This show is for new leaders, experienced leaders, struggling leaders, and leaders at the top of their game. It is for those who want to hear about the skills, tools and concepts that lead to better results. In this show, I want to bring leaders valuable concepts that aren't just trending the flavour of the month "shoulds." These might be ideas that haven't been sucked up and branded by LinkedIn personalities and gurus. What they will be is field-tested in the real world. Episodes will each focus on developing the skills and capacity today's leaders ask for. And they'll be kept interesting, fun, and full of metaphors and stories. It will be memorable, relatable, and accessible. Here's to you and your best version of a leader.
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In this powerful episode, Tim Sweet unpacks the critical role of focus in leadership, especially when navigating the noise of political and economic uncertainty. With heartfelt clarity, Tim explores how today’s leaders can rise above the chaos by gaining altitude and stepping back to assess what truly matters. He invites us to let go of the busywork, choose the essential few priorities, and give ourselves permission to slow down and realign.
Drawing from his own experiences, including a delay in releasing this very episode due to a client crisis, Tim reinforces the idea that integrity in leadership starts with reclaiming control of our time and energy. Through practical tools and emotional insight, Tim challenges us to start each day with intention, not the inbox.
He introduces a simple but powerful three-step practice: notice when energy is off-track, name a meaningful action, and schedule it. By understanding the emotional drivers of distraction, such as insecurity and the urge to prove ourselves, leaders can instead ground themselves in purpose. Whether it's protecting your most creative hour or "bilge-sweeping" your week to clear the clutter, this episode offers a refreshing reminder: true leadership starts from within.
Everything we talk about in the show pertains to leadership in some way, shape or form, or at least your leadership impact and your leadership career. But real daily leadership in a time where we've got political upheaval, where we've got economic upheaval, it feels harder and harder to maintain. So this week, one of my editors said to me, Tim, could you talk about how we can focus when everything feels uncertain? That landed. Because right now, a lot of leaders are tired. They're asking a lot of big questions, they're reacting to a lot of volatility, and they've got teams that are distracted. They've got teams that are actually, in some cases, at each other's throats. They may have lost trust. They may be dealing with personal crisis. While we have to talk about that as well. We have to be able to do our jobs at the end of the day,
Tim 00:58
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. This is episode 55 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast.
Tim 01:30
I want to be transparent with you. This episode, it was supposed to be out a few days ago, or at least I was supposed to get the recording to my editor, but a client crisis came up. It was urgent, it was important, it was distracting. I got pulled in. The irony isn't lost on me that when I'm about to record something about focus, I myself lost focus.
Tim 01:54
So today's for the leader who wants traction, not just more output, but clarity, integrity, so that they can believe in themselves, so they make good on the promises they make to themselves. We want to develop a rhythm that we can predict and that we can trust. Let's start up high 10,000 feet, because the first problem with focus is where we're looking. It's easy sometimes to get stuck in the weeds when we haven't really considered how we do the work. We need to take some time and work on the work. We need to focus on how we focus. If we get locked in on a task level, what's due, what's late, what's noisy, what's the emergency of the day? Things can seem very unmovable. So our first concept is, think about altitude. Be able to go way up, 300,000 feet, look down every once in a while and say, am I working on the right thing? Is this the piece of work that's going to move that needle forward.
Tim 3:06
So here's the first question, what does this season of your career actually demand you become? Not what's trendy, not what's the burning platform in the moment politically, not what used to work, not what others are simply applauding. Just this season. Just right now. Who do you need to be? In my work with executives, with clients and universities and businesses and medicine, we want to be able to name those one to three things at any point that are going to move the needle and then ruthlessly let go of the rest. Because here's the truth, if everything is important, you know that nothing is. You have to choose, not just what to do and the quality you bring with that, but what to release, what to stop doing?
Tim 04:05
Focus isn't just about intensity of attention. It's about permission, giving ourselves the right to stop and invest in what matters. We ask our people to keep their head on the swivel, to think about what matters. Why are you doing things? But so often, we ourselves get overwhelmed and we forget that not everything is possible. Leaders often become the catch all. They will do something just because they're trying to keep their other people so committed and deployed effectively that the little things well, it's just easier to do them than to develop a system by which we're going to get those done. And in the process, the people that are at the top most positions in teams and businesses themselves become overwhelmed and you cannot give away calm. You cannot promote calm in others if you yourself don't have a sense of calm and control. So before we optimize our own schedules, we want to think about elevation. We need to get up and zoom out and get honest what deserves our focus in this season of our lives, in this quarter of the business, in this area of our growth and development.
Tim 05:34
Even when you know your priorities, your day, can still get hijacked. What does it take? One email, one off handed comment, one meeting you didn't expect to be in, one emergency you didn't think was going to take place, and you're back in reaction mode. So here's a simple shift start your day in intention, not in your inbox, but with intention. Before the world grabs your energy. Decide where does your energy need to go? Decide where that day needs to end.
Tim 06:14
With the work life design tool that I use with every client, when we onboard, we talk about energy alignment. Not just how to get more done, but how to develop a capacity to feel more focused and to really make sure you're in command of your day. You need capacity to create capacity. For me, I live by my calendar. My clients know that if it's not in my calendar, it does not happen. So I make sure that every time a new event comes in, it has to go in my calendar. It has to immediately be jotted down, captured even contextually. If I don't have it, if I don't have access to that, because I've chosen not to focus on long term things, I'm very much into the Get it into my inbox and delegate it into an event. I need that so that I can maintain my free time and my booked time. My free time is very, very important, and I wouldn't say it's necessarily free. Let's let's probably call it flexible time. But for me, that time becomes wildly creative. It's when I get to be curious. It's when I get to think about which one of my clients I'm caring about most in the moment, which one requires my intention, which one do I need to send out a little hello to if I haven't heard from them. Who am I concerned about? Who am I really wanting to see move something forward. If it's not in my calendar, it simply doesn't happen.
Tim 07:52
Because if even one block of my responsibility hasn't been represented in a visual way, and this is my way, it doesn't have to be yours. I can't keep control of it. I will fill the whole day, but I may fill it with what I'm most interested in or most passionate about, or I just don't let something go rather than diverting and changing tact. And when you have as many clients as I do, as many projects on the go, as many books that I want to write, you need to be able to switch gears. So here is a question for you. What's one part of your day that you can reclaim? Take a look at your calendar and see where you are pointed at things that simply don't provide you any value. Can you get that back? Where is there a spot that is claimed with the wrong thing and you could put that to better use?
Tim 08:57
Okay. Next question. When does your energy in the day feel most clear? Pay attention for the next week when you feel a sense of clarity. For some people, it's first thing in the morning. For myself, it's often first thing in the morning. For other people, it's right before they go to bed. And for still other people, they need to have experienced the day. So it might be at four o'clock or five o'clock. People are different. Some people need to be in this dance between forecasting what they need to do and finding out what they actually need to do that day. But pay attention when during the day is best for you to stop and kind of do a broad sweep of what you're working on.
Tim 9:42
Third question, what's one thing that you can protect that fuels your impact and your focus and your time, not just the activity? So what's something that settles you down or gives you that type of space it might be going for a walk. It might be taking a glass of water. It might be that space before you decide to hunker down and watch a movie. When do you need to honour your requirement of refocusing your life, of really clearing out the bilge, getting rid of things that don't matter? All in all, this means don't manage your time. Design it. Design a day that you can win with. Here's the layer most productivity advice skips. There is an emotional driver underneath everything that we do. And there is an emotional driver underneath, failing to focus, failing to take stock of what's important and what can you ignore. We're not simply distracted because we're disorganized. We're distracted because of insecurity. We fail to cut loose things we don't need to do because doing those things, says something to ourselves, proves something to ourselves, that allows us to feel secure in the moment. Perhaps it's that useless meeting that we're supposed to go to, that if we don't, the boss is going to hate us. We're trying to, in those moments, prove that we’re enough. If you're a mom or a dad, you might be trying to please everyone. Or you might be trying to pattern yourself after someone else's formula. But proving pleasing, patterning, it's all exhausting, and it can keep us busy but completely unfulfilled.
Tim 11:46
So another question, when you look at the tasks that you've got in front of yourself, is it about impact, or is it about insecurity? Until we confront that and we're fluent in what makes us insecure and what has us nervous. It's very hard to arrive at the best systems, because that insecurity that trying to keep up the false self sits there like a gravitational force that pulls us faster and faster, often in the wrong direction again when we pause, we take that time to reflect. We have to look at everything that's important to us, everything that's happening on the outside, but then also, what are we trying to be on the inside? Whose approval are we chasing? What would change if we stopped needing to prove that thing to others or to ourselves.
Tim 12:46
The deepest kind of focus isn't tactical. The deepest kind of focus is emotional intelligence and emotional alignment. Where are we and why are we there, and is it aligned with who we really are and what we really need to do?
Tim 13:05
Okay, big words. How do we make this real? Well, you don't need a new app, although there's lots that are out there that they're going to promise that they can solve this for you. And you don't need a massive overhaul. An app is snake oil. There's things out there that promise to do it for you. We don't need to develop faster pencils, faster ways to get unfocused, trying to do more when really we need to be doing less. And we don't need to change ourselves. We don't have time to change you, nor would we want to, because why would we want to knock all those sharp edges off of you, who is perfect and very effective at being you better than anybody else at being you.
Tim 13:52
Here's a three-step practice that I come back to, especially when I feel scattered. Practice, like meditation, is knowing you're out of that state of flow. You've got to notice. I feel like my energy is misdirected. So where is my energy going today? Is it being bled by urgency and emergency? Is it being bled by ego or insecurity? Is it being bled by lack of alignment with something, I don't feel like I'm working on something that I feel is important, or I can't connect the dots? Am I having an issue with fit with the type of work I'm doing today? Or am I having an issue with being frustrated with perhaps someone else or a set of values that I don't agree with. So notice, is your energy slipping away? Is your focus slipping away? And where is it going?
Tim 14:52
The next thing is, find one meaningful action and name it. Notice the energy is going away. Right? And then name that one meaningful thing you could do that would bring this back into control. And it's often not something complex. It's not becoming somebody new. It's not developing some new tool. It's saying, Hey, I'm feeling insecure right now. I'm not sure if Bob appreciated how I talked to them yesterday. So what's one meaningful thing I could do? Call Bob, call Bob and ask. It's not complex. It takes ownership and leadership of the situation, and it goes out and says, Hey, this is what I'm worried about. And Bob may not agree, um, you know, I'm fine, or he might say, yeah, you were an asshole. But we've settled it, and we've probably dealt with what we really needed to deal with in the process. You might not be able to deal with them right in the moment. You might feel something but not be able to action it. So, notice you're out. Notice you're out of focus. Name the thing that's going to bring you back in and then schedule that thing. When are you going to do it? When are you going to protect 45 minutes in the day where you are going to move some of these things forward? And it can be a great, really liberating part of your day to say, you know, I'm going to have that spot to just clean the bilge. If you follow me for a little while now, you know that I've had this, this interest in Napoleonic seafaring. Well, those ships were disgusting. You know, these large ships of the line, these large merchant vessels, they had these disgusting bilges down in the bottom, where, where, you know, the wood was rotting, there was effluent, there was rat shit, there was there was stagnant sea water, and, gosh knows what else down there. The best ships are said to have sweetened the bilge on a regular basis, because, you know, down there in the hold, things can get pretty sour and pretty stagnant. And so they would let sea water in, and they would have people on the pumps, and they would exchange the dirty bilge water for clean bilge water. Ideally, you'd like to keep the bilge dry, but if you can't, at least sweeten it.
Tim 17:21
So think about that. What's the time of day that you're going to have a time to sit back and and sweeten your bilge? Right? You can do it in the morning. You can do it before anything else starts barking for your attention. It's a great way to use the morning pages activity that we talked about in several other episodes. This isn't about being perfect. It's not about making sure that you are never exposed. It's not about being resistant to ever being unfocused. Lack focus happens. It's going to happen to you. We are we are built to look far off and close up. It's why our eyes were nearsighted and far sighted. It's not about being perfect. It's not about never being surprised. It's about building trust with yourself again that you can make the calls needed to take control of your day. Because when you can consistently refocus, you can follow through on what matters, and that sense of agency over what you're working on what's important to you returns. And interestingly enough, you know, there's a million ways to get something done. This practice also allows us to design what's our best way through a problem, because our route may not be the route that our neighbors should take. In the end, it allows us to stop drifting and start leading our day, start leading our schedule.
Tim 18:52
So let's land here. In these times, these times where volatility and distraction and noise, where everything is vying for our attention. Focus isn't a tactic. It's a leadership stance. In martial arts, depending on what practice you're in, the first thing they teach you is grounded horse stance. If you're boxing, they teach you that orthodox or that southpaw stance, where your back foot, the back foot is the one that when your eyes are closed and they push you, that's the one that falls to the back, because that's your steadiest position. That position says to you, when you know what it is, you've got a home base, you can say this focus, this home base, this feeling of stability, is what I've chosen to give myself today. I deserve this. I deserve to not feel off kilter. This is where I will show up for myself and protect the time that I want to spend on this planet. This doesn't make you better than everybody else. It does not make you superhuman. It just means that you're intentional, and the more you practice this, the easier it gets.
Tim 20:07
Warren Buffet, everybody's business Grandpa, lovely, straight headed, wildly successful. Salt of the earth, super grounded. He never has felt the need to put on airs. He wants to be practical. He lives in a small home with his wife, and he drives in a simple car. He says that it's his drive home and his drive to work which is his chance to refocus and think deep thoughts and and really plan out his day. And he finds that by silencing the radio, he doesn't use his radio. He doesn't listen to music. He takes that opportunity to just enjoy silence, and that is something that we don't have a lot of in our lives. For myself, it's first thing in the morning. I got a busy family. When everybody gets up, it is mayhem. I'm the only morning Lark. I'm a morning person. I'm the only morning Lark in a House of Night owls. They love to stay up late. They've got all sorts of energy at night, but that few minutes in the morning when I can just be intentional, focus on what I need to do, have that bit of quiet. Ideally, being out on a walk and doing it is golden. It's how I find traction and wherever you find your most energy, where you feel that you can have that natural propensity to focus, schedule it, because that's how you're going to find traction every day, in small ways in this shifting world that is trying to vie for your Attention. Jagroop Chhina said that the new economy is an attention economy. Jared van der Meer said the same thing. It's all about watch time. People are trying to keep you focused on them, not focused on yourself, and we need to win this focus back. When we can find focus, we find traction.
Tim 22:03
That's how we create clarity for ourselves. And when we have clarity for ourselves, we can provide that clarity for our teams. That's how you become a better leader or focused on integrity, doing the right thing at the right time, not just activity. We look up to heroes because they're the ones that do the right thing at the right time, even when it's tough. That is the definition of integrity. Extend that integrity down to every activity that you do. Is that the best thing that you could be doing right now? And then, I would really highly recommend you have some recess time, some free time, both to reground yourself and focus, but also just to go out and do some silly stuff, go out and exercise, go out and just get creative. You know, that's the rule. Free time when you're allowed to be distracted, when you're allowed to just free think and ideally producing it, creating, not consuming. And keep that time and schedule it in the same way, intentionally.
Tim 23:10
with all of this. I hope it helps you find new levels of focus this week and every week beyond. If you are interested in getting very, very precise about where your life is aimed, where your day is aimed, where your career is aimed, and you want to build that back in your life. I think it's probably time that we we have a conversation. Meanwhile, thanks once again for joining us here. Thanks again for investing a few minutes in yourself and your own development. If this resonated with you, share it with your colleagues. Share it with your team. Share it with your family. Anybody who you feel is wrestling with clarity on who they are and what they do in the course of the day and who you think focus might help. It's a skill that we don't think of as a skill. We think we should just have it. But you teach it to yourself, bring it into your relationships, perhaps you teach it to young people that are important to you. Can do amazing things. Can unlock amazing levels of natural efficiency, because when we have capacity, we can create capacity. When we have a feeling of togetherness and calm, we can create togetherness and calm. And when we have focus, we can create focus. We can move from creating it for ourselves to mastery over it. And when we have mastery over it, we can mentor it in others, if you want more tools to help you with finding your rhythm, your groove, and to protect that energy that so many people want to rob you of, you'll find a link to how you can get into a Work Life, Design, conversation with me in the show notes. Take the time to stay focused, and when you do, you'll feel more aligned. You'll feel more confident. And you'll feel like you are better able to show up and lead not just your own life,but the work of others. Okay, I'll see you again next time.
Tim 25:12
Thank you, so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts, this helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
From Chaos To Clarity - Transformational Practice
Episode 54
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 • Duration 27:19
In this episode of Sweet on Leadership, Tim Sweet guides us through his four-part framework of leadership transformation amidst today’s instability. In The Drift, Tim helps leaders recognize the subtle signs of misalignment—control, confusion, and collapse—as natural but unsustainable coping mechanisms. He unpacks how these reactions stem not from personal failure but from the emotional weight of leading in a constantly shifting world. The key, he says, is not pushing harder, but stepping back to reconnect with the foundation of leadership itself.
From there, we move into The Reset, a call to return to purpose and audit the energy we give to people and projects. Tim encourages listeners to make just one aligned decision and let small, intentional actions build toward bigger change. In The Reach, he explores how leaders can guide their teams with clarity and truth—not by solving every problem, but by anchoring to what matters most and adapting as needed. Finally, in The Practice, Tim reframes transformation as a modular, ongoing discipline. It’s not about heroic reinvention, but honest, daily choices that reshape how we lead from the inside out.
The episode closes with a powerful reminder: this isn’t about fixing others or waiting for normal to return—it’s about returning to our bedrock, reshaping ourselves, and choosing to lead what’s next with resilience and purpose. If you’re feeling the pull to lead differently, this conversation offers the clarity and calm you didn’t know you needed.
Visualizing Your Future Situation with Dave Appleton (the coolest 40yo octogenarian you'll ever meet)
Episode 53
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 • Duration 31:25
In this episode, Tim sits down with longtime friend and financial advisor Dave Appleton, who brings over 40 years of experience in financial planning. Dave shares insights on the importance of long-term financial strategies, emphasizing visualization as a powerful tool for understanding complex financial concepts. He explains key principles like the rule of 72 for investment growth and the value of diversification to secure financial stability across generations. Through real-life client stories, Dave highlights how proper planning can lead to financial success and security, while short-term thinking—like what fueled the tech bubble—can be detrimental.
Beyond finances, Dave and Tim explore the importance of staying active and engaged in retirement to maintain both mental and physical well-being. They discuss how early retirement without purpose can increase the risk of cognitive decline and why continuous learning, including leveraging screen time for education, can keep the mind sharp. Dave also shares how simple visualization techniques—like using sugar cubes to demonstrate financial impact—can make complex topics more accessible. Tune in for a conversation that blends financial wisdom with practical life lessons, helping you make smarter choices for a more secure and fulfilling future.
About Dave Appleton
Dave has been assisting individuals with the planning of their Lifestyle Retirement goals. His objective is to provide individuals and business owners with the advice they need to achieve their immediate and long-term goals by offering a wide range of financial products and services through Planning Strategies Group Ltd. In 2004, Dave was awarded by the Financial Planning Standards Council of Canada (along with two other business associates), the prestigious award of "Advisor of the Year".
In addition to help develop and manage a Financial Planning department for a major world-wide Life Insurance corporation, he was also one of the first individuals to set up a full service Financial Planning company in association with accountants and lawyers, this providing a one-stop service for individuals and business owners needing Financial, Estate and Tax Planning advice.
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Special Edition - Facing Unfair Firings and What To Do Now
Episode 52
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 • Duration 20:59
In this special episode of Sweet on Leadership, Tim tackles the current wave of layoffs in the US and crossing the border into Canada, emphasizing that this is not business as usual. He speaks directly to those who have lost their jobs or fear they might be next. The recklessness of recent mass layoffs, particularly in public sector roles, is top of mind. Tim tells us that these cuts are not about efficiency but rather a dismantling of essential institutions. He also critiques the private sector’s rollback of DEI and people-first initiatives, companies that once championed employee well-being but are now abandoning those commitments. Real leadership requires clear thinking, alignment, and intentional action—not reactionary decisions that leave employees scrambling.
To navigate these uncertain times, Tim provides a simple four-step action plan: reframe the situation by writing down your fears and aspirations, identify transferable skills (beyond just polishing a résume), activate your network with a professional and strategic approach, and sharpen your confidence and sense of worth daily. Job seekers need to treat their search as a full-time role, maintaining productivity and resilience even while processing emotions. Tim’s message is clear—while layoffs are often beyond control, how you respond can shape your future. Leaders, whether guiding a team or their own career, need to take charge, adapt, and move forward with purpose.
Jared VanderMeer - An Eye For Making An Impression On Social
Episode 51
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 • Duration 51:47
In this episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast, Tim chats with marketing expert and content creator Jared VanderMeer as he shares his proven approach to long-term brand success. He emphasizes the power of a well-structured touch point cycle, where consistent and authentic content builds trust and drives engagement. Instead of chasing quick ROI, Jared urges businesses to focus on lifetime customer value and to track meaningful metrics like watch time and impressions over vanity likes. With a 90-day commitment to content creation and a strategic marketing budget, businesses can create lasting connections that lead to sustainable growth.
Tim and Jared dive into the myths of social media success, the importance of storytelling, and the balance between quality and quantity. They explore why brands should showcase real-life applications of their products instead of aiming for perfection, and why avoiding shortcuts is key to long-term impact. If you’re ready to shift your mindset from instant wins to building a brand that truly resonates, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you make it happen.
About Jared VanderMeer
Jared VanderMeer is a digital marketing specialist, public speaker, and entrepreneur. He’s also the creative muse and pioneering spirit behind Magnolias Consulting Group in Canada. From podcasting and videos to blogs and books, Jared is dedicated to driving home the importance of value-based marketing in our modern digital era.
If there’s one thing that defines JV above all else, it’s being a Canadian content maker. In the past few years, he has poured all his effort into expanding JV content into all the formats technology has made possible. As an agency owner, JV helps clients grow their businesses on a daily basis, but as a content creator, he takes that goal a step further by sharing his knowledge and experience with brands on a larger scale.
JV's debut book If You Sell, You Lose is a step-by-step guide on how to add value to your brand through your digital marketing. It’s just one piece of the larger vision Jared holds for marketers, brand and business owners, and startups. You can also grab free guides, templates, content maps, and more at www.jaredvandermeer.com.
Revolutionizing Dental Care with AI: Leadership, Innovation, and Giving Back with Amreesh Khanna
Episode 50
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 • Duration 46:18
In this episode, Tim welcomes Amreesh Khanna, a visionary entrepreneur and the founder of OraQ, a company revolutionizing the dental industry through clinical AI solutions. Amreesh shares how OraQ is standardizing patient exams, empowering patients with transparency, and strengthening the patient-clinician relationship through informed decisions and trust. He explains how dentists play a crucial role in identifying and preventing systemic health issues such as cardiac and respiratory problems. Amreesh also highlights the potential of AI in healthcare, including its ability to predict patient outcomes and personalize treatment plans.
Beyond his professional endeavors, Amreesh discusses his passion for community service and his work with the nonprofit organization Cause to Smile, which aims to empower the dental community and support local initiatives. He reflects on the importance of balancing professional ambitions with giving back and shares insights on leadership, decision-making, and reframing failure as a learning opportunity. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about innovation in healthcare, leadership lessons, and the power of community impact.
About Amreesh Khanna
Dr. Amreesh Khanna refers to himself as a professional tooth enthusiast, more commonly known as a Dentist. He has a deep passion for the integration of AI/ML in clinical applications and is at the forefront of advancing precision dental care through his start-up, OraQ AI. This company is dedicated to redefining ethical dental practice growth by prioritizing optimal patient care.
With over 17 years of clinical dental experience, Dr. Khanna has encountered numerous challenges and successes on his entrepreneurial journey as a dental practice owner. In terms of patient care, he has been involved in complex treatments, including dental implants, bone and gum grafting, IV conscious sedation, dental sleep medicine for patients with obstructive sleep apnea, and oral rehabilitation for individuals with complex TMD, tooth wear, and bite concerns.
Dr. Khanna remains actively engaged in his field as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. Additionally, he has established his own dental education platform called ADEPT Dental Education, which aims to drive accelerated growth on the clinical and business sides of Dentistry.
Karen Dommett - Belonging Starts Here: Fostering Inclusion Through Connection and Curiosity
Episode 49
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 • Duration 39:04
In this inspiring episode, Karen Dommett, Manager of Games and Competition at Special Olympics Canada, joins the podcast to share her journey from rural Saskatchewan to her impactful role in inclusive sports. Karen shares with Tim and listeners how her love for boxing not only shaped her sense of community and resilience but also empowered her to compete and win the Western Canadian championships. She highlights the transformative power of sports in fostering belonging, building confidence, and creating opportunities for connection.
Karen delves into her work at Special Olympics Canada, emphasizing the social impact of major sporting events and the importance of creating environments of psychological safety and inclusivity. She shares her leadership philosophy, which is grounded in guiding principles, human connection, and fostering a culture where everyone feels they truly belong. Karen also discusses how Special Olympics is changing perceptions of people with disabilities and calls for community involvement ahead of the 2026 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Tune in to hear Karen’s unique insights on the long-term cultural benefits of inclusive sports, the challenges of leadership, and how we can all make a difference by fostering authenticity and inclusion in our own communities.
About Karen Dommett
From the rural landscapes of Saskatchewan to the national stage of Special Olympics Canada, Karen Dommett has built a career grounded in resilience, passion, and the transformative power of sport. As the Manager of Games and Competition for Special Olympics Canada, Karen brings a wealth of experience in fostering inclusion and creating life-changing opportunities through sport.
Karen's journey began as a determined young athlete convincing her farming parents to let her take up boxing—a path that not only taught her grit but also revealed her ability to adapt and excel. Her tenacity led her to a Western Canadian Championship title, where she mastered the art of turning challenges into advantages.
With a degree in kinesiology and a love for the collective energy of major sporting events, Karen found her calling in sports administration. From contributing to the World Juniors in Saskatoon to leading national-level competitions, Karen has dedicated her career to creating moments that inspire athletes, build communities, and develop future leader
Harold Horsefall - Balancing Material Success and Personal Fulfillment
Episode 48
Wednesday, January 8, 2025 • Duration 39:36
Tim Sweet chats with Harold Horsefall, an Indigenous issues strategist from the Pasqua First Nation, about his inspiring path from firefighter to cultural leader. Harold shares his journey rooted deeply in traditional values and leadership principles. Harold highlights the importance of preserving language, place names, and cultural landmarks and how they shape the understanding of the land. He also opens up about the impact of his family's residential school history, which fuels his dedication to truth, reconciliation, and advancing Indigenous relations through meaningful projects like managing a memorial for residential schools.
Harold offers insights into the progress and challenges in Indigenous relations, noting increased federal investments since 2015 and advocating for greater support in areas like education. He emphasizes continuous self-improvement and aligning work with personal values, drawing parallels between traditional practices like the sweat lodge ceremony and the process of reconciliation. Harold reflects on the balance of material success and personal fulfillment, encouraging listeners to pursue work that contributes to growth and happiness. Tune in to learn more about Harold’s inspiring story, his current projects, and his vision for the future of Indigenous relations.
About Harold Horsefall
Harold Horsefall is an experienced Indigenous Relations Strategist who is focused on creating meaningful relationships between Municipal Government, the Treaty 7 Nations, the Metis Nation of Alberta Region 3, Inuit, and urban Indigenous Calgarians.
Harold has a demonstrated track record of attaining results and is skilled in advancing Truth & Reconciliation to build mutually beneficial outcomes. He is a strategic thinker who aims to co-create with Indigenous Stakeholders. Harold is a well-rounded professional and has a Master of Global Management (International Business) from Royal Roads University.
In this final retrospective episode of the year, Tim Sweet delves into the concept of capacity, exploring how it extends beyond time and energy to include personal priorities, relationships, and intentional choices. Drawing on insights from guests, including Renee Miller and Anna Morgan, Tim underscores the importance of leaders prioritizing themselves to avoid burnout and make space for personal and professional growth.
Additional clips from past guests, including Richard Young, highlight the power of evidence over hope in decision-making, while Dan Löfquist and Julie Friedman Smith discuss the rewards of stepping out of comfort zones to embrace challenges and foster adaptability. Jeff Massone emphasizes the transformative role of positive relationships, and Tim Beissinger shares how focusing on key goals can lead to significant achievements. These conversations provide a holistic view of capacity as a critical leadership tool.
Tim concludes the episode with a call to action, encouraging listeners to evaluate their current state, identify areas of over-commitment, and align their choices with their goals and values. By creating space for what matters and surrounding themselves with supportive relationships, leaders can build capacity for success. Tune in to discover actionable strategies for intentional living and leadership.
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim sweet. Welcome to Episode 47 of the Sweet on Leadership Podcast.
Retrospective Special - Part 2 - Vision
Episode 46
Wednesday, December 18, 2024 • Duration 15:34
In this special retrospective episode, Tim Sweet takes listeners on a journey through the most profound moments shared by past guests, all centered around the transformative power of "vision" in leadership. Through inspiring clips, guests reveal how they discovered their vision, how it shaped their leadership decisions, and why having a clear vision is vital for success in both business and life. Whether you're seeking inspiration or looking to craft a roadmap for the future, this episode is a compelling guide to creating clarity and purpose.
Tim Sweet delves into the importance of aligning it with one's values and experiences. He highlights insights from 11 guests, including Teresa Waddington, who bridges past and future through her vision; Ryan and Shane Pegg, who value innovation and helping others; and Debbie Potts, who found strength in a vision of a little red house in her dream country. Erin Ashbacher stresses the link between physical health and vision, while Erin Lydon draws parallels between poker and leadership. Tim ends the episode with an inspiring call to listeners to define their vision and share it boldly!
Over 42 episodes I’ve have had the privilege of conversing with incredible guests. One thing stands out, vision is deeply personal. It’s shaped by our experiences, values and our willingness to embrace vulnerability. Vision isn’t just about what we see, but why we see it. In this episode, I’ll share insights from 11 remarkable guests who have illuminated what it means to craft, nurture and live your vision. Their stories showcase authenticity, courage, the joy of discovering brilliance and exploring unexpected places.
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When outside forces are bucketing us around, politically, socially, economically, and our people are bringing in more fear into the workplace, and our clients are more hesitant than ever, and the whole world seems like it is on tilt. We're still supposed to be leaders, and that can feel sometimes like a fantasy. By the end of this episode, you're going to have a clear sense of what might be holding you back. And I'll give you some practical ways that we can go forward, not through more effort, because we know today, capacity is an issue, energy is an issue. Not through more effort, but through better alignment, alignment with your purpose and alignment with who you are. You're going to walk away with some new language, some new structure and hopefully a new mindset, so that you can go through these resets and lead with clarity again. So if you're a leader and you felt more tired, more scattered and more unsure lately, this episode is the one you need.
Tim 1:06
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable. If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. I'd like to welcome you to the 54th episode of the sweet on leadership podcast.
Tim 1:38
Welcome. Perhaps you feel like you're the only one that is struggling today, I want you to know you're not alone. A lot of the smartest, most capable leaders that I work with, the ones that are at the very top of organizations, are saying the same thing. I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing, and I have days where I'm not sure I'm enough. It's not just the pressure that is coming down to deliver our strategies and our mandates. There is a new fear, a new anxiety and a new emotional weight that's on everyone you your team, your customers, the people you serve. It's the fact that the ground keeps shifting today, not just that things are tumultuous, but everything is changing week on week. Yet you're supposed to stay steady yet you have long range commitments that you need to make.
Speaker 1 2:31
A lot more time spent on investments or politics. Those are the things where people are having conversations.
Speaker 2 2:38
We've all got budget pressures. The political noise. Staff complaining. Faculty complaining. Students are complaining. It's all piling up, and people seem hesitant and guarded, and we used to be more collegial. Now it just feels, just feels like everybody's getting by, just trying not to drop the ball.
Speaker 3 3:00
I don't think I've seen work like this. I haven't seen teams, still smiling, but just tightly wound.
Speaker 4 3:09
I've been spending more time managing how people feel than actually moving work forward. We need to hit deadlines, and it's like everybody's tired.
Speaker 5 3:18
And I can't slow down. I've kept myself checking in on things more often, just making sure things are moving along. And I'm mentally frazzled. It's just so much more frustrating, and this is what I'm hearing from my team.
Tim 03:38
Okay, let's talk about leadership exhaustion. Some days, leadership doesn't feel like it's as simple as simply carrying the vision forward inspiring people. It feels like trying to stay upright and holding on to people amidst this flood of uncertainty. Today, you're going to be navigating complexity, managing expectations, carrying emotions of others, and somewhere in all of that, you're supposed to be clear, you're supposed to be stalwart, you're supposed to be steady. But lately, a lot of leaders are finding themselves in this type of fog. They're not broken, they're not necessarily burned out we’re just caught in this limbo. We're between two worlds, the world we were prepared for and that everything worked in, and this other world, this unknown future where we're standing now. It's this limbo that has us feeling adrift, and it's here, when we feel this way that we have to be the ones to first find purchase. This is how we get set to transform and rebuild. It's not recovery, it's not resilience, in the way of being broken and then having to get fixed again. We're actually talking about being break resistant. Because in this environment, transformation isn't a one time pivot. We can't just change things around us. There's that saying that says everybody wants progress, but nobody wants change. Well here change even isn't enough. We have to transform, and that ability to transform and to really evolve oneself is a continuous skill.
Tim 05:30
Let's talk about the drift. When the pressure around us builds, the highest performing leaders fall into one of three states, typically. We have ones that tend to opt for control. They take everything on themselves, they tighten their grip, they micromanage. It's a form of leadership that's more about protecting others, but really it's over functioning. It's trying to make everyone safe. It's trying to bring everything home yourself. It's trying to be the hero. The second camp that people fall into is one that is confused. They're pivoting constantly. Everything feels urgent, everything feels like a threat, and they lose the thread of what actually matters. And in third camp, we actually see collapse. We see people going through certain motions, but quietly, just checking out. They're still doing the job, but they're finding ways to divest themselves from caring too deeply, because that's just painful. These aren't character flaws necessarily. They're coping strategies, and they're what we see in response to a world that keeps moving the goal posts. We have to remember that many of us, all of us, have been through the trauma of the pandemic, and we learned coping mechanisms just to get through the day. Those coping mechanisms for many people are reasserting themselves. It's how we dealt with great degrees of uncertainty and polarization.
Tim 7:10
And polarization is a big deal. In today's world, things are more polarized. Things are more emotionally charged. People are taking things very personally, not just from a dogmatic perspective or a belief perspective, but also because this is hitting them in the pocketbook. Things are becoming economically unstable. These are things that you feel. And when the clarity and the certainty that we're okay disappears, we begin this kind of drift. It's just like a boat that's lost its anchor. We can't lead people well from that place. We've got no steerage on, we've got no forward momentum, we have no wind to drive our sails, we have no water moving over the rudder. So because what's forward looks so scary, we tend to go back to a previous version of ourselves, like an image on your computer drive the thing that was the last version of your computer that was working before you got a bug. Going back to the previous version of ourselves isn't always the best way to go. We don't need to go back to the previous version we need to actually dive deep and go back to what is foundational, back to that bedrock, which are the simplest possible terms of what we are and what we're meant to be.
Tim 13:02
This brings us to the reset. Resetting is not just about calming down, and it's definitely not about simply changing the strategy and changing things that are around us so that we can stay the same. It's actually saying this new way of operating requires a new version of us, and so we have to transform, and we have to transform in real time, because our old assumptions and our old way of being don't fit the time. This doesn't mean a wholesale reinvention. That would be incredible. You can't become a different person, and we don't want to start from scratch, because that's just incredibly overwhelming and exhausting. Instead, what we need to do is return to what's essential and then build back up selectively so that we can address where as leaders, do we have things that will work in the future state and will not work in the future state. What about our strategy works? What about our strategy doesn't? What about our processes and how we lead them works and what doesn't? And what about our people and our teams and how they're engaged and what works and what doesn't? And if you want to go one step further, we have to look at our interest holders or our customers? Are they working for us? Do they need to change? If we're going to shift any of those things, we have to get into this state of creativity.
Tim 10:13
So step one, we need to reconnect with our purpose. You've heard Sinek say “your why” not the one in the strategic plan, not the purpose that's on your company mission statement, but the one that lives in here in your gut. Who are you designed to be? How do you express yourself in this world as being a powerful entity? Why are you here? And why are you right for this moment, that's what you have to connect to.
Tim 10:45
Step two, we need to audit your energy. What parts of your work are giving you life, despite all the confusion, which are giving you a sense of driving you forward and are drawing you forward or pulling you forward. You're not pushing rope. You're actually enthused with what you're working on and what parts of your life and your work and your roles are draining you? What have you been tolerating that in this new, more brittle future you can no longer tolerate? We have to now become very economic with how we're spending our time and how we're how we're expending energy. Burnout often hides in the gap between our values and who we think we need to be and the demands of our calendar. And we try to be this and do this. And those two things don't always mesh. We have to be much more selective and find methods and processes that allow us to balance those two things.
Tim 11:54
Step three, we need to make one decision. We need to make one move at a time towards alignment, not multiple moves. We need to take one step towards agency. You don't need a grand plan, and you don't need to be working things all simultaneously. The reason is this has to be experimental, and you're going to be creating and trying something and seeing if it makes life better. And you can't do that if you are changing multiple multiple factors at once.
Tim 12:26
You don't need that grand plan, but you do need to prove things out. And most importantly, your brain is going to be learning this entire time. You need to prove to yourself that you're not powerless in a seemingly massive and uncontrolled situation where you feel like such a small fish in such a large pond.
Tim 12:47
Transformation happens properly in small ways, right? We don't try to evolve everything at once. We try to look at how do we need to evolve, and then make selective adaptations. If we go at things with this scalpel rather than a shotgun approach, we can approach things modularly. We can change out one thing at a time.
Tim 13:15
This is the practice, and it's what as a leader, we have to train our egos and our brains and our instincts to serve. When is it time to initiate another one of these recreations, another one of these adaptations, another one of these transformations.
Tim 13:39
A sustainable transformation that's not going to destroy us and have to completely build us up from the bottom. Happens in small modular bites. These small choices that allow us to sense something needs to change, test it out, and then make that change and go for something new. It is a creative process. It would be like trying to paint a picture where you want to change something about the picture, so you wipe everything off. No, you don't do that. You look at what is wrong with this image, and then you push a little bit of paint around. You add a little bit of red here and a little bit of green there. It is a creative exercise. It's an artistic exercise. It's releasing something that has always been there and has just been cluttered up.
Tim 14:32
This sense that something needs to change, and then we get foundational, and then it becomes manageable. Is a practice. It's a discipline. Because once we can do that, and we can tolerate, then we can enter this kind of creative, experimental stage where we can try different things on. That's how we evolve. That's how we build ourselves into something new.
Tim 14:56
And when we build ourselves into something new, and we do it right, you know what? We don't feel like we had to become somebody else. No, we're making choices. There's a lot of agency here, right? And we're making better choices, because these are all steps that are closer to who we were ultimately meant to be. And yet, I talk a lot about fluency. I talk about having a clear idea of what your ultimate expression looks like, because that gives us a true north about where we want to go and when we're in periods of transition and transformation, crisis like this, that true north, that clear vision of who I'm meant to be. It allows us to make some very logical decisions. It's like a game of hot and cold. You know, when a move is getting you warmer, warmer, not colder, colder, warmer, it's towards where you need to be.
Tim 16:01
All right, so once you've done the internal work, which again, is to get back down to this foundation of who I am, what am I meant to be, and what can I change? And what am I going to work on first. it's time to guide others. The reason is they're going to be going through the same things. And you can take a look at them and say, All right, which ones are stepping up their level of control, trying to gather more control, which ones are confused and getting creative and trying to just throw spaghetti at the wall, and which ones are choosing to disengage, and they're kind of collapsing in that way. You need to help them through it, coach them through it, because if you don't, they're going to be a constant drag on your energy. You cannot supplement them through this. You cannot be the hero. You have to help them find their own stability. When we do that, we will be working through them to help them. name, what's real in their lives. What are they dealing with? As leaders, our best approach is to speak plainly, speak in terms that are real. We don't need to sugar coat things. We have to be kind, but we don't need to sugar coat things, and we don't need to dramatize things, because we don't want to engage in mental manipulation. We don't want to be fooling them through things that are okay. That's not a way to build stability for others. We want to bring truth into the room. We want to focus our teams on what matters most right now, the essential work, the parts of the strategy, what we're going to see through, and where you expect them to be. We might have that long term goal, but we also need to have short term goals in terms of what are we going to work on in this team to become that new thing. We want to make sure that we reassert the values that we've always had and the ones which we refuse to compromise on, because we can't shift our values and expect to be happy a few months down the road. So, here's a shift that you want to start to engage in stop treating this new tension like something that you can manage. Treat it like something you need to understand and then be able to work with. Thirnk of it like a new current in the water. We need to be able to not only navigate it, but we need to be able to utilize it to move forward effectively.
Tim 18:40
The tensions reveal why our old ways no longer fit with new realities. And when we start to think in terms of tensions and conflicts, it helps us understand where our systems and our behaviors and our beliefs and our identity and our assumptions and our fears and our myth, etc, need to be evolved. Need to be either proven true or need to be disregarded. Transformation isn't one big moment, it's 1000 small realignments. They're modular, they're intentional, and they're ongoing. And this might seem overwhelming, but for a moment, just stop and think, when there's no crisis and we're just going through business generally, we are constantly rebasing things. We might have gone through a project or a particularly tough time, and we look back at and say, oh, we were good enough to get through that. Well, that's actually something that we want to call out as being a success bias, we forget that. You know, that road to that success was full of small adjustments and often transformations. The only thing here right now is the threat seems so much more out of the norm, but the fundamentals remain the same. You don't have to overhaul everything. In fact, you shouldn't. We simply have to get really real and then find the parts that no longer serve, and we reshape those parts. We transform those parts. And this is how teams change. This is how culture changes. Whether or not you have a new person join the team, or a new leader join the team, or you're pointed in a substantially different direction. For us, our transformation is how our leadership becomes sustainable, and it's how our trust in ourselves becomes sustainable. Once we realize that we are creatures of transformation and creatures of reinvention, then we're okay. So let's talk a little bit about the practice, because this doesn't really get talked about enough. We always just think, we go ahead and we do it. None of this is a one-and-done. You are not transforming once. You are transforming often. And as I say, You're a creature of transformation. Sometimes these have to be more profound than others, and they feel bigger. Sometimes we do this on an organizational level, new roles, new teams, reorganization, strategic shifts, brand new leaders. But more often, they happen in small ways, and they happen constantly. They can happen in the moment of how we speak in a meeting, how we hold a boundary or a line, how we choose to be present and listen in the moment over panicking, when we choose to calm people down or offer a, You know, a gentle push in the right direction. the idea of transformation is something that we need to normalize. We have to make space for it. We have to consider it as a practice, not a crisis response. Yes, if you're feeling this way, a crisis is causing you to listen to me right now, but this should be a change that you make now, and you carry this as a practice forward for the rest of your leadership journey.
Tim 22:09
It is okay as an individual and as a leader to feel wobbly, to not know that something is just right. Often we fake our way through this. Instead, we want to realize that we have slipped out of our sense of control, and we want to get real and honest with that, and then approach it in a very intentional way. You don't need a lot of fancy language to do this, or a polished leadership message. You don't need to gain some sort of a degree in order to be good at this. Instead, we need to be intentional and present. You need to notice where friction lives in yourself and in your team, and you need to notice what old habits and myths and structures are grinding against what you need now. Transformation starts with this incredible amount of honesty, and once we are honest and we can put ourselves between that immovable object and that irresistible force, we feel momentum and we're encouraged forward. And I use that word intentionally, because being encouraged is being filled with courage that we're headed in the right direction, and that makes it very easy for people to feel that energy and that certainty. You can bring that to yourself so you have a better Monday and a better Friday, and you can bring that to your team so that they're less likely to want to jump ship because they start blaming the job, instead of recognizing that it's simply a time to change and we can stop blaming the work and letting it run roughshod over us and sap us of all of our energy and overwhelm us with capacity challenges. You're only three months into this insanity. We have at least two to four years of this coming, so you may be tempted to wait it out, but the people who are going to make it through this in fine, fine style, are the ones that are going to realize they're in a fog and decide to get through it, not just adapt enough to survive, but actually to become that thing that they were always meant to become. Don't waste a good crisis. So maybe it's time to shoot for something a little bit deeper. I encourage you to get open about stripping back to what's true and what matters most, and what fits this moment and who you need to be today and build from there. Because the leaders that we need now aren't the ones who are claiming to have all the answers, because, frankly, we don't know what the future is going to look like. They're the ones that are willing to transform, they're ones that are willing to connect with others and create spaces for dialog, and they're the ones that are able to do this over and over again in the service of something meaningful. So trust yourself that you are enough, start from where you are, in fact, start beneath that, from who you really are and what you really want, and then with just your first step, with that first decision, with that first act of clarity, you can move.
Tim 25:52
Thanks for taking this moment to be here with me for investing in yourself and your own growth. If you found this little method helpful, I'd encourage you to share it with somebody who might be carrying more stress and weight than they let on. And this week, get excited, because this is a tremendous opportunity to stimulate that growth and that transformation in yourself, figuring out how to get one step closer to that ultimate expression of potential and lead wherever this crazy world takes us. All right, see you soon.
Tim 26:33
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading.
Tim 26:33
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading.
A picture is worth 1000 words. You get good screen time. You've got 10,000 words, and the memory of a picture is a lot greater than the memory reading from a book. I'm not saying you don't remember. It's just that the picture is there and you can visualize, and if you can visualize something down the road in 10 years, five years. But the thing is, it imprints is there, but the book isn't the same as a picture as that picture. This is why this has become a lot more usable.
Tim 00:33
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action. Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. Welcome to the 53rd episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast.
Tim 1:06
Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us again. Here on the Sweet on Leadership podcast, I have a dear friend joining me today. I'd like to introduce you all to Dave Appleton. Dave Appleton has been a friend of our family, helping us with financial decisions. We've known each other for years. We came from the same community, but Dave means so much to the health and the wealth and the happiness of my family that it's a real pleasure that I get to introduce all of you today to this fine man. So Dave, thanks for joining us. I hope that this is a fun experience, and I'm looking forward to all the reactions we're going to get from this, because I know that the lessons and the messages that you have and what you've taught me in the past is going to resonate with a lot of people out there that are trying to improve their influence and their impact with others and their life in general. So again, I'm really excited for this one.
Dave 02:01
Happy for you. It's been a pleasure.
Tim 02:06
Okay, Dave, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and the company you run and give us a picture for what your purpose in life is. That would be great.
Dave 02:14
First of all, I have been in this business for over 40 years.
Tim 02:19
Yeah, wealth management and financial advisory.
Dave 02:23
Yeah, and insurance and I started with, years ago, I started with Manulife. And it's funny because I went with Manulife because they were focused on money products, like financial planning, and that really attracted me. Prior to that, I was in real estate for I had my own business in real estate for about 15 years. And I think when you go from one type of business to another, but they're both linked to financial, there's a lot of crossover of information that you maintain and or keep. And I think I've always been in the money side of things, because it intrigues me. Real Estate, you're helping people. Transitioned over into the financial services industry. And I say financial services insurance was not the hot topic at that time. It was more helping people with their money, retirement planning, things like that. And interestingly enough, I joined Manulife because they bought or developed a plan, a financial planning plan from California, Financial Profiles. It was called, and it was a dot matrix program.
Tim 3:30
Yeah, so floppy disks?
Dave 3:30
Well, it was a very slow process, and I to relay a story to that, I remember one time I was doing a plan for somebody, and I said, Oh, I hit the button to say, I want the whole plan. Four hours later, we finally got the plan. I actually went out for dinner and came back and it was still printing. So it shows you how things have changed, from a technology point of view. And, you know, it's interesting when you look at these things and how financial planning has become a hot topic. Before people, oh, yeah, financial planning. And there was all sorts of people that said they were financial planners. You don't want to become a product peddler, shall we say, but you want to become a financial planner, where you're looking at analyzing and helping people get reach their goals. And what financial planning does is it forces you to look at the things you want to do, where you are in life, what direction you want to go, family, everything else, and then you plan accordingly.
Tim 04:23
What's one or two of the most meaningful transformations you've seen families that you've helped make.
Dave 04:30
Most of my clients have been with me for over 25 years. And interestingly enough, when you look at where they started from and where they are now, and I'm not the magic guy, it's just that when you have the information, you can make the right decisions, or hopefully in guidance. And that's all you know, a financial planner isn't guide, shall we say, guide of going through life. And you, you provide people with information, and then they can discuss those options and choices that you they have to do or and help them along the way. Sometimes it's just a couple, then it becomes a couple and some children, and goes from there. And yeah, some of the couples I started with that had children, the children are now clients of mine too. So yeah, it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing business. And I like that, because I think, and that's the teacher in me, because I taught a couple of years. So yeah.
Tim 05:20
You know your client set is really interesting, because you've been with some of them from the very beginning all the way through to the very end and you know, for us, and we've been clients of yours for years after we were introduced by a good friend, and you spend your days, you have the focus to spend your days looking at what options are out there, what movements are out there? What needs to be done keeping an eye on that aspect of my and my wife's life, you're calling me and saying, Hey, this is happening. This is going on. We need to move something around, or we need to plan for something in the future. And so you're able to devote your time to keeping an eye on things for people where they may not have the time or the expertise to keep that that attention as high as it needs to be. My clients, even this week, when they're facing challenges of leadership and team, they may never have dealt with that challenge before. They're not an expert at getting out of that issue. I deal with it 30 times a year, and so I specialize in some of the issues that they call me in for If your faucet is leaking, you call a plumber, right? You don't call the local baker or something. That's what I notice for sure. Do you think captures it?
Dave 06:32
As a planner, I'm not a chartered accountant, I'm not a lawyer, but I think the people that are in need of financial advice are the business owners, the self employed and people that have family situations and that getting the right advice is so important when you're planning for your future. And I think that's the problem. Is most people don't think far enough ahead. They think ahead, but they don't they think about next year, but they don't think about five years, ten years, and where am I going to be and making a big financial plan when you're 30 years old. I stopped doing the big, complex financial plans because there's too many changes between age 40 and 60 in retirement years or 30 and and 50. And you can do a plan, but it doesn't have to be a complex plan. Yeah, and I think that's the key is you gotta, you just gotta have a direction and understand things, understand terminology. What's an RSP, what's a RIF? These are things that we I think every business has their own acronyms. What's your GDS ratio? People say GDS, well, gross debt service ratio, and then that's how they qualify you for a mortgage. Every industry has these little short forms in that, like here, in ours, we have the riff, we have the list, and people look at you, and you got to be careful, as an advisor, not to utilize these term, this terminology, without explaining what it is, because if you say it and they don't understand it, they're not listening from there on.
Tim 08:00
So that's that brings us to a really interesting point, because, you know, again, I consider you one of my close friends now at this point. And for those of you that can't pick this up in Dave's voice, because you sound spry and youthful, and you are, you know, you're the same age as my dad. You'll have a big birthday coming up this year, right? And when we talk on the phone or whatever, to me, age is irrelevant. It's trust and respect and mutual interest in the other person's well being and all of those things that kind of come into play. And a big part of that for us, Dave has been that you come to the house when we need to be thinking a certain way. You keep us on a plan and on a track, and you help us see things differently. You help us consider all of our options. You put everything on the table. And you do this in such a personal way, because one of your one of your habits, is to always be doing this in really close proximity. It's not something that's kept at a distance. It's very intimate. And we're having coffee and we're sitting around the table, and it's…
Dave 09:08
Tim, I'll interrupt you there. That's why I come to your house for a free cup of coffee. There you go.
Tim 09:12
There you go. Free cup of coffee. Oh, I hope our coffee is all right. But when you think about that, and you think about the value that you can bring to somebody by having them get out of their bubble and thinking long term, right? That's one of the biggest benefits that you've given us, is allowing us to take a much longer view. And in the middle of COVID, when things are a little bit hot, rational outside perspective, focus on the larger picture here. Don't get too bent about the little moves. What kind of problems in the world or with families are associated with that thinking too close, thinking too much in the short term.
Dave 09:50
I'll give you a good example, in the tech bubble. When it was back in the 2000s, that tech bubble we talk about it, tech stocks were just i. Everybody wanted to be in tech. And I had, I think I might have, might have told you this before, I had a client who was a GIC client, and we finally got him involved in some insurance company segregated funds, which are like mutual funds, because of the guarantees that they provide. That was a big step for him. And I always remember he was there for years, and when the tech market was going crazy, he says, oh, we were making like 16% in on our on his investments, and he wanted to move because his neighbor next door was in tech, and he was making 24% so he moved all his money into tech. I didn't do it. I said, I think you're crazy. And as we know, the tech market went from $1 to 20 cents, in some cases, some of those stocks, and it was a short term thinking, talking about long term, short term. One thing if people can remember, the one thing if they can remember, is the rule of 72 and the rule of 72 is, if you take 72 divided by the interest rate that you earn on your investment, that's how long it takes your money to double. So if I get 10% as an example, it's going to double in 7.2 years. Yeah, if I get 5% Oh, guess what? Now it's double the time. If I get 2% I get, Oh, here you go, the banks give me 2% of my on my savings account. It's going to take your money 30 plus years to double at 2% and we're only talking a difference of, Oh, I get 7% that's 10 years. I'm going to use 8% as an example. So every nine years, my money doubles. So if I put in $10,000.09 years later, and I get 9% I get nine years, my might becomes $28,000, it's the next nine years with 20 becomes 40, and then 80, it's a doubling of the doubling. And I think that's what people forget, is it's, that's the long term thinking. And if you can, you don't need 50% returns. You don't need 40% because now you gotta add in the one thing that really affects everything is the risk factor. Yeah, okay, I got a picture in my office, and it's actually, I think it's down Pebble Beach. It's the one where they shoot the golf ball the holes across the ocean. There Was You gotta get it across, and the bottom of it is risk. I'm looking at it now, and you look at these things, you think, oh, yeah, because people don't sometimes look at the risk side. I'm not saying people don't make more money in short term, but don't put all your money.
Tim 12:34
I think there's a crossover there to life, and that is in terms of Jen and I, when it comes to either finances or what we do more broadly, in the things we choose to engage in, you want to have things in your life that are very solid, that are foundational, that give you that low or or controlled risk environment, so that you have bandwidth to take some risks in other areas of your life. So you know, when it comes to investment, I have a portion of my portfolio that is in startup companies and things which are a little higher risk, but the stability of my long term investments gives me the ability to play over in those spaces without feeling overly exposed, right? It gives me a little bit of freedom. And it's the same thing that financial stability that we've created with you, allows me to take the risks that are associated with being an entrepreneur and being a business owner and investing in my business and making plays in my business, which other people might find very scary that don't want to take those risks, and so balancing that kind of net risk is part of that control part of our life that allows us to then be free and creative over in other parts of our life where we need to be free and creative.
Dave 13:59
Yeah, I think you have to ask yourself, Where did you go through life? You got to say, okay, is my investment an investment, or is my investment a gamble? And when it becomes a gamble, the risk factor goes up considerably. We all do this, but you don't do it with 100% or 80%, 50% of your money. You want to play the game. As I always tell people, you want to play the stock market. You take some money and go play it. It becomes a gamble when you're taking I gotta double my money overnight. I'm gonna bet this one horse, and he's gonna. It's a hot tip.
Tim 14:31
Just this past week, I used the phrase again when I was doing some career work with an executive. We were talking about getting stuck in waiting for someone else to promote you, hoping that somebody notices you. That, to me, is a gamble, right? That you're hoping that other people are going to do something in the same way, that if you're not enjoying your job and you jump and you don't know what you're moving into, or you're not leaving with a feeling of success from wherever you jumped off. You're playing the career lottery, and longer term thinking says we have to slow some things down. We have to really analyze what all of the inputs are and then make the best possible strategic moves to lower the risk overall. It doesn't mean you can't do exciting things. It doesn't mean you can't take risks, but you do it with as much data and as much controlled risk as possible, I think there's great lessons that transfer over to how we think about the game of money and investment and financial literacy and all of those things, when we start to apply those same lessons to our life.
Dave 15:37
Yeah, and I think there's been a lot of stuff written books and that on people that win the lotteries, yeah, and you look at it and you say, a lot of those people don't have the money in five years. They win big money, and they don't do the planning. They don't, a million dollars. You can't retire on a million dollars. As a kid, I used to watch the program The Millionaire on TV, and a million dollars, back 40 years ago, was a lot of money. I had a client that they inherited $900,000 and of course, one year, if you can believe it, they spent $100,000 in travel costs. They started to listen to me because I said, Well, you're just going to burn it up because you can't expect to double your money replace that type of usage in one year. Hey, you want to have a travel budget, that's fine, but stick to the budget. I mean, I always like to tell people you want to, we like cruising. And you know, when you do it, they got six month cruises. Those cruises are $200,000 people buy those tickets, but those are people that have a lot more. And 200,000 is probably like 20,000 for the average person. They use that money because they're going to, obviously, they're going to be out traveling around, doing spending, and they're not just spending 200,000 on the cruise those cruise ships sell out. But I look at cost of living things like that, we're going to go through this with the tariffs and everything. I think this is going to cause a great wake up call for a lot of people. Yeah, they're going to have to start looking at the deals that are out there. You know, are you going to go out and buy oranges if they're going to cost you 10 bucks a pound or whatever? I don't think so. So these are things that people have to start looking at. Investing money. I'm going to say, Well, okay, don't tell me. I'm going in for lower risk. I'm going to invest in my GIC. Well, that's a risk. Yeah, right away. It's a risk because the risk is you're going to run out of money, yeah, because you can't survive on a 2% rate of return when inflation is three. And you can't survive if you're 40 years old. Putting into GICs, the key, I think, to any investing is diversification, and diversification simply means that I got my money all over the world. You've got a whole blend. Don't get into the risky diversifications.
Tim 17:53
Yes, I think it's a great segue into thinking about the real risk of decisions. And again, this is one perspective I'd love to ask you about right now. One thing that we know is happening is perhaps people invested and are able to retire right now. And so you and I had lots of talks around retire at 60 or retire at 65 and we're seeing lots of strong data now coming out about the increased dementia risk when people are bored and when they're not active and feeling useful, even having suitable amounts of stress, and definitely a notion of having purpose and a community and people that hang around is really important. And taking that decision that this is when people retire, decision, this is what we should do. This is what society says we, when we should put ourselves out to pasture. That's never been your game. For the people that are out there listening. Drop that knowledge on them. Drop what you told me about the thought of staying sharp, challenging yourself to help other people.
Dave 18:59
I think working and keeping I'm not saying it's going to prevent dementia, but it forces you to remember things. It forces you to be active, forces you to interact. And I think the highest risk retirees, if you can believe it, are the police and firemen. Because they have a high, high stress job, they retire, and they sit retire, and they sit at home, watch TV and bang, and the mind goes, I'll be working on the day I die, as I said, and I don't mind that, because you feel you're interacting, you're you're alive. Let's put it this way, you see at Home Depot, you see all these people that are retired and they're working there. When you take an Uber, I like taking an Uber because you're talking to people that are, yeah, they're working and everything you're getting life stories from these people, yeah, really interesting to hear the life stories of different people.
Tim 19:49
Any year I have clients, probably three to five a year are people that are on to second careers. They're 60-65 or older. They've retired. And it's hasn't worked for them. They're starting businesses. They're entering into consulting. Often the story is that they finished working when they were told they should finish working, when they were prepared to finish working, and they're bored. My clients are primarily very driven people. They're leaders of organizations. They're people that are not satisfied with kind of mailing it in and taking it as it comes. And you're not going to suddenly become somebody who is going to be satisfied with a boring existence or a purposeless existence after you retire. And so pay attention to who you are now, there are things that people misidentify as, stuff that'll never change when it actually can change, and there's things that people think will change when it actually won't change, for instance, your personality or your drive, and in some way, shape or form, you're not going to suddenly change who you are, right? Some of those things are pretty baked in. We've come quite a ways here. We've talked about the lessons that we can capture from long term thinking. We have talked about how important it is to think this way, Assuredly when it comes to our wealth and when it comes to life and planning and family, what do you want people to challenge themselves to do? After listening to this.
Dave 21:25
You got a plan around what they have. What is your lifestyle? What is your family situation? Do you have kids? Do you care about your grandkids? Are these factors so we put away 150 bucks a month for the grandkids when they hit age 60 or 65 there's a half a million dollars in access to cash flow. And you know, there's different things, you know, you say, oh, inflation, Oh, that's too much money.
Tim 21:49
150, bucks a month is too much.
Dave 21:50
It's not too much more than 10 bucks or a cup of coffee every day. It's 300 bucks a month, right there. If you don't do that, how much you're going to have when the kids hit 65 you can save money, and if you're willing to adapt, I'm not going to buy steak every day. Well, I'll buy it if it's on sale once in a while, but I don't think everybody should have steak every day anyway, so it's not good for your body.
Tim 22:14
So you help people plan from a financial perspective. I help them plan from a career perspective. I think it's always hilarious that when I ask somebody they've spent more time planning one vacation or buying one car than they've ever put into where are they going in this life, making decisions, looking at what we're starting with, and mobilizing the assets we've got and the choices we can make towards the future that we want to have.
Dave 22:44
You're a good example, Tim, you were a chef. You did things and you changed. You've changed careers, and you were good, but then you say, Do I want to do this for the rest of my life? And you made a change, and I made a change. I taught for a couple of years, and I made a change. If people look ahead and say, Okay, I gotta, I gotta change, make a change in my direction, because otherwise, if I keep going this way, I'm going to fall off the cliff.
Tim 23:08
Yeah, yeah. Or somebody else can decide when I fall off the cliff.
Dave 23:12
Well, as I've said to you, and other people say, I'll live to, I want to live to 125 because I want to see them, uh, grow up. But, yeah, that's not going to happen. But it's think that way. Maybe it does.
Tim 23:22
Yeah, and some people start with more privilege than others, or better situations than others. But wherever you're starting, having a plan and being intentional versus leaving it up to chance, you'll do better off regardless of your starting position. We do this little game here where we play a hopscotch game between guests. In a previous episode, we had Jared Vandermeer, who was a social media expert, join us, and he lobbed a question, which we're going to play for you now that I'd like you to respond to.
Jared 23:52
Let's talk screen time. I challenge you to look at your screen time on your phone, if you're comfortable, share your screen time with the audience and then let us know what you're doing to manage it, if anything, at this current time.
Dave 24:05
I, first of all, I probably don't know my screen time because I use my phone what's changed, and I'm not making excuses. This is, this is my diary, you might say, and everything in it, because I…
Tim 24:17
Yeah, same thing. It's our office on our hip.
Dave 24:21
It's a tool. Yeah, it's not. Now, I would probably say, I we talk screen time. I'd like to say, Okay, let's What's your screen time in front of that TV? Yes, to me, it's true screen time. And yeah, I say there's people that spend hours, an hour in front of a TV and watching, what do they watch? Nothing. Oh, I'm going to watch the news, their news crazy or whatever. And I watch TV, but what I really enjoy is, if you can learn, even my grandkids like sitting there watching a cartoon is one thing. Sitting there and watching a program that is a learning, use it as a learning tool. The Smithsonian on TV is free use now, and the history and things like, that's what. To learn. That's good screen time. Yeah, okay, that's like reading it. That's a video book, almost, because you're seeing history and actual photos and things like that. That's good screen time watching some movie. I know people that they're movie buffs, and they go, that's all they watch. And I think you gotta differentiate. There's nothing wrong with screen time, we see it now how it's come into the educational system. The kids can watch it, but it's not watching cartoons. It's a learning tool.
Tim 25:29
Is there quality screen time versus something that's keeping you from investing that time in better ways? We should be a little more discerning when we say screen time to are there things that can help us grow? So I love that answer, Dave.
Dave 25:46
Yeah, I think it's the old adage, like a picture's worth 1000 words. You get good screen time. You've got 10,000 words, and the memory of a picture is a lot greater than the memory reading from a book. I'm not saying you don't remember. It's just that the picture is there and you can visualize, and if you can visualize something down the road in 10 years, five years. I mean, I can, like I said to you earlier, I remember that movie The Millionaire, and I can, you can almost picture some of the old TV. And I can't remember the guy's name or what. But the thing is, it imprints, is there, but the book isn't the same as a picture as that picture. This is why this has become a lot more usable. Problem is they've let the use of this not why they ban it in schools. Is because the kids are saying, well, I'm texting out Sally over there in the other side of the room, and we're going back and forth and things like that. That's not the intended use. Whereas, if they said go into Google this and Google dinosaurs, will say, you know, if you see, you know, a video on dinosaurs and how they lived and things like that, it sinks in. It's an impression that kids suddenly say, Oh yeah, I see that pterodactyl. And now I know what the pterodactyl is. My kids, my grandkids, when they you know, we go to the drunk Heller, and they know the names of the dinosaurs, and they're six years old, for crying out love, if you can bring that type of screen time in early ages, it really helps them down the road in terms of reading and things like that.
Tim 27:17
In the 15th century, intellectuals and religious leaders were fearful that, because of the printing press, books would overload the population with information and ideas. And there was a scientist called Conrad Gessner. He lived around 1550 in there. He warned that the flood of information was going to be confusing and harmful coming from books that most people couldn't handle it. And we have to think of the quality of information that are pulling in the intended use. And so we have to, you know, get really chunky on what's the what is the good use of this tool, this new technology, and what is the harmful use, and don't confuse and conflate the two. And make sure that we're being pretty honest when we consider these things.
Dave 28:08
Am I going to read a book about dinosaurs, or am I going to show pictures of dinosaurs and talk about it, okay? And this is one thing people should think about. Talk about visualization. One sugar cube is roughly four grams. The number of sugar cubes on different things. The highest one was the Tim Hortons candy cane hot chocolate.
Tim 28:28
Yeah, how many sugar cubes?
Dave 28:31
16
Tim 28:31
16?
Dave 28:32
In one cup.
Tim 28:33
Yeah, so that’s…
Dave 28:33
64.
Tim 28:33
64 grams… that’s a quarter of a cup. So you don't, are you gonna put a, would you sit down with a spoon or a straw and drink a quarter cup of sugar? Probably not.
Dave 28:46
But, and so when I look at when I look at when I go, if I go shopping, and I look at the gram, because being diabetic, you gotta see how much is the sugar. I mean, I can visualize when I say what it says, 16 grams of sugar. I say, hold it. Like one cookie is 16 grams of sugar. It's like a muffin is 30 grams of sugar. You say, What is 30 grams? I can tell you what 30 grams is, it's seven and a half sugar cubes. I say, Oh, crap, I can't eat that.
Tim 29:11
You’re gonna be a lot better off translate
Dave 29:13
Things that sort of, you can remember so to speak.
Tim 29:16
Yeah, yeah. We used to say speak in people's currency, because working with, if I'm working with one of my very first regional management jobs with was with a large scale food manufacturer, and I would be talking about waste, and if you're talking in dollars and cents, that didn't mean a lot to people on the line. But if I said we're throwing out the equivalent of two dump trucks full of dough every week. That's what we're after. That's what we're chasing. And that meant something to them, because they could visualize a dump truck full of dough. Okay, Dave, last question, what would be something in life that you would be one business that you would be just curious about asking a stranger, that you could get some out of the box thinking with something you're interested in related to life or work or whatnot. What would you ask somebody? What would be a question that would be on your mind?
Dave 30:14
What are your goals in life here that you want to achieve? Because that determines what road you go down, that's your road map. What is your goal in life? What's the most important thing in life that you feel is something you would want to do? You got to be able to visualize things that comes to planning and everything else you know. And if you can do that, if you apply that same concept in your life and financial and everything else, if you know what the goal is, the quality falls into place, that’s the philosophy of life.
Tim 30:43
Well thanks very much for spending this time with me, Dave. Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
Transcript
Tim 0:00
We're not living in normal times. If anything this past week has taught me, it's that it is not business as usual. This is a special edition of Sweet on Leadership, one that's inspired by the thousands of professionals who I am seeing abruptly cut loose without a plan and forced to navigate uncertainty in their career overnight. I feel positioned to be able to help, and so I want to take this episode to do that. Maybe that's you. Maybe it's somebody you know. Maybe it's someone you lead. If it is, please listen carefully, because today we're going to talk about what's happening, and more importantly, what to do about it. I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Listen and you'll walk away with clarity, control, and a strategy to move forward. If you don't listen, you might just find yourself reacting to the storm instead of learning how to weather it and come out stronger. Even if you have a job today, even if you are not one of the ones that were cut, do yourself the favor of having a plan. I'm Tim Sweet. Welcome to a special episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. This is episode 52.
Tim 1:30
If you're from the US, you may be feeling this firsthand. The recent moves made unilaterally by the executive office by the President, moves that may yet be proven to be illegal, have upended lives overnight. And here in Canada, we're not immune. We might feel the heat very soon as economic pressures mount and as unintelligent decisions seem to migrate north, carried on the winds of bad leadership and worse policy. And no matter where you are, one thing is clear—when chaos happens, we have two choices. We can react and panic and fail and fall down and get tired, or we can adapt and we can lead, not necessarily for others, but at least for ourselves. So today we're going to talk about how to do the latter. This abrupt demobilization of public sector departments is extreme, so let's talk about some of the numbers. In just the past month, 220,000 odd federal employees, many with less than a year on the job, are gone. Poof, overnight. For instance, the Department of Veteran Affairs, 1000 layoffs. You want to tell me that that is all fat that needed to be trimmed? The US Forest Service, 3000 workers cut right before peak wildfire season, right after the worst fire season on record. And let's not forget about the air traffic controllers and what we've seen happening there, despite being dangerously understaffed and woefully overworked even before the current president's inauguration, they were handed even more responsibilities and a bunch of distraction as people were cut, others were offered job payouts, all of them are feeling the pressure. That's not efficiency, that's just reckless. That's cutting the engines mid flight and acting surprised when the plane starts to go down. This isn't restructuring; it's dismantling. It's something we haven't seen before on this scale. A business can cut jobs and streamline. Why? Because essentially, they are an autocracy. A country, a public institution, a democracy—you don't cut costs by cutting the very people who make the system work. A business has one goal, and that's profit. And this makes it relatively simple, whereas a government has different goals all around the common good—community, justice, human rights, long-term values. And when you cut the people who are there to uphold those things, you cut the purpose out from underneath the country. On top of all this, we're now seeing a corporate wave of DEI and people centric layoffs. And here's the next step in this domino effect. The private sector, in certain instances, is beginning to follow the same script. We're watching the same playbook unfold. Companies that spent the last four years building “people first” cultures are now gutting them overnight. And here's what's wild. The same companies that made big, bold statements about diversity, equity, inclusion, mental health, employee wellbeing and a whole bunch of other things, companies like KPMG, Amazon, Google, Walmart, Meta—they're all rolling back or eliminating DEI and other human centric programs. The Zuckerberg Initiative walking back its DEI efforts despite years of public commitments, it's a page right out of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and his more nefarious moves with Doge. The Playbook seems to be as follows. Announce yourself as a leader who cuts the waste. Call anything that you don't personally understand or value, a “woke” distraction. Then watch people panic. Watch people infight for scraps instead of fighting for each other, fighting for what the company or the institution stands for. The leaders who are cutting these programs aren't just adjusting for the economy. They're intentionally shifting priorities. They're not all bad people. Some of them are being pressured to do so. And here's a question I have. Think about what happens to the people who brought into these companies with a “people first” vision? What happens to those leaders? What happens to the people who believed in these positive cultures made it feel like a safe place, found a measure of work life balance, found themselves? And what happens to all the people who look like me? Privileged white men who took it seriously, worked hard to cast off old-fashioned workplace attitudes, to move into a modern more just workplace. One that's less sexist, less racist, less scared of our own shadows. Well, I tell you, those who remain are going to face ever increasing pressures in the workplace, and they will become exhausted, especially if they care for people around them. Panic and fear breed bad behaviors, and when people feel scarcity, they isolate, they get defensive. And when fear runs into the room, things get nasty. This isn't just about the ones who are let go. This will damage those who stay. Because when good people feel unsafe, they will do bad things. When they feel scarce, they will do bad things to try to maintain their safety. If you were laid off, or if you think you might be next, let's get very, very clear about something. If you're one of the 1000s that have been released, an employee caught in a probationary period, or even one of those that has resigned rather than act against your own values or your oath, don't waste a second thinking that this release is your fault, that this is about you or your performance. It is not a reflection of your potential. Because of this, I have faith that you will rally. But make no mistake, this is unfair. And what I would say is you cannot take the energy away from yourself, getting lost and entertaining too many thoughts that somehow you deserved it. Unless you were shown some evidence of underperformance, some tangible proof, and you believed and could see the logic that you were underperforming, this argument holds no water. If you're feeling the weight of these layoffs, if you're staring down the barrel of uncertainty, remember, this is not your failure. But just because it's not about us, just because we didn't create the volatility and uncertainty and chaos we still have to deal with it, especially if we call ourselves leaders. This is a rash and reckless mismanagement, and it fails on the most basic leadership assessments. If you want to judge leadership, don't listen to the slogans that people are saying. Don't listen to the assertions that I think what they mean to say, and I think what they're really getting down to makes sense. Don't buy into that garbage. Look at the behaviors. When we see good leaders, we see a couple of key things. Good leaders, they think clearly, they listen widely. They build alignment before acting. They don't wake up and shoot off a bunch of true social posts, then purge entire departments overnight with no transition plan, with no logic. They don't destroy morale and expect engagement. What does all this mean? Well, if you can put aside the causation for a moment, let's focus on what are your next steps?
Tim 9:36
There are some things that you can do right away to put yourself in a much better position and get ready to find your next role. Hopefully some of these things are wound back, be ready to find your next role. And if you are in a role currently, give yourself a plan as a backup. Make sure that you have that career protection, that freedom, knowing that you've thought through some of these steps and you may have even acted on them. You will not be caught unaware. Here you go. Here are your next steps. I'm going to cover these at a very, very high level. Trust yourself. You're going to be able to chunk them down as appropriate, and we'll talk a little bit about that towards the end. First, reframe your situation. This is an action step. Stop and write down whatever your fears are. Maybe they haven't happened yet. Maybe they've just happened and now you're faced with a whole bunch of new chaos. Write it down. Write that down on one piece of paper. Now take out a fresh piece of paper and write down what excites you, if you can let go of those fears. Write them down. Group them, if necessary. Then write down what excites you. What energy do you find if you can let go of those fears? This gives us a priority. This gives us a priority list of what we need to do first. That's a mindset step. The next thing is, if you haven't done it already, get clear on your skills. Now I'm not just talking about “polish your resume.” What I am saying is that think about your skills as a leader, your skills as a professional. Write down five skills that are going to transfer for you, not just into your next role, but are actually going to become the skills you use through the next period where you're finding your next role. One thing that I like to say is that you already have another job. Your job is now to find your next role. You were a professional, whatever you did before. Be a professional in your job search. Write down those five skills that you have today, that other people are going to want, and those skills that you can already put to work, getting organized, getting busy, going out, and networking. Step three, activate that network. Message at least—we used to say three people a day—but I think that that's just really bogus. Think of it this way. You want to be messaging people. You want to be reaching out. You want to be applying for jobs. You're going to activate the network around you. You are going to start to apply for jobs strategically. But think about this. Think about what you were paid per day. Now, imagine if you took that amount of money. Let's say you make $120,000 a year. That means roughly, you're making $60 an hour, right? You're going to be making $480 a day, right? If you were to pay somebody $480 to find you your next job, what would you be satisfied with in terms of the workload that they would be putting in? Would it be reaching out to three people and applying for one job? I don't think so. You were a professional at work; be a professional in your job search. There will be a time to recover, and you will be doing that. You will grieve, but you can grieve and work. The working through things, the believing in yourself, the reminding yourself how much you're worth is worth far more than staying in your pajamas and eating a lot of ice cream and feeling progressively worse and worse and worse about yourself. You will grieve, but you can grieve on your feet. Okay? This is not about “get tough.” I am not saying shut off emotionally. You're going to feel a lot of emotions, and you should, and you should process them, but you can process them alongside the reminders of just how great you are at doing your work. If you were a strong organizer when you were in your job, organize yourself through this problem. If you were inventive in your job, invent your way through this problem, if you galvanized and networked people together through your job, network and galvanize people towards helping you and maybe others find a new job. Activate that network. Get busy. You want to get sharper. This is the fourth step. Get sharper every single day. I'm not talking about going out and retraining, although maybe that makes sense for you. What I mean is get sharper on just how much you are worth. Get sharper on your feeling of control over your own direction in your own career. Lead your career as you would lead a team, as you would lead a strategy, as you would lead your portfolio. Get sharp leading your own career.
Tim 14:51
It's funny because most people will spend more time planning a vacation than they will planning their career. Now's your chance. Now's your chance to craft the work life that you want. Now's the chance to remind yourself what you're capable of and go out and get it. Then, yeah, take action. Apply for jobs. Remember that applying online is sort of 3% effective. It can be really, really demoralizing. I don't say that you shouldn't check the LinkedIn and the job posting boards. Absolutely do that, but the power here is getting out and meeting people, networking first. Network—always first. The reason is, network has a lot more leverage. When you apply for a job, you're maybe one of 300 people putting in for that job. When you go and meet someone, and you spend that time talking about what they're up to. You don't come with a resume in hand. You don't come asking for work. You go and you find out what they're up to. You get engaged and interested in what they're doing. You help them think through some of your problems. You apply some of your superpowers to helping them through their work. Guess what? All of a sudden, now you are going to have all sorts of space in their brain. The next thing that's going to happen is they are going to carry you and your potential with them. Now, you've got a person out there that's slinging for you. You have a person out there that cares about what you're up to. And they are going to engage in any chance they get in thinking about what you might be to that position. They may be doing it for more than one person, and that's okay. And they may be doing it for their own reasons, and that's okay, too. The key is, get people that you know or you don't know well enough yet out there thinking about you. Get interested in them. You will, you will convince them so much more of your potential if you show them in their context, not yours.
So, okay. My final thought here, this is a really tough period for a lot of people. It's going to be nerve wracking. We are going to have people around us that are going to be going through a lot of issues, and I hope if you find somebody like that, maybe you'll share this with them. But there's that saying, “Never waste a good crisis.” We have a chance right now to be present and really decide how we want our career to go for the rest of our working life. And this is a great chance to do that. For all my friends down there in the States, when you're tired, execute on your plan. When you are scared, execute on your plan. When you don't feel good enough, execute on your plan. Remember that your brain will lie to you in your own voice. Just keep moving forward. You will feel yourself getting sharper. will feel yourself getting more momentum. You will feel the support that starts to gather around you.
Tim 18:00
If you find yourself scared to go out and network, if you start to feel like you're failing at that, or that you're annoying people, or that you're fearing rejection, work those feelings. Don't give up on the activity. Go and do the behavior. Work on those feelings, because chances are you're not feeling what other people are feeling. But do the activities. I'll be putting out a little more information on this. Attach what I can here. We all have a responsibility here to call out shitty leadership when we see it. You can come from whatever political background you want to come from, but when we look at the people that are making these decisions and are running these programs, ask yourself, “Is that a leader that I would want to follow? Is that a leader I'd want to work for? Is that a leader I'd want to be?” And if the answer is no, chances are we can take what they're doing with, you know, a little bit of harsh criticism—we can critique that fairly harshly, and know that we would do better than that and that eventually, crappy leaders, they burn down everything around them. They light their path with the bridges they burn, and provided they don't burn down too much around them, they will burn themselves out. Because at the end of the day, look… National organizations, universities, hospitals, they're all about the common good. And it's so much more important than simple profits, and it's so much deeper than running something like a business where that's the only option. The currencies are wide. We have currencies of community. We have currencies of human rights. We have currencies of justice for all. We have currencies of value and neighborliness. Focus on those. Those are the things that are going to survive through all of this. Take care of yourself. Check my site for some free tools. Support those around you. Well, that was a little bit of a strange one, but thank you for listening. We’ll see you soon.
Tim 20:21
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading you.
What I try to do is get leaders and individuals to understand that you have to think about it just slightly differently. Create a touch point cycle. Create a brand, validate that brand, create a whole bunch of touch points in a circle, and when the timing's right, you're going to capture that customer. You're going to capture that lifetime value. Very, very few, I would say under 2% of leaders are thinking long term, lifetime value rather than ROI, and that's what we want to try to change the conversation to.
Tim 0:33
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. Welcome to the 51st episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast.
Tim 1:06
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Sweet on Leadership podcast. Once again, we're joined by a very eclectic and interesting leader, somebody with a perspective that I am sure none of you will have. This is my good friend. And actually, I guess, family by marriage. Jared VanderMeer, Jared, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it.
Jared 1:26
Thanks for having me, Tim, thanks.
Tim 1:28
You and I have a history of long talks about business. We annoy our families when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever, because we volunteer for doing the dishes. And then we sit there and we workshop stuff, and we dig deep. And boy, for anybody who isn't a leadership geek or a business geek like you and me, they're all waiting for us to, you know, hurry back and play cards or something. And a lot of people just don't get it, I think right or feel left out, maybe.
Jared 1:57
You get addicted to business and you get addicted to these types of things, and we just love talking about it. So when we get that moment to sit down over dishes and talk about it, we just get excited, and we just can't stop so getting back to the other stuff is secondary to getting through our business chat.
Tim 2:14
And we've always had a really great split. We can be family, and I think that's really important, and then we can switch it on, and we've worked together, and we've run contracts together, and we've done some amazing things that have been recognized very widely for clients that we've joined forces on. And so that's always been a ton of fun, and it's such a joy to work with somebody that's as passionate about what they do. And so getting into that, I want to really open people up to who you are and what you do, because you've had an amazing transformation over the last eight years, right? So why don't you say it in your own words?
Jared 2:50
So, I like to say now that I'm a professional creator, and what that essentially is, is I make content across all online platforms that is designed to hold attention in today's world. Currently, I have 2.9 million followers across platforms on multiple pages, including my wildlife page and my creative photography page. And a couple years ago, I wrote a book called “If You Sell, You Lose.” So, author of “If You Sell, You Lose,” digital marketing kind of theory book, all of my concepts and practices went into that one and I just took that book, took everything I put into it, and applied it to the real world, and took those concepts out to prove them. And have had a lot of fun over the last couple years going out there and and making content for the the modern digital landscape.
Tim 3:36
When we think about one of the key attributes of a leader, that they make well informed decisions, evidence based decisions, and this is something that I've always really loved about you. And your approach is that you're not just going out there and pitching an idea, you're testing an idea. And sometimes you take years to test an idea out. And when I share your theories with other people, and when I show them your pages and what you're doing, because again, when we started working together, you were very much focused on marketing, and that was in sort of the more broadly based digital marketing space. But now you're not simply a person that claims to have done it, but you're doing it again and again, and you're doing it repeatedly, and you stood up the Near Me brand, which you know, again, for those of you that don't know, check it out Near Me Victoria. And I think you've got Near Me Edmonton now, is that correct?
Jared 4:32
We're starting in Victoria, pretty hard, and then we're going to move it across Canada from there.
Tim 4:35
Yeah. And so this, this is a great showcase channel and whatnot. But whether it's that or your wildlife photography piece. How do you create this kind of following? You're really decoding that and demonstrating a process to get there.
Jared 4:49
I think the misconceptions about social media and creating content for marketing purposes in today's world really comes down to that, if you. Just make a couple good things. Success can come to you, and then people do it and they give up because it's hard, it's difficult. But the secret to social media and building content and building a brand today is there's really no secret. If you work hard and make lots of content and make good content, and make it in this authentic way that people connect with then your brand will find success. It's an automatic that the algorithm will find you your customer base. And it's so simple, but I think people over complicate it, leaders over complicate it, and all they got to do is break it down a little bit and they'll start to see the growth that they've been dreaming of, that they've been hoping for.
Tim 5:40
We talk about that trust triangle, and I talk about it constantly on the show here. You know it's it's the presence of logic and authenticity and empathy. And when you talk about good content, or when we're dealing with a leadership brand, and we need to take somebody who's not necessarily interested in being a social thought leader, but they need to be a thought leader in an organization. You need to connect with people on things that they're interested in and more they're interested in you and who you are. You've taught me that that, like that authenticity piece is so important. And then from the logic piece, the consistency and getting out there and getting in volume and whatnot. And then really that stuff that resonates with people. When you know you're with a creator, that the stuff they're doing just really brings some positive feeling and positive addition to your life. How important that is. So I guess what I would say is, what gets in their way, what's the thing that they think is important that really isn't?
Jared 6:43
I’ve seen pretty much everything, and I think what people forget about when they're trying to build a brand is that the people that are buying their products are regular people. They want to see it working in their lives. They want to see that service or product doing what you say it's going to do. And what brands and leaders get caught up on in our era is this idea that everything has to be made picture perfect. And you see so many of the brands that were built in the millennial era starting to fall apart and starting to not do well and not get the reach. And the reason is, is they haven't adopted the ability to make content quick enough they haven't adopted the ability to go out and show off an authentic part of a business, and the audiences today are not able to resonate with that in any way. And I'm a very analytical person. I like looking at the data and the stats and the watch time doesn't lie. So I like to say this, if you go out and use a 4k professional camera, hire a great videographer. They come in and make a video, and they post it, and you look at the average watch time you're from everything I've seen going to be sitting around six seconds average watch time on the average commercial piece of content. If you take your phone out and record something happening at your business that day, showcasing anything. It could be the people in the lunchroom having a birthday party celebration. It could be your manufacturing process, whatever it is on a phone, and make that post. Do it a decent edit on it, in cap cut, or whatever your editing app software is, and post it. Your average watch time is going to be between eight and 10 seconds. So six seconds, professional video, eight seconds to 10 seconds with an iPhone shooting authentic content. And all that platforms want, all that marketing wants today is attention. So looking at those two things, imperfect, 10 seconds, perfect six seconds and the perfect one cost 10 times the amount. That's where leaders and businesses are getting in their way today. They they're looking for perfection. For perfection equals less attention and less watch time, and we want more watch time, so we have to find out ways to do that, and ways to get leaders to start to look at the process in a slightly different lights so that they can start to achieve the watch time and success that they want for their brands.
Tim 9:06
It’s funny because as you were speaking, I started thinking about the whole return to office movement and the work from home friction that a lot of places see. And you know, we know that one of the things that you lose when you go to a remote or a hybrid workplace is that you don't have that regular touch point with people. Crossing them in the hall, seeing them without even speaking to them, having a chat about your dog when you're putting the dishes away in the in the lunchroom, or whatever that is. And that makes sense to me that the volume is so important, or the frequency is so important, because that's one of the things that reinforces a relationship. Now I know for creators that I've met, we've got Tim and Renee, who've been on the show. They're thru-hikers. They've done a lot of these extended hiking programs, and they're going to be joining myself and TransRockies in Moab for the Moab Run the Rocks, so I'm going to meet them for the first time in person there. But long before I interviewed them, I was following them over COVID. And it was the frequency by which, even though they're hiking, that I could get to know them. And I felt by the time I talked to them, I remember I felt like I was talking to an old friend. I've had that experience, albeit briefly. I sat next to somebody on the plane heading out to BC, and they said, Oh, you're that, you're that guy who's, who's on that podcast, right? You do leadership or something. And I was, look, I'm not talking about myself as some sort of celebrity, but it was like it was an amazing thing how quickly they wanted to tell me their life story, right? That trust was already built. And so this is not a small thing, even for people that will never perhaps want to be an online creator. They just want to be a leader. They just want to get people around them and build trust. This frequency message is important.
Jared 10:53
I call it the touch point cycle. So take your example of getting recognized for the first time on your trip over. You put out a whole bunch of content. You put out a whole bunch of feelers everywhere, online, through your website, through your blog, through your podcast, through LinkedIn, wherever it is. And people see it multiple times. They start to get to know you. They start to get to know your brand. But they're not going to initially, and we'll talk about this a little later. They're not going to initially say, Tim, I want to work with you. Or maybe they don't even need to work with you. Maybe you're going to be someone they know. But at the end of the day, as they get to know you and know your brand, when the timing's right, when they're either going to tell their friend about you or they need your services, then they're going to buy from you. And that's that's another thing that leaders and business owners today make the mistake with they really think that when they have a product or service that they think is great, and everyone thinks their product or service is the best thing out there, they think that everyone's ready to buy that day. So if we put out something, I people are going to come right away, the classic return on investment discussion. You spend $1 you get two back. And what I try to do is get leaders and individuals to understand that you have to think about it just slightly differently. Create a touch point cycle. Create a brand. Validate that brand, create a whole bunch of touch points in a circle, and when the timing's right, you're going to capture that customer, you're going to capture that lifetime value. And it's a struggle because very, very few, very few, a small, I would say, under 2% of leaders are thinking long term lifetime value rather than ROI. And that's what we want to try to change the conversation too.
Tim 12:41
Help us understand, when a person comes to you, what type of state do they come in, what type of question or ask are they typically coming with before they're informed about what's the right thing to do, or what's your method, what's the type of need you see?
Jared 12:57
Yeah, if I was to take the typical business that comes and has a discussion with me, they're usually starting to make social media content, doing it on an inconsistent basis. They do some traditional marketing, still putting some stuff out there to create their brand, doing it in a very professional, pristine way, but un-unified between their website to their social to their traditional campaign. Everything's looking a little bit different. Nothing's brought together yet and and a lot of times they're still fighting to get validated. They want more followers. They want things like that. And I have to break them down. I have to say, Okay, we're throwing all of that out the window. We're not going to care about likes, comments, follows none of that. We're going to start from the basics and then go through a step by step process that's going to take them from a very disjointed, non-focused marketing approach to a very focused marketing approach that can go after what they actually want, which is sales for their product or service.
Tim 13:59
Before we get into that process, you're going to share a little bit with us. Why is this a thing? Why do people make this mistake? What's the misconception here?
Jared 14:09
If you look at attention today, it's very clear. The data is very clear that attention is online and it's on social media. So the watch time on Tiktok and Instagram alone, not including even Facebook. If you're looking at it, we're talking hours of people's attention today, and that's now not designated towards newspapers. That's not designated even towards driving and seeing billboards on the side of the road, definitely not TV, other than through sports programs. So there's nowhere for people to market effectively anymore, other than through digital and people are still dedicating so much time and energy towards looking cool in that legacy aspect through some of those traditional means. And I'm not saying they can't work. What I'm saying is that's no longer where the bulk of attention is. So the reason that everyone needs to consider this specifically for the next five to ten years, is if you're looking to grow your business, you want to put your marketing dollars where the attention is, and stop worrying about things that are more about creating that brand legacy for yourself than doing something that's actually going to translate to results. So that's why I want more people to think about this, and why they should think about this, because it's just where the attention is.
Tim 15:30
If we think about the title of your book, “If You Sell, You Lose,” right selling and that traditional, you know, print or broadcast advertising mindset, which is all about, you know, pitch the benefits, tell them why you're unique, all of those things, very, very different from when you talk about this touch point cycle, which is, establish a relationship, establish some trust. You know, really, how do you become the subconscious thought in that person's mind when they're approaching an issue, not because of the benefits they think they're going to get out of you, but because of who they know you are. Am I getting close? Is this?
Jared 16:07
Yeah, and I think, I think at the end of the day, all that, what we're all looking for with that, is for a brand to have enough awareness in someone's subconscious mind that when the purchasing decision needs to be made when the timing is right. They want to purchase your product, or they already feel like they know you. That's what we're all trying to achieve. It doesn't matter what business you run, all you're looking for is to try to be the choice when the timing is right for your customer, and the means that we have today to market are much more effective in finding that customer quicker, without dealing with what I call the needle in the haystack effect, where you're just throwing stuff out there and hoping that it finds the right person. And because of that, we can actually be a lot more effective with the same budget today than we could even 10 years ago. And that's what we all that's all what we all want. Now we just have to execute it.
Tim 17:01
There's so many parallels here, because we can talk customers and when they're ready to buy. We can also talk about employees and when they have an issue, or when they need some direction, are they going to come and Are you their first port of call? Not because of authority, not because of anything like that, but because they they have trust, right? They are going to take your your your feedback, or they're seeking it. So, so much here. All right, so people come with this misconception about, you know that it has to be shiny. It has to be a shotgun approach. It has to be it's all about likes and clicks and all of these things. How do you guide them out of this?
Jared 17:40
Well, the first thing I do is I talk about removing vanity metrics from the way that you judge your campaigns. So vanity metrics, for me, are likes, follows, comments, those types of things, because the amount of followers you have, the amount of likes that you get, does not affect the purchasing decision of somebody that needs your product. So it's not that they don't matter. It's that if you judge your content based on engagement alone, and engagement typically comes from your followers, from the people that already trust you. Doesn't come from outside of that. It's something that we've learned over the last couple years is engagement comes from the people that already love you. So if you're trying to build a brand, and you haven't done it yet, you're still trying to validate, then you should have no engagement anyways, that's why it's a metric that doesn't matter. That's why that's one that we put off to the side. So first thing, more than anything, what I'm worried about is that we start to look at the metrics that matter. And the metrics that matter are very simple, average watch time, so the amount that somebody's watching a piece of content that you create, photo or video, we look at impressions, the general impressions, because impressions and views are standard to how many people are seeing the touch points. And if we want more people to see our customers, we want as many touch points and impressions as possible. That's how we grow. And if we look at average watch time, and it's going up over time, and if we look at impressions, and it's going up over time, and I'm saying month to month, we're not talking week to week, then what we are doing in the marketing department, as a leader, guiding our organization, is we're doing the right thing in terms of building a modern brand, because we're starting to hold attention longer. We're in the right direction. And that's it. That's all we're trying to look at from the start. And if we can do that, if we can change our theory with that, then we can start to go and make the right marketing decisions and start to make content that works in today's world.
Tim 19:41
It’s interesting. You talk about vanity metrics, we talk about likes and whatnot. What's the purpose of the like and the click and all of these readily available sources of data? It's not about whether or not it's effective. It's about keeping people on that platform. It's the gamification of your social time. But it has little to nothing to do with that, holding the attention and building trust, and really that relationship, building that, figuring out what your market needs and whatnot. So it's interesting to think how much a like, a thumbs up can betray you.
Jared 20:18
The question that I get asked all the time. The real simple question that every business owner asks is, how do we beat the algorithm? How do we find a way to achieve success in today's algorithm? And I like to tell everyone that the algorithm is no secret. Instagram makes it public. The algorithm is only looking for two things. Number one, the algorithm is looking for, will the audience watch the video longer? Why? Because all of these platforms want to serve ads to their audience, and the longer you can keep someone on the platform, the longer they're going to be able to serve ads to them. So that's, that's a common sense. The second one, which is the vanity metrics, is, will that audience engage? But an engagement is not what people think. An engagement is a click. It is a link in bio click and then, yeah, there's still comments, likes, shares, saves, all of the other metrics. But it's not as simple as just a like, so that's why I say they matter, but it's secondary, first to watch time and then to creating an audience that trusts you, that actually wants to engage. Because the fact of the matter is this, you can create an audience that's going to watch every single video that you ever post and they never like or engage with it.
Tim 21:34
Yeah, that's right. They're not there when it matters, in a sense.
Jared 21:38
Yeah, and the algorithm doesn't care if the algorithm sees that person wants to watch every piece of your content, and they're still going to look at your website, and they're looking at your profile, they're engaging with you, and the algorithm is going to keep pushing your content to them. So that's how you create success, by only worrying about those two things that the algorithm wants. And this is universal across every platform. It doesn't matter which one it is. All that matters is watch time and then secondary, are they going to potentially engage with you over time? That's all you got to remember.
Tim 22:09
It's kind of like saying, Are you getting a smile, a nice smile and a nod from somebody, or are they coming to you when they have a problem? There's a very big difference between social engagement and business engagement, or leadership engagement, or, you know, sort of organizational buy-in. Cool, all right, so watch time, impressions, using those to make market decisions. You know, it's funny when people come with that question about beating the algorithm. I remember a year ago, you said this to me again. It's like, don't worry about the algorithm. And at the time, I was thinking, you know, the algorithm that is my problem, or I would say is many people's problem, is the math, not that the app is doing, but that we're doing that stops us from creating and stops us from being open, and stops us from being okay with raw, dogging our our content out there into the world, right? Rather than having it to be perfect. It's all that doubt and whatnot. That's the algorithm up here that we should be worried about, because that's when you say that's gonna that's gonna stop us from that frequency and that openness that might be required.
Jared 23:13
We've chatted about this plenty of times. I mean, oftentimes leaders or brand creators get in their own way. They're worried about their own personal appearance, and I must say, after posting 5000 videos in the last three years across platforms, across different mediums, what you think that people are going to see in the video is the absolute opposite of what they actually see. So you might think that they're going to see the double chin or whatever you got going on in that moment. But what they're actually seeing is what service, what value you're offering. And people don't have the attention span today when they're scrolling on eight second, nine second scrolls to worry about an appearance or something not perfect. What they want to know and they want to connect with you is on an emotional level, on a storytelling level, or when you're solving problems, and that's my three pillars of value. And if you can do those things, taking the rest out of the equation and not worrying about what you feel the content is, you're going to be able to make more content, and you're going to see success.
Tim 24:17
Even if you're not making content again, if we go back to that leadership analogy, if you're focused on being clear around your emotion, the story and the problem that you're solving, you're going to connect with more people more deeply. And that has to be a goal, whether it's in real world or online. When I talk to people about the amount of effort that I put into LinkedIn and Instagram and things like this, and I'm not even, I would say, on the top end of how much effort people put in, I get stories back. They tried it and it didn't work, and they and they lost heart, and they were disappointed, and they gave up. You know, what are some of the disappointments that you you see that have people failing?
Jared 24:57
Yeah, I see one thing happen all the time. And with any platform that I have had success on, I've had to post for roughly 90 to 120 days straight, two or three times a day in order to see success. But, the amazing thing about it is that every single time, all the platforms around that 90 day mark, if you do it consistently and do it well, magic happens. It pops. So what I like to tell people is you have to stick to it. You can't give up in the process. And what I see, or the biggest disappointment I see, with clients, is they go for 50 days, 45 days, they're doing good. They're making their posts a day. They're doing really well and getting their content and value out, and then they're not seeing those that the value come back immediately. So they give up, or something happens, or they get busy, and they can't follow through and get to that magic threshold, which I would say is 90 days for the win, and it's happened every time. It's a secret, it's a trade secret. I think that a lot of creators know, but the average business owner or leader does not. So it's it's not it's not even that long. It's 90 days. But for some reason, everyone seems to give up in that 60 day mark. And all I want leaders to do, and business owners to do is stick to it and stick to the process, and you'll see the success for your brand
Tim 26:26
And focus on the right expressions of success. As you said, it's, you know, it's watch time. It's not, it's not likes. Keep up with it and observe those, those metrics you talked about earlier.
Jared 26:38
Just, yeah, just create value. Look at look at the average watch time. Every single time you're seeing that it's increasing. And if you're telling stories, engaging motion and solving problems, again, those three pillars that I talk about over and over again, you will see success in your content, and you'll see that average time start to increase. It doesn't mean you're not going to fail, Tim. We've been there. It doesn't mean that the first 20 pieces of content you make aren't going to do horribly. The point I'm trying to make is, if you stick to it and get to that magic 90 days on the platform of your choice, then what you're going to end up seeing is you're going to start to see one or two videos, one or two photo posts start to pop, and then you feel great because you see it working, and then that's the small win that keeps things rolling. But very few times do I see people get to that point they give up before that, and then it's kind of like a waste of time. So you have to commit to that 90 days no matter what. If you're listening to this and want to try it. And I mean, if I say one thing, just commit, commit to the process, and you'll see success.
Tim 27:46
You really clarified something for me there. I'm even still stuck on, well, we got to think about watch time first and stuff. And really the very first metric that we got to be concerned about is there's 90 check boxes on the calendar, and has there been a piece of content every day for 90 days solid? And you've got that consistency, before we worry about anything else, make it to the 90 and then start considering. So that, for me, is a little, is a little light bulb moment going on here. And I imagine you have that experience a lot with people that you're helping them get over this hump of what they think it is to to develop a social following. When you see a light bulb go on in somebody's eyes. Does that do it for you? Or what about this? Work really sings to your heart, Jared?
Jared 28:39
When a leader switches from thinking about marketing and building a brand on a traditional, classic ROI basis, which is basically $1 spent $2 reward, just basic ROI. And they flip the switch, and they start thinking of things, as I like to say it as the lifetime value proposition. And so what you're thinking of essentially, what that means is you spend $1 but you get $20 back, but you have to wait five years for that, because the lifetime value of the customer, whatever it is for your business, is what the reward is going to be. So if you can change that, and you could flip that switch, one to two to then one to 20, you start to think of every piece of content you make differently, because it's no longer about trying to get an instant reward for every single thing you produce, and you start to actually create value for your audience and for building your brand. And it's just this magic little switch that as soon as you do it, you'll start to see the results. But if you still think classically, which is, again, what 99% of business owners do, is you just struggle. You struggle to get past that 90 days that I just talked about in the previous segment. You struggle to find ways to make content where you're not selling. And I should touch on this just a little bit. I mean, at the end of the day, we've talked about my book, “If You Sell, You Lose,” the original idea of the title came from the fact that at the time, everyone was starting to skip over content that had high sales content in it. And if you think about yourself, anyone listening, can think about how they scroll through social or how they scroll through Google. Majority of people, they see an ad, it's a quick flick right through unless it matters to them in that moment, if you're on Google, you go straight through the ads to the organic search results, and that skipping of content is lowering your average watch time. And if you lower your average watch time, you're not going to see success. So it's an easy formula to think about. If you can start thinking in terms of long term value and capturing the lifetime value of a customer, you're going to be able to not make sales related content and not kick yourself in the foot when you're going about starting to start the process. And that's what gets me going, when I see that switch go off, and then content starts to come out with that value related process in it. It's magical, because it's so much better. It's night and day, and your brand and your customers can see it. So that keeps me going. That keeps me, me excited about creating these transformations.
Tim 31:30
Yeah, and so in that, and you've given us a lot to think about so far, but if you had a blueprint that you were going to lay down on somebody, what would it look like?
Jared 31:41
Well, first of all, number one, if we're going through the process, is you have to feel good about your brand before you start. You have to feel good about committing to that 90 day process. Number one, feel good about your brand. Usually that means you unify your brand, so your website, your social media, your Google Maps, optimization, everything about your brand across platforms, including your print documentation, is exactly where you want it to.
Tim 32:08
Feels like the real deal.
Jared 32:09
The real deal. Then, then you're ready, because I don't want you to spend a single dollar, not one until you're ready to commit to the 90 days. And you don't want to make too many changes to your brand in that process. You want to commit and go after it.
Tim 32:22
It's like, look at what I made, you know.
Jared 32:24
Exactly, so that's number one. Number two, as part of the process is execute that cycle that I talk about, the touch point cycle. So start to make so much content, start to practice, start to create the value. And create that cycle. The more times you get to the same customer when you're doing your boosts, when you're talking about making your content and getting out organic reach, the more times you're going to have a chance to find that customer when the timing's right, because you're not going to see success until your customer starts to see you in a long period of time, feel good about your brand and then execute when the timing's right. So execute the cycle. Start making content with that commitment to 90 days. Then as soon as that's done, it's about looking for the small wins to keep your motivation up. So number three, look for the small wins. Try, you said one earlier in the conversation, you said you're on the plane to BC, and someone said, “You're that podcast guy.” I can't count how many times I'm walking around and someone says, you're the guy on Instagram, or you're the creative photographer you took the photo of the blue jay in Canada. And all of those moments, for me are, are those light bulb moments where you know it's working, and there may not be a ton of of results from that, but you know that everything you're doing is working with those small, small wins. After that you want to create and correct as fast as possible. So creating correct, for me is a term that I used in my book. It's a whole chapter dedicated to it. And essentially, what it means is just trial and error. But for me, it's simpler than that. When you're looking at your metrics, on your on your content, you're only looking at that average watch time and a little bit of the engagement, as we talked about, and that's it. So you look at it, you see it. Now you forget about that content. That contents gone a mistake. I see is business owners and leaders, when they have that first success, they are constantly looking at it and analyzing it and and breaking it down. And it's weeks on end they're like, did you, did you see that one video I got? They got 50,000 views. Why did lightning strike? Why did lightning strike, and then they obsess about it. That is not going to help you make more content to succeed. So look at it, analyze it, forget about it. Start making new because I want you to dedicate every minute to making more content and less time analyzing after that initial view. So be quick. Be very efficient with how you look at your metrics when you're creating and correcting. After that, when you're starting to go through the process of making the success. I always set the blueprint for every business across the board to spend between 2% to 5% on marketing. That's the general spend across business industry. It's backed by a lot of data, and I'll find, and I'll be willing to bet, that a lot of people listening to this, when they do the math on how much they spend on marketing or how much they spend on Instagram boost compared to how much they make, they're not even close to the 2% mark, let alone the 5% mark. So the 2% to 5% mark is designed for you to spend the money required to replace clients and bring in new clients or customers to your brand that are going to bring that lifetime value to the table. And after that, number five, as we're going through this process, is actually find out what the lifetime value of your customers is. Now, I never say this is number one, even though some people say, why am I not figuring out the lifetime value at the beginning? It's because when you're starting to do a new marketing process and you're starting to bring in new customers with these small wins after your your 90 day process, then when you see the magic start to happen, it's a new customer than you've never had before very often. So sometimes it opens up, sometimes it's your typical customer, don't get me wrong, but you're bringing in new people that you've never experienced in your brand before, and their lifetime value may not match what it is now. So you're going to have a blend of what that lifetime value is, and then figure it out. Figure out exactly, based on the customers you're bringing in, how much they're going to spend on your product or service over their lifetime. And with that data, you come to my magic number, which is spend 5% on marketing to acquire a client based on their lifetime value. So if the lifetime value of a customer is them buying $100 chimney cleaning service, you should spend about $5 for every lead that you're bringing in, but 5% of that 100. But if the lifetime value of your customer is $10,000 then your customer acquisition for every client can be up to $500 to achieve that, and it's a big number, because on most platforms today, the cost per conversion is somewhere between $50 to $200 depending on industry. So there's a lot of room to play in there with your marketing budget. And if you have a high lifetime value, if you're selling a service at a very, very high price point, you have room to acquire that customer, specifically talking to real estate agents yourself as a leadership coach, and anyone that has a higher ticket item, we want to make sure that you're spending 5% of the lifetime value to acquire a new customer. And then afterwards, I always like to say, I always come back to the value tree. So when I look at my my value triangle, when I look at my three things, solve problems, create emotion, and tell stories. If you can find a way to do the value last and always make sure you're coming back to creating and correcting, finding what the value for the customer is creating and correcting, finding what the value is coming coming up with that cycle you can't you get into a system that you feel Like you're winning every single day you post something. Like I give you an example, not my major pages, but on near me, Victoria, the last couple days, we posted eight times in one day, and in that eighth, post, we got 160,000 views and 3200 shares within the local community. So that's after years of creating content every single day, multiple times a day, but when you do that, and you feel those numbers come in on a base level, you get excited, and you know you're making a difference. And that's what you're going to do with this blueprint for your brands.
Tim 39:16
I think that's great. There was something else that, as you were speaking there, you you told me years ago, and when you're going through this validate and feel good about your brand piece, what would you say is the relationship to asking sort of permission or asking too many people what they think about your brand or about your content, especially people up close and personal who aren't doing it themselves. I feel, that feels like a trap to me sometimes, because you know, often, if you're worried about being… of getting people's approval, it can really put the brakes on.
Jared 40:05
Well, with anything in marketing, obviously, there's industries out there that have to have compliance on some level, and they want to get each piece of content checked for legal reasons, whatever, whatever the case might be. And I understand that, but the less touch touches there is on each piece of content, the less revisions you have, the less resources you're going to spend on it, and the more resources you're going to have to spend to make more content. And I guess I should touch on what that means. I guess the quality versus quantity debate that everyone seems to get caught up on. So I mean, let's go this way, quantity-quality, there is debates on social media both directions. Some people say one, some people say the other, and oftentimes, people that I work with have tried both. They've done a lot of quantity, but it's been really bad, and they've done some really, really refined stuff, been really good. The secret to quality versus quantity is you actually need both to succeed. So there's no one or the other. There's no debate here. You need both. You need lots and lots of content, you need to train the algorithm of who is your customer so they can retarget your content to them and help you build organically a little bit. And then number two is you, you just have to find a way to make good content still, you need it to have those pillars of value in it. And that doesn't mean use a good camera, like I said earlier, it just means make good content and that takes practice, but once you create that good content and can do it quickly and effectively, then it even amplifies everything else that I've talked about with doing it for 90 days or longer. The Magic really takes hold at that point in time. And yeah, it's, it's when you find that one piece of content that works, then duplicate it like give her, start making more, start doing it again and again and again, and you'll see success.
Tim 42:18
Don't stress out about how to make lightning strike, but, you know, just use it as a kickoff. And you know, you were thinking square, so just forget about that no. Go and make the next piece. Make the next piece follow that vein until it plays out.
Jared 42:35
The biggest thing I can tell your audience from my secret to creating multiple brands with 10s of 1000s of followers, is…
Tim 42:44
Millions of followers, right?
Jared 42:46
With millions, each of my brands has had success over multiple niches. So we're talking from photography to wildlife to local content, multiple niches with the products that I do is, is, I'll give you an example. With my wildlife page. There was a point in time where I posted 200 reels in a 10 day period. So I was 20 reels a day, and in that period I gained 60,000 followers. So anyone listening to this that thinks 200 reels in in 10 days, that's, that's crazy, that's impossible. Well, I sat down and I edited them, I got them ready to go, and I made that post every single like they were all ready to go, and then I just launched them. And there's no harm done. There’s no loss of followers. You're training the algorithm, you're creating a ton of content. It was all great, and there's a reward for that. And so, so don't be scared of that. Don't be scared of creating at that level. There's almost no downside to producing more. And when the arguments come in for it, the easiest one to explain is a lot of misconceptions are that you'll train your audience to not follow you or follow your content. You might make them a little annoyed at the amount, but what we've learned is the algorithm won't show content to your audience if they think your audience isn't going to watch it or might unfollow you. So even if you post 20 times in a day, then it might not show the 20th post to your audience member for another 30 days. So it's not showing all 20 posts to them on the same day. It's utilizing and showing it to each individual based on what their comfort level is with your brand. That's why you can produce so much and increase your chances at organic reach by posting on.
Tim 44:38
One and 200 points of data for the for the thing to learn from helps it work, right, in a sense?
Jared 44:48
Yes, it helps the algorithm retarget your content to people that are going to follow you and and get attached to your brand. And that's, that's where most brands don't get to that, that point where it can train the algorithm, so.
Tim 45:03
Awesome. All right, if somebody is going to take away one thing from what you've offered today, if you have a wish for the listener right now, what state do you hope they are able to reach by the end of listening to us?
Jared 45:18
I think with leaders and marketers today, the one thing to remember across all of history and all of business is marketing has always been the exact same. Nothing's changed. And this is what hasn't changed. Value is always going to equal value. So if you can connect emotionally with your audience, solve a problem for them, or tell them a story that they engage with those three pillars of value, you are going to build an audience and build a brand that's able to sell your product or service. That is never going to change. It doesn't matter if social media disappears tomorrow. It doesn't matter what you do, if you can connect with your audience on one of those three pillars, hopefully all three, but at least one, then you're going to succeed. And that's that's it. And if you write that on the wall, value is always going to equal value, and that's never going to change. It's easier to make marketing decisions when you're looking at buying that commercial video that maybe isn't going to do any of the three pillars. You're going to be able to make better decisions by recognizing that that's not going to change from a market.
Tim 46:22
And avoid the snake oil I would imagine, right?
Jared 46:25
Avoid, yeah, really avoid the shiny objects. Because when you see a shiny object, when you see a hack, a shortcut that someone is pitching to you, I can tell you right now that there's no shortcuts. To build my first photography page, it was 1000 posts in 365 days, close to three posts a day, learning from every single one on what works, getting better at your craft, getting better at how you're engaging emotion, solving problems, telling stories. And eventually I got to the point where I could do two or three in each video and watch time was going up, and it blows up from there. So it's sticking the course and really understanding that you have to do the work and there is no shortcut. Any shortcut you take today is probably going to set you back from a marketing standpoint, indefinitely, years, months, years, every time you make one of those decisions.
Tim 47:17
Haste makes waste. All right, let's get on to hearing from our last guest. So we're talking here to Amreesh Khanna. So we're going to listen to this little clip where Amreesh asks about your relationship with your reflections on your own leadership.
Amreesh 47:33
What is it that you could do or change in how you reflect upon yourself as a leader, to reject perfection, change your perspective on failure and success that would help you be better at what you do today, and have that influence on the people and the purpose that you lead with?
Jared 47:54
Yeah, sure. Thanks Amreesh for the question. I think for myself, I struggle with some of the even the concepts that I talk about. I struggle internally a lot of times with trying to not always do the things that I love and sometimes focus on the things that I don't love as much. And what I'm saying by that is I really, I love what I do. I love, I love creating content, but sometimes I get caught up in trying to only do the things I love and I put the things that will help me build and grow as a leader off to the side. And what I need to do is I need to find a way to reprioritize, bring some of that back and create a balance between doing what I love and also focusing on the business. And that'll help me in all my relationships, from my clients to staff members, etc., finding that focus and and realizing you can't have it all.
Tim 48:46
Yeah, I had a coach once say to me, it's more important to be consistent than it is to feel good. And I was like, you know, when it comes down to it, yeah, you're not wrong. There are things that we have to be consistent with whether or not it's our favorite thing in the moment. But all right, great answer. As part of this tradition, you get to lob a question that you've considered into the next mystery guest, and we're not quite sure who that's going to be yet, as always. So what eclectic leadership perspective would you like to weigh in on one of your issues? What would be the question?
Jared 49:23
I'm going to go with, screen time. So I'm going to say, let's talk screen time. I challenge you to look at your screen time on your phone, if you're comfortable, share your screen time with the audience, and then let us know what you're doing to manage it, if anything, at this current time.
Tim 49:39
Cool. Love it. Great challenge. Okay, as we wrap up here, thanks very much for taking the time. I hope people are as happy with this conversation as I have been with all of those times we've happily washed dishes and scrubbed dried gravy off of roasters. It's really something to see the success you've had in this space, and see all of the people that are that are interested in collaborating with you, and all of the big brands that are now coming coming to you for guidance. And so if people want to reach out, or you want them to get involved in something, how can they connect with you? How can they experience Jared VanderMeer?
Jared 50:23
Yeah, I would say to reach out through one of my platforms, most likely Instagram or Tiktok. It is for the modern creator. That is your phone book, that is your contact list. So when people reach out to me through one of those platforms, it's usually easiest to manage, because it's where we do spend our lot of our work time. So through my Jared VanderMeer Photography page or Wild dot VanderMeer Wildlife page are the easiest ways to reach out and send me a message. And I'll always find it.
Tim 50:53
All right, we'll put those deets in the show notes. And as I say, you know, man, great to have you here and I and I can't wait for people to listen through this. So.
Jared 51:03
Thanks, Tim, yeah, I can't wait to talk business over dishes again soon.
Tim 51:08
That sounds great.
Tim 51:11
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
Community involvement has always held great importance in Dr. Khanna’s life. As a dental student, he founded the SHINE Dental Clinic in Edmonton to provide dental care to those in need. He also leads a non-profit organization called Cause to Smile, which strives to "do good beyond the walls of our clinics."
Away from his professional endeavors, Dr. Khanna enjoys traveling with his wife and two young daughters, creating cherished memories that will last a lifetime.
There's no failure in leadership if we are reflecting on it appropriately. There's good leaders and bad leaders. But if we're those honest leaders that are constantly reflecting about what we're doing, why we're doing, you know, like all these things, that we're thoughtfully and genuinely trying to do what's best, well, if that's the case, then there shouldn't be any failure in leadership too. Because without having the ups and downs and things working and not working, how would we even be where we are today, or able to do it right?
Tim 00:33
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action. Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet, and this is the 50th episode of the Sweet on Leadership podcast.
Tim 1:06
Welcome back to the sweet on leadership podcast, where we explore stories and strategies behind remarkable leaders, and we're certainly joined by one of those today. I am thrilled that sitting across from me virtually is Amreesh Khanna, a visionary, an entrepreneur, driving force behind Ora! AI. Amreesh, we've known each other now for about two years, roughly, having met through Startup TNT, I am so impressed at how you are disrupting your industry in such a positive and empowering way for both the dental community and the patients, and I would love for you to introduce yourself and and let us into what drives you in that space. So, welcome Amreesh.
Amreesh 01:53
Thank you so much. Tim. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on your show, and thank you for thinking of me to bring you on here, share my experiences and hopefully give something insightful to your listeners. Yeah, it's been great getting to know you and through the tech community here in Calgary, Startup, TNT, as you mentioned, was kind of what brought us together initially, and where I was sharing my journey, and you know, where we were going with my startup called OraQ AI. What we're doing, you know, a little bit, I guess, call it about myself and what we're doing with OraQ, we're the only clinical AI solution in dentistry that standardizes a comprehensive patient exam and engages a patient with full transparency and ownership of their oral health data. What does that mean to you and your listeners? I mean, we've all got a story where one dentist told you one thing and another dentist told you something else, and you're kind of like sitting there leaving, like, are they just trying to sell me on something I don't really get that? You know, I've had this feeling this way, and somebody's now telling me I need a crown. And it's like, why is that happening? And you know, how do we really make sure that patients understand their reasons behind the recommendations in a way that they can truly trust their dentist and know that their dentist does have their overall health at the best interest at the forefront of their mind. But then also at the clinical level. Like our user is the clinician, and their practice is, how do we support the clinicians around precision care, right? And how do we drive those decisions around what we need to do for our patient, you know, to not be tooth to tooth dentists like let's look at the patient as a whole. Let's look at them comprehensively. Let's look at their medical health, how that all impacts their overall wellness journey, and make sure that we can empower them with the information that they need all at the tips of their fingers. We call it the mind and the wisdom of 1000 dentists to both dentists and patients, so we can make better decisions, more informed decisions, and then empower our patients to make the right decision as well too.
Tim 03:45
I think that's absolutely fantastic. I've always been told and maybe you can clear this up for me, the mouth says so many things about the health of the body, but also and tell me if this is true, if you've got poor dental health, you typically can have cardiac problems, you can have respiratory problems, you can be at increased risks for for cancer and gastrointestinal issues. Is that? Is that? Is that a thing?
Amreesh 04:11
Yeah. I mean, you know, so one of the things that is always a big component at least of my clinical education journey was what we call the oral, systemic health connection, the dental medical connection, right? I went to the University of Alberta for dental school, and through my educational journey over there, medical and dental was actually together for the first two years, so we did all the medical classes alongside with our dental classes. And I mean, I loved it. I was probably one of the Keeners that loved it, the few that really loved it that way. But it's because I found it so fascinating, again, because everything is connected, right. With that connection, at the end of the day, infection in our body, inflammation in the mouth, all translates to have effects with other things like you mentioned, right? You know, cardiovascular issues. It's linked to preterm births with women who are pregnant. And one big thing we look at now sleep disorder, breathing, obstructive sleep apnea, right? And the amount of research that's come over the past 10 plus years that shows how we look at clenching and grinding and people that we'd say, Oh, you're stressed out, you're grinding your teeth, let's give you a night guard. Really, it was all stemming to an underlying airway disturbance that dentists and hygienists and the dental community are in a very unique position to be able to screen for these things. Because you see your dentist often, a lot more than you see your family physician, right? And so how can we play a role in early intervention prevention, flagging those areas of concern, so that now we can tell you, hey, something might be going on here, right? Like, we're not seeing you improving in, say, your periodontal, your gum health. Well, is there something else going on? Like, are you diabetic? Do you have, you know, you know, cardiovascular issues, other inflammatory markers in your body that could translate to other issues, right, and play a role in that, right? So find that really fascinating. Again, part of the core in our AI platform too, is, well, how do we bring that awareness to everybody? Right? Because, you know, not everybody might have geeked out the same way that I did when it came out to the medical side of things, right? So how do we bring that mind and the wisdom of 1000 dentists, again, so that every patient coming in the door, we understand what is their medical risk, even so that we can screen for things early, we can send them back to their doctor to say, hey. Like, we're not saying we're a physician here, but like, go get something checked out something doesn't seem right here. Rather, you check it out and make sure you're okay, then find out later that something got way worse than they could have intervened earlier too, right?
Tim 06:37
Well, and a dental visit is much more accepted as a maintenance style activity, rather than than solely an intervention with a disease or something. But I imagine, I mean fascinating to find out how many people will talk more regularly about their health to their Barber. I don't have that problem, but to their Barber, their hairdresser, than they do to their doctor, because it's a maintenance activity. They're there on a schedule more or less, and you know, the doctor is going to check your tonsils and look in your mouth anyway. So if you've got a healthcare provider that's under the hood, you know, on a regular basis, that should be a logical place to start collecting data, triggering further investigation, doing all of those things that the patient themselves may not appreciate is going on.
Amreesh 07:26
You got it. And I think that's exactly the core to our solution, is bringing that awareness first, have asking the right questions, right? Because, you know, as a healthcare provider, we can ask and we need to be asking those questions, right, instead of your barber, right? What medications are you on? Right? Understanding, connecting those dots again. But what if one clinician is not asking all of the questions, they're only asking 20% of them, and another clinician is asking 50% and another clinician is asking 80 or 100% Why does that happen? Right? And it's all because, I mean, we're all human. We all have our mind full of a ton of things that we're trying to do the best for the, you know, patient, or the service, or, you know, industry that we're providing care with to that individual. But if we can just sometimes nudge and support like, I mean, what we truly are is a clinical decision support system, right, is nudge to collect the right information. Give you meaning around the information as a clinician, firstly, to understand that what's the impact of that information I just collected on my patient and my plan. And then give you as a patient an understanding of it, so that you sit up and you see your health in green, yellow and red and know, okay, shoot, I don't know what all that other stuff meant that you just told me about, but I know green is good, yellow is okay, and red is bad, right? And so what do I got to do about this?
Tim 08:50
Customize the dashboard for the level of knowledge or the level of expertise of the of the patient, so they have a check engine light around their their health and I think that that's, yeah, that's, that's amazing. Plus, I mean, just from a data perspective, centralizing data, making it available to everybody, getting that, that holistic picture, even though you're doing it through different people, and filling in the blanks, it's so important, because otherwise we just have all this orphan knowledge and orphan data just floating out there. And how do we, we're relying on the patient to centralize that and communicate that story in a layman's term, from from provider to provider, rather than, yeah. Okay with you. I think that. I think that that's fantastic. Before we get going too much further, I want us to hear from Karen Dommett. She had a question for you as a guest, which is a bit of a tradition, and don't worry, at the end of the podcast, you're going to have a chance to lob your own question at the next guest. But for right now, let's, let's take a listen to Karen's.
Karen Dommett 09:53
So, when you find yourself at a crossroads of conflicting good that conflicts with good, yeah. How do you find that moment of clarity or that direction in those conflicting moments?
Amreesh 10:05
You know this ties into probably a deeper discussion even today, is that like as driven entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, we often like want everything to be right and ensure that we have de-risked every decision that we've made, and find the data and the pros and cons and the lists that we make, and everything to make that right decision. I think something that maybe I don't trust enough too and that would help me on this is that gut and intuition right? Like, trusting that we've come this far to be in a position that we are in to be, you know, have the honor of making a decision like that, right? That people are trusting us with that decision, that we also have to trust a little bit in our intuition and gut and around what's guiding us there, right? And then take the chance. In this particular question, we're choosing between two good things, where we're not going to know what the end result outcome might be, but we know we're choosing between two good things, so we've done the analysis to really know that these are two directions that are good for us, but what's gonna what is my gut maybe pulling me towards? Because there's something there that we probably can't, you know, articulate or give a reason behind, but something's going to draw us to one or the other. And I think you got to trust that.
Tim 11:25
And I think it's it's funny when you watch leaders at those crossroads and they have to make that decision. Often, they can find what they were looking for in the in the second decision down the road, or it wasn't as binary decision as they thought it was going to be. It could be a matter of timing or something. But, you know, making that decision and having I love that what you said, you know, we are privileged to have that, that ability to be the one deciding. And so Trust yourself, trust your gut, keep going. Love it. Great, great. And that, again, was from Karen Dommett. Karen is the manager of Games and Competition at Special Olympics Canada, so great episode with her wonderful conversation. And I'd recommend that you take a listen very inspiring stuff. Speaking of which, you don't just run OraQ, you've got this history of running, not for profits, volunteer organizations, philanthropy. Can you tell me a little more about that? Because I think that's a that's a part of your profile that I find, again, just very inspiring.
Amreesh 12:36
Yeah. Anyway, you know, I think I was brought up always with community and giving as something that was very important to me. My parents came to Canada from India in the late 70s. Always were involved in, you know, the East Indian community in town, finding ways to give back, support, help in whatever way they could, you know. And so I saw a lot of that growing up. And, you know, got involved in ways to do so. And I think what I realized over time was that you know, I was doing it, and why was I doing it right? Like, I would maybe grade some fundraising thing in high school. I, in dental school, I founded a student-run clinic, which is, you know, 20 plus years of existence they call the Shine Dental Clinic in Edmonton. And I was like, Well, why am I doing this, and what, how do I get the energy to do this, amongst all the other things that I'm doing? To me, that aspect of giving filled a certain bucket in my life that other things couldn't, right? Not saying that there was deficiency or something lacking in other things that I was involved in, whether that's, you know, My family, it's my friends, it's a social circles. You know, beliefs, you have your professional ambitions, but there was something around the giving that still, I couldn't feed in all those other aspects myself, but when I did that, I really lit me up, right? And so, that's where I continue to try to find ways, you know, we're busy doing lots of things all the time, but finding some ways to thread that into my life, and hopefully, just like I was I saw it, and my parents show my two daughters, you know, that's an important part of living, right? So, yeah.
Tim 14:15
Yeah. Well, and it fills you with an energy, as you say, or a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning that may not be in such great concentrations in other areas of your life. So you're really creating this whole life experience. And yeah, I, you know, you said a little bit about you've had asked, answered questions about finding energy to do it all. And, you know, I think, to Karen's question, you're making choices about where you're going to apply your time, and you're making choices about what you can invest your time in, what you can put support towards, and what you might have to lay fallow, or something right that you can't, you can't deal with right off the bat. How do you find, do you find that there's conflict throughout the different aspects of your life, at least drawing on your own time and things like that? Like, is it? Do you ever get pulled in those two different directions? As Karen says?
Amreesh 15:14
Yeah, you know, is it like having that ambition and drive? Definitely, you know, I'm always like, oh, wow, like, that's something great. I want to be involved in that, or I want to do this, or I want to do that, right? I think what I've, I've learned over especially, to call it the last five years having, you know, great mentors, coaches, people in my life that kind of helped me piece this together was that if I have multiple things that I'm involved in that ultimately have some overlap and congruency around what is I'm passionate about, what my own personal values are. Then I found that those were actually not conflicting, right? Because the, like, from the outside, somebody might be like, whoa. Like, what do you do? And you're doing all these things, like, how do you find the time to do this, it’s amazing? And it's like, yeah, that's crazy. Half the time, yeah, it's crazy. Half the time still, too. Like, not the, you know, my wife will say, You're crazy. It was picking up the next or doing this and doing that, but when they're all tied together, then that's what drives, like, the energy around me, right? And I, I kind of went through this, you know, about, you know, five years ish, go like, you know, I have great personal, you know, coaches, mentors, been part of organizations. I was part of Tec Canada for quite, you know, 10 years. And did this personal values exercise, like you'll see up here, inspire, influence, educate, is something that I put together that was like, Who, what defined me as like values and what I wanted to do, right? So that then, when I looked at okay, what was I doing in my dental practices? What was I doing with my education platform for dentists? What was doing with my nonprofit? What was I doing in Oracle? They all tie back and led to this, right? And they… Yeah. So then for me, it gave me kind of that North Star that I'm like, I'm not distracted, I'm actually just doing different things, but they're all to serve that energy or to serve that ultimate purpose.
Tim 17:13
You know, when we talk about purpose, especially among high performers and whatnot, there's a fluency around what our purpose is. And then there's the whatever we do in our life, if it furthers that purpose, we achieve that congruency. As you said, it's such a love that word, it just means that it's not I've always found with myself, it's not work. And it sounds like such a trite thing to say, but honestly, I can be working late. I just came through a crazy week this past week, probably one of the nuttiest weeks I've had in years. But it wasn't work. It was it was hard, it was challenging, but it wasn't work and it wasn't exhausting in the same like physically a little exhausting. Mentally, no, no. Mentally, spiritually, whatever you want to put, put it on that side of things. I was living, man. You know what I mean, I'm just exactly where I where I need to be. And so, yeah, I can definitely get down with that.
Amreesh 18:18
And I was gonna say, like, Tim, like you, like you said, like, yeah, we're physically exhausted, like you probably went to sleep, doesn't it to be like, holy, I am just like, done, right?
Tim 18:25
Sometimes can't even get to sleep because I'm I am tired physically, but I am so energized mentally and emotionally that you have to kind of go for a walk, listen to a book tape, you know? Yeah, have a cup of tea. Because, you know what I mean?
Amreesh 18:41
Yeah, what I was gonna say, like, I think like you said it really nice is like, because it's part of your purpose and your drive and your vision and where you want to be and where you're making your impact. That's what still gets us up the next morning to be like, All right, that was like, really hard, but I'm ready to do it again, even though it's like, hard. I'm like, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep going, right?
Tim 19:03
So we talk about that energy management. And you know, in my practice, a lot of times, we're always dealing with this balance between creative energy, which is that can be that anxiety-rich, stress-rich, creative process, and then the ability to maintain calm and control and have those systems so that you know that you are, that you are safe, basically, or safe enough. And that you've got the data coming in that you need, and you can just, you know, you can just relax a little bit and say, You know what I've got, what I need. So I'm this picture is emerging for me, of you, Amreesh, where you know you've got this, inspire, influence, educate, purpose. We have this, these community clinics and whatnot that you've set up, these, not for profits, that are helping people, and that's a big part of your Venn diagram. And then over here, we have Q AI, which really, you know, is putting this knowledge, or this information and this data into the hands of both the health provider and the patient, right? And all of that, to me, smacks of creating freedom for other people. Like it's creating, you're empowering other people, and you're doing it through exactly as you've gotten back there, you know. Are you inspiring? Are you influencing? Are you educating? You're giving people data they need. And that, to me, is really on that control side. You know, it's that, yeah, I've got the, I got the base. So can you talk to me a little bit more about that? Am I? Am I reading you right there? Like, is there? Is there? Do you find that that reduce…. like me, do you find that reducing the struggle in people's life is really, is, is really fulfilling?
Amreesh 20:58
When I put my clinician hat on, like we want to do what's best for our patient, and in order for us to do what's best for our patient, we as a clinician, need to be empowered, as you said, have the right data, have the control, the confidence to do what's best, and we also need the patient to believe it, right? And and so because then we get at a crossroads as clinicians, where sometimes you're like, I want to do the good for my patient, but my patient doesn't accept that if they don't proceed with that treatment for whatever reason. You know, they don't value. That's financial reasons, it's insurance, it's like, whatever. There's a multitude of reasons, but I always go back to value, right? And I think like, data, knowledge, if used in the right way, empowers us all, right? And it gives us then the confidence, right? Because it's, I think, in order to get the trust with a patient, we have to be confident in what and why we're doing something. I mean, you, you, and your listeners would have a feeling where they know they're sitting there with whoever their healthcare provider is. I mean, it's a very, you know, intimate, vulnerable state to be in which whatever provider you're sitting there when they're telling you they're going to do something or stick you with a needle or whatever. But how do you trust them? And you can feel like there's something there that I trust this person, or I'm not sure if I do right. So, like, so I think then get back to like, what you're saying about, like, control and data and all these things. Like, I think I look at it as more like, when I felt good and confident in my clinician journey of treating my patients was when I let go of like, why or why not, my patients are doing something, and just try to do the best for them, right? And so in order for me to do the best, I needed to have the right data, have the right approach with my patients, the right philosophy, the education, everything that I needed to do to feel that confidence. So then I could say, Hey, Tim, this is all what's going on, like, but I support you, whatever way you want to go. That's when I saw, hey, my practice thrive, right? And I was doing the fun dentistry, making an impact on many patients. Like, you're not going to win everybody over, right? But they just might not be ready at that time. And patients valued it. Patients could see it, you could feel it right, and then at the same time, now we're empowering a patient to understand that. So I think there's, like, there's all these like, kind of gaps that I saw, like, hence, you know, where a division of work you came about to kind of solve those pain points, solve those gaps.
Tim 23:38
Yeah, well, the way I'm seeing it is, OraQ is also, what I love… I know. Sorry, I mean, this is, I'm taking this a little too far, but it's taking that practice of, you know, going with, how do we help them help themselves, or or whatnot. How do we do what's best for them? And it's, it's systemizing it. So let me ask you this question, because a lot of people that are listening are not going to be dentists, but everything that you've just said when it comes to, you know, focusing on value and confidence, having these vulnerable and influential moments, really having that power and that influence, but then translating that into belief and trust that isn't just having talked to you, I know that that this doesn't exist, that isn't just in your system. I would imagine that that influences how you approach your student-run clinic, how you how you mentor people, how you run your own business. Are these same philosophies exactly what you apply when you're dealing with staff, exactly what you're when you're dealing with partners?
Amreesh 24:45
Yeah, like, I'd say, I would be not truthful if I said, Oh, I do this all the time, right? These are things that I have learned over time, that I strive to do. So have I made plenty of mistakes along the way? With, you know, how I've dealt with team, staff, anything in over the years in my various businesses, absolutely. But I think then looking at that a bit differently is what's kind of brought me to understanding a different focus here, right? And approach.
Tim 25:17
Let me reword this question for you. Do you think that that same approach that you take, that you're trying to bring between the the the doctor, patient relationship, is transferable for a person that's in a leadership position in an organization? Can they approach things the same way?
Amreesh 25:37
Yeah, that's where I think, you know, like, that's a great question. Because I think that's what I've tried to take. And I don't know if I have the exact, firm solution, answer playbook for that kind of today, but what's made me reflect a lot on, like, my thinking around that, because, in one sense, as I said, where I got free in my world as a clinician, that then led me to kind of build this was when I took the risk off of me, and it was like, let me get look at the data, let me look at this and support it, empower the other individual, in this case, the patient, to make a decision. Well, so how do you look at that, I guess, from a business perspective, then that's really interesting question, because I think we look at data as leaders, definitely right. We look at the risks and benefits of of the decisions that we're going to make similarly to what, I'm you know, we do in OraQ. But probably one thing that I've had to learn and continue to learn, is the outcome of doing or not doing something, what that translates to is it a failure or success? Right? And I think that's something that I often reflect on more now. I don't know if that makes sense.
Tim 26:55
No, it does. We had a conversation a little bit earlier where we were listening to a video together of a basketball player that was faced with this exact question. We'll take another listen to that right now and then we can talk a little bit about how does keeping it real in your own leadership journey, not just making it real for your staff, but keeping it real for yourself. Free you up to deal with feelings of failure or whether or not we're dealing with imposter syndrome or anything else.
Amreesh 27:27
Yeah
[Clip of Basketball Player Giannis Antetokounmpo]
Reporter 27:29
I just asked Bud the exact same question, but I'm curious for you, do you view this season as a failure?
Giannis 27:34
Oh, my God, okay, because I'm not that up. You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Okay. Do you get do you get the promotion every year on your job, no, right? So every year you work as a failure, yes or no? No. Every, every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, right, which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able, I don't know, provide the house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal is not a failure. It's steps to success, you know. And if you've never, I don't know, I don't want to, I don't want to make it personal. So there's always steps to it, you know. Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six Championship, the other nine years was a failure? That's what you're telling me.
Reporter 28:34
I'm asking a question, yes or no?
Giannis 28:37
Okay, exactly. So why are you asking that question? It's a wrong question. There's no failure in sports. You know, there's good days, bad days, some days, some days, you are able to be successful. Some days you're not. Some days, it's your turn. Some days it's not your turn, and that's what sports about, you don't always win. Some other other people is going to win, and this year, somebody else going to win. Similar as that, going to come back next year. Try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better, not have a 10 day stretch with playing bad basketball, you know. And hopefully we can win a championship. So 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we didn't win a championship. It was 50 years of failures? No, it was not. It was steps to it, you know, and we were able to win one, hopefully we can win another one? You know, I sorry that I didn't want to make it personal because you asked me the same question last year, and last year I was in the in the right mind space to answer the question back, but I remember it.
[End of clip]
Tim 29:33
So, when we listen to Giannis talk about failure, when we listen to him answer this reporter's question, what comes to mind for you?
Amreesh 29:42
The question you asked me before, plus the listening to this quote here, right? I think like to tie both together. I don't know if I can say, you know, have I figured out the entire approach that I've taken through my AI company, and how to apply that to leadership in a sense, right, and failure and success? What I have learned is moving from a—what was my bread and butter before, which was, you know, being a dentist and treating patients and running dental practice to going into a startup, right? How that shifted my perception and view around success and failure in a very different way. And so that resonates really well with this quote we just heard, because in a health world, you're very much primed to like, failure kind of isn't an option, right? Like you you can't do something and have it fail or try something out, and you don't think of it that way. Or everything you're trying to do is, is striving for that perfection to help your patient be right?
Tim 30:39
Do no harm.
Amreesh 30:40
Yeah, exactly right. Whereas in a startup world, so much of it is about like, testing assumptions, testing this, trying that, trying this, trying that, okay, you're going to win some. You're going to fail some. That is exactly, I think, what he said, and there's no failure in sport. Well, I think there's no failure in leadership, if we are reflecting on it appropriately. There's good leaders and bad leaders, but if we're those honest leaders that are constantly reflecting about what we're doing, why we're doing, you know, like all these things, that we're thoughtfully and genuinely trying to do what's best. Well, if that's the case, then there shouldn't be any failure in leadership too, because without having the ups and downs and things working and not working, how would we even be where we are today or able to do it right?
Tim 31:24
That's right. I mean, I remember years ago playing chess with my son, and he said, do you get angry that John beats you at that game? And I said, No, I don't. I don't get angry. I mean, any more than he was getting angry when I was beating him like chess is, you don't learn anything in chess by winning. You learn by making mistakes and then anticipating other people's mistakes. That's really the game. It's a game of mistakes in a way, and opportunities. But yeah, you cannot appreciate where you are today without accepting all the failures you would never be. It's a good thing. We can't affect the time, space continuum, or go back and I. And yeah, mistakes or we would get nowhere.
Amreesh 32:06
But it's hard. I'll admit it's been very hard, and still is hard for me to kind of shift that perspective in my own mind, because I want to succeed, and how I then define myself and what I'm doing and where I want to go about success, right, and then holding benchmarks or parameters, or what I'm defining that is like, where I think we start to put the pressure on ourselves and all these kinds of things, right? Whereas giving room for that is definitely something I've had to learn in this journey of like being in a technology startup world. I think there's people in a startup who are in that world or big founders that come out. Like, you know, right away. You know, you hear all these, you know, the Silicon Valley stories, and the founders in the basements of the garage is doing things, and they're just like, oh, it's all good. If this doesn't work, I'm on to the next one, right? That's just not how I was wired, right? Like, and so for me to think that way is like, whoa. Like, what do you mean? It's like, okay, if this doesn't work out, like, for me, it's like, no, there's no option. This has to work out. So that's a good thing. It drives but it also, you know, it has its, yeah,
Tim 33:16
Making it work out through perfection too early in the game is really troublesome, right? Because if you go for perfection and you keep and you could burn out like you could, you know, I remember in the 80s, late 80s, Toyota or Lexus had a what was it? The the relentless pursuit of perfection, I think was one of their taglines, right? Or passionate pursuit of perfection, or, or something along those lines. But it's like, yeah. I mean, that's the long term goal, is to make it as good as it can be, and to always know that there's always a step further that we can take. But the journey there is not without failure, not without error, right? So do I have you there? Am I on your wavelength?
Amreesh 34:00
Yeah.
Tim 34:01
When you think, then when you see this sort of manifesting for the people that are around us and whatnot, I see people that find themselves in periods of scarcity, when they forget that it this is a long game, when they forget that it's okay to experiment and have small, controlled failures, and sometimes even big, gnarly failures, that pursuit of perfection, that insistence on perfection, seems to be really emptying a lot of people's gas tanks. Could you be where you are right now, at this point in life, if you held on to that belief that every move had to be perfect, every move had to be stellar,
Amreesh 34:40
I think for like, you know, high performing leaders who have that ambition and drive, they do hold themselves likely at that high standard, which is why they get to where they are and drive and create change and create companies or lead companies and things right? But what I'm learning is that if everything doesn't work exactly the way I thought it should work, or how I mapped out on a whiteboard and planned it out that that's not failure.
Tim 35:11
No.
Amreesh 35:13
Like that is like, just because something you didn't hit that goal, you didn't hit that milestone like, doesn't mean that that is failure. Like, you know, you have to do something about that. But I think, rather than getting into business, operational side of things, it's more about like, my perception of that, right? Like, because I would then perceive that as maybe a failure and not enough, right?
Tim 35:31
If you're climbing the mountain, it's important that you have solid footing, but if you're going to chastise yourself every time your foot slips, you're not going to get very far, right?
Amreesh 35:41
Yes, exactly.
Tim 35:42
As we wrap up here, I just want to play a quote that you had shared with me that's hanging on your wall. And so we're gonna just, we're gonna listen to that really quick, and then I would like you to tell us what that means to you.
[Man in the Arena (Theodore Roosevelt) read by JFK]
JFK 35:53
Theodore Roosevelt once said, The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Amreesh 36:35
Yeah, you know, this is something. There's a quote that I heard reading and listening to like Brene Brown some years ago. And it just really struck me, because it's something that I do read often, and I mean, it's right in front of me as I look here today, and it's, it's funny, because I got to remind myself of it, because it literally says, you know, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, right? And here I am talking about perception change around my failure. And I got the quote right in front of me. But it's like that, you know, I thought a lot about it all because, and for so long, because it, I think, has shaped that we are the ones taking the risk, taking the chances, making those decisions between those two rights, or whatever it is, or right and wrong. We are holding ourselves to such a like, Oh, my God, I have to be right, right? But we're not.
Tim 37:26
At every step of the way.
Amreesh 37:27
Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, like we've are also the ones that have the privilege, the honor and taken the risk to make those decisions in the first place, so that in itself, you know, is daring greatly, that in itself is not failure, failing in that one moment or one decision doesn't define, I think, who we are, right and so and define the what success for us.
Tim 37:53
And if we're creating that sense of freedom, that sense of space for employees or for customers, or for for my coaching clients, or for dental clients, where it's like, no, we're not going to lose you're not going to lose the wrong teeth. But you know, we can put things into a larger timeline. We can put things into bigger context, so that we can realize that these little decisions sometimes have more flexibility than we would would say otherwise, and we don't have to be right all the time if we're constantly congruent with what our long term aims are. That's a big source of capacity loss for a lot of people, when I see teams that are not, you know, free to fail or not free to to there's just too much risk, and even the smallest errors, perceived risk, particularly man, it tires people out. It makes teams go quiet. There's a whole bunch of awful things that happen internally and externally, if that's what we allow to to exist.
Amreesh 39:02
Yes.
Tim 39:03
Sorry, now you know what I think. All right, so Amrees, let's, let's talk a little bit about again as we're, as we're heading towards the end here, we heard Karen's question to you. First of all, thanks for this journey. You know, we come a long ways. I think it's, it was a very, very rich discussion. There's a lot of angles here. I think, you know, if you had one wish for the people that are listening today, what would you want them to take away from our conversation.
Amreesh 39:29
That feeling of you're in a position of leadership, whatever role you're in, management, executive, whatever is doesn't really matter, like you're leading some form of a vision and some form of people in some organization right, to achieve a certain purpose, that it's like, you are enough, you've come this far, that the pressure that we hold upon ourselves to make every decision right, in every way, like we're going to be okay, I got to be more gentle on my own self. So that's where I think it's like, how can we we all take that that like, hey, reflect on where we are. We wouldn't be in this position today if we we didn't have a skill or or some form of influence that got us here. So we've got to trust in that too.
Tim 40:13
You think about the eclectic group of people that we have visit this show. If you were to lob a question at one of them, what would it be?
Amreesh 40:19
You know, I like what you were saying about that relentless pursuit of perfection, and, you know, and we were talking earlier too, like, I think we talked about the rejection of perfection, right? So, what is it that you could do or change in how you reflect upon yourself as a leader, to reject perfection, change your perspective on failure and success that would help you be better at what you do today, and have that influence on the people and the purpose that you lead with?
Tim 40:49
Cool so possibly even a reframing what's one failure that you think You could reframe as a, as not diabolical, not disastrous.
Amreesh 41:00
Yeah, and that, that, you know, reinforces who you are, or shapes how you want to lead differently, I guess.
Tim 41:07
What do you got going on? What's one thing that you're excited about and you want people to know, know about?
Amreesh 41:12
Obviously, living and breathing in the world of AI these days, and so, you know, that's something that excites me a lot. I mean, we're seeing the advent of AI in so many aspects of our world. Everybody's playing with chat GPT now, and that kind of thing, right? I think we are seeing that this is going to be a part of our future no matter what. But, you know, there's people who are scared about it, and there's people are embracing it, and there's got to be a happy medium in between, of course, in every way. So what excites me a lot right now is like, how we're incorporating that in the world of health, right? And, you know, I was at a conference last month called Health, one of the largest digital health conferences in North America, and got the pleasure of listening to the VP of health and life sciences from Nvidia, and she was talking about, you know, how the integration of these types of technologies, the large language models, and how they're interpreting and thinking slow to think, thinking fast and thinking slow to reasoning, and how this is going to support us with what we do. And something that, just like blew my mind, is this whole concept of a virtual Omniverse, as they called it. And what we talk about within our company and other health companies is the digital twin concept, like the power of if we use this data and things correctly and use this technology correctly, imagine that world where we can be answering those questions for the patient around I'm going to be providing you this treatment or therapy or medication or whatever, and I can simulate what's going to happen to you before I give it to you. That just blows my mind, because I'm just like, that would be so cool. In a dental world, we always get asked a question, Hey, Doc, you know, can I wait on that crown till my insurance turns over next year or something like that? And I'm we're always like, we don't know what's going to happen until that time. You could bite on something hard one day and it just cracks and breaks off, right? But what if I could give you more information around you know, one patient can wait three months, the other could wait a year, or one needs to do it right now, right? Like, and then the patient's like, holy, this is cool, right? And so I know that's happening a lot in the genomics and therapeutics world and on the medical side too. So pretty cool stuff. Absolutely no.
Tim 43:21
I think it's great. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Cause to Smile. So how can people get involved in Cause to Smile?
Amreesh 43:28
Our organization on the charitable side, we have some amazing individuals who volunteer on our board there that we're constantly working to do good beyond the walls of our clinics, and really about empowering dental community, larger community, patients, business, everybody, to come together, to be empowered, educated around what's happening around other grassroots organizations that we can give back to, right? And so you can visit causesmile.com. I'd say, hey, where could we have people involved today is we're actually looking for great people who are excited about giving, who want to be a part of our board. That's where we are today, because we're at a stage right now in our nonprofit that we want to continue to drive sustainability and impact long-term, and we need great people to be a part of that. So that's my one ask is, hey, if that excites you and you're interested, you know, visit causetosmile.com, reach out to me directly. Where would love people that are inspired by some way to get involved and give back to the the local Calgary community.
Tim 44:27
Love it. And if people want to get in touch with you.
Amreesh 44:31
Yes, absolutely. I can share my you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, email, everything you'll have all that. Please reach out to me directly. Love, always open to a conversation any way I can support, help in in any way.
Tim 44:46
Amreesh, thank you so much for joining us. We'll have all of those links in the show notes. We've been all over the board, but I love it, and so thank you so much. This podcast has really been a reflection of just how rich you are as a person, and how vibrant talking to you is and knowing you, and it's it's really great to see. So, thank you very much.
Amreesh 45:10
Thank you to Tim. I really appreciate you thinking of me in that way, and humbled by you know that, and I hope that this gives something useful to at least one of your listeners out there. So really appreciate this opportunity too. So thank you so much, Tim.
Tim 45:83
Right on. Thank you so much. All right. Well, inspire, influence, educate. Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter, you can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word, too, by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
I think everything I've ever learned or felt like the outcome always landed back to in an inclusion moment or social impact or any deep achievement, it's always rooted back to people first and true connection. And whenever there has been that upfront investment in that time, and building that psychological safety, building that connection, and always peeling back that like just people are people are people, man, the efficiency, the return on investment, on human connection, it makes those hard, difficult situations so much easier.
Tim 00:40
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet, and I'd like to welcome you to Episode 49 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast.
Tim 1:12
Welcome to Sweet on leadership. Thanks again for joining me today. I am thrilled to welcome a truly inspiring leader in the world of inclusive sports. Karen Dommett. Karen, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.
Karen 1:23
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Tim 1:25
From your roots in rural Saskatchewan in your early days as a boxer, which, that's one of the connections that you and I have, because boxing is something that has been a very special part of my life. To your current role of Manager of Games and Competition at Special Olympics Canada. You know, I look at your journey, and it's one of resilience, it's one of passion. It's one of driving social change. And I can't wait till we can dive into it, because I think people are going to get a lot out of it.
Karen 1:51
Well, thanks so much.
Tim 1:52
Can you tell me and tell us a little bit about your history, and where do you find yourself now, and what would we see you doing day in and day out.
Karen 02:02
Yeah, so I guess sport has always played a part in my life. I was always a kid who was begging her farming parents to put her into sports, and somehow convinced them boxing was a sport they should say yes to. And yeah, sport has just always been where I found connection. It's always felt home to me where I have felt sense of community. I wasn't necessarily ever really clear what I wanted to do when I when I grew up. So I went in kinesiology, knowing that was kind of the foundational work for sport, and went into my degree not knowing where I would land, whether it was like a phys ed teacher or physiotherapist or what would happen. And partway through my bachelor's degree, I got introduced to the administrative side of sport, major sporting events, and we had some really cool stuff come through Saskatoon that I got to be a part of, like the World Juniors were there while I was in university, and got to work on some cool student-led projects, and, yeah, I just really saw that, like collective effervescence that happens in a major sporting event, and just how the ripple effects have on community and how you're creating that best moment in someone's life, and how that sticks with them and creates a pathway and motivation for them to give back and do more in community, and how, how you are part of developing other leaders through creating those opportunities. So yeah, then that's really where my career has taken me. It’s kind of just been chasing major sporting events.
Tim 03:41
And furnishing others with those best moments, as you say, right when you think back, if I take you back into the boxing ring, many of us have that transitional, transformational moment in sports when you understand what just happened. You may have to think back on it, but you were a different person a moment ago, right? Do you remember an instant when you were boxing where you reflected back on about or some training and you felt like a different person?
Karen 04:13
I mean, we were a really rural Boxing Club of just like a bunch of farm kids that this was probably the only access to opportunity that we had. So we never took ourselves too seriously. We'd go to big tournaments and cards. And you know, you're up against these, like, inner city kids from Edmonton that are, like, 16 years old, covered in tattoos, and like, we're knocking off, like the horse poop off our boots to get in, and you always feel a little bit out of place. And then, you know, maybe viewing yourself as lesser than or not quite fitting in, in those big tournaments.
Tim 04:48
Did rocky ride a horse?
Karen 04:52
I had, I had had, like, a really tough couple seasons where I was, I was really underweight, so I would always have to try to bulk up. And you know, they're just not that many female boxers at, certainly at that time. And so in order to get a sanctioned fight, I'd often be fighting girls a weight class or two above me. So that didn't come with a lot of wins. And then I had a season where things kind of just really turned around. Found the way to to use my shorter stature and shorter reach to my advantage, and got really good at like, ducking and slipping and working around someone's reach advantage and how to really work the body, and won the Western Canadian Championships. And, yeah, just had that moment of like, Oh, wow. Like, success is something that is actually attainable. To me. It's weird to think that you know, you train and compete in something, and you've just accepted, like you're just actually there for fun and, like, the social part of it, and this is cool, but then, yeah, you actually find your loophole and what works for you and the tools that you have, and how that drove to success that was, yeah, like, a really different moment of like, oh, I don't actually have to accept that the bar is down here. I can use what I have and find a different pathway.
Tim 06:09
I love that it's kind of like you've decoded something for yourself, and you've found how you fit. And that it doesn't have to be everybody else's journey. It doesn't have to be everybody else's style, you figured out your own. And to me, that creates such a different level of possibility for oneself, such a different level of confidence for oneself. And then when you fast forward to what you're doing now, and you describe that effervescence that you create, that bubbling, that buoying up of the entire field, it's giving you know that's seeing a bunch of people on mass have this opportunity to decode themselves and suddenly have this feeling of belonging and this feeling of potential. Does that describe that effervescence as part of it?
Karen 06:58
Yeah, you experience energies and moments that really just like, stick with you and change you when you're part of that collective effervescence, right?
Tim 07:08
Yeah. And those moments, it's so cool, because, would you agree? In my life, I found that those moments, the ones that really matter, it's like a ratcheting up. It's once you've ratched it up, it's very hard to lose that. You know it, it's something that lasts. It's something that sticks with you. It's not like it's fleeting, like it was it. You know that moment of clarity, that realization that you can design yourself to fit a certain competition and to excel that sticks with us. It's not like we lose that and it's so that's to me. It's yeah, anyway, that's what it is to me. Is it is very ratcheting. So it sticks with a person.
Karen 07:53
I think it's that like, what is that quote that Brene Brown has, where the opposite of loneliness is not fitting in, but it's belonging. And like, I think it's that, it's that, that moment where you've stopped trying to fit in and find a way to fit in, but you actually have that true sense of belonging. That's that unlocking of that like, as you put it like that, ratcheting that, you know, you're not trying and and it's not grabbing on. That's what fitting in is, right, that you keep trying it on for size, and it's not working. It's that when you really found your, your authentic way to do it, sticks.
Tim 08:35
I like using the word arrive. I always feel like those people, they arrive at a you know, I remember that feeling when I was, when I was in my first, I would say, major international professional role. There was a moment where I was like, I knew I belonged. I knew I had something to offer. I knew that I could, I could not compete, but I could operate at the same level as everybody around me, regardless of what their specialty was, or how senior they were. And that knowledge that I belonged in that room at that table, was really empowering. Cool. Okay, well, so tell us a little bit more about, you know, the role and what it involves, and what does it take to actually create this effervescence. What is the nuts and bolts of it look like? What are the what are the challenges lend?
Karen 09:33
Yeah, so hosting a multi sport games, I think you know what people are most familiar with would be an Olympic Games. It is a massive logistical, strategic plan that you're starting from, something, from nothing. So we always use the analogy you're building the plane as you fly it, and you're trying to fasten all the pieces, and you really hope everyone's on board. How. Uh, when, and everything's tightened where it's supposed to be when you go to land the plane, and that's the event day. So it is a lot of logistical things, of, you know, beds, adding beds in and meal plans and bus schedules and all those things. But what I think the real opportunity is with major sporting events is the social impacts that it has. So there's so many things that always seem like the nice to haves on the shelf when we talk about legacy that's left behind a major sporting event, and what is most I think, often viewed as facility enhancements. When we talk about an Olympic Games and talk about, you know, the infrastructure that comes as the legacy with a major game standing. We're both based out of Calgary that, you know, we know that our city was built on the legacy of an Olympic Games. What I do in my work with Special Olympics is that we focus less on that physical infrastructure and more on social impacts. So it's not only hosting a really high quality athletic competition in really great venues and logistically really well ran games, but also, how are we changing perceptions of persons with intellectual disabilities. So Special Olympics is designed solely for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to compete in sport, because otherwise, without Special Olympics, that access and opportunity for sport and physical activity would not exist for many people with an intellectual disability. So how do we not only create that access and opportunity and quality sport experience for that athlete, but how do we also get the rest of the community involved and change those perceptions of disability? Disability is often something that is feared or is uncomfortable or awkward, and it's not something that people necessarily feel welcomed to partake in, or there's fear of doing the wrong thing, or just fear and ignorance In general, if it's not something that is part of your nuclear circle of your family, right? It's maybe not something that you you think about getting involved with or thinking that it necessarily matters so hosting these huge, huge events that use, take up an entire city and use hundreds of different contractors and partners and sponsors. Every single one of those partnership deals leads to a conversation about disability inclusion.
Tim 12:51
Cool. So if I was to think about that more generally, the easy conversation is, what's the short term economic benefit that it brings to the community? What are the rinks that it might create, or, what are the, you know, what? What's the infrastructure that it might leave behind? And if we were to, if we're parallel this to a business, it's like, what's the operational improvements? What are the, what are the nuts and bolts profit margin that that it's bringing in? But the more lasting effect is, how does it shift the culture? How does it shift the way in which we treat one another? How does it leave people feeling, people humans, beyond just having access to more gear or more depreciating assets? You know? I mean, there's, it's, it's like, what are the assets that don't depreciate? What are the assets that that appreciate, I guess, in a sense, and those can be cultural assets that we leave behind. And it reminds me of our guest that is in the episode that we just had right before you, Harold Horsefall. I mean, he is very much coming up against uncomfortable topics around Truth and Reconciliation and how do we how do we discuss those things, and how do we bring up Indigenous issues? And they're in the middle of building a welcoming space, a shared space on an old trade grounds, or, you know, where people would meet at the confluence of the bow in the Elbow River, and it's literally called The Confluence. And we had this great talk about how, even though there was a sign in North America that everybody understood, even if they didn't speak the same languages, that's where we're going to meet this welcoming space, right? And creating that space. That's a big challenge. And so you know, as the person that's the GM for 2024 Special Olympics, you're now Team Manager going into the 2025 Winter Games, right? You have all of these moving parts, and it's a very, very, it sounds like a very complex and a very. Tough role on top of everything else. So I think it's a great time for us to bring in Harold's question for the guests, because I think it applies. And so Harold's question was.
Harold 15:12
What do you get from your career, and how does your work fill your bucket? What am I doing for this? How does this work for me? Yes, I get to pay the bills, but what does it do for me, personally, like as a person, how does it advance my own journey, my own destination?
Karen 15:26
I think what I get out of my career, in the work that I do, is perspective. I am so fortunate to get to work in a space that has the opportunity to include so much inclusion and answer so much social issues that I am constantly learning and being afforded perspective that I didn't necessarily inherit. And I think what fuels me so much, and what that gets to me personally, is the ripple effects that that gets to have in my personal life, that my work gives me so many gifts, that it gets to change and influence the conversations that happen around my dinner table, that happens in the Community Groups I'm involved in that it never just stays in a project.
Tim 16:26
Could you share an anecdote? Could you share a story of one of those perspective moments, those things that, like lit you up and you were like, Whoa, life is not going to be the same after this.
Karen 16:43
I mean, there's like, our kids are our greatest teachers, and so anyways, when you hear an original thought from a five year old, that's a pretty cool moment. So I think for me, you know, we, try to normalize disability so much in the work that I do, and as a result, you know, my husband and kids have got to come along the ride to a lot of really cool initiatives and events. And the hope is that that perspective and normalization of disabilities ingrained in them too. And this sad story, but when my oldest was in kindergarten, in grade three, now, they had their first ever substitute teacher, and there's a little boy in his class that has a lot of sensory processes, processing difficulties, and just very early in that stage of starting to have some of those tools for emotional regulation and sensory regulation in the classroom. And he came home so heartbroken and said at dinner that night that the teacher was really hard on this little boy because she didn't think he was listening. And my son said he's not trying to be bad. He wasn't trying to not follow the rules. That's just how his body works, that he just can't always sit down in his chair all the time, that she just didn't understand that, that different people have different needs, and that's how his body just works. And…
Tim 18:19
It was misconstrued as a respect issue, or it was misconstrued as not paying attention or not not doing their work.
Karen 18:26
Yeah, and I was just like, so grateful in that moment that like that everything I think I tried to lead with of, wherever possible, we try to take an individualized approach, and we try to meet people where they're at to the best of our ability, and to see that that's like ingrained in a five year old was pretty cool.
Tim 18:52
Was it an experience that he had had, or was it a conversation that he had had? If you were to take a guess at some of the pivotal moments, some of those ratcheting moments that he would have had to be able to, you know, stand up for his classmate with with such conviction. What do you think he was exposed to?
Karen 19:14
So, in a previous role, I was the Executive Director of a project called Calgary Adapted Hub, powered by Jump Start, where we would create different adaptive sporting opportunities and experiences for children and youth with disabilities. So with that, there'd be a lot of like, try it, days of sledge hockey or wheelchair basketball and things like that. So yeah, he would get pulled along to a lot of these events. And, you know, I think he knew more about wheelchair basketball before he ever knew about generic basketball. And just being in those environments where disability was really normalized led to a lot of those conversations on the way home, and those conversations of you might see something today that you might have questions about, and that is good and okay to have questions about that. And I think this is what I think the power of sport and adaptive and disability inclusive sport has is that I don't think anyone ever meant to not be inclusive to a person with a disability. But when we think about, you know, when we were kids, and you see someone on a street corner using a mobility device or an aid, or behaving in a way that is different from what you've ever seen before, you would have looked up to your big person that you were with and pointed and said, what is that? Why are they doing that? Why are they using that? And what was that met with? It was met with your grown up, then being embarrassed and saying that's inappropriate. Don't look, don't stare, don't point, don't shush, shush, shush. So then what's encoded in your body is like, Oh no, I did something wrong. Whatever that thing is, it's bad and scary, and don't look and acknowledge like we shut off.
Tim 21:02
Yeah, no kidding. It get, it gets transmuted onto the person with the disability being wrong instead of, you know, not to say it's not right to ask questions or something. But that whole experience as a young, young child being told like, don't, don't talk, don't, you know, it makes it that forbidden thing you can't talk about, that you can't you know, well, then why? Now I've got, is it scary? Like, what am I? What am I up against?
Karen 21:29
Yeah, and I think, unfortunately, some of that has stayed with us as we become the big people. And we don't necessarily always stop and give that moment of, Oh, wow. That's a really good question. I wonder, like, what do you think? Why do you think that? And if there's a moment where it's appropriate, maybe we go ask. And maybe it's not always appropriate, but you find those sliding door moments.
Tim 22:01
Well, and it's funny, there's a couple ideas that I rail against constantly. And one is that at adulthood, when you reach adulthood, that suddenly you've got it all sort of figured out, or suddenly these lessons stop that whole “shush, shush, shush, we don't talk about that.” Now, it may not be related to a person you know, walking down the street that is using a cane, and we don't understand why, or whatever. But there's other things in professional environments that people shush each other about, and they don't talk about things. They're these no fly zones. And so they become scary, or they become unknown, and they stay unknown, or they become surrounded by myth adults, reinforce these types of, these types of fears in each other along this very same way, like we don't, you know, that's that's verboten. We don't talk about that. And then the other thing is, I think back to, I was a chef at one point in my life, right? And so I remember when we first had our first child, she's 19 now, and I was learning about, you know, what foods to introduce, and I ran across this developmental article, and it said, when you first introduce a new food to a child, their brain is going to freak out, right? And it's going to not know what broccoli tastes like, you know it's going to panic and so their face is going to squidge up, right? But this isn't that they don't like it. This is that this is a brand new sensation. This is a brand new feeling. The brain is just figuring it out. And often, parents will try a child on broccoli or whatever mash peas or whatever they're giving them, and the child will screw up their face, and then the parent will say, oh, you don't like that. Now, the parent says that with a question mark, you know, Oh, you don't like, Oh, you don't like that—question mark. But the child's brain depending on, you know, if it's just reading the inflection or whatever is is hearing, Oh, you don't like that period. And that goes into programming, and that becomes the, oh, they don't like broccoli. Oh, you don't like broccoli, and it's and we program children unwittingly to believe they like or don't like something. They're scared or not scared about something, and this rather than giving them the chance to be uncomfortable or be, you know, unsure of what something is, and work through that, you know, and then fun, you know, funny enough later in life, if you give it a chance, and you can get past, you know, whatever the myth was around liver or brussel sprouts or whatever it's like. I don't actually mind these things like these are you. You know, the taste was never the problem. It was the idea.
Karen 25:04
The story I was telling myself.
Tim 25:06
The story I was telling myself, and the programming that went on. And I think that that's when you say, you know, shush, shush. We don't talk about that. That's rude. That's like programming on a social level,
Karen 25:15
yeah? And I think you know, to your point, how that exists in team cultures, too, at work, right that? Yeah, I'm a huge believer in the power of what our sporting events can have to the external community, but I think it starts within our team first. And yeah, so I do a few things when I lead a project in how we change our team culture first, because I can't be the only person championing this. It has to be felt throughout. So we always start a project with defining our guiding principles. What are our top three decision pillars that we make every single decision against typically, first and foremost will always be the athlete experience. Creating the best experience in this person's life. But we do it collectively as our leadership group, and then we pulse check those as people come on the team, and then we do rules of engagement, of how do we operate with one another within our team? And that has to match up with what the social impacts are that we trying to make. Because if we're not doing it inside the house, it's not going to happen outside the house. And then some more, like granular things that we do. So in a sporting event, there's always your staff team, but then there's a much, much, much larger volunteer base, and how you create that culture amongst your volunteers is incredibly challenging. So anyone that's listening to this, that maybe works in nonprofit knows the value and importance of your volunteers and how hard that management dynamic can be, like it's such a different ball game when someone is voluntarily doing something, and you know, you don't, you don't often fire a volunteer. If you do, it's really bad. So how you developed that culture is so important. So one thing that we did on these past games, instead of, you know, in oil and gas you typically will open a meeting with a safety moment. We started every single staff and volunteer team meeting with an inclusion moment, and sets the tone for every meeting. So often we'll do like, a two word check in, that I'm a big believer in you temperature check and pulse check where everybody is at when they're stepping space into the room, so that we can have a productive conversation. And then we go into the inclusion moment. And an inclusion moment sometimes is like a funny YouTube video that maybe addresses a topic, or maybe it's a definition of a word that's important to the work that we're doing, or it's more of a conversation, you know, around, you know, as part of these games, we have a mandate to address Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action 87-91 in any major sporting event, that is your duty. So how does that show up in all of our day to day work, in the language that we're using, not just at what's going to happen at this big opening ceremony, and the blessing that we're going to have and which elder is going to do what, and what that protocol looks like. But how does that reflect in our day to day language that we're using? So what does the term stakeholder really mean, and what are those roots of that word, and how, what language are we going to use instead? And what's the why behind that. We use key contributor. Yeah, so it's, it's those moments of trying to create some more awareness and acknowledgement in those things that maybe were like encoded in us, like that big person shushing you on the corner. It's taking that moment to stop, pause and like completely we're all learning and doing it together. We all can strip off our armor collectively, together as a team, and have that safe and open space of have a conversation about it, and unlearn or challenge our perceptions.
Tim 29:18
Not having to be right, right now so that we can, we can be humble and take on some new information. And, yeah, it's funny, you talked about pillars. And I mean, pillars are something that you see all the time with organizational dynamics, and it's like, these are the pillars, and this is how we stand up, and this is how we behave. I think it's important to say, if these are our pillars, this is what we value. Those pillars, right, that are really important to us, those things that are that are key to who we are. They should also tell us where questions are allowed and where questions are safe. And if the question is offered in the spirit of standing up one of these, then there is no shushing. There is no. There's no need to feel, you know, embarrassed. You can go ahead and ask your question, and it'll be received with the spirit that it's offered, right? And so it's okay to not know in service of that pillar, not just to go and do something, but actually risk something, to be to be unsafe for a moment, and then that's how we're going to rebuild this trust. That's great. I really like that, that idea of not just safety moments, but inclusion moments. I mean, inclusion is safety, right? When we get down to it, you know?
Karen 30:34
It is psychological safety
Tim 30:35
And so that's something that that, once we understand that, you know, it's not hard to justify taking time to do that. It's really important. If we were, to think about what the average leader could take from this, this conversation in terms of a practice that they could bring into their team, or a mindset that they could take into their claims include inclusive moments would be one of them. What else would you like each leader listening here to challenge themselves, to think about?
Karen 31:05
I think everything I've ever learned or felt like the outcome always landed back to in an inclusion moment or a social impact or any big achievement. It's always rooted back to people first and true connection. And whenever there has been that upfront investment in that time and building that psychological safety, building that connection, and always peeling back that like just people are people are people, man, the efficiency, the return on investment, on human connection. It makes those hard, difficult situations so much easier. I always kind of lean back to that saying people are hard to hate close up.
Tim 31:53
Yeah, no kidding. That is a great that belongs a t-shirt. I'm putting that on a t-shirt. How that really resonates with me. You know, often professionally, I found that I could design great processes, I could reduce costs, I could identify risks, I could do all those things professionally that I was designed to do, but if we couldn't get people on side, everything was for not like you could. You could do all that work. You could have all the nuts and bolts, all the complexity that you could mitigate through and in your world. You can have all the right number of porta potties or whatever it is, right? Yeah, but if people aren't on board, if they're not along for the ride, there are so many unknown ways that things can get messed up, and all the planning in the world won't compensate for people when they're hurt, when they're scared, when they're angry, when they're you know, whatever that is, no amount of planning can can help us compensate for that. And the inverse is true, right? As you say, when everybody is safe and open and talking really difficult, complex things can suddenly become a heck of a lot easier to accomplish.
Karen 33:09
Yeah, I say maybe, like two things in response to that, that then everyone's off the same song sheet, right? Everyone's marching in that same direction that so many things will get solved without even coming up to the senior leadership level. Problems get managed really well at an operational level, that don't always have to come up the chain, because you've got that shared belief and vision. So, yeah, that's where your return on investment also really comes in. And then your point of, like, the processes and systems. There's this quote from, I think it's Michael Babcock, who used to coach the Leafs, that says, you know, I can have all the different technologies and drills and high performance skating programs, but you wouldn't believe how fast I can get a player to skate when I know the name of this dog, there you go. And it just goes to like that power of human connection, right?
Tim 33:57
And start where they're at and start with the person. I'd be remiss if I didn't share that when we were having a conversation last week, I was asking a little bit about the appropriate language to use. And I think that that's something just very tactical, besides the great lesson that you dropped here about, you know, hold people first start there. You helped me understand that, legitimately, I wasn't sure, right? You know, it's we used to say that the person was disabled, or we have differently abled, and all these kind of things. And I did some reading about it afterwards and helped myself understand what you had said to me. We now say person with disability, or a person with a disability, or whatever. It doesn't define them. They are a person first and then, like me, I'm a person who's follicularly challenged. I have no hair on the top of my head, but it doesn't define me, right? Well, maybe it does a little bit, but the the point is, you know, people first. In our language, people first in our approach, very hard to hate a person up close. I think that's excellent. I can't wait to use that. I'm gonna pull that out. That's fantastic. Okay, so we heard from Harold Horsefall, and we heard his question. Before we say goodbye here, I want you to have a chance after giving us so much value to lob your question at the next person to visit us, so what would your question be, Karen?
Karen 35:31
I hope I articulate this in a way that makes sense. So when you find yourself at a crossroads of conflicting good that conflicts with good, how do you find that moment of clarity or that direction in those conflicting moments?
Tim 35:46
Right when you're faced with a choice of where you're going to go and what you're going to do, and both options seem like the right thing to do, but they don't work at the same time?
Karen 35:55
Yeah, yeah. I think it's that you know, you're never going to be amazing at all things. But how do you feel like you're not sucking at everything.
Tim 36:06
Alright, so how do people find clarity in that moment to proceed? All right, I will carry that question forward.
Karen 36:16
Okay well thanks so much Tim.
Tim 36:17
No problem. All right, couple of things to clean up here. What are you most excited about what you've got on the go right now that you want people that are listening to know about and possibly get involved in?
Karen 36:27
Being that this is Alberta based Special Olympics Canada Summer Games are coming back to Alberta in August of 2026 they will be hosted in the beautiful city of Medicine Hat, which is not far from us.
Tim 36:42
That's my wife's hometown.
Karen 36:44
So if you want a glimpse of what it looks like to be involved in something so much bigger than yourself, whether it's as a volunteer or a sponsor or get involved as a partner in some way that you can help with this massive logistical event, do check out the Special Olympics Canada, Summer Games 2026 in Medicine Hat.
Tim 37:05
All hell for a basement. As I say about Medicine Hat.
Karen 37:12
Yeah, that's a Hell's Basement Brewery, right?
Tim 37:15
Yeah, that's right. They've put lots of gas under there, all right. So we'll make sure to include links to the 2026 involvement sites, or anything that you can give us there if people want to get in touch with you. Karen, where can they where can they reach out?
Karen 37:30
Probably LinkedIn is my best form of connection, so just Karen Dommett on LinkedIn. You can find me through Special Olympics Canada as well, but we're a Sport for Life in Cochrane is where spend a lot of my volunteer time, or with Team Alberta as well, when generic sport with the Canada Games movement.
Tim 37:48
Great. And I should mention that we were introduced by way of Erin Ashbacher. So special. Thanks to Aaron, because this has been absolutely fantastic. And thanks so much Karen for taking the time to speak to me today.
Karen 38:01
Oh, thanks so much, Tim. And thanks to Erin.
Tim 38:05
Yeah, have a great day, and we will be following your track forward, and anything we can do here too to help you spread the word, we will do so thank you so much, Karen.
Karen 38:14
Okay, Thanks, Tim.
Tim 38:19
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If, like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
There was a high school in Calgary. It was great. And I'm very thankful I got to go there. It's called the Plains Indian Cultural Survival School. And so in there, like, I got exposed to a lot of traditional values that I otherwise wouldn't have. And so even like pow wow singing, like I did, pow wow singing 10, 20, and 30. And so there's some traditional values that I was focused on. So like to be a leader, you had to be a person who risked your life for your people, for the people, and you did so selflessly. That was the big draw. To be a firefighter, to be able to say that I did that, and I did for seven years. And seven is, of course, if you didn't know, it's a very significant number to Indigenous people.
Tim 00:39
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim sweet. Welcome to Episode 48 of the sweet on leadership podcast.
Tim 01:10
Welcome to Sweet on Leadership. Thanks again for joining us. Today we have the privilege of speaking to Harold Horsefall. You are an Indigenous Issues Strategist. You are a person that I met when I was helping a team with a team building day and a strategy day, and you had me thinking for days after that with your presentation, which I really am grateful for. And luckily enough, one of the people there was was willing to put us in touch. And so here you are today, and I'm really excited for you to be on the show help our audience have a brand new perspective on a number of things, and I think it's going to be fantastic. So Harold Horsefall, thanks for joining me.
Harold 01:55
Oh, thank you for having me. The honor is, the honor's mine. The Privilege is mine.
Tim 01:58
I really appreciate it. So as we get going, here, you and I've had some conversations leading up to this point, and I'd like you to tell us, how do you see yourself? How would you describe Harold the person?
Harold 02:11
Sure, no problem. I guess to start, though, first I'll introduce myself and a name. My name is Harold Horsefall. I'm originally from the Pasqua First Nation, so it's on Treaty 4, just northeast Regina, the Qu'Appelle River Valley. So you know, if you jump in the Bow River, we're in Calgary here, you jump in the Bow River on my on a paddle board, I could get there eventually, but I'm born and raised in Calgary, Alberta here. So I just wanted to say that, and just say hello to any Indigenous listeners out there. Oki, Tân'si, Aaniin, and Dzīnísī Gújā.
Harold 02:41
Oh, thank you so much.
Harold 02:42
And Âba wathtech, sorry, Âba wathtech. I forgot that one.
Tim 02:46
Great. So people are aware, what were those languages you were speaking in? What was your?
Harold 02:49
Aaniin is Ojibwe, or so I'm Cree and Saulteaux, so the Pasqua First Nation is Cree and Saulteaux. Saulteaux is like plains Ojibwe, if you will. And then, Oki, is Blackfoot. Dzīnísī Gújā is Tsuut'ina, Âba wathtech is Stoney Nakoda, and Tân'si, or Tân'si is Cree. But also the Michif, their language, the Métis language, it tends to be, on average, that the verbs are Cree, sometimes Ojibwe, and then the nouns are French.
Tim 03:20
That is a great way for us to actually take a moment and although we didn't talk about this, but I mean, acknowledge that we are on this land as we record this today. I live just a hop, skip and a jump from the Tsuut'ina right there, like over a street I'm on. What is their land right now. I'm really thankful that we can just all be here and live in harmony together, and I think that it's great that it's such a vibrant part of our community here in Calgary. I remember on that day, when I came home, I was talking to my wife about how you were talking about the Elbow River, and that it was this confluence, and that everyone in North America knew that location, this this elbow, this trading area, was important. I had never appreciated you said you could get in a paddle board and end up where you needed to go, that that was the origin of that, that that word had so much meaning, that it was a that it was a fixed place in the mind of so many people. And that was one of the things that blew my mind that day. As we walked outside, we we looked around so.
Harold 04:28
Perfect. Well, I have another one for you if you want.
Tim 04:29
Please shoot.
Harold 04:30
Okay, so everybody, well, for most Calgarians, go out to the mountains occasionally, or maybe some more than others, and they go past Mount Yamnuska. Yamnuska is so this is a little bit like, how did Indigenous people really know the land really good? And if you read any of the history, you know that was typically because that wasn't always, there was a lot of conflict. The Indigenous people in a certain area always knew their land better than than whoever was coming in. But how? There was no. Google, and there weren't any maps. A lot of it was, was is buried in the language, place names, especially so Yamnuska would be one of those. And my boss used to be Dr. Terry Poucette. She's a she's now a professor at the University of Calgary, and I think she was, she also a professor at University of Victoria. But anyway, she she, she was sharing with us that Yamnuska, if you say that to a Stoney person, that means messy hair. So that would be mount messy hair, which is a mistranslation, because then she said the correct way to say it is "e-yam-nuthka". So that's mount Îyâmnathka, and that means flat faced mountain. So then in the Indigenous languages, like with the confluence in Blackfoot, they say, Moh-kins-tsis. In Stoney they say, Wincheesh-pah. In Tsuut'ina they say, Kootsisáw, the Michif or the Metis called it Otos-kwunee. And they all mean elbow, the confluence of those rivers, yeah. And that would be and so there's all that language, all that variety, and the languages are very different, but they would tap their elbow because, yeah, the way that people would trade there was a sign language, and that sign language tended to be more uniform amongst the various speakers of different languages.
Tim 06:15
Was there a sign for Yamnuska?
Harold 06:17
I don't know that one. I'd have to ask Terry.
Tim 06:20
I should have a flatter face, but, you know, it's probably something. I'll put a I'll put a link for our listeners that are joining us internationally. I'll put a link to a couple of Wiki pages or something so they can actually see these areas and appreciate them later when we go out. I'll tell you a story about how I got trapped in behind Yamnuska, and I had to avoid a bear, and ended up there's a slough back there. And I crossed over, crossed over a creek, which then filled with water, and I had to hike all the way down to the highway, and I came out along Highway, what is it, 1-A, and there's the there's the lodge there, and then hitchhike back to my car, but it's long story so much younger days great. So if we were to think about, well, actually, this is a great opportunity for us to bring up a little tradition here, which is we have a question come from a previous guest. So, your question comes from Melanie Potro in London, who is a professional business and political stylist for women, and very concerned about women's place in leadership. So I'll go ahead and let her ask you a question.
Melanie Potro 07:32
What was the trigger for that person, that made him or her go into that path?
Harold 07:41
I used to work in oil and gas, and I worked in accounting, and I was going to get an accounting designation. But always in my in my heart, I really wanted to be a fireman, actually, actually, I wanted to be a police officer, but my father-in-law talked me out of he said, being a firefighter is better. And so, so eventually, it’s the path I went on. And then, so, while I was a firefighter, a friend of mine was, he was finishing his master's at the University of Calgary, and I was a fireman. So, then I took that career path. One of the benefits definitely was the work-life balance. And it was more like a life-work balance. I had a lot more free time, right? And I used to think, you know, you get you get time, or you get money. So I thought, You know what I want time because, like, that's you can't always just get that. So that was one of the main reasons why I chose being a fireman. At any rate, my friend was working on his master's degree and a side job. He worked hosting an Indigenous relations course that the University of Calgary still offers. It's called the Indigenous relations leadership course. He was leaving the job because he was finishing his program, he asked me if I wanted to do it. So I was like, sure, I'd love to. So I was a fireman. And then I was, I was hosting the Indigenous relations course at the University of Calgary. And then so it was great, because I would sit in on this course for four days. It was offered four days, three, four times a year, and I was sitting on this course. And so it was these professors would come in, and some of them were professors that I had when I did my undergraduate degree at the UofC. And then so they would come in, I started really picking up all the material, and I could, I could really go in depth with this. I was like, hey, you know what? I want to work in this field. And so then I got my own master's degree, global management from Royal Roads University. And then I started to hit the streets. I was like, Okay, I'm going to consult in this area. And I ended up meeting somebody at the City of Calgary, and they said, Well, I can't hire you because you're already an employee, because I was a firefighter. And then so then I was seconded into the, into my into that role that I have in my day job.
Tim 09:38
And that, of course, has led you to where you are today, and I really liked how you described how you see your position and how you see your own profession. So could you give us a little bit of that?
Harold 09:48
Sure, yeah, I guess I'll start though, is that my day job or the profession in which I'm in is more a deeper expression of myself. Because my mother went to the Lebret Indian residential school, and then so, as a result, we had in my family, my grandparents, there were very significant cultural, prominent people in our community. You know, they were healers, and all that information was lost. So they, like my mom was that the 12th youngest, and so she by the time she went through the residential school system, they just, I don't know the whole story. I didn't get to meet my grandparents. They passed away before I was born, but I just assumed that, you know, they learned that it was just much easier on the child if they didn't teach them as much, or really anything, especially in terms of the Indigenous language, my mom can hear it, and, like, if she hears it, she understands it, but she doesn't speak. So, a lot of those values kind of were, like, they kind of just went poof, right, which is a whole nother long story. And on my own time, I have a grant going forward. I'm hoping, crossing my fingers, I get it, and I'm going to dive deep on that story.
Tim 11:10
Can I just ask, when you say that they thought it would be kinder on the child, does that mean that the lessons and the language and everything, if they had passed it along, could have been a liability or could have been a risk for that, for that child.
Harold 11:23
Yea, 100%.
Tim 11:28
Because the more they related to that, the more in danger they were.
Harold 11:31
Yeah, and literally, they would get beatings and worse, the beatings would be the easy part.
Tim 11:38
So, to protect the protect the child, you have to protect them from their history or from their legacy.
Harold 11:45
Yeah, because the goal of those schools was to eliminate the Indian in the child. Sometimes, yeah, and we won't go too dark, but sometimes it went further than that.
Tim 11:54
So well, it is a history that is really painful and shameful, and it's something that everybody, I would say, around the world, like so many other atrocities that that human beings have managed to inflict on one another, they need to be appreciated, and they need to be brought into the light, right? And so people can see how we've evolved and why. It's not all pretty, that is for sure. But to sum that up. You had said that you consider yourself a practitioner, and I really, really love that term. So, could you just introduce us to that?
Harold 12:27
Sure, yeah, as a practitioner of truth and reconciliation, you know what I do is to advance truth and reconciliation. So, one of the projects that I'm currently managing is a memorial for Indian residential school to create an environment of a reconciliatory environment between Indigenous and non Indigenous people. And part of it is getting this kind of information out there. That is a huge part of it, actually. Another part is to actually give a physical place that people can go for this kind of information.
Tim 12:57
And, and that will be at that at that confluence.
Harold 12:57
At the Elbow, yes. At the confluence, that’s correct.
Tim 13:00
And, and so, you know, in a sense, that's really, I mean, I'm just thinking about this now, I kind of getting goosebumps a little bit. But it's like, if you think about trading the most important things, then trading in that story and that knowledge and that ability, what a place to do it right? Because people who come from around the world to actually trade in that knowledge, and…
Harold 13:27
That's what I'm hoping.
Tim 13:30
Oh, man, that didn't hit me until sort of just now. So that's a whole different level. I love the word practitioner, because when we think about leaders and people who are really, they're really moving thought forward, and they're helping people embrace things, and helping people become, you know, their own, powerful individuals, people that that can express themselves in the world. You know, a practitioner, in my mind, is somebody that you don't, that doesn't just talk like they do. They, you're seeing them practice whatever they are. They're espousing. It's so much more powerful than somebody who is simply theoretical. I think that's such a great word, and I think that's where we're going to be heading today. So, before we get too much into that. I also want to just ask you this, if we were to see Harold Horsefall on any given day, what are we going to see? What is, what is? What is Harold Horsefall, the person, engage in, day in, day out?
Harold 14:33
Day in, day out. I guess, like I've started volunteering in an effort to really get out there. So, I volunteer for the University of Calgary Alumni Board. So, so I've been, you know, making my best to go to as many networking functions as possible, just to really get in there with people. I'm part of a meditation group, and I think that that's really helpful. And I have four children, so that's definitely above average, more than the average Canadian. So, yeah, I'm but my youngest is fourteen now.
Tim 15:04
You're a practitioner of sorts there.
Harold 15:08
Oh, yeah, almost accomplished. I'm almost like, on the verge of being an empty nest, empty nester. But my youngest is 14, so maybe three, four more years, and then he’ll go to university then, and then, that's a whole nother, you know, it seems it's so expensive for the kids out there, right? Because I have a daughter who's at the UofC now, and she's still at home with us. Yeah, it's just so expensive out there.
Tim 15:29
It is, yeah, it's, it's something that just learning how to, how to exist in this world is such a wake up. My kids are going through the same thing right now.
Harold 15:39
So, then I'm like, the comma rents, you know, the pa-rents, free rent.
Tim 15:44
Yeah, there you go. Pa-rent. When we think about you meditating, and you and I talked about, you know, really making sure that we take time to develop ourselves and whatnot. How do you see people that are out in the workforce, when you see them managing their own lives and going through things and, you know, besides just your children, but people that you work with in, day in, day out, the community members we've got around us. What do, how do you see their relationship with time? Again, you talked about trading time for money that you would take time over that. What do you see out there in the in the world?
Harold 16:27
Oh, geez, a lot of people, you know, and I'm, I live in a material world, and you know, I prefer to have, you know, good, solid look good. Good, solid goods. And, you know, even clothing that makes me look good, right? But that said, like, definitely, I see, I see many people just chasing, like, this carrot, and you know, that's fine. It's good an all. But why? What does it do for you? Because I even got to speak with some, through the alumni, not through the Alumni Board, this is before I was on the Alumni Board, but through Career Services, because that university and the Indigenous relations course was through Career Services. And so I did speak to some alumni, some graduates, some new graduates, and as part of a panel, and I was like, Well, you know, like, you should really focus too on the things that make you happy, because even if you make a whole bunch of money, like, eventually the, I hope this doesn't get dark for people, but it's like 100% the one thing that we are sure of is that we will pay taxes and we will die. And so, it's like, so say you make, like, a billion dollars. You can't take it with you, not that I know of, right? So, so it's like, really, like, for your own self, like, and this was my, my message to new grads, right? And I don't know how it was received, but I felt that maybe it wasn't received as popular as some of the other people, because one person was, like a new they had a position with the Royal Bank of Canada, and it was like a director or something. And so that was the person, oooh we gotta like, you know, go around that person, and I'm just like, well, you know, you got to really focus on your life and what makes you happy as well. Doing well materially is good, but also making sure, hitting that it's like a Venn diagram, hitting that intersection between what's personally satisfying, I think, is also important.
Tim 18:15
I think that's a very interesting reaction to notice. I've seen the same with young leaders and even some accomplished leaders, that when you offer them a perspective that causes them any sort of doubt, when they're in a blind pursuit of something, you know, when they're heading towards something and they've either omitted facts or they've biased themselves towards things to overcome questions or fears or whatever they're doing, so that they can charge ahead in a certain area. And if one of those things is, you know, hustle culture, so it's like, no, you got to work hard, and you work hard young so that you can be rich later and get what you want or whatever. Anything that questions that, it's like it erodes the bedrock of what they or would actually say, erodes the house of cards that they're building themselves up upon. And it can get really scary for people that they will reject that thought outright, like, let's just not go there, because playing in that area is just it carries a lot more risk than we might realize for that person, because they're, they're built up on that. That's, you know, and I think it's, it's an, also an interesting thing, that when you meet people down the road in their careers, when they realize that they've built their approach on really shaky ground, and it'll last for a while, until the universe demands the truth. And then guess what? They're kicking in the water. They're thrashing around pretty good. So the earlier that we can get to truth, the earlier that we can get to facing these hard facts and really questioning what our assumptions, I think is a is a is an important point. I hope I took that in the right direction there.
Harold 20:07
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, yes. Great conversation.
Tim 20:09
So when you think about the reaction of people to wanting to be around the person that emulates what they want to be, they want to be around that bank executive or whatnot. Tell me a little bit about that. What does that mean to a person besides, you know, potentially being an expression of we can see where their priorities are. But what's the hazard that comes out of that?
Harold 20:34
Oh, geez, I'm not sure. I've never really thought about that from somebody else's perspective, because, like, I wrestled with that, whereas, like, wanting to pursue a career that's gonna make me a lot of money and whatnot and high powered career, but for me, like, internally, I just couldn't there was this, like, a it was, like, it was a force field or something that I just couldn't get past. And because, like, for me, it was just, I really needed to, personally be able to be 100% invested in what I did. For example, it’s the real old school traditional value on the plains. The best way to say that, I say I'm a Plains Indian. There was a high school in Calgary. It was great, and I'm very thankful I got to go there. It's called the Plains Indian Cultural Survival School picks and so in there, like, I got exposed to a lot of traditional values that I otherwise wouldn't have. And so even, like, pow wow singing, like I did, pow wow singing 10, 20, and 30. So, you know, like, it was great. And so there was some traditional values that I was focused on. So like, Crowfoot. Hugh Dempsey wrote a book on Crowfoot. And so it was, it was done really good and huge. Dempsey is a local southern Alberta historian, or was before he passed to be a leader for me as a plains from the plains culture, where we had teepees and we buffalo hunted, so that, like some people say, they who are Indigenous people, and that's what they'll think of teepees and buffalo culture, but that's the plains culture. Whereas in like out east, they lived in houses, and they were farmers. And same with out west. They were they lived in houses, long houses, and they also farmed and they fished and they traded. But for me, that's, that's what it was. And to be a leader. You had to be a person who risked your life for your people, for the people, and you did so selflessly. That was the big draw. To be a firefighter, to be able to say that I did that, and I did for seven years. And seven is, of course, if you didn't know, it's a very significant number to Indigenous people. There are seven brothers in the sky, so the Big Dipper stars. And other than that, that's some, actually part of the grant that I've got forward and crossing my fingers that I'm going to explore many of those issues. But four is also another one. And I do know more reason about why four is significant. There are four seasons. There are numbers that we tend to see in nature. So then there are four seasons. And then, accordingly, you could even break up your day to be like the four seasons. You wake up in the morning, and then you have your afternoon, and then your late afternoon into the evening, and it's almost like a mini cycle. So you're in a mini cycle on a bigger cycle inside of a bigger cycle. So four seems to be the number that is most associated with cycles.
Tim 23:06
There's so much there that we could unpack, but it immediately makes my mind go to my friend Julie Friedman Smith, who's a parent and coach here in town, and she's part of our association here, helping our clients out. And she said something that was very similar at one point to me. And she said, you know, people will often, they'll say whether or not their day was a success. And she said, it's much better if you if you can develop the language where, you know, well, the morning wasn't a success, or this last hour wasn't a success, but the next one can be. And you chunk things down into that sort of seasonal thinking, where it allows us to be a little more gentle on ourselves, and refocus and rebase and kind of have these cycles within our life. But as you were speaking there, I was thinking back to you saying that you're a practitioner of truth and reconciliation. Now, truth and reconciliation in Canada has a very specific meaning, which I think is important, but more broadly, the pursuit of truth. What's the truth of who we are and where we're sitting, and then reconciling with that? And I often think of that like doing the math right, like getting to the facts doing the math, and say, We have to reconcile ourselves with the facts of what just happened, and that takes some work right to get through it. And so the importance of that as a program can't be understated. The importance of that as an approach to life is also something that's fairly important, is getting down to that, where am I actually, and how do I feel about that, actually? And what does it mean for me, actually? Where are we actually? What's the truth of that? So if I can have you sort of expand on that a little bit. Could you tell me where you think we are in that journey?
Harold 24:57
So I guess I would say first that in. General, the atmosphere in Canada is is quite good, in the sense that if you use the idea of like Pareto improving, it's been a while since I since I've done economics.
Tim 25:10
80-20 rule.
Harold 25:11
Yeah, exactly. But just if you take like each day, or even each hour, and like and to the person that you mentioned. So if you took yesterday or even 20 years ago. And if you looked at the status quo of what it meant to be Indigenous in Canada, and then you look at it today, there's improvements. And so some of those improvements are definitely like, so I went to the University of Calgary, and if we look back into the 1980s if you go to the, it's called the Writing on Symbols Lodge now, it used to be called the Native Student Center when I went there, so I'm dating myself, but there's a graduate list on the wall. And in the 80s, there was like one, and then the next year, like 1985 or something, and then the next year there'd be like two or three, and then it's kind of went up, like a logarithmic scale. And then it's like, okay, that's awesome. So whatever it is that the environment is definitely there. And so even then, you know, a lot more people are respectful. And even just that, the way that we opened on this podcast, I think that was, that was excellent, and I'm finding a lot more people are much more open. It's still a long journey. And so my approach as a practitioner is always like so when I was young, I managed to reclaim a good chunk of my culture, and I did that personally while I was a teenager, so, you know, and I still did live a teenage life, but I also did do a life where I went to a lot of ceremonies, especially sweat lodges. They were very important. I was very blessed and fortunate. And you know, I would get myself to these sweats when I was, like 16. And a sweat lodge, for those who don't know, is, is, it's like a cleanliness ceremony, it's a spa and it's a sauna, but then it's dark, and we sing songs, and you do a lot of prayer or focusing like, I guess you could find it in like Bhuddist culture, they call that single point focus. So you do a lot of focus on that thing that that you are concentrating upon to live a good life, was the one that was general for me. But the thing with a sweat lodge is that when you go in and it symbolizes rebirth, in a sense, but when you go in say that you're taking in a whole bunch of negative kind of crap that kind of lingers in you through this process, you sweat it out. And the idea is that all of your impurities go with that sweat, and it cleans you out both like physically and spiritually, in addition to other areas. So it's more holistic in that sense. And so you have to sit in that initial if, say, you go in and you have a lot of negative energy and you're sitting in there, it's painful in the sense that it hurts, it's uncomfortable, and it's in the dark and it's somewhat crowded, so a lot of fears are already triggered for many people. So then you just have to learn to sit still through all of that. It's uncomfortable. You sit through it, and then eventually, when you come out, then I would say that reconcile. So that's like, kind of my model for truth and reconciliation. It's like sitting in a sweat. It's uncomfortable, but you sit there and you do it. Sometimes you'd even come out and you know, you'd be pretty red, bright red, almost like a little bird sometimes, but you know, and that's the thing, is, like, if it gets hot, you can't once the door is closed, you have to wait until the door is open, or you could go run out screaming. But it's generally, it's not advised and it's frowned upon. So you have to sit still. And that's the thing, when it gets really hot, if you like, start thrashing around and panicking, it just escalates on the top of itself, and you end up in a mess, right? So you have to really sit still, and you have to sit quiet, and you can't move, especially when it's really hot. That's one of the things I learned, and actually came in really handy, is when I was a firefighter working in really hot environments, because in, like, physically hot, because you don't move too fast. You have to stay composed, and you have to actually move very slow, and you have to be very purposeful with each movement.
Tim 28:47
So quite literally, you're sitting there having to face all of those things that are are weighing on you, moving you forward or holding you back. You have to take some deep, honest reflection and emerge with some increased amount of fluency about who you are and where you're going.
Harold 29:09
But that's the magic, because, like, you surrender to it, and then you when you do get out, you definitely are better than when you went in. And if you keep doing that repeatedly over time, then that's when you see the benefits.
Tim 29:22
I think that's cool too, because you haven't said anything really, although you're sweating it out. It's not like these things, these things remain. They're part of you, in a sense, right? But your relationship with them is different, and you can process it differently. You can handle it differently. When I go back to that thinking of those young people at the university that are new in their career and their and their orienting around about wealth and who they want to be. And we also talked about openness being so key to this, and then the societal openness may be open at one point, but then be getting more closed in other ways. Often, you know, we think of things in a static place that it's either open or it's closed, we're open or we're closed. The society around us is getting more open or more closed, but it's like this pendulum that kind of swings and seeing things in that cycle pattern, as you said before, where we have to be observant about that and whatnot. Do you think that it's getting better right now, or is it getting worse? Or are we on a pendulum, or is it, you know, where are we at this?
Harold 30:31
It's definitely getting better. A colleague of mine did send me email that in terms of finances, and it says, since 2015 This is taken from the Fraser Institute.org, and it says Since 2015 the federal government has significantly increased spending on Indigenous peoples from roughly 11 billion to more than 32 billion. You know, that sounds like that could sound like taxpayer money, but I don't. I would be more curious to dive into that. That's a whole process unto itself. But there is a large trust fund that is held on behalf of Indigenous people, and that's where many Indigenous things, like in education, which was negotiated during the treaties. In essence, I've done Indigenous relations courses for various organizations, corporate organizations. And one item that I like to always point out to, and I don't have it handy on a presentation, but if you look at annual GDP of Canada, and then you can, you can even look at areas like from natural resources, and you look at that value on an annual basis, and then you compare it to what the treaty rights are. So I get $5 a year, and I get education, maybe, maybe I get education. That in itself, is a whole episode. Probably do really investigating that, but it is pennies to billions of dollars. So then you think like, that's really where it is. So a lot of those funds, though, do come from a National Indian Trust account. And I encourage you to google it. I could probably even just throw in a link to a short video.
Tim 32:10
We'll put that link in the show notes for you.
Harold 32:11
Sure. Yeah, and it's put together by the Yellow Head Institute, and it's a really good video to watch. And it's just a short video, two and a half minutes, I think maybe two and a half to it's under five minutes.
Tim 32:18
Yeah, I think that's that's a really important thing too, for people to for Canadians to appreciate. Because there's a lot of myth and a lot of, I would say, bias and hearsay that goes into exactly proportionally. How do we support our native communities? How do we make good on the on the Treaty and the agreements that were promised? And it's pretty shocking when you see, you know what it actually means on an annualized basis. And then, oh, on the flip side, I'm optimistic with what you've said in terms of this exponential growth in education and whatnot. Because as I follow Indigenous creators, and I've got a few, as I was telling you before, people that I'm really, I'm really enjoying, kind of having in my life, and following their journeys, and, you know, appropriately consuming their content. There's a positivity that's out there, and there is an optimism that's out there, and there is a and there's an energy that's out there, which I think is just fantastic. And so although the totals may not be appropriate, and there's definitely room to move there. What people are doing with the time and the opportunities they've got is so inspiring. So that, to me, means that there's a new energy, there's a new confidence, there's a new identity that's coming out, and I think it's a steam roller. I think it's unstoppable. You know, you think of that, that Jim Collins example of the flywheel, if you've ever heard this, where you have this massive flywheel, and it's the size of a city, and one person could go up against it, and they could smack it one way or the other, and the thing wouldn't even move. It would be like a monolith that wouldn't even move. And often we have communities that are all smack it in different directions, and so the thing couldn't start to move even if it wanted to. But if we get enough people slapping that thing in the right direction, it starts to shudder, and then it starts to spin, and then it spins faster and faster, and pretty soon, that thing, which we thought was immovable, is under its own energy. And it's, you know, it's unstoppable, so that any one unreasonable and logical dissenting voice can't, can't stop it. So that's, that's what, what I hope for, is that unstoppable momentum.
Harold 34:39
Sure, I definitely I would get on board with that.
Tim 34:43
We'll be smacking that flywheel. Yes. Cool. So as we sort of head towards the end, what would you like us to focus on? Was there somewhere we didn't get that you would like us to get?
Harold 34:56
Really like for me, these are like questions in my own. Mind that I just can't something in me always brings it back to the service. Hey, I need to focus on this and so, like, continuous improvement would be one of those things in that focusing myself, like, what do I want from my careers? And that was the thing I do have a question for the next guest.
Tim 35:17
I love that you're unprompted, go for it.
Harold 35:22
What do you get from your career? And how does your work fill your bucket? Because those are things that I always ask myself. And so what am I getting from this? What am I doing for this? How does this work for me? Yes, I get to pay the bills. Maybe I get to get to I have a thing for boots. My wife will tell you, I buy too many boots. She's probably right. So like, in addition to me getting a new pair of boots, but what does it do for me personally, like, as a person? How's it, uh, advanced my own journey, my own destination? People, quote, like, Crazy Horse. If they don't know who Crazy Horse was, from the American point of view, they say, well, he's like, hoka hey, it's a good day to die. Like, he's gonna charge out there on the battlefield and but that's not what it was. That's only like half of the quote, because…
Tim 36:03
I think [who?] from Star Trek, said that. But what did Crazy Horse actually say?
Harold 36:10
He said, hoka hey, today is a good day to die, because all is well with the world. And the Stoney Nakoda, because they're, they're, they're Nakoda Sioux, they say Âba wathtech , and that's their greeting, and it means hello, today is a good day. I think it's implied all is well with the world. So what that means is, like for you inside, is everything well, in the sense that, if you were to die, would you feel that there are unresolved issues? And so really, then your attention, for me, that exercise brings me to like, okay, what are those unresolved issues and I gotta address those. Sometimes they're scary, sometimes they're hard, but it's just like sitting in that sweat, right? And so, so for me, that's what I would leave. And the question I'd post to the next guest.
Tim 36:53
How is what you're doing? How is it filling your bucket that is something that I can relate to, I'm really passionate about. You know, often when I'm working with executives, etc, you know, one of the things when we're we're looking at career, when we're looking at where they are, is to have them focus on, from a career perspective, what is the best day of the last year you're ever going to work look like? And are you heading towards that as a reality? And then more generally, are you in balance in your life? Right? Like, are you are do you feel like you're where you belong? And do you feel like that you've got this beautiful flow going on that you have enough sense of control or stability and you still have the right types of excitement and anxiety and those things, I feel like we've just scratched the surface here, Harold. So one thing I want us to do is is stay up to date on your grant and your research project, and want to make sure that when that gets rolling, you come back and we and we talk about that.
Harold 37:59
Perfect. Sounds great.
Tim 38:00
Yeah, I think that would be great. And in the meantime, if people wanted to reach out to you, if they wanted to, if they wanted to experience what I experienced, or if they were interested in the confluence, where can they find they you?
Harold 38:14
They can go to the confluences the website, and I think it's www.theconfluence.ca or something, or just Google “the confluence Calgary”.
Tim 38:23
Sure, we'll put that link up in the show notes.
Harold 38:25
Yeah,if you want to get in touch with me, please reach out on LinkedIn: Harold Horsefall.
Tim 38:29
right on, lots of exciting things coming up for you. Thank you very much for dropping the question for our next guest. Harold Horsfall, it was just an absolute treat to have you on.
Harold 38:39
Thank you, Tim.
Tim 38:29
I can't wait till we can meet at that conference together. I'm really itching to get there.
Harold 38:45
Sounds great.
Tim 38:46
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams, and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading.
Tim 00:31
Today we're diving into the critical topic of capacity. Capacity is about more than just having enough time or energy. It's about making room for growth, prioritizing what matters and understanding how we lead ourselves and others sustainably. We'll be drawing on insights from nine incredible guests to explore this theme. These are leaders, thinkers, experts, who have all shared authentic, surprising and fearless perspectives on how we can unlock our own potential while creating environments where others can do the same. They've been my guests over the last year with Sweet on Leadership podcast. So I'm eager to dive in. Capacity begins with prioritizing yourself. As leaders, we often focus so much on serving others that we forget to check in with our own needs and aspirations. But here's one truth, you cannot pour from an empty cup and a well that gives no water is just a hole. When I spoke to Renee Miller in Episode 42 her perspective on this was both authentic and actionable. Renee one of two intrepid thru hikers that join me, challenges us to see how easy it is to get caught up in daily demands while sidelining our professional and personal dreams.
Renee Miller 01:42
You get so caught up into your daily lives, and the tasks that you, you know, you go to work and have to get all these tasks done and come home and have responsibilities at home, but yeah, you kind of forget about yourself. And you know, what about that professional engineering license that would be really good for my career? Oh, I don't have time for that, because I'm busy working and, yeah, just talking with people and reminding them to prioritize themselves and their resumes, and it'll probably be good for their company as well.
Tim 02:20
Prioritizing yourself is not selfish. It's essential for sustainable leadership. Anna Morgan, a career coach and speaker, added another layer to this. In episode 31. Anna spoke powerfully about the importance of balancing your professional identity with the things that bring you joy outside of work.
Anna Morgan 02:37
Care about yourself enough, and this is the other thing I see, especially at the manager to executive level, is people get so wrapped up in their identity as a small company CEO or as an executive, and it takes me so much time to unwire and alchemize a lot of that identity that if I don't have that I am less than or I'm not enough, and it's balancing out and making sure that you have hobbies and side hustles and things that bring you joy outside of that 40-45, plus hour work week, so that you are just not in that rabbit hole of you know work which, and then you look at your life, because nobody on their deathbed is going to be like, I wish I worked more right? They're going to say, I wish I spent more time with my kids. I wish I went on more trips.
Tim 03:41
Servant leadership is an important concept, but we can't let work, we can't let our roles as leaders define us entirely. Our capacity expands when we make room for joy and relationships and fulfillment and development beyond our current office, beyond our current team. But it's not all feelings, capacity also depends on evidence, concrete facts that help us move from I hope this works to I know this works. If you're seeking to manage your capacity, the word hope should be a red flag. If you're using it, you're no longer in the driver's seat. You're playing the lottery without evidence. We risk making decisions that are based on emotions instead of facts. Richard Young, my friend, a performance researcher and the author of Simplify and his new book Amplify, shared a powerful story in Episode 27 about how evidence can close performance gaps.
Richard Young 04:34
They said, "hoping" is a flag for evidence that's missing, and "knowing" means the evidence the gap has been filled. So it's a good word, generally, universally, for human nature to have hope. But in the performance game, it's another trigger, and there needs to be a leader who spots that and says, Well, it's, you know, I hope it all comes off. So before Olympics, I hope I get Lane eight. So there was one rower who was world champion, and they started to fade, and they became kind of disillusioned with their fitness. And the psych team, an army of good intent, you know, wrap themselves around her. But it turns out it was, and I had this one in the book as well. It turned out it was the evidence that they had numbers for, but she wasn't aware of them, and so he just presented those numbers to her every day on how she was tracking. And suddenly she had evidence that it's not as bad as I thought. Feelings aren't facts. Facts are facts. And so suddenly her progress since she became world champion that year, and he knew it wasn't mindset, because you can't hope your way to victory. You do have to have prep. You know that goes into flow, which we can talk about later.
Tim 05:55
Context brings calm. It's a saying that I love, and it's truly t-shirt worthy. Evidence fuels confidence and clarity, and when you focus on what you know, you can build capacity with intention and precision. But how do we know what to focus on? Sarah Elder, founder of Piped, a platform helping engineering interns document their most meaningful experiences, shared in Episode 18, that the first step in building capacity is understanding your current state, often in the simplest of ways.
Sarah Elder 06:29
Once it's written down, you can't ignore it anymore. Tim, you talked earlier about building capacity. You can't build capacity. You can't you can't have capacity without understanding the state. So getting everything into one place and being able to understand that is the first step in building capacity. You can't cut what you don't know, or you might cut and it might not be enough.
Tim 06:52
Whether it's your time, energy or goals, getting a clear picture of where you stand is key to moving forward. As we continue this clinic on capacity, we must realize that it also requires us to leave the familiar behind. Growth that gives us the ability to handle more is found outside our current comfort zones. Dan Lofquist, a technology consultant and one who shares the Red House of Debbie Potts, emphasized how stepping out of a comfort zone drives growth and adaptability.
Dan Löfquist 07:23
That's how I try to be myself. I mean, I can't stick to old things that doesn't work and it doesn't make me happy, and I can't do my job properly. So I need to adjust and then learn new things, new processes, new techniques or whatnot. In order to move forward, I think you have to have that mindset, and also it's good for you, because if you are in your comfort zone, nothing fun or exciting is going to happen every day. It's going to look the same. In order to have some kind of excitement in your life or in your workplace or anyway, you need to step out of that comfort zone, because the amazing things happens outside, but it's a scary place, but it's very rewarding if you're there.
Tim 08:15
Growth is always on the other side of fear. Taking bold steps to develop outside of your comfort zone, leads us to rewards that you never thought possible. This is one area that pays dividends again and again and again, but easier said than done. Right capacity isn't just about adding more to your plate. It's about making choices trade offs. It's about carving out space for what truly matters and who truly matters and being true to yourself in the process. Julie Friedman Smith, again, great friend, teammate, author, podcaster and a parenting (my parenting expert) spoke about this in Episode 34. Julie captures the uncertainty that many of us feel when we're navigating our roles and responsibilities outside of work, often asking ourselves, Am I doing the right thing?
Julie Friedman Smith 09:05
I'm doing all these adult things. I still do not feel like an adult. I'm not even sure that what I'm doing is something I like, but I'm not sure how to get out of it, or, am I going to look stupid for getting out of it? Or, you know, and, and that is what another time where we kind of take that left turn of like, oh, it could be different. And if this is what adulting is really about, how do I do it in a way that makes sense for me, instead of playing the role of adults, how am I going to be an adult that's really true to myself? So I think there's a, there's some kind of a pivot point in that mid 30s that comes along as well.
Tim 09:42
I remember, in my experience, it was almost like a you start to focus on something a little bit more, and you have to cast off certain hobbies, and you have to cast off, even in some cases, friends and certain social groups. And it's like I have to pick my lane, in a way, I guess is how it...
Julie Friedman Smith 09:59
Or I want to, also, I want to do this like I want to spend time doing what I really want to be doing, if I can. Or maybe the question is, how do I spend time doing more of what I really want to be doing? I have these obligations. I've got to meet those things. I've got to meet the needs. I've got to earn the money that I need. And, you know, fulfill these obligations, and how do I carve that piece of my life that's really fulfilling?
Tim 10:25
In truth, to be in charge of our own capacity means continuously evaluating our choices. Carving time out for what truly matters means being intentional and courageous about how we allocate our energy. Capacity and capacity management just isn't about what you do. It's about who you surround yourself with. In episode 34, I met Jeff Massone, a leadership consultant I discovered I'd like to spend time with.
Jeff Massone 10:51
From my perspective, it is really get around the right people. Now explain what we explained at the beginning of the podcast, is getting around people of who've achieved where you want to go. And if you're starting to hear people in your workplace that are negative, you know, just politely, kind of distance yourself from them. You're not better than them. You just don't need to hear negative things. Leadership Development is not about being better than your co-worker, not about being better than your neighbor. It's about being the best version of yourself and adding value to other people.
Tim 11:25
Capacity isn't just a solo journey. It isn't a unilateral decision. It's shaped by people we surround ourselves with. When we're intentional about building positive, supportive relationships, we can create environments where growth becomes contagious. Finally, to bookend this episode, let's talk about how capacity means we can make space for those big, audacious goals. Tim Beissinger, a trailblazer and thru hiker, shared how prioritizing what matters allowed him and his partner Renee Miller to chase their dreams of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and have many more adventures.
Tim Beissinger 11:59
So the way we've done it in the past is we make room for them, and I'll give an example. But if the big goal is big enough that it needs to push something else out of the way, we push it out of the way. The example is our first thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. Renee really wanted to do that trail, and I was a new professor, Renee was an engineer, and we felt like, I felt like there wasn't room to tackle that big project, that big goal of doing a PCT, it was something to put off until we retired. And Renee was persistent and said, No, we're only gonna get slower and weaker and like now's the right time to do a hike like this.
Tim 12:45
Tim and Renee's story is a reminder that you can't do this alone, that making space for what matters isn't just about time. It's about aligning your actions with your priorities and the people you care about. From Renee's reminder to prioritize yourself, to Richard's focus on evidence, to Anna's wisdom about identity, to Julie's quest for fulfillment and Jeff's emphasis on relationships, we've seen how capacity is a balance of internal clarity and external alignment. So here's my challenge for you, understand your current state. Where are you? Where are you over-committed? And where can you make space, create time for what matters, what obligations can you re evaluate to prioritize your goals and choose your relationships wisely. Look around who inspires you to grow and supports your capacity for success? It isn't just about doing more. It's about doing better. It's about living and leading and aligning with your values so that you can create the life that energizes you and sustains you.
Tim 13:47
Thank you for joining me on this retrospective. I hope you'll join us for the next new episode, and I hope you'll check out our other two retrospectives on Vision and Arriving. I'll see you. Hopefully with better capacity and more gas in that tank to lead. Take care.
Tim 14:07
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim, Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading.
Tim Sweet 00:35
I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. Welcome to Episode 46 of the Sweet on Leadership Podcast. Today we're diving deep into the concept of vision. It's more than just setting goals or dreaming big. It's about clarity and knowing where you're headed, and the courage to take steps to get there. And authenticity ensuring that your vision aligns with who you truly are.
Tim Sweet 01:20
So let's begin. Vision begins with purpose. It's not about ambition for its own sake. It's about what truly matters to you. When I spoke with Teresa Waddington, an engineer and Vice President of Corporate Relations, in Episode 28, her story struck me. Teresa's vision bridges generations. It's shaped by her father's legacy and her aspirations for her daughter and the world she lives in. She beautifully illustrated how vision connects the past and the future. It's why I sought her out; because it's just such a compelling picture. Here she is.
Teresa Waddington 01:54
I'm on a mission to turn my dad's oil patch into my daughter's energy garden, and when I think about that future energy garden. I really do think it is a whole host of things. It's a whole host of technologies, and couplings of those technologies between kind of old and new that'll really drive us forward.
Tim Sweet 02:12
The idea of legacy can deepen and strengthen our vision. Teresa reminds us that its purpose that gives our vision its resilience. In episode 26, I spoke with Ryan and Shane Pegg. Ryan, a grade eight student and an inspiring entrepreneur, a triathlete and a wearable technology ambassador, had a keen eye for innovation and a desire to make an impact. His dad, Shane leads business incubators in their community, where he fosters creativity and collaboration. Their conversation covered the origins and purpose of how visions evolve and create value beyond ourselves. Here's Ryan.
Ryan Pegg 02:51
I feel like business is not only about the money side of things, like you're not only trying to make money, you're trying to build new things, you're trying to help people. And that really changed the way that I thought about it.
Tim Sweet 03:08
Ryan's clarity and focus stem from values that he's seen modeled and experience that he's been allowed to have. Shane shared how cultivating an others-first mentality has shaped not only his approach to business, but also his family's outlook on life.
Shane Pegg 03:25
It's encouraging, you know, you try to model a kind of an attitude of generosity and compassion thinking of others and others-first mentality. So that's kind of big part of life here. It's what about others kind of take your focus off of yourself, and so the kids are all great at doing that, and yeah, it's encouraging, and that's certainly a life lesson that we find later in life that's amazing at how money can follow when you're not focused on it, but you're focused on doing good or doing something that you really enjoy doing, and you do it really well, and the money will follow if it's meant to be.
Tim Sweet 03:57
As I reflect on this delightful conversation with the Peggs, it became clear that a really powerful vision transcends personal achievement. It is truly about creating something larger than ourselves, something meaningful and something that will leave that lasting impact. Having a vision is one thing, sharing it with others is another, and this is where clarity and confidence come into play. In episode 13, I was joined by Melanie Potro, an image consultant specializing in personal branding, she highlighted how our vision for the future is intertwined with the vision we have for ourselves in the future. This influences how we present ourselves and therefore can shape how we're perceived by others and how we can forward ourselves in life. First impressions often pave the way for new opportunities that will allow us to fulfill the vision we've got in front of us.
Melanie Potro 04:51
If you want to inspire other people and want to make sure that they feel that you're trustworthy, competent and so on, and you feel that we don't carry that across at the moment, then you need to look at your appearance, because that's the first thing they see. So that can really be the entrance ticket, the ticket to open the doors for the next step in your career, or to get a big client on board, or to make a big sale.
Tim Sweet 05:17
Melanie's insights inspired me. I hadn't considered that we can make ourselves a visual representation of where we plan to go. Our presentation reflects our confidence and our values and reinforces our undermining mission and where we're going in life. Likewise, Elayna Snyder, a creativity coach from Episode 25, took this idea further. She challenges her clients and our listeners to align their work with their unique identity and to use that alignment to push boundaries beyond what most people would think is possible.
Elayna Snyder 05:54
What we're really looking at is this main question around, how do I powerfully articulate what I do to create more of my best clients at the fees that I desire? And there's another question that comes on the back of that, too. And that question is, how do I integrate more of myself into my work? What's that next big idea? Maybe it's a new offering, a book, or even the creation of a movement.
Tim Sweet 06:19
This is an important reminder that a vision isn't static. It evolves as we grow. It gives us a new launch point to push even further. In fact, a vision usually is something we simply haven't achieved yet. The question isn't just what's my vision, but how is this a much more intense version of who I am? Obviously, vision isn't just about the immediate future, it's about the bigger picture. In episode 20, Debbie Potts, an educational economist, HR and productivity expert, shared a harrowing tale of her personal battle with illness through her struggle, my friend Debbie found an anchor, a vivid, unwavering vision of a red house in the forest that gave her strength and focus to survive and become an advocate for others. Here's Debbie.
Tim Sweet 07:08
What did the Red House represent to you?
Debbie Potts 07:10
Oh my gosh. It represented freedom. It represented achievements. It represented living life on my terms, and obviously I love nature, as you do, and it just represented, you know, being able to be close to nature. And, you know, completely do a 180 turn around of my life. You know, I lived in a big city, London, full of people, full of traffic, full of everything. And I've now completely reversed that.
Tim Sweet 07:43
Debbie's story revolved around this idea of a true north giving us direction and focus in life during our most challenging moments. It's a compass that helps us define a path to those spaces in the world where we can truly thrive. Obviously, our vision is about how we care for ourselves now so that we can experience what's next. In episode 29 Erin Ashbacher, a leadership fitness coach and member of my team, spoke about the intersection between physical health and vision. She highlighted how neglecting our well being can become a barrier to fulfilling those goals in the future. In fact, it can completely derail where we think we're gonna be.
Erin Ashbacher 08:22
There's definitely been a lot of people who think that being busy is really the gold standard and making sure that we do it all, and it's hard when you're working in cardiac rehab, and you see people that have all of a sudden just been stopped in their tracks. And it made me really realize that preventative medicine, preventative wellness, is where we want to be. Some of my clients that have reached retirement, and they've had a really successful career, and now that they're retired, they're like, oh, now I'm going to take care of my health, but maybe they have an ailment that has been kind of creeping around on them, and so they just feel like they're starting at a really deep bottom, like, oh man, if I would have just started going to the gym or being a little bit more active in my 40s or my 50s, now that I'm in my 60s, I wouldn't have to deal with this big mountain, right? And it can be a bit discouraging to people when they kind of thought that their retirement was going to be one way, and their health and physical limitations are creating some a different story for them, right? So, yeah, let's take care of it today.
Tim Sweet 09:27
Those insights are both sobering and inspiring, challenging us to think if we are caving to short term comfort rather than investing in our future selves to achieve a vision, we need to be physically, mentally and emotionally prepared to enjoy the journey. This podcast is about leadership, and therefore it's about high achievers. But vision isn't about perfection. It's about showing up even when things are uncertain. In episode 24, Erin Lydon, founder of Poker Power, drew a fascinating parallel between poker and leadership. She explained how leaning in to take calculated risks, even when you don't have perfect information, even when you are out of position and maybe even at a disadvantage, is a skill that's applicable both at the poker table and in life.
Erin Lydon 10:13
So often at a poker table, nobody has a made hand, you know, and so it really is going to come down to the person who's going to play their chips most aggressively and get the other players to fold, that person's going to win the hand. That is something you have to practice, shoving your chips all in when you have imperfect information, you don't know the cards still to come, and you certainly don't know what the other players have. That's a learned skill, because it's scary.
Tim Sweet 10:40
like poker, a vision requires courage, not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act regardless of what hand you're dealt. Reflecting on these stories, I'm struck by how authenticity and trust in ourselves are intertwined with vision. In my conversation with Hanne Ballhausen, a director and diabetes advocate, I was deeply moved by her openness about putting a difficult history in its place. Hannah's honesty about her journey through a dark emotional forest showed immense courage. We can't show the whole episode here, but I would encourage you to listen to it for now. Just take this little snippet.
Hanne Ballhausen 11:20
Trust your gut feeling. It's there for a reason. Tap into your superpower that are your feelings, and just join me in to give into all of your muchness of who you are. You're beautiful.
Tim Sweet 11:36
Right before Hannah's episode, I met with Greta Ehlers, a med tech professional and diabetes technology advocate who shared how belief in your vision can inspire others. In episode 22 she highlighted how passion and conviction drive leadership forward, and there was a great moment when she realized the leadership torque that that had given her. Again, I encourage you to listen to this whole episode, but for right now, here's just a few words.
Greta Ehlers 12:04
Leadership can be finding something you really believe in and driving it forward. And if it is something you believe in and you drive it forward, then others will follow.
Tim Sweet 12:14
Hanne and Greta demonstrate how authenticity makes the vision and the person magnetic. People are drawn to sincerity and passion. It inspires them to take risks and pursue their own adventures. And on that note, in Episode 42 Renee Miller, an engineer and avid hiker who knows a little something about carving her own path, described how stepping away from societal expectations can lead you to unexpected growth. Here's Renee.
Renee Miller 12:45
You get so caught up into your daily lives and the tasks that you know, you go to work and have to get all these tasks done and come home and have responsibilities at home, but yeah, you kind of forget about yourself. And you know, what about that professional engineering license that would be really good for my career? Oh, I don't have time for that because I'm busy working and, yeah, just talking with people and reminding them to prioritize theirselves and their resumes, and it'll probably be good for their company as well.
Tim Sweet 13:21
Rene's story, which was shared with her partner, Tim, showed how this vision of adventure often emerges when we step outside our comfort zones, when we refuse to be defined, when we take risks, when we trust that life will provide and when we embrace what's over that next hill. Well, that's it. And I hope in this episode, with all the different facets we've explored around the concept of a vision, you've found some inspiration that you can use to meditate on your own. It's not about predicting the future, it's about creating it. Because life is a creative process, and our level of creativity is parallel with our willingness to dream boldly, express ourselves authentically and take courageous action. So here's my challenge to you, define a vision that resonates with your deepest values, share it boldly, let your uniqueness shine through in every detail and when needed, challenge that status quo and step courageously into the unknown. Take that first step today, write down a few words craft that future that only you can imagine. Remember, the world needs leaders. The world needs you. The world needs your vision, your passion and your unique perspective.
Tim Sweet 14:40
Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading you.
