Tracey Ann Thomas, Vice President of People at Florida Coast Equipment Inc

Welcome to the ThinkFactory podcast. We've got one question for you. What keeps you up at night? Welcome to the ThinkFactory's Workplace podcast, powered by OGC Solutions. The podcast where we explore the ever-evolving landscape of workplace dynamics. My name is Alka Bajal. I'm a partner with OGC Solutions and Chair of our Corporate Immigration Services Group. And I'll be your host today. I am very pleased to have with me Tracy and Thomas, Vice President at Florida Coast Equipment. Welcome to the podcast, Tracy. Thank you so much for having me, Alka. I am very happy to be here today. Thank you. Can you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do, Tracy? So I am currently the VP of People at Florida Coast Equipment. And we are co-bolters number one dealer in the U.S. My background has always been in human resources and I have worked in the Caribbean and I've worked in the U.S. as well. And I see myself more as a strong HR generalist and strategic professional. And I've had the wonderful opportunity to touch many aspects of HR compliance, recruiting and talent acquisition, talent development, general HR, employee relations. So I think I have been fortunate to get a well-rounded HR experience. And that must keep things interesting dealing with all the different aspects of HR. Yes, it certainly does. And in my role at Florida Coast Equipment, now I still do a very wide array of HR functions. So it's interesting, hectic, wonderful, but it keeps me abreast of everything that's happening. Wonderful. So you mentioned that you worked in the Caribbean, you worked here. Tell us about your career path and what led you to the current position. So I like to think that HR found me and identified HR. And I have a wonderful professor coming out of college to thank for that who lined me up with a job opportunity, which was with a company in the UK that was starting a branch in Jamaica where I lived at the time. And that was in psychometric assessment and testing. So that was my entry into recruiting, into using assessments for talent development and using it for employee as well as executive coaching and management. So that was a wonderful opportunity. And from there, I think I also got very good experiences working with companies like KPMG and PriceWoodles, where I was on the consulting side and then eventually went into the industry side where I was able to be a very good source in terms of implementing things. And that's really where I found my love for HR. I like to be very hands on. I like to be given the opportunity to lend my voice to projects and initiatives that impact employees. And most of my experiences have allowed me to do that. And then stepping into management was just another level where I have been reporting to the CEO since probably over the last 10 to 12 years of my job opportunities. Excellent. So you have a sort of unique perspective on being a female leader in the workplace and having that experience. They have experienced both in Jamaica and in the US. Yes, I do have that unique experience. And yes, I have been in positions where I am reporting to the CEO in a few instances being the only female at the leadership table. So working alongside males and having to jostle and having to understand and learn especially what that means and coming into my own of being someone of influence and someone of impact, which is one of the great things I really enjoy about working with Florida Coast equipment. It really has given me a very good environment and an opportunity to really sit at the table, let my voice be heard, my CEO and executives value what I have to say. And so I have been along the spectrum of being ignored. And now being valued and being sought after, not just for HR initiatives in the organization, but for many other things, even from an operation side in the organization. Yeah, so that's really nice to hear in this day and age. We don't always hear that. That is the way it works when there are women and leadership positions. But tell me, how is that evolved for you over time? You said that you've been places where you've been ignored. Do you think that this is an evolution in society and that women are more accepted as leaders or do you still think it's somewhat specific to the employer? Excuse me, I think it is very specific to the employer. And I believe that my experience and I also believe that it has very little to do with the size of the organization, but it has a lot to do with the person who is actually leading the organization. And my own experience, I have found where you have a CEO who is mature in terms of they have learned how to work alongside others, they have learned how to listen, they understand and accept that they are not the preeminent voice in every matter that they really want to hire and retain people around them who are even better experts in their fields. And you can find that in small organizations, mid-sized organizations, huge organizations. So I think that it is slowly evolving from a more general perspective, but I think that many persons have been fortunate to find that kind of engaging and pouring environment in different workplaces. But I think I'll call even beyond that one of the things that I have personally learned which I champion as much as I can, it's really the individuals, the individual woman sitting as an executive and learning how to be someone of impact and influence and making that difference just from your own personal life and how you leave your life at work. Very interesting. So we've talked about this before and how leadership comes from the top down. So what advice or what do you believe is essential for effective leadership today as a woman in executive, C-suite type position in the workplace today? There are a few things that come to mind, Alka. And I believe that the foundational one, it's clarity in terms of who you are as a woman in the workplace. Not first starting from what you do or what you know what who you are. So your identity, understanding whatever that means for you as an individual. For me, that means that I understand my personal values. I know what I will compromise on or not compromise on. I want to be someone who collaborate. I want to be someone who listen. I don't speak just because I feel I have been silent in a meeting and I feel that I need to say something because I'm at the table and a woman must speak and say something. When I speak, I want to make a difference and I want to turn the conversation around to what I believe is the best solution. And so those are some of the things that really drive me as an individual and allow me to manage myself in a particular way whenever I'm in situations. I also want to be known as someone who is diplomatic but truthful and very transparent and open in what I communicate. And there are things you have to balance, Alka. It's not easy being in a work environment and knowing that you can say something to the CEO and the CEO may get upset and so your job is in jeopardy. That happens but you have to navigate that and sometimes build the relationship again, not just by this is what I have to say, but sometimes you have to massage the environment. You have to know your CEO, you have to be very deliberate. I had an experience if I made a share where I started a company and I learned from the previous job that which I believe was a huge learning experience because I was so horrible in that job and when I stepped into what I stepped into this new job, one of the things I really committed to was I need to build a relationship with the CEO. And I found out that they got to work very early, much earlier than I would have. So they would normally come in at 630 to start their day. I would normally be coming in at 745 8 o'clock. And I made the decision that I'm going to start coming in at 7 where my office is, I would walk another side of the building where his office would go through another, you know, like another entrance. I decided I would go through the entrance closer to him when I come in. And so I would just walk by and say, "Hey, good morning." And go to the door and say, "How are you doing? What's happening?" And I did that consistently and those informal conversations of how you're doing, what you're doing, he has already started his day. And so he would be in a very relaxed informal way and he would say, "Hey, I want to talk to you about this." Or, "I have a concern about this." And we would just sit and talk from that perspective. And that's what I did. I built a relationship with that CEO. He called me last December just to say, "Hi, how are you?" So we catch up probably twice a year. And he stopped being my CEO about, "Wow, problem about 14 years now." And so I believe that it's not just a matter of sitting down and saying, "Well, I am the VP of People at IMX and IMY, so they should listen to me and I should have a seat at the table." Sometimes you have to be very wise in how you navigate things so that your work gets easier, so that you can get ahead of things before they become a problem. That CEO can say something to you that morning rather than saying it at 10 o'clock when you're in the management meeting with everybody else. So those are the things that I believe that, especially as a female, we have to be nimble. We have to be wise. We have to sometimes not have so much of a chip on our shoulders and believe that this should happen or should not happen. Create your own opportunities. Understand what you want. Understand how your organization flows and work it so that you can get what you want to get for the good of the organization and for your department. I like that. I think that is a great lesson and piece of advice for those coming behind us. I just wanted to circle back to one thing that you said, which I found very interesting, which was you learned from a previous position that you were very good in. I think that's wonderful. I think that's another great lesson for those that are coming up behind us that your every job is not going to be perfect or successful. But in failure, we grow and learn. We all make mistakes and that's how we learn. So I love that. I love that you're not perfect, but you've learned and you've grown. I know that you are amazing at what you do now and so I think it's great for people to hear how you've got here. So what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned so far as a leader? The most important lesson I have learned, there are many that are flooded my mind, but I think the most important one really is, as a leader, if you happen to have a team, is to spend time with the team to one, hear from them and two, make your vision become their own. And that I believe is a key thing. So I may have a team of three people. They come from different backgrounds in terms of their experiences. They have different personal values and personal experiences. They may more than likely would have joined my team at different times. How do I build that team and harmonize everybody and how do I ensure that what is in my heart and what I have been mandated to do as the head of my department as a VP of people? How do I communicate that and entrust it to them and have them make their own possession? That's what I think is very, very important. And I think that's the biggest lesson I have learned in my leadership experience. I want not only myself, but my team to feel connected to the organization. I want to inspire them. I want them to want to come to work every day. I want to teach them what it is that I know. I want to learn from them and give them opportunities to share things and have us as a department make a big impact in the organization. I believe that's the key thing. That definitely is the key thing. How do you incentivize your team to be invested and take ownership? So at Florida Coast, I think one of the biggest things is that we have taken the time to really write down our vision, mission, and values. And for us, identifying those values also meant identifying the behaviors that make these values. And so one of the things that we have as a value, for example, is we use time energy and resources wisely. Well, our value is prosperity. And one of the behaviors of that is we use time energy and resources wisely. So how do I incentivize my team members around those values? So I look at we use time energy and resources wisely. Within the HR department, you many times have to rework something because of the manager didn't communicate clearly to you or in hiring, the candidate says that they can't start on Monday. They can start two weeks from now. And so there's always things that you end up doing that creates bottleneck. And have you been working? Have you been frustrated? I say to them, listen, there are certain things that you can't control. Things that are outside of your own desk, outside of your own productivity. But the things that you can control, I want you to touch it once. So if you're working on a report that you need to give me on turnover, then I want you to work on that report. I want you to leave it. I want you to come back the next day and make sure that it is accurate. Don't give me something that is going to be wrong, that you are not going to be proud of. And if we build certain metrics and certain KPIs, then we can take our values, build them into those metrics and incentivize you on a quarterly basis, if you meet certain metrics. And so I actually sit down. Well, last year was the first time that I actually did it with my entire team before I was able to do it just with one person. But that's what I do to really sit down, identify metrics, but identify those metrics in connection to our values and the behaviors. And then develop commission programs and bonus programs that align with that. So this not only speaks to your style as a leader, which I find very impressive, but also to how you're setting the tone and the workplace culture. So what do you think are some key element elements that contribute to a positive workplace culture? I think one of the key things which we are always learning and I think it's the same for any successful organization is defining that culture and having that culture come from the very top. So I am a true believer and that aligns with me in my current position where the CEO really needs to be the champion of the culture. It starts there. And at Florida Coast or CEO is a culture champion that's one of his titles actually. But on side of that, yes, it is outside of that I think defining the culture, putting systems or programs, committees, games, team building activities to communicate that program in a very informal way. And when I say informal, you'll always have the posters on the walls, you may have like pocket cards with the values and so on. But you want to build those into fun events of the things we have done at Florida Coast is we target one of the values and we focus on that for the entire year. So last year it was we make it happen. The year before it was we worked to yes. This year it's prosperity. It's all about generating strong returns for employees or customers or owners or manufacturers. And once you have that where employees begin to live the values and feel the values and understand what it means. And remember, Alka, this is like an entire year with various kinds of initiatives. Then the communication happens. Then the dialogue can happen. Then you can say to somebody when you when you seek out the right resources for the job, you are living the values. When you seek to be productive, you are living the values. When you don't work properly. And so as a technician, you have to rework whatever you did on this machine. Then you are not using all resources wisely. Then you have to use double the energy. Then you are not being you're not living within our values. Those kinds of conversations is what I believe is another key thing. So it's taking just a broad term of communication and drilling down into that in terms of very practical feedback both in positive ways. And when you have to highlight negative behaviors, that really allows the culture to be filtered through the company. And that becomes a position of everybody. That's really amazing. I love that focusing on each element of the mission values. So tell me a little bit more about how you're doing that. You mentioned that you're incorporating it into something funny. So do you come up with something different every month or just periodically and hadn't pushed it out. Document, talking. So one of the key things that we do is, so we have 14 locations across Florida in addition to our head office. So you're talking 15 locations and about 215 employees strong. So every month, by none, every single month, we have a team lunch where at every location, the company, somebody is in charge and we buy lunch for all the employees. We have an award program. So in addition to just stopping to say thank you with a nice lunch, we have an award program where we recognize employees every month for the value that we're emphasizing for that year. So if we're doing, for example, prosperity, then for this year, we have prosperity champions. And for March or lunch, actually, was last week. And so last week, we recognized the prosperity champions for each department for the month of February. So we have a list of two to three things that we sent out to our general managers and our executive team. And we say identify somebody from your department that you believe exhibited these values in the month of February. Send us a two sentence, three sentence right to public this person. And there is a nomination and then everybody who is nominated. So overall, it may be five or six departments. Everybody who is nominated receive a gift card and receive a small trophy. And then from the nominees, we have an overall winner for that month. And that creates a lot of excitement and that creates a lot of emphasis by the employees on really demonstrating the values. It's diverse because people see it happening every month and people see that we're serious and people see persons from different departments and different functional areas being awarded. And it is also a very good opportunity where persons get to understand another side of the business. So if Alka is in immigration and that is a part of the legal department, the technician at one of our stores may have no clue that we have an immigration department. But by virtue of the fact that Alka is recognized as the prosperity champion for a particular month, when the meeting or the lunch is happening. So we have a lunch and we have a team's meeting. Somebody is at Alka's desk. They're talking about her looking on camera reading why she was the person identified, shaking her hand, giving her a gift card and everybody's clapping. That's so easy. That's so fun. It is. It is. I mean, it's a small thing. And then at the end of the year, we have our employee awards and it's the same thing. The persons who have been nominated throughout the year, they are the ones who we look at at the end of the year and we vote for an overall person for the sales department, the support department, the service department. We vote for an overall person. And Alka, listen to this. Our gifts that we give to our employee of the year and the employee of each department of the year is a vacation. It's like, it's like we have a traffic agent. We send them to the traffic agent. We give them a gift voucher of $5,000 or $2,500. And many persons are like, we tell them we don't have to know where you're going. But if you work hard, we don't want to give you any money. You are just going to take it and pay a bill. You may go somewhere with your wife or your children, but it's just going to end up in the way that everybody's paycheck ends up every month. We want to do something very nice that you can remember. So we have had opportunities where we got feedback that this guy he wanted to take his wife on a first-class trip always. Of course, he couldn't afford it. He took his wife on a first-class airplane trip to a fancy hotel from Florida to New York, but that was a huge thing for him. It's so exciting. Persons have gone on cruises. Persons have gone to Disneyland with their entire family. Persons have gone on tour three vacations with the money. They have the entire year to use that. Persons who were awarded in January this year. So we have a big event. Persons who were awarded in January this year was for the year 2024, and each of those employees have until the end of 2025 to use their vacation travel award. It is so creative. It is wonderful. It is great. It's really great. It's what a great message you're sending. You worked hard for us. You invited our values. Enjoy some time off. Yes, but have a break. I love it. Yes, and additional vacation time. We throw that in. So not just the travel, but we throw that in. You're really giving people things that have meaning to them that really are incentivizing them to buy into the values, to participate. I can imagine that creates a lovely workplace culture. It does. Do you think that that helps with employee retention? It does help with employee retention, but we still have challenges with employee retention. Our industry, which is very heavy on technicians. A few years ago, there was a study that shared that there is a shortage of technicians all across the US. So technicians for us would be generally mechanics. We call them technicians, but they work on equipment and our machines. And that study said that to fill the shortage of technicians in the US, it will take the next five to seven years. And so we do lose technicians who get more money somewhere else. We still lose people because of varying reasons. The usual turnover reasons. So yes, we still do have a problem. And we still do have challenges. And we recognize those challenges, but yes, it is a very big retention draw in terms of emphasizing our culture and ensuring that we incentivize persons not just from our commission plans and our bonus structures, but things like these. Very interesting. And do you think that that technician shortage is something that's come out of COVID, or is it something that was sort of trending that way regardless? It was trending that way regardless of COVID. So if you think about it, technicians come out of technical schools, trade schools, and overall the enrollment in technical schools have gone down. I don't have the stats, but when you look at the 10 year history, you have less and less persons who are going into vacations like technical schools. And that's really where it starts. So when the decline started to be seen many years ago, that's happened and we're living in the result of that. So that's one of the key things in terms of a lot of younger persons are finding opportunities elsewhere. A lot of persons coming out of high schools, they are looking at job opportunities or that may not be in the technician field. A lot of persons are thinking of themselves as the next internet star and want to try things that are more in the area of social media and having their personal brand in different ways. And so that's just one of the things we have to deal with. So we try to make alliances and build relationships with technical schools. We have just started, it's not something that's very entrenched and strong in what we're doing within the HR department and the organization. But we realized that making relationships and partnerships with the technical schools in the various areas that we have a store location would be very key. So yesterday we were in Miami and we were at the high school event by AED, associated equipment dealers. Their pathway event in Miami where Florida Coast equipment was there and over 400 students passed through and was able to interact with our team members, be interviewed, see some of our equipment and so on. Those are the kinds of things that we're doing especially for technicians and then trying to recruit in a more precise way and ensure that we recruit so that persons come on board that align to our values and management training so that when we do have persons in house or managers are more equipped in terms of understanding how to lead and manage and engage. So when you're looking to recruit at an entry level, you're looking for essentially skilled labor. You want at least folks who are trained in some sort of technical skills that relate to your equipment. You're not looking for just generic high school graduates and you're going to bring them on board and train them, correct? Correct. And that is specific to our service or service department, which is one of the key departments that provide service with respect to fixing and diagnosing of machines that come in from our customers. So yes, we are looking for persons who are skilled. But we also train individuals so we can get an intern right out of college. Sometimes high school but it's usually better coming out of college because they would have been exposed to these mechanics or some beginning aspects of hydraulics or slowly beginning to understand what diagnosing equipment errors and faults are. When they come on board, we train them in or go to machine and equipment. But yes, that's the kind of level that we are looking for for service department. And we talked about this before. It's more than just the mechanical know-how, right? To execute that really the critical part of diagnosing, you have to be able to think critically, you know, to solve problems. So it's more than just knowing how to actually work with the machinery. That's correct. And one of the key things for us is so we have technicians along the spectrum of their knowledge and experience. The way in which turnover hurts us is you can have somebody come on board and you are training them from the entry level technician so you're just expecting them to change oil and filters and so on. And you begin to pour into them regarding training and you are hoping that this person will get up to speed where they can become a lead technician or, you know, eventually want to build a career in the area of being a technician. If they leave, then you lose that investment that you have placed on the inside of them. And as you rightly said, getting someone up to speed to truly understand and diagnose accurately is something that we want to get more off and want to train persons more off. And the schools are a starting place, but yes, working in the industry, working with the companies is very, very key for stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. And certain things you can't learn in school, you just have to learn on the job. Yep, that is true. That is definitely true. So changing a focus a little bit. Let's talk about mental health. So how important do you think mental health and mental health support is in the workplace today? I think it is very important. I think we live in a world where it's a lot more complex than 10, 15, 20 years ago. The things that occupy our mind and that we see on the news or that we hear about, it's becoming wide and varied. And so probably 10, 15, 20 years ago, you could have somebody who, you know, just recently left college and started school. And they're not necessarily so concerned about the wide range of things that may occupy the mind of somebody who is a parent, who is, you know, have lots of bills and, you know, trying to manage age in parents and all of that. But in today's world, that's not the case. You have persons who are in school who have to be dealing with aspects of bullying who have to deal with failing grades and how that impact them. That can get transferred to college and they leave college and come into the workplace. And so mental health is really, really very, very, very important. We bring our entire beans to work alcohol. We don't, even though you may want to, nothing, come up what's happening at home when you go to work. It's very hard to switch off. And so the health of who we are and the things that we're dealing with is very important. And so the emphasis on companies to provide mental health support, whether that is through the employee assistance programs, whether that is through training managers and how to identify if somebody is going through a challenge. And you may not know what to do as a manager, but just flagging that of the chain, flagging that HR to say, hey, you know, this employee has been out for, in and out for the past two weeks. And when they come to work, they, I hear them in the bathroom crying, or I can see that they're not as cheerful as before or it may just be, I don't know, something is wrong, something just seems off with this person. Can I, can I ask him a horrible XYZ? Sometimes it may just be that to begin to understand, how can we support that person? How can we give them a safe space to raise their hands if they, if they need support or if they want to reach out to the company to say, can I have ABC XYZ? It is, it is absolutely important. This concept about recognizing that people bring their whole selves to work is I think really a key concept in the workplace today and effectively or such as yourself are the ones who are really noting this and paying attention to it. And it's really very true, you know, when we first entered the workforce, number of years ago, we were true on Facebook. It wasn't like that, right? You had the work yourself and you had your home self and you didn't bring your home issues to work. And which was difficult. And, you know, you had to suppress if there were things bothering you at home. Right. You know, and nowadays, everybody is so much more transparent. And as you say, so much more information about everyone and what other people are doing and what's happening in the world, that, you know, you are who you are. And if something is bothering you in one place, it's certainly going to keep bothering you. But yesterday, there's no way to shut that off. Right. Right. But feeling curred and accepted and sometimes just say, I'm sorry and I understand, it does go a long way, yes, with people. So I can imagine that that, again, contributes to a very positive workplace culture. That's amazing. Yes. Yes. So setting aside the political issues about DEI, how important do you think diversity and inclusion as concepts are into this workforce? I think it's very, very important because I like to think that if you have a different set of experiences, which we each do, if you have a different set of experiences and I am open to hearing from you, I believe that I'm going to learn something from you. And I believe one of the key things is having the openness to listen and to sometimes ensure that we're not being too sensitive with somebody asks us a question, because a lot of times people generally don't know about your lived experience. And so we have to be able to determine when somebody is really being facetious and really being rude and being aggressive towards us. From the person who really wants to know, they may probably even be asking the question very clumsily. And I believe those things are what really make DEI as concepts, as you see, very very critical because I may solve a problem very differently because I just have a different background. Somebody else may come from a totally different country with different values. And because of what they have experienced, this thing that we're working on, this issue that we have, or even just hearing and accepting that person, or sometimes as simple as, well, I don't eat this. Why do you eat that? And persons who eat that kind of a thing, it's wrong to eat that. Well, it may be wrong to you because you're not exposed to it, but it's really not wrong because there's another culture somewhere else who does it. So I believe those things really make for a much richer individual. I'm a richer individual because I believe I'm open to talking to persons from different walks of life and especially talking to persons who are different than me because that's how I learn. That's more exciting. That's how I can grow without taking a flight and going somewhere else because I am open to talking and learning and listening and hearing from others. So yes, as concepts, I believe diversity, equity and inclusion, those things are very important. I like that. I share that perspective. I do think you can learn a lot from people who are not identical to yourself. Yes. I just like experiences. So looking to the future now, what predictions do you have for the future of your area and your industry? Say in the next five years. So I think the biggest thing that will impact us is AI. I believe from an industry perspective, AI will become even more critical in the development of machines and equipment. I think that will be an increase in demand and scale from the formative level in terms of the persons who are innovating what our machines will look like, what they will require to do. That will have a downstream effect in terms of our technicians understanding how to fix and diagnose equipment that are AI generated. What does that look like? When would the area of robotics be introduced? How much with that infiltrate? The workforce and what it is that we have to do, the results that we have to give. I would not be able to say exactly what that will look like, but I think that will be a very key thing. I think AI will also impact not just the technician field, but for example, it may be HR, it may be areas of creating and ensuring that the organization have documents that are truly copyrighted and that are appropriate. I have had experience with persons using AI and it's not relevant or it's not appropriate to what they need to do. So they may just use chat GPT or they may use Gemini or they may use any other kind of solution and say I have an employee problem, what do I do? Well, if you use it as a start, you still have to go through it and make sure that it is relevant and that appropriate. So I believe that's one of the key skills that will impact in terms of the future. Then the other thing I'll cut that I believe and this is something that has always been around. It's a lot of development of or people, but especially managers in terms of soft skills. I think we have a lot of people who are very competent in their technical skills and know what to do. Knowing how to do it in a way that affirms and values the individual as well as bring change in the organization will still be forever important and so I believe management development will continue to be one of the key things for the future. Very interesting. Yes, interesting how you were looking to AI to start taking over many aspects at all levels, but that soft skills, which is something I suspect AI can't replicate very well. Is that much more important? It makes a lot of sense. So as we wrap up, I have one last question for you, which is something I did not prepare you for, because our traditional last question on the thank factory, which is what keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night? I have a very good sleep outcome, very little keeps me up at night, but that question really goes to a very deep personal place for me. So I rooted in my faith and the thing that I would say keep me up at night if anything were to keep me up at night. It's really a reflection on if I have been true to my faith in how I have lived my life the day before or the things that I may have to do coming forward. So if I have a conflict within work, if I have a conflicting issue within my family with my sister or my brother or or I am dealing with challenges regarding my health, no matter what it is, how am I navigating and dealing with that from the place of my faith? That to me may be how am I engaging in conversations with whether that may be somebody at work or maybe my sister? Am I being open and truthful to that? Am I looking at myself and saying, okay, Tracey, why were you so offended by this thing that this person said? What did that trigger on the inside of you? What is still there? Why you got so upset when this happened? Or why were you so disappointed in expressing that they didn't show up? What's that touching on the inside of you? Is there something there that needs that you need to look at, that you need to uncover, that you need to put a name to and identify and see how that is turning up in other aspects of your life that may be limiting you or celebrating myself in terms of Tracey and I think you handed that very well. What are some of the things you can learn from that? Those hard things that keep you up at night, Alka, it's a lot about me and my material and my development and a whole lot less about people and events and the externals. You're very introspective person Tracey yet. Yeah, I try to be. I think that it ties in very well with one bringing your whole self to work and two, thinking about and focusing on the things you can control as opposed to the things you can't. All right. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. Well, thank you Tracey and for being with us today. I have really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much, Alka. It was an absolute joy being with you today and I thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you. Absolutely. So thank you listeners to the Think Factory's Workplace podcast. I'm Alka Mahal from OJC Solutions signing off for now. Until next time.