Tracy HazzardTracy Hazzard, Inc. Columnist and co-host of three top-ranked podcasts, joins Justin Recla to discuss the importance of transparent marketing strategies in today’s marketplace. With a constant stream of content and products from her authority platform, Tracy reaches over 100,000 listeners and viewers each month. Listen in as she shares her vast marketing knowledge and experience and how she incorporates them in her “Feed Your Brand” podcast.

Welcome to the In the Clear Podcast, my name is Justin Recla. Today we are talking to one of my favorite people on the planet. She is the CEO of Hazz Design, and is featured on the Run Your Own podcast, Feed Your Brand podcast, and Product Launch Hazzards. Our guest today is Tracy Hazzard.

She is one of two partners in a dynamic duo with her husband, Tom. They do so many amazing things in the product space, in the podcast space, the our power partners, as well. I’m honored to have her back on the show with us today. Tracy, how are you?

I’m doing really good, thanks for having me, Justin.

Thank you so much for being on the show. I love the fact that we get to not only connect at CEO Space, but that we can connect in between times as well, and here in the podcast space as well, which is always fun.

So Tracy, tell us little bit about what you’ve got going on.

It's a really noisy world out there

It’s a really noisy world out there.

What don’t we have going on, you know? It’s a really noisy world out there, right? It’s really hard to be seen, and heard, and found. And so we’re always looking for the ways to do that that are not I’m going to call them ‘trendy.’ That are timeless, that are sustainable, that do it again, and again.

My big thing that I say all the time is when you’re gonna hire someone, you want someone who’s been there, done that, again, and again, and again. And that’s why I love working with you guys, because you guys have a strong, deep history of what you do.

Well, and speaking to that, tell us little bit about … Because our listeners want to know a little bit more about your background and your history, especially around the product lines. Tell us a little bit about what you’ve done with launching products.

Tom and I have been doing this for way too long, 26 years, launching products the hard way, right? Before the Internet exists. And it’s a combination of doing a lot original product design, which is really what we really specialize in: inventions, patents, we have 37 patents … Actually we might even have more, I kind of lost count.

And so we’ve been doing that for this whole time, but it’s shifted, right? The marketing of it has shifted, the way things go to market. We used to be able to license, it’s really hard to do licensing agreements now. We used to be able to walk into Target and they’d just take a meeting with us, they don’t do that anymore.

It’s just the whole dynamic of how things have happened have changed over time, and we have evolved in a way that has managed to keep up with that, mainly because we’ve just been at the forefront of doing a lot of Internet things ourselves, building our own businesses online, and doing a lot of marketing that way.

And because of it, we’ve stayed in touch with what’s actually working, and using these good principles that we’ve espoused since the beginning, right? I mean it works offline, it will work online too, you just have to find the method to make that communicate and come across.

Young Entrepreneur Secrets

Absolutely, and that’s one of the reasons why I love, not only having you on the show, but the fact that we’re connected in the business world like this. Because that transparency piece is something that really, really is essential.

It’s something that I know that you guys have leveraged throughout the course of your business careers, I know it’s something that you’ve assisted your clients with, it’s something that you’ve , you know it’s something that you preach, but it is what you practice, as seen by your profile in the Clear Business Directory.

But let’s talk about some marketing strategies through transparency. How can businesses market themselves transparently? What are some of the methods that you’re assisting folks with?

Well, you know, this is the thing that I have done since the beginning, and it’s one of the reasons why we were really attracted to the Clear Directory. Because it’s … We put out information, we put out a lot of information. And everything is linked, and everything has …

If you wanna say … I say I have 37 patents, I’m not kidding, you could go on my site and the majority of them are linked, because sometimes they’re not published yet. But, you know, as soon as they get published, I link them right up in there, so you can find them, so you can verify, right? So you can check on me that that is actually true, and you can see what they look like.

They’re not all design patents, they’re utility, which has a deeper meaning to many, many people, many inventors who are attracted to us. We really try to put information out there, and we’ve done that from the very beginning. So being transparent about what you’re providing, but also being really prolific in that.

So when someone wants to do business with me, they can find me on the Internet, they can find all of my information, I just put it out there. But I have a column, I write a column for Ink.com. And every single week there’s an article coming out that shows my expertise that shows that I exist in the world.

And that’s really where I feel like we’ve gotten into this place where some of the … And I’m putting air quotes on it you cannot see … “Gurus” out there. You know, they just put out click funnel pages, and they’re espousing some course that they won’t reveal to you, they write a book that has no … Is a glorified sales letter.

Because websites don't usually transact and perform just because they're a pretty design

Because websites don’t usually transact and perform just because they’re a pretty design.

And that’s not what we’re about here, we’re about the opposite of that. We’re about providing you … Almost too much information sometimes. I’m accused of that all the time.

But in an effort to really get people to find us, and seek us at where they are in the process. Because we can do so many things. But, you know, design is one of those things that is really hard to quantify. Did you get value for it?

And you know, because you’ve had a hard time vetting … I know this from personal experience; you’ve had a hard time vetting web developers, web designers, right? There’s always a lot of complaints about them, because the communication between them and their clients is not as clear about did you get value for that. Because websites don’t usually transact and perform just because they’re a pretty design. It just doesn’t work like that, right?

So that’s product, not quite at the beginning, eventually it should, but it’s a little harder to do that. So in an effort to market ourselves, we market ourselves very openly.

That transparency piece is what really, really translates into … What I believe, a lot of your success is because you show up authentically, you show up transparently, and you’re just raw and real with your clients. And that goes a long way, especially in the product industry.

Yeah.

It really is. So what I want to do is, is I want to take a quick break. But before we do, where can people go find more information about you?

Well, you can find our podcast Feed Your Brand and Product Launch Hazzards on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play, anywhere like that. But you can also find us at feedyourbrand.co and productlaunchhazzards.com.

And we’re talking to Tracy Hazzard about transparent marketing strategies. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the In the Clear podcast on iTunes.