team, and the importance of client engagement and community involvement. Tracy emphasizes the significance of finding the right people for the right roles, the value of outsourcing, and the impact of philanthropy on their organization. Tune in for insights into the importance of leadership transformation and the need for continuous learning in your leadership role. 

Key Highlights:

• Discover how strategic role alignment and thoughtful delegation can transform your leadership journey from overwhelmed to empowered.
• Learn why investing in the right partnerships and outsourced solutions becomes a catalyst for sustainable business growth.
• Understand how cultivating meaningful client relationships through active listening creates a powerful ripple effect of word-of-mouth referrals.
• Master the balance between business growth and community impact, and how this dual focus drives sustainable success.
• Explore how creating dedicated spaces for innovation and continuous learning elevates both your team's potential and your organization's impact.

About Our Guest: 

Tracy Johnson conveys complex principles to leaders in practical terms. As a result, leaders are able to implement ideas that effectively diminish drama and distraction and deliver increased results. Working with the InitiativeOne Proprietary Process for nearly 20 years, Tracy understands the leverage points that will push leaders beyond their comfort zone. For anyone who is interested in attending an upcoming ThinkTank, either in-person or virtually, here is the link: https://www.initiativeone.com/events

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Tracy, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here. I'm incredibly grateful for your time today. I know as a busy CEO and doing all the things and running your company and serving your clients and your family and all of the things, I'm so excited to dive into your story of initiative one and how the company came to be, how it's evolved over time, how your role has changed and evolved over time.

and diving in all things related to team and how you determine what your priorities are based on the goals of not only the organization, but also where you're going to act personally in life. So all of that being said, before we dive into the nuts and bolts, why don't you tell our audience just a little bit about you to get us going?

Yeah, thank you, Melissa. It is awesome to be here. And first of all, I just want to say I'm so grateful that I found Melissa Swing Company because as I took over my role as CEO at Initiative One, you were a really, really important part of that transition for me. So thank you for all that you have done and that your team has done.

Thank you. I appreciate that shout out right out of the gate. That's a good way to start a conversation. Testimonial that, yeah, didn't even see coming. So thank you for that. We really enjoy working with your organization. Like I said, it's one I truly admire.

Right out of the gate. Right out of the gate. know, we have to always...

Thank you. So let me tell you a little bit about my background. I actually have 20 years of nursing experience transitioned into Initiative One as the Chief Operating Officer in 2006. Dr. Fred Johnson, our founder, has been in business for about 25 years, and I joined him probably about year six or seven.

And at that time, I really took over that CEO role, working on a lot of details and things to make the organization stronger, better, provide excellent client services, all of the things that we do day in and day out in our business today. As I transitioned into the CEO role, Fred, as founder, decided that he really wanted to take a step back and stay in the space that he is really excellent at, which is

speaking engagements and connecting, doing some very high level executive coaching, even with NFL teams. So he actually is able to be very focused on our clients at this point and really meeting the needs of the clients. For me, stepping into the CEO role then, because I had so much attention on detail within the organization, one of my biggest hurdles was stepping out of that day-to-day detail, right?

I think that's when I met, I'm like, I need someone to help keep me organized and keep things moving when I'm out delivering services and meeting with clients and all of the things that needed to happen as we pivoted roles. your team came along. One of the most important things that I learned when your team came along is that it really does take a special skill set to be able to keep.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

that organization take care of details, keep things moving forward and to find someone who's really gifted in that area. And it doesn't just have to be in the EA role. We've done the same thing with your team on the social media side, tapping into some of your content writers who are excellent, excellent writers, by the way. And as they have gotten to know our brand voice, really, it continues to get better. And so it's...

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

It makes a huge difference to having the, it's not even finding good people or great people. It's also finding the right seats for them. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's what for us, we teach leadership, right? Like that's the beauty of the partnership. Whenever you have a partner that can compliment the things that you're doing, that is a win-win. And that's what we found with your team. They just are really excellent at what they do.

Yes!

love it. Yes. You know, it's interesting that you brought up even Dr. Fred where he started the organization and he grew it to a point where, you you have this incredible organization and he found that he really enjoyed working with the clients. That's really where he wanted to be. And I think that's so interesting because when I even think about my own client, my own, I should say professional journey as a CEO and a lot of our clients were

we started really being hands-on working with clients, and then we started to lead the organization and step out of client work, and Fred's true desire was to step back into it. So I think that's really important is following where you're really being led as well.

Yes, yes. He is so good at what he does when he's in with the clients. you know, it's where we call it, it rings the joy bell of his heart. Like that's where that that's what lights him up on a day in and day out basis. He wants to be able to help organizations really accelerate change. And he loves pushing people out of their comfort zones. And so he's in that space. He's doing a lot of great work and he doesn't have the

How do I want to say the thinking long term in terms of what's our business strategy? What are the development needs of our team? How do we build our team out from here? And so I've stepped into those strategic areas in the company at this point.

For sure, for sure. Taking a little bit of a step back, I'm just curious, how has your clientele evolved over time as well? I would imagine that you started working with a particular type of clientele and that has continued to grow and evolve over the years as well.

Yeah, started, when Fred, in Fred's early years, he actually, he started big. He's one of those leaders that very visionary. He worked with a lot of really great organizations in the beginning out in Scottsdale. Healthcare was a very large component of the work. We still work in healthcare today. He also worked heavily with manufacturing.

Hey.

I'm trying to get some of the companies that he worked with out there. Caterpillar was a company that he worked with very big, manufacturers. And so we still work with manufacturing when he relocated the company here to to Wisconsin. One of the the beauties of that was we're heavily manufacturing. And so we've been able to continue that here in Wisconsin. Then we pivoted probably about five.

five or six years ago, we saw a significant need in public education. And again, our work is very, it's very close partners with our clients that we work with, or we're usually with them for anywhere from two to five years. And then oftentimes we go back in after that period of time. So public education was a significant need after the pandemic.

You saw a lot of teaching staff discouraged. saw a lot of polarization and you know, people that can be pretty traumatic to people who are trying to do good work, make a difference with kids and really drive results for the school districts that they're working in. And we found that working in public education really has been extremely just.

pass.

Amazing, amazing to work with. And not only are we impacting the administration and teachers at this point, but we're seeing data and results coming back on student achievement going up in the school districts we're working with because people are on purpose and they've worked through the trauma of pandemic. And it's really gone very, very well for us. And we brought in some excellent, excellent partners, superintendent partners, and it's helped us grow significantly.

Yes.

One of the things you asked, how do we, how do we grow? How do we, how do we, how do we expand our business? Word of, word of mouth is our biggest, actually our biggest go-to. if we have raving fans out of the market, that out in the market, they actually do our, our amplifying of our voice, rather than us doing the amplifying of our voice, we can share data, we can share information, but that word of mouth referral matters. It's gold to us. So we want.

Right.

Yeah.

always deliver the needs of the clients that we're working with.

Serve your clients well at the end of the day. That's really the golden rule of owning a successful business, right? The rest are details that can be sorted out. But if you don't have that customer experience and satisfaction, it's really hard to do anything else for sure. So now you talked about how Dr. Fred's role has evolved and how your role has evolved. Now, how is your team over...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

How has your team evolved over time? In the beginning, I would imagine that Fred had maybe an assistant or somebody helping him out when he was getting everything off the ground. Now, of course, you have quite an impressive team.

Yeah, we have grown and one of the keys that we have found is, again, finding the right people for the seats that we have. And so we have about six leaders that our executive leaders have experienced as executive leaders. We're very proud of each and every one of them and the work that they do. Many of them are doctorate prepared and very wise and good counsel for the clients that we serve. So in public education,

You know, we have Dr. Margaret and Dr. Phil who really focus on public education and growing out that area. In the office, Regina is one of our teammates that she does excellent, excellent work for our clients who come in for mixed groups. she does a lot of manufacturing around here. Dr. Andy Chisel is another one that we have on board. And so you have to have enough support.

for each one of those facilitators that are going out to meet the clients and be with the clients from a coordination standpoint. And so as that facilitation team grows, the support team has to grow, right? Like it matters, it matters to our clients. And so that internal team has grown quite extensively. And one of the things that I've learned from your team is again, putting the right people in the right seats.

for sure.

Yes.

matters because they have different gifts. They have different gifts and abilities and making sure that you've got the right people. And if you don't have them internally to your company, don't be afraid to reach out for some fractional help because there is really great fractional help out there.

Yes.

Right.

Yes, I want to pack so many things that you talked about even just with your facilitators where you truly know like this, this is what they're truly gifted at. This is where they can make the biggest impact. And it certainly isn't, you know, sitting behind a computer and organizing a spreadsheet and putting their own slides together for the next training. That's just, that's just not the best use of their time or their talents.

Right. listen, that's where you get procrastination, right? Like last minute stuff, because it's not their favorite thing to do. And so aligning hearts and talents and all of that, you can see it in people. You can see when they light up, when they're doing the work that they really love to do and that they're very gifted at.

You're right.

Yeah, yeah. So you had brought up even bringing in fractional team and outsourcing or bringing in outside contractors. There's a lot of different phrases that people would use for it. What would you say was one of the first things that you outsourced or maybe that you saw, oversaw being outsourced? We'll start there.

Yeah, one of the areas, even before we met you, one of the areas was really trying to build out sales processes and sales teams and having somebody come in and help us train with that. And we continue to do that. Any organization that needs to grow or scale, you have to have a sales process in place. We call it our partnership process internally.

so initially we would bring in part-time subcontractors to help us to help Girl Footprint and things like that. Some of them worked out, some of them didn't. And, that part of using a subcontractor, it allows you to see how that person operates and how that person works without bringing them on full, full time or full board. And so, and it gives you flexible staff. And so,

Yes, you're right.

For those of us who've had banking requirements before, not to have that, that you can have expandable salary and when you don't have work to do, you don't have that expandable salary, that's been very helpful and banks love that.

Right. Yes, absolutely. I love what you talked about and you addressed this. want to impact this a little bit more. Even the experience of working with an outside contractor because essentially you, Initiative One, are an outside contractor or you partner, you have much better words for it. But at the end of the day, you're partnering with these organizations and they're not bringing you in as a full-time employee.

Yes.

So there's a lot that you can learn even as a client of someone else's of here's what worked really well. I would love to incorporate this in the work that we're doing with our own clients. I would imagine you've learned a lot even as a consumer of services over the years too.

You're so spot on. One of my purpose statement, like we get our clients down to a really clear purpose statement. My two words are, exist to help others through learning and activation. So when I'm in a client organization, I am not just there to provide my expertise, I'm there to learn from them. And so one of the important things, you have to be really gifted at active listening and learning and understanding. And so

all of that information that I learned in our client organizations, because yes, we are there as an extension, always as an extension of their senior executive team. And so we have to really understand their strategy, understand their goals, make sure that we're conveying that in a really good way, because what we talk about or what we teach is leadership transformation.

Right? Yeah.

But the sweet spot, the differential for us is we're able to help people apply that to the organization strategically as we're going through the process that we work with them for an extended period of time. And so you're constantly learning and absorbing, and you really are one of their subcontractors. And so you have to know them. You have to understand them. You have to know how do you motivate their staff? How do you inspire them? How do you make sure?

that you're assessing them in the right way, getting people in the right seats, all of the things that you're talking about.

Yes. Yes. And I even remember from my consulting days before I started my virtual assistant services company, remember buy-in was also very important. You need to establish rapport and buy-in so that you can get everybody engaged with what you're trying to accomplish. That's a huge piece. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just curious, what are some of the things that you've invested in as an organization over the years that

Yes.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

you would highly recommend to others to check out.

Yeah, let's see, invested in, like so.

Yeah, things that you've invested in, maybe personally for your own growth or maybe key partnerships that your company has invested in over the years. We'll start there.

Yeah, have certainly we don't speak often to this, but Fred and I really are philanthropic. So we do often support a lot of the local charities around town, specifically, Rawhide, specifically Howard Swamico Education Foundation. There's a On Stage for Cancer group that locally. So we really try to support the nonprofits around the community and

and just use our time, talents, financial resources to actually help them when they need that help the most. The second thing I would say is our building, investing in a place to bring our clients for innovation and for getting out of their space, give them some space to really think outside of their own day-to-day routine.

That has been instrumental for us. in that investment, we do our monthly think tanks where we offer, really it is a complimentary one hour, 45 minute speech that Dr. Fred puts on. that, you know, people don't see that necessarily from our perspective. That's a huge investment for us. We have it streaming. We usually see about thousand people who register online every month.

So it's carrying out a very significant event on a monthly basis, which on our side, you know, that that takes some effort and energy from our team. Our team is amazing at orchestrating it all at all times. Creative Edge has been an amazing partner of ours. They come in every month and record that and stream that and allow us to break that up into social media pieces. Super helpful. And again.

Okay, yes.

for us to have that talent internally to initiative one would not make sense. And so that's another example where a partnership really works very, very well as an extension of who you are as a business.

Yes.

Yes, yes. So many things that I love that you mentioned, the philanthropy. That's not something that often comes up directly in conversations that I have with clients and guests on the podcast, but it's something that is very top of mind for so many because again, they're building organizations and companies that are authentic and aligned to them and giving back is a huge piece of that. So I think that's something that we as entrepreneurs and CEOs don't talk about enough because so many of us are just doing it naturally.

Yes.

So it's great to actually talk about it and address it on the podcast. Your building is beautiful. I have been there a handful of times for Think Tank, and I'm so glad you brought that up because that's one thing that I wanted to make sure that we talked about on the podcast because you're teaching leadership transformation. And so if someone is not necessarily part of one of the organizations that you're partnering with at the moment, a great way to kind of get into what you're doing, get involved.

And what you're doing is through Think Tank, whether it be in person in Green Bay, Wisconsin, or even if you live in a fairly close vicinity to Green Bay, it's well worth the drive. But you can also join online as well. Do you want to share a little bit more about when Think Tank is held and where somebody might be able to get plugged into that?

Sure, if you go to our website, initiativeone.com, we have an actual click on Think Tank and it'll give you the registration information, the dates that it happens, the topic that we're covering that month. the topics are always relevant topics that are really impacting our clients that we're working with out in the communities. So we always brainstorm that and come up with ideas of what's hot in leaders' minds right now, essentially.

And so Dr. Fred has such an amazing way to really help people dig even deeper, even deeper. It always amazes me how he puts his content together every month. But I wanna comment on that. One of the things that we love, it energizes us. It's one of those things we love to do every single month because it brings our community of leaders, of like-minded leaders together.

And it's not just about the speech, it's about walking out there and having made connections, whether it's with, we have watch groups across the country. So we have groups down in Georgia that are rooms of like 100 people or 200 people. And so they bring their community together and the topic provides that important, how do we sharpen, how do we get better? And that dialogue can happen then within the team. So we welcome.

Yes.

know, of teams, welcome individuals who are online. It's really just meant to bring our community together and be forthright or forward thinking in terms of their own leadership and what they really should be considering or thinking about for development of their own team.

Yes, yes, I highly agree with that. And I want to make sure that I highlight this for our listeners is that I was at a conference about two years ago, one of our clients puts on a women in business symposium down in Milwaukee. And one of their keynotes was talking about just the way that her own leadership had evolved over the years as different roles that she had taken on within her company. And she was also in healthcare. And she talked about how in the early years,

being promoted as supervisor and a manager, those promotions were heavily based on really knowledge experience, right? They knew the job. They were the best one in their medical billing department. So they became the supervisor and then they became the manager and the department head. And then she talked about when she started to become C-level and ultimately became the CEO of this organization, she's like, I was starting to lead people that I had no clue how to do their jobs.

And she's like, that was a huge shift for me because my leadership was more on developing the team and the vision and the mission of the organization, not on how the best practices to do the thing. And so I think think tanks a great way to maybe step out of some of the day-to-day doing leadership that you may be working with a small team. And this is more to develop you and how you influence others as well.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, Melissa, thank you for sharing that because it is you get think tanks. That's what that tells me. You get the work that we do. And, know, you have to have technical expertise in your organization and you also have to make sure that you're building trust and relationships out in your organization so that people will follow. You don't you, you have to have high trust with individuals and that they know the technical skill. And that's one of my big learnings in

Right. Mm-hmm.

in stepping into the CEO role, I have to let go of all of those details of knowing how things are done. My team is stepping into changes and I have no idea what they all are, but I know it's happening.

Yes, they're implementing new systems or developing new processes and sometimes the team will hop on and be like, what do you think? And like, I don't even know what you mean. Like show me and I can tell you, know, if they're just kind of, if we have a group chat of, hey, we have a client who's trying to do X, Y and Z, they're using this system. And they're like, Melissa, do you have anything to add? No.

Yes.

Yes, that's where I found myself. And so it's the same thing. And so think tanks allow those, as those leaders are making those transitions to be thinking about things differently, differently than just the tactical day to day.

Yes, remember and and dr. Fred's teachings are just so timely and so relevant I remember even we talked about the sacred cow a couple of months ago, and I'm just like you're right You're right. I was starting to think about that. So for those of you listening, we'll grab a replay of that I'm sure it's posted somewhere on the web. We won't dive into that but Yes, yes, we will link that one. Mm-hmm

yeah.

Lincoln, Lincoln, it's great. That was one of the very, very well done think tanks. It was well.

Yes, yes, but it's essentially a good reminder. Just a little snippet from that was, even if you have somebody who's a high performer or they bring in a lot of clients, if they're somehow having a negative impact on the team or the organization, it's not worth it and you need to address it.

Well, all that good work that looks good in the front, on the backside, all gets undone by the wasted time, effort, energy, broken relationships, all of that.

Yes.

Yep, yep, exactly. And what kind of message are you sending to the rest of the team if you turn a blind eye to what this one high performer is doing and everyone else, you you just, create those, those issues within the organization. We'll just say issues as a blanket statement. But yes, that, I mean, there were so many, I think every time I attend Think Tank, I've got lots of notes and I have a lot of ideas spinning in my head of, okay, we need to work on this as a team. So love it.

Yep.

Thank you so much, Tracy, for everything that you've shared. Anything else that you'd like to share with our audience before we wrap up? I know you have clients to serve as well today.

That's

Yeah, I do. And that's awesome. We are always so grateful and so blessed for our clients that we work with. I think I just, in wrapping up, I just want to again convey that your team has been amazing, especially when it comes to reaching out for fractional help for other CEOs who are looking for that support in areas maybe they aren't able to find the right hire at the moment. What I have found, especially with your team,

is you have a lot of talent that can fill gaps. And we didn't talk about this, but you have an eye for talent. And that in the fractional world, it's rather than spending a ton of time screening talent, one of your differentials is you have an eye for that and you have an ability to find good people to support all businesses.

I don't know, I think we have talked a little bit about that. First of all, thank you. That's very intentional on my part. One of my strengths is actually harmony. My top strength is harmony. And my second is responsibility. And so I think that's where that comes in is making sure that we have talented people who can do the work, but also that work really well with our existing team and our clients. I think there's both sides to it.

You're welcome.

I think that probably is influencing that talent search that I have a knack for. So thank you. Thank you so much, Tracy. Again, I really appreciate your time and everything that you've shared. So honored to have initiative one here in our community, but also if you're not here in our community,

You're very good at it. You're very good at it. So, appreciate it.

There are plenty of ways to get plugged in and be impacted in a positive way from the work that your organization is doing. So I really appreciate you today.

Thank you so much, Melissa. You have a great day.

Yes, you too, Tracy. Thank you to all of our listeners for taking the time to tune into today's episode. I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More, where we'll be sharing more tips and tools and strategy for growing your business beyond you. Have a wonderful day, everyone.