MRACE MRS ACE - Plate 51 - Trista's PL8STORY Podcast featuring Tracy Brinkmann

MRACE MRS ACE - Plate 51 - Trista's PL8STORY Podcast featuring Tracy Brinkmann

Transcripts for MRACE MRS ACE Episode

Trista, Host: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Welcome to this week's episode of Trista's PL8STORY  (Plate Story)  Podcast. I'm Trista Polo from iwokeupawesome.com and I am your host. Each week, we learn the story behind that vanity plate. You know, the one you saw driving down the road... what did it say? What did it mean? Why did they choose it? 

Welcome. I'm super excited to have the owner of MRACE license plate we're with Tracy Brinkmann . Welcome Tracy. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:00:27] Well, thank you so much for having me. 

Trista, Host: [00:00:29] Yeah, it's great to have you. I'm excited now tell us your plate story. Let's start there. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:00:35] It's really cool. Obviously the, the MRACE could mean so many things, but for me, it aludes to my love for the the rock band KISS and the really cool story behind it was I was dating the lady that is now my wife, and one of our first big dates was a, a KISS concert. She found out I was a huge fan. She found tickets that were going to be in my [00:01:00] hometown.

And which makes that even more important is the fact that.... when we first met, we met online and I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she lived outside of San Francisco. So we were always traveling to see each other. And she found this concert coming my town and she bought the tickets unbeknownst to me.

And then, you know, we went there, she did the whole, she bought the whole experience where we got to go behind the scenes and meet the band. They did a, it was, it was a really cool experience and it happened to be right around my birthday, which was in August. So it was a birthday present at the same time. So it was phenomenal.

And while we were sitting there between the band, there was an opening act and we were waiting for KISS to come on up on the side screens. They showed an advertisement for the KISS Chapel. And we, we were joking around. I said, you know, if I ever get married again, I have to get married there. And we ended up getting married at the KISS Chapel just a couple of years later.

[00:02:00] And it was, it was a blast. So when we when we moved up here to Wisconsin and we found out how... how reasonably priced vanity plates were. I was like, I've always wanted to have a vanity plate that I toyed with either CCC, which would have been trey-cs right. My name is Tracy. Oh 

Trista, Host: [00:02:21] yeah. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:02:22] Or MRACE, right?

And se goes, well, if you getMRACEs, I'll get MRS ACE and it was like, Oh, okay. That was kind of. You know made that happen at that point. So we went and got those and we wear them proudly. 

Trista, Host: [00:02:35] That's awesome. Now I do have some questions. So was your now wife, what's her first name? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:02:42] Diane. 

Trista, Host: [00:02:42] Diane. So was she a KISS fan too when she got these tickets or did you kind of turn her on to KISS? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:02:49] Well, she's been a fan. She's not as diehard a fan as I am. But she's definitely a metal head like I am, which is one of the great things we clicked about. I mean, we, we, that's how we, our [00:03:00] families spends our summers were obviously not this past summer in 2020, but we've always spent our summers traveling around to different concerts and going to the festivals and enjoying the music of the of their big headliners, but all the up and coming bands as well. So she was a KISS fan, but now she's even more of a KISS fan. 

Trista, Host: [00:03:20] Yes. That's awesome. So how long had you guys been dating when she got you this experience? Because that's a pretty major present. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:03:28] It was a pretty major present we've been dating, I would say... I use the term dating from the time we first met face-to-face we had been chatting for a long time online, and I say a long time, it was probably close to a year. And we had our first official date in Vegas. We both flew into Vegas and we met there, you know, spent the weekend, you know, getting to know each other and what have you, and kind of a, made it official that weekend.

And so this would have been [00:04:00] five ish months later. So it wasn't a long time afterwards. 

Trista, Host: [00:04:04] Well, obviously that was a pretty good trip to Vegas, then 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:04:08] it was a very good trip to Vegas. Absolutely. Right. It was a good time. Very good. 

Trista, Host: [00:04:12] Now my biggest question is you have got to explain in detail about what it is like to get married at the KISS Chapel.

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:04:22] It was, you know, if you're, if you're any kind of a, a KISS fan, it is the place to go because, and I actually have become friends, online friends with the lady that owns it. She's the the, actually the founder of Monster Mini Golf. And in her, in her theme is different in a number of different places.

So at the it's currently at the Rio in Las Vegas is inside the casino is the KISS Monster Mini Golf. And then they also have an event center. And part of the event center is of course, you know, you can get married there. [00:05:00] And then a part of those options, you can have a regular minister. You can have the KISS mini minister, which is literally a small person, dressed up like Gene Simmons - the demon from KISS, the one who sticks his tongue out for those that don't know them very well. Or you can have this guy who makes a living as a Gene Simmons, impersonator as a demon impersonator. He actually does one of the shows in Vegas. I think it's the Eighties rock show or one of the rock and roll shows where he plays Gene Simmons in that show as well.

So this is what he does for a career. And he's also an ordainted minister and we like, we're gone, we're going full out, right? So we've got the Gene Simmons impersonator to be our minister. And you, you get to pick your incoming in music and you're coming out and music, what it is. We, we chose "War Machine".

Okay. And I think it was "Never Going to Let You Go" was one of Paul's songs, but "War Machine" [00:06:00] was the coming out. And funny story behind that is it was like Diane, I was picking all these love songs for the coming in. Right. And so she let me do that. And I said, well, what song would you really like?

What's your favorite song? She was like, well, it's really not a wedding song, but it's like "War Machine". And I'm like, Let's do it. It's our wedding, right? Let's, it's all about us. And what was really cool about it. They give you these invitations that look like concert tickets, and you get to customize them with, you know, they customize them with your name and everything.

And we chose to get married. We were getting married in 2017, so we did seven, seven, 17. Oddly enough, my birthday is eight eight. Her birthday is 1111. So it just made sense to do seven seven. Right. And so, you know, we did everything that when we sent the invitations out, I wrote up a little email and you know a letter to go with it.

That was all about someone being invited to a concert. You know, it was an event for folks to come out. You know, it was [00:07:00] a pretty small attendance. I say, small. I have, you know, we have a very small knit a group of friends, there was probably 40 people there, you know, it's nice, tight little Knippa group of folks that came in, you know, save 

Trista, Host: [00:07:12] for a Vegas wedding.

That's pretty large, 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:07:15] usually Vegas 

Trista, Host: [00:07:17] nobody's there 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:07:19] and I actually had expected less people to show, you know, we, we probably invited 50. Thinking 20 or 30 would show. And so we were very happy with that. One of the cool add-on to the story, and I'm hoping I'm not giving away one of your questions later on was as we were going through all the planning, I thought, how cool would it be to have one of the actual members be there. Right? And so we reached, we reached out to the folks there and said, Hey, would it be possible to get an I first thought about, you know Jean or Paul? And of course you could get them. However, there is like this price tag that was actually going to be like twice the wedding. And I'm like, [00:08:00] okay, let's not go there.

I said, well, what about Tommy? Who's the, now the guitarist, he replaced Ace Freely and or Eric Stinger. Who's the drummer and Eric Singer has got a great story. I mean, he's been a drummer in so many bands. He's one of those what do they call them? Hired guns. Oh, yeah. So if anyone's, if anyone's ever watched that hired gun documentary on Netflix, you'll, he's a part of that.

And he played a long time in his own band, but he's played, you know, as a drummer for a number of bands, probably the most notable, other than KISS is Alice Cooper. Right. And so for anybody who knows, Alice Cooper only hires the best to come on out of the road with them. So and, and Eric's been doing their drummers since I think the late nineties, early two thousands. And so they said, Oh yeah, we could get Eric, Eric, you know, lives in LA. He actually has friends.. And he frequently comes to Las Vegas, you know? And the price was like, [00:09:00] Oh my God. So you would like really? I could get him really good. Come on in there. And they said, yeah, he'll come on in.

You know, he'll, he's even willing to be the ring bearer and he'll hang out, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll sign some autographs. He said he put it out for 30 minutes or so. Eric was just the coolest guy, very down to earth. He's a, he's a Midwestern guy, so I can totally relate, but he ended up hanging out for about an hour and a half.

He was going to be going out with some rock and roll buddies who were like hanging out in the wings. He's like, I'm like, come on guys, come on in and hang out. Right. But he was, he was super nice to everybody... told some awesome stories... but yeah, and he was our ring bearer. We had for me, I had a double platinum, which is one of their albums, a ring made that has an each of their icons from the from the KISS franchise on the ring. So when he opened it up to hand it to the minister to hand to us, he's like, well, wait a minute, have you seen these rings? These are bad [00:10:00] ass. And he totally interrupted the ceremony. It was, it was phenomenal. It was a great time. 

Trista, Host: [00:10:06] That's awesome. I I've heard that theme weddings are possible, et cetera, but this is the most.

You know, the coolest one I've ever heard of to actually have a member of the 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:10:15] band. I thought it was amazing, 

Trista, Host: [00:10:18] right. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:10:19] Yeah. Right. Very cool. 

Trista, Host: [00:10:21] Memories to last a lifetime.  

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:10:23] It was super cool.

And we didn't tell anybody about the surprise visitor. So it wasn't like they all showed up because some superstar was going to be there. That was a total surprise to everyone, which was, I thought it was great because no one came expecting anything except us. And we were able to, you know, And everyone was able to enjoy the, the extra bonus of having him there.

It was, it was really cool. 

Trista, Host: [00:10:45] I actually remember the very first time I heard of kiss. You know, when I grew up, I was, I grew up in the South, a lot of my childhood, so it was more like the country pop kind of music in my [00:11:00] house.

And so the very first time I was introduced to KISS, I was friends with this girl Ashlyn. So I'm giving her a shout out. I was in her bedroom. We were hanging out after school and she's like so excited. Cause she just got this new album and she's this huge fan I'm like, Oh, let me see. And of course the album, I don't remember the name of it, but it had the four different guys from the band on and their full makeup. So and so that was very jarring to me. Like I had never seen anything quite, so 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:11:32] just their faces, 

Trista, Host: [00:11:33] their faces. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:11:34] Yeah. That was part of the Dynasty album. 

Trista, Host: [00:11:36] Yeah, that you would know better than I, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna do defer to you, but when she showed it to me, I was like, Oh my God, I don't even know how to react to this.

You know, 

I was just so thrown by it. But I, it really left an impression, like I never forgot that moment. So that was the first time I was ever introduced to KISS. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:11:56] Well, I I'll tell you anybody yourself included or any of your [00:12:00] listeners, if someone says, Hey, Would you like to go see this KISS, concert- go, whether you like their music or not, because it's not just a, a concert, it's really an experience. The things they do, the antics. I mean, these guys are in their late seventies now and they're still... I mean, Gene still flies up in the air and spits his blood and fire. And you know, they D they put on this phenomenal show, which is, I think one of the things that kept them alive for, what, four decades now. 

Trista, Host: [00:12:32] Yeah. I can't believe they're still performing full out at their age. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:12:36] Yeah, they're doing their last tour.

They're saying this is the, they call it the end of the road tour. Unfortunately, it was interrupted with the you know, the whole pandemic issue, but they're starting to, re-release the the final dates for 2021. Wow. 

Trista, Host: [00:12:50] I mean, Cher said that she said it was her last tour. So 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:12:54] the last tour, then I went to her next last tour.

[00:13:00] Trista, Host: [00:13:00] Now, when did your love of kiss? Start? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:13:04] My love of kiss started. It would have been 1977. I got introduced to them. My dad was a a long-term military man. So at this time we were stationed over in Germany and we were getting ready to come back to United States on an emergency leave. There was my one of my grandparents had fallen ill, and so we were staying with a friend and as I was getting ready to leave one of my best buddies said dude you gotta check out this, this band and he handed me this cassette tape.

And so I'm at this friend's house and I pop into the cassette tape in the headphones and it was the you probably won't know the album, but if any weed you're listening to too, it was the Destroyer album. And one of the first songs you hear on there is an iconic song called G2 at Rock City. And it starts off, you know, if there's ,you know, the sounds of someone getting into a car and starting it up. And we're talking about a car back in the seventies and eighties. So you hear the keys, then you hear the guy hit the gas [00:14:00] pedal a couple of times and the car starts up and it drives down the road, blah, blah, blah. Then the music. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

I was like, well, I was kind of like you, when you saw that album, I was like, who are at that point? I've been listening to bands like Abba. Right, totally different. I've been listening to, you know, ELO, Jefferson Airplane Earth, Wind and Fire. And my buddy and my buddy says, no, you've got to check these guys out.

And it, I think I wore that tape out during our trip to back to the States and ever since then, I have been a huge fan. My mom used to say, tell all her friends, Oh, it's just a passing fancy. I'm 55 

Trista, Host: [00:14:43] still waiting for that thing to pass 

Still waiting for it 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:14:46] to pass. I 

Trista, Host: [00:14:48] think it's funny. You talk about wearing the tape out and I had this thought like millennials will never know, 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:14:55] but that experience 

Trista, Host: [00:14:56] of 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:14:58] well 

Trista, Host: [00:14:58] that too, right.

[00:15:00] With just listening to something over and over so much that you wear it out. 

So as a kid growing up, you said you were part of a military family, and I know from your Your podcast, summary of your Hardcast, that you you've had sort of a rollercoaster life growing up. Can you tell us a little about what made you, who you are today? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:15:21] You know obviously that growing up in that military environment had a huge impact on who I am today.

And my, like I mentioned earlier, my dad being a 23 year veteran of the military, you know, he went to Korea and Vietnam and you know, so I ended up growing up all over the United States and then spending probably six or seven years of my youth in Germany, which was really cool because my grandfather immigrated over to the States from Germany.

So we grew up speaking the language, which made, you know, it made it really easy for me and my family to, you know, [00:16:00] navigate the German economy. We always lived off base except for the, when I was really young, where, like I say, really young, I mean like kindergarten young we lived on base for a few years, but after that, we always lived off base amongst the, you know, the German nationals.

And usually it was away from the military base itself. So while they knew who we were and, you know, they were, they weren't unfamiliar with Americans and military. The fact that we spoke the language, you know, my dad and I, certainly brought us into the fold a whole lot easier. It was very welcoming.

One of the cool things about that whole growing up a military brat experience was I was exposed to, you know, all kinds of colors and creeds and religions and types of people across the gamut in the military, as well as outside of it. And so when my dad retired, you know, in my late teens, mid teens, we moved to Southern California and all that structure that had become accustomed to.... it was gone [00:17:00] and became a little bit of a mid-teen wild child. It was probably the worst time for him to retire. Right, right. As I went into my teens, you know, you're going to have problems with your teens in the first place. Now they took away the structure I was used to luckily in the early years I didn't get involved in drugs.

I did get involved later on, unfortunately. I went right out of high school, I went into the military and did about six years and I actually requested to go back to Germany. And so I'd spent my whole time back over in Europe, literally about 60 miles South of where I had just been a few years before.

Wow. So I knew a lot of the area. My mom and dad, and I, we always did things to travel around and go see things. So it was not unfamiliar territory for me. So I felt very comfortable. I got out of the military and started a little computer consulting business. And this was right before the.com boom.

So computers were on their way up and I was doing freelance programming for a preferred provider [00:18:00] organizations. And I was doing very well and and I was out celebrating and that's when I got introduced to the drug scene and therein started quickly dimming to darkness path of my life.

The first big dip in my roller coaster was the bad scene of drugs that I ended up traveling into for a couple of years two or three to the point where if you listened to a whole episode, you know that I was out probably out, Oh, two, three days on a party binge. And I come back to my condo and my door had been kicked open.

And then I realized my door hadn't been kicked open by theives, it had been kicked open by the police. Because of all the choices I had been making and the things I had been doing to sustain my habits you know I was now on their radar and luckily I hadn't been there when it happened. And I think that the major, that was a major turning point for me. Not so much because it was like, Oh, they kicked my [00:19:00] door in. It was more because I had a four month old baby that was brand new to the scene. And it was like, now I literally was lucky enough to take that moment of reflection of like, okay, you know, I'm not messing up my life anymore. Now I'm impacting this little girl's life.

And you know, made that decision to clean up my act and, you know, get the poisons out of my body. And I had some very supportive parents and a brother that was to die for.He, you know, what's funny if it wasn't even my brother, probably he wasn't brother by blood. We had known each other since we were, you know, early teens since, you know my dad's retired into Southern California and we just clicked.

So I call him my brother. And so they were the ones there to help me clean my act up. And because of the you know, The kick in the head. And I mean that in a mental state, not a physical state, my self-confidence took a big dip. Right. Hence the rollercoaster analogy I kind of built [00:20:00] and I didn't go right back into doing what I knew I could do, which is, you know, computer programming, what have you? 

I, I didn't feel I had the confidence to do. I didn't feel I was worthy. You could even say, and so I started taking Louie menial jobs, office jobs, and, and I'm not putting down anyone who does these on a regular basis. It's just like, You know, I just did that to build my confidence back up.

And I finally did, and it took a little while,about a year, year and a half or so, and I was able to go out and land a job at Coca-Cola, which started a rise on, on the, you know, corporate ladder. Moved me out to Atlanta to work in their headquarters. You know, again, continued to rise up and, you know, was lucky enough to learn some great lessons, life lessons, as well as business lessons along that path.

And it was, and then inside of that, When we get out to Atlanta, you know, my second daughter is born and you know, she has issues. She's born with a distended [00:21:00] abdomen, and she has to go through six operations in the first three months of her life just to make it so she can survive, you know. And one of the operations was to put in what they call a TPN line, which is total parental nutrition. And literally it's the, it's the base nutrition that we all need to survive because she was born with, you know, like 23 centimeters of small intestine versus, you know, 10 times that you should have been born with so she could eat.

But she, her body wasn't absorbing enough nutrition through that eating. So this TPN line gave her that nutrition straight into, and literally it went right into her aorta, her valve going to her heart. So the heart would just pump it around. However, the body being the amazing machine that it is, it says, Oh, well, you're not using the liver.

So I'm going to get rid of it. So her liver started to deteriorate because, you know, obviously she's not eating the food, she's not filtering it through the [00:22:00] liver. Now she needs a liver and small bowel transplant. So we, you know, she get the doctors, get her healthy enough to get on the list. And then we wait and we hope, and unfortunately, you know, she took a bad turn,

health-wise, at about 18 months. And at one point I pulled the doctor aside, literally pulled him aside. And ask the question. If you had organs right now. Which she survived and he'll give, he gave me doctor speak and you know, that whole thing, this is no joke. Pulled them into a janitor's closet, closed the door.

It's like, dude, it's you and me? No one else is around. No lawyers, no administrators. You gotta tell me and was able to get out of them that no, he didn't believe she would survive the operation. Not the, not the answer you want to hear. Right. But now I know, so my followup question was, do you think she can get up to that healthy level where she could survive the [00:23:00] operation?

And unfortunately what's the things that she'd been going through the last couple of months .The prognosis wasn't good. He says, I, I really, I want to tell you yes, but I can't, you know, in all honesty do that. And so at this point, you know, the respirator was keeping her breathing, you know, it was basically keeping her alive and made that personal choice.

And I say this every time I tell this story, it's a personal choice for whoever's faced with it. You know, you may make a different choice than I. I felt selfish that if I was going to leave her on that respirator, that I was seeing that I was keeping her around for me. For me to come visit for me to see her where, you know, you know, I, so I made that choice or we made that choice to disconnect.

And I literally, this is no joke, held her in my arms, sat in the rocking chair and rocked her to sleep one last time. And that, for me, while it was tough and I almost get wispy eyed right now, thinking about it. It also gave me the time to [00:24:00] tell her all the things that she taught me in her short life.

She taught me so many amazing things. She did this cool thing. You've seen the movie ET right. And he, you know, he points out with his finger and it glows and he touches things. Well for him, that was healing for her. That's how she investigated. Right. So it was always cool to watch her see something new... didn't matter what it was, whether it was a piece of food or a a binkie or a new stuffy or a person she would reach out and touch them once she touched them, it was like any other baby with like right into her mouth. Right. But it was, it was all these little things. When I knew she wasn't feeling well, or she had all these things that were going on, the poking, the prodding, yada, yada, yada.

She always had a smile on her face, always bright eyed. Always, you know, welcoming the world. And that moment though, you know, that moment Kind of changed my perception of how I wanted to go forward with the rest of my life. It's like, dude, you know, tomorrow's not promised right now, here I am holding something that I thought was going to be around [00:25:00] for long past I was gone and now I'm saying goodbye. And you know, here are the I'm taking in these lessons and trying to, you know go forth and teach them. And I still have my first daughter. So, you know, as a parent, you're trying to keep that that positive - PMA - that positive mental attitude, but good mindset and teach lessons.

You know, At the same time. You've got all this going on inside. So, you know, there's that balance you know, it, it offered yet another parental moments, you know, here she was about five or six at the time. And you know, how do you, how do you educate them? You know? And I, I'm not, I, I'm not the kind of person that's going to give all these

woo woo stories. Oh, you know, they're there, you're doing this or they're doing that. It's like, Oh, she she's, she's gone. Right. The only place she lives now is here. So this is where we have to keep her alive. You know, we have to remember our time together and all the things we got to do and all the smiles we shared and [00:26:00] all those things, you know, we, we, we get to be sad, right.

We have to be sad because she's not here anymore, but we have to remember all the goodness of it. Right. And so that was turning point number two for me, you know, and it was a big one. I threw myself into personal development and work. I took my, I I've almost come to the reflection here recently that I'm an addict, right.

Back then I was addicted. You know, if I go way back, I was addicted to computer programming. I was doing it all the time. And then it became the drugs and you know, when did my dark period, right. And then it became work again. And then it became my daughter as she was going through everything she was going through, you know, and then it became, you know, work

again. So I have this, I don't want to say addictive personality, but I find something that I enjoy and I do it a lot. Right. And so I assume myself into work and personal development and, you know, thank goodness it you know, it saved me [00:27:00] for what could have been another really dark time. And I could have drug my daughter back down with me.

Yeah. 

Trista, Host: [00:27:06] You said your daughter was five or six at the time. That's pretty young. How much did she understand? How much did it impact her? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:27:16] You know, she understood because Krista spent probably nine of her 18 months in the hospital. Right. And and you know, especially towards the back end, we actually had to take her to the children's hospital up in Pittsburgh. And we lived in Atlanta. You know, so her and I would travel up there, you know, fly up there every weekend, every other weekend, as much as we could to go see her sister. And she understood her sister was sick, you know, and I tried to as delicately as possible say, you know, I want you to understand, we all want the best for her, but it's possible that she may have to leave us. And, you know, I think in the beginning I totally [00:28:00] avoided the word death and dead and say, she may just have to leave us. She may have to go, you know, use the terms that they can relate to up to the angels, you know, visit grandma who had passed away and grandpa passed away those kinds of types of things.

But, you know it's, it, it was tough. Yeah, you, you try to put the language in there. And I think luckily there was enough, there was enough good shows out. You know, we were avid Disney Watchers at that age and there was enough good shows out there where you could point to a moment in of course you could use like a lion King moment when, you know, when one of the characters died.

So now you can, you can click with that little, remember when Mofasa passed away? And you know, , the other characters had to go on. They were sad. But they took all the learnings, all the lessons that, you know, he had taught them you know, forward. And I tried to use those connections to help her understand.

Trista, Host: [00:28:59] Yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah. That makes sense. And thank goodness you had reference points and stories that you could use too. Kind of relate it to her understanding. I, I don't know personally, but I do understand that the kind of loss you have as a parent losing a child, it never goes away. You carry it with you the rest of your life.

And so I just am very sorry for your loss. I'm sorry for you having to live with that. And I really acknowledge you for finding lessons that you could take to create a life in honor of her instead of avoiding the pain or medicating the pain of losing her really, you could go either way and nobody would fault you for either 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:29:48] one.

Really? Absolutely. 

Trista, Host: [00:29:49] Yeah. So you've taken the. Oh, lessons and learnings, and you've put them all into this podcast, this Dark Horse [00:30:00] Entrepreneur podcast. Tell us a little bit about that. And what kinds of things you like to share that some tips from there, 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:30:07] one of the things I've always felt like. I I've always been, had the belief and thank God for my parents were driving this home into me is I, I could do anything I wanted to, I just had to want to bad enough, right? Yeah, my dad never shirked. The idea of it's going to be hard work, but if you set your mind to it, you can go out there and do it.

Heck I could be a basketball player, dude. I'm only five nine. How good of a basketball player I could be, but I could be one, right. It would be Wiley. Right, right, right. I'm well, I'm wired, I'm wired and say, I could be, you know, I could be a jockey and a horse track, not a very good one, but I could be it.

So I've always had this mindset that I could do it. But even though I've had that, there's always those times when you feel like the world is set against [00:31:00] you or the odds are stacked against you, or people just don't believe in you. Right? And so that, that to me is a dark horse. Someone that believed potentially believes in himself, right.

The world's rest of the world, not so much, right. The world is like, yeah, you're not going to win this race. You're not even going to show up on the track. Right. And those are the folks that sometimes they just come up from behind and they could blow past everyone else. And they may not come in first, second or third.

But they show up, they do the work and they run the race and they held their head up high, you know, and they, they go on with their life. So to me, that's, that's the dark horse. And that's what I'm trying to share with other folks that, Hey, you can do it right. And I'm not going to tell you that you're going to come in first place, but gosh, darn it.

If you get out there, stand in the gate, do your stuff and start running. You did it right. That's a Pat on the back. And so I bring on the, so far, the majority of the episodes have been guests that [00:32:00] I've brought on and they share their experiences much like, you know, you're, you're doing here is like, you're asking some questions.

You're saying, Hey, Tracy, what about this? And share about your, your rollercoaster ride. You know, I, I feel if you have that organic conversation with someone, you'll find those hidden nuggets. You know, those ones that potentially the other podcast hosts or the other interviewers neglected to, because they had those canned answers, you know, so they get on, they share their stories and some of them are some pretty tough stories, you know? And you're like, Oh my God, I'm sorry you even had to go through that. But then they've, it then comes apart where they make that transition and they start sharing. Here's how I turned it into my business. And here's why I'm doing that. And you hear that and it kind of resonates with you're like, wow.

Right. So I get them to, and then I, you know, obviously I get them to share the tips of running a business or to market their business. And then at the end of the show, I always try to give, here are the thoughts that stuck out to [00:33:00] me, you know, thought one, thought two, thought three. So if, if someone is even in a rush, they could rush, right to the last few minutes of it, and he was listening to that last part but you know, they missed the gems of the stories and everything.

And then inside there, I, you know, often drop little, you know, nuggets from my experience. So at the end of the day, it's all about trying to tell folks, Hey, if you're considering being an entrepreneur or you're, or, or running a business, or you're smack dab in the middle of it right now, and you feel like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get through this.

This is those moments to help you understand, you know what, everyone's going through it. Right. You're not alone. Here's some tips. You know? So that's, that's the whole motivation behind it. 

Trista, Host: [00:33:43] That's awesome. Now you actually have some tips yourself that I wanted to underline during this conversation. And they're around reputation management and this is something every entrepreneur needs to be aware of because we really have become our influence.

How many people we [00:34:00] have influenced, how many people open the emails, how many people watch the videos, right? Give us some tips on reputation management and specifically how to manage it to your advantage and how to deal with it when it goes awry.

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:34:13] Sure. I think one of the, one of the first tips is. Start managing it. I think so many people take the reputation side of things more passively, right? In other words, if you're selling a product or a service and someone gives you a five star review, you're like, yay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Right. Some folks are even going a little further into saying, Hey, could you leave us a five star review or anything like that? I think you need to, you need to grab that bull by the horns and ride that puppy all the way to the bank. You need to ask every single person that interacts or with you for some feedback.

And you want to ask for that feedback in a way that they're sharing the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think one of the biggest reasons [00:35:00] people don't want to do that because they're afraid of the bad and the ugly. Right. And one of the things I shared in a recent episode is, you know, what your, your naysayers or your biggest opportunity to improve your business. Because if you hear that a couple of times, then there's a hole in your business or a hole in your process that you need to fill. So doing both sides. And I think one of the greatest ways in there are a number of tools out there. 

Trista, Host: [00:35:27] That's great advice because I think you're right. Business owners definitely want to shy away from the bad reviews. Take them really personally get upset and angry because you do work really, really hard. And sometimes there is a problem that you did not anticipate. And yet there it is. And so meeting it head on 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:35:45] very, very important.

Trista, Host: [00:35:46] That's great tip. Now you have an Academy that I want to also give you an opportunity to share. So share about your digital Academy. What is it and what can people learn? 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:35:58] The Dark Horse [00:36:00] Digital Course Academy is literally, and I'm going to say this a little tongue in cheek. It's a digital course about creating digital courses.

Which almost sounds like, okay, what does that gotta be about? But literally in, in eight modules, we're going to take you through the steps to create your first digital product. Right? So any, I think one of the biggest struggles, any number of entrepreneurs are having out there is they're trading time for money, right.

We only get 24 hours a day and I don't care how much you're making for every hour. Right. You can only, still have 24 of them in a day. 

So. In this digital course, we're going to take you all the way through the steps and breaking it down. I may even be a little bit anal about it, cause it's like a lot of "Today you're going to do this, this, this, and this" and check box, check box check. I'm a checkbox kind of guy.

I feel good. It's like, Hey, I got that done. It's done. And it's a again, over eight courses, how to create, how to outline it. But before [00:37:00] you outline it, you know how to validate it. Hey, I have this great idea. How do I validate it? What, what do I do? We'll, we'll take you through some steps on validating your idea, and you can walk away with that with even more market data.

Quite often, I find that when people go through the validation process, they're like, wow, I didn't even think about adding that into my course. And now they've got even more stuff which makes your course more sellable. And then we're going to go through, you know, how to actually outline it, record it I'm a big proponent of doing video courses that people can watch, you know, they can pick it up, watch it, put it down, pick it up, watch it, put it down at their own pace. You know, of course you could use the same processes for creating an an ebook or a PDF course. But I think people will be a little more challenged to consume that, but that choice is yours.

And then we'll take you through how to market it. We have some pretty cool tactics. There's one really cool up and coming tactic. And it's called the pop-up podcast. Believe it or not, it's a, it's a, you [00:38:00] know, I think webinars are still good tactics. They work, but you know, it, it's pretty busy nowadays.

When life gets back to we'll call it normal, whatever normal is going to be. How many folks have two hours or an hour and a half to sit on a webinar where they know, they know, for fact, you're going to be pitching them at the end. You're like, dude, just tell me what you're trying to sell me. I already know you. I love you, dude. You rock. Gimme, gimme the, give me the order page, right? And so we take you all through that step by step and you know, a few bonus gems along the way, how to build things up, how to, you know, hit, hit the ground, running how to make sure your, your students when they do buy your course, how to onboard them in such a way that it raises your completion rate.

And when you raise the completion rate of your course, more people are more apt to say, Oh my God, I got so much out of it. Well, you did it. You got more out of it because you finished, you 

Trista, Host: [00:38:54] finished it. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:38:55] Yeah, absolutely. 

Trista, Host: [00:38:56] That sounds like a great course. You know, I've considered [00:39:00] taking my best knowledge, putting it into a course, but the steps to do that, I 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:39:04] I've never done that 

Trista, Host: [00:39:05] before.

I wouldn't even know where to start. So it sounds like this is a great step by step way to not just start but complete the course and market it so you can actually get people. Registering for it and getting the value out of what you have to share. So that sounds great. We're going to have the podcast and the course available in the show notes so people can access both of those from you.

And I I've just really loved learning your plate story and what's made you who you are today. I do like to wrap up with you asking me a question. So do you have a question you'd like to ask 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:39:44] me. You know, obviously the obvious question is how did you start talking about plates? But I think I'm gonna switch and say, you know, what, if you were gonna do a documentary, what would it be about and why?

[00:40:00] Trista, Host: [00:40:00] Hmm. That's an interesting question. A documentary.

I think if I was going to do a documentary, it would have to be on something really super curious about like, how does it work? Why does it work? What makes it work the way that it does? How does it working impact the world? So I'm trying to think, like, what am I so curious about that I would want to do all of that work?

Cause I have a friend doing a documentary on whiskey and is it whiskey or scotch? He's in Scotland. So I guess it's scotch, right? He's doing a documentary on scotch and he's been working on this for over a year, flown all over the world and he loves scotch so much and he loves Scotland so much, but it's this labor of love for him.

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:40:56] Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. But 

Trista, Host: [00:40:58] I'm like, do I love anything [00:41:00] enough to spend that level of time and resources on it? You know, I I think if I was going to do a documentary, I have a curiosity about non-spiritual people using spiritual practices in business. There's this growing number of people I'm finding that have they're very buttoned up and pragmatic and very professional. They're not what you would consider like woo, woo type people.

Sure. But yet, when you get to know them a little deeper, you realize that they're using a lot of different things like angel cards, meditation, law of attraction, manifestation, visualization, crystals, you know, Reiki, healing. All these modalities that are not considered buttoned up professional mainstream kind of thing.

Right. And I'm [00:42:00] curious about that crossroads, like how those two things come together and cross paths and become meshed together. And so I think that I have no idea if this would be a good documentary that anybody would ever watch. But I'm very intrigued by that merge of those two. Yeah. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:42:23] That's, that's actually a good one.

I would watch that one. I would definitely watch that one. 

Trista, Host: [00:42:30] Great. It's another thing to put on my 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:42:31] side. I mean, I've seen over my time, you know, coming in and out of corporate America. The, the influx of what some folks 20, 30 years ago would think is woo, woo become part of the mainstream in, you know, in the big companies, certainly a lot more prevalent in the smaller companies and folks like you and me who went out, go out and look at it. 

Trista, Host: [00:42:56] I think there's a lot there and I, I find it fascinating. [00:43:00] 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:43:00] I'm feeling a project coming up. 

Trista, Host: [00:43:02] One more thing to do.

Actually yeah, that's very intriguing, but Tracy, it was very, very nice having you on. I really appreciate you sharing everything that you did. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:43:13] Thank you so much. 

Trista, Host: [00:43:15] Absolutely. Have a great day. 

Tracy Brinkmann: [00:43:17] You do the same.

Trista, Host: [00:43:18] Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Trista's PL8STORY podcast. Please subscribe to Trista's PL8STORY podcast to get the story behind all those vanity plates, driving with you on the road. And if you would like to nominate the owner of a license plate, including you... Or visit any of our partners and sponsors come and see us www.pl8story.com. That's P L number eight story.com and give us the details. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review and give us a share. I'm Trista Polo wishing you well on the road to your next adventure.