Tracy Doyle

I attribute all of my success to lived experience. My mom was mentally ill, so I became very resilient at a young age. I had to adapt, and I had to survive some of the situations that I went through. But the most important person in my life was my grandmother. During those trying times, she gave me hope, and I held onto her words, which was, you know, if you do well in school and you can figure out a way to afford college and get through that, then you can live the life of your dreams. And she was right, and I held onto those words. But I burned out because I just was all about achieving and achieving. Where my success really comes from was recognizing how overachievement actually took me away from myself. I lost myself. Finding my way back to myself and to the people in my life was what really propelled me to be the woman I am today. When I stopped becoming a human doing and I became a human being, that's when things really took off for me.

The best advice I ever received came from my grandmother during those trying times when I was young. She told me that if you do well in school and you can figure out a way to afford college and get through that, then you can live the life of your dreams. And she was right. I held onto those words throughout my journey, even though I had to work 3 jobs to get my degree as the first in my family to go to college.

The advice I would give is to follow your passion. For me, this is a full circle moment, because I wanted to start doing coaching about 10 years ago, but it was very difficult for me to manage both my business and coaching at the same time. So what I would say to someone who wants to become a coach is to follow their passions sooner, or find a way to keep your skills going so that when you're ready to do it, you can. The best way to say it is to be adaptable. Even if you can't do exactly what you want right away, find a way to keep those skills active - for me, that was through mentoring - so you're ready when the time comes.

To me, I think my biggest value is authenticity and integrity. For me, authenticity is about being your true self and being who you are. I'll give an example I was just at the book promotion event at the Oscars, and here I am, just a Jersey girl who just wrote a book, and I'm engaging with celebs and media and all sorts of people, and the most refreshing feedback I got was that I was authentic. But my biggest value is integrity, approaching everything from a place of honesty and accountability. To me, emotional accountability is what has taken me to where I am today. In my book, I call it Acknowledgement Conversations. It's really just acknowledging when you've done something hurtful or acted in a way that impacted someone negatively. It's not about saying I'm sorry - it's about saying things like, I can see how unfair that was toward you, or I didn't realize I was acting ugly, or I didn't hear my tone and didn't know it was defensive and that it hurt you. When you acknowledge it, people all of a sudden look at you and say, wow, you know what you just did, thank you for acknowledging me and seeing me.