Weirdos In the Workplace – Details, episodes & analysis

Kevin Judge is the CEO and Founder of iNOBL, a strategic business advisory firm with a global reach.

A best-selling author, international speaker, and strategic business advisor, Kevin leads a team of professionals that senior leaders trust, to turn strategy into sustainable success.

Join us for an insightful conversation on how to go from chaos to clarity, to best guide organizations to harness their potential, and excel beyond expectations!

Stay in Touch with Kevin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinjudge/

https://www.instagram.com/kevinrjudge/

For more on Kevin and his services:

https://inobl.com/

Script:

When you're in a moment, one, have that sense of curiosity for yourself, but also if there's somebody that is coachable around you to say, hey, hold on a second, I hear you, you're concerned about ABC. What would happen if you were to stop and think of this in this different way?

Mm-hmm. What other possibilities could there be? Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today.

My name is Erin Patchell, of course, your lovely host. And I'm here today with Kevin Judge. Say hello, Kevin. Hello, Kevin. No, hello, everybody. Nice to be here. It's great for you to be here, Kevin. Okay, so for those who don't know Kevin yet, Kevin is the CEO and founder of iKnowBull, a strategic business advisory firm with a global reach. Kevin leads a team of professionals that senior leaders can trust to turn strategy into sustainable success. He's also a best-selling author, international speaker, and strategic business advisor.

Welcome, welcome.

 Thanks very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

All right. So what are we talking about today, Kevin? Just give me broad strokes. 

Well, you know, one thing that's caught my attention recently was how crazy our brains are in making up stories about what's going on in our worlds, whether it be driving down the road and somebody cuts you off or the way a coworker responds to an email or the way your boss treats you. Like all of these things, our brains tell us stories and that can get us in a lot of trouble. So what is interesting for me right now is how can we have a little bit more of a view of curiosity to solve some of the problems that don't need to be problems in our lives?

And of course, if you want to tie that to strategy and execution, it's about getting away from conflict and better communication and that type of thing to help make the world go around a lot better. Yeah, that'd be nice. There are a few existential crises in the world at this time. So I think I use that word almost every single podcast right now is like existential crises. And it's not surprising that people are trying to find ways to both like predict, analyze, compartmentalize, and like, just, you know, try to like kind of survive through, you know, what's going on today at a micro and macro level.

So, you know, humans be humans, right? Well, exactly. And whatever's going on around us, like if you think, And whatever's going on around us, if you think, probably heard this example before where a caveman sees a saber-toothed tiger and they go into fight or flight mode and it's all about survival. Well, first of all, we wear more clothes nowadays, but also, well, many of us do. Some of us. Yes, right. But also, we don't have saber-toothed tigers coming at us. But on a day-to-day basis, our brains don't know the difference between the perceived physical threat of a saber-toothed tiger and a perceived psychological threat. So let me take it into a work environment.

You walk into a meeting room that you're expecting to have a meeting with your boss, and HR is there. Oh my gosh, Right. So perceived psychological threat of why is HR here? I'm going to get fired. And if I get fired, everybody's going to look at me and be ashamed of me. My family's going to leave me. I'm going to lose my house. I'm going to end up on the street and I'm going to starve to death and die. I'm going to end up on the street and I'm going to starve to death and die. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but that can be where our brain goes very, very quickly when it's not necessarily the fact. Right.

Well, I think you've given us an amazing intro to the topic. Let's come up for air. And I just want to ask you first, the first like real question, the most important question, what makes you a weirdo? What makes me a weirdo? When you asked me that the first time I was like, well, I don't know. Am I really that weird?

But I'm going to focus in on, it's taken a lot of work for me to not appear as weird as maybe as I, as I was many years let your freak flag fly that's there you go I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and in my younger years there was no gray area like it's either right or wrong the rules are rule you follow it or you don't follow it etc uh and that led to me having super high expectations for myself as well as super high expectations of other people. And I think in my terms, what makes me weird is I really struggled to understand, well, how is it that people are not as serious about these things as I am?

And how can they be comfortable with the lack of performance and, and just getting by and not really caring, et cetera. And so it took a lot of work for me to understand people and how they, how they actually think and process and that not everybody's like me. And thank God they're great. Like the last thing that people need is another me uh and thank god very great like the last thing people need is another me like we we need everybody to be who they are i mean not to like go down a huge rabbit hole here but i'm very i'm kind of curious like if you've ever detangled like why you were so motivated like what was it in your dna or in your upbringing or whatever that like drove you in that way that that is interesting that could be an interesting conversation yes yes uh should we get the virtual couch out no it's not my not my thing but yeah um you know what i'm not 100 sure because when i when i look at i have two brothers and i look at them and we're fairly different uh than than each other um but also similar in some ways but my father was in the military my mom was a nurse there was a strict household um but i i think some of it's just maybe it's because i was born in january right? Like I, I, there's a thing, that's a thing, you know? Well, yeah. Right.

So I really don't know other than our behavior as we learn behavior, we are either rewarded for it or not. And perhaps how I behaved in the decisions that I made. I had rewards for it either intrinsically or extrinsically was rewarded for those behaviors. And that worked until it didn't work, right?

 Once I got into my career, that rigidity wasn't helpful all the time. Yeah, no, for sure. Especially in the world today when things are, you know, you need to be more agile and adaptable in a lot of ways. I can see how you would have had to learn that probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's for many people, that's not something that comes easily. No, no. For most people that doesn't come easily. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, interesting.

 Okay. So maybe, maybe another rabbit hole for another day to go all the way down. Yeah. But you're a strategist at heart. Okay, so you and I, we're both strategists. We kind of work in different areas. We're not like conflicting at all or competing, really. We work with different kinds of clients. But we're both, you know, more on the strategy side, strategy execution. I also do some coaching. Do you do coaching as well? Are you a coach? Yes. I don't do a lot of the coaching myself anymore, but I do coaching usually with executive CEOs. Right. Okay. So you do a little bit of coaching as well or have done coaching as well. Yeah. So the world's basically like it's on fire on fire, you know, and everyone's terrified. Business leaders are terrified. Doesn't matter, you know, small business, medium sized business, large enterprise government, you know, nobody knows what's going to happen next.

There are lots of different mega threats, you know, in the world. mega threats you know in the world yep um what are you seeing like just like on a what what are you sensing right now in the world like what are you sensing as like some of the biggest things that people are concerned with day to day that is affecting their behavior i think um and and that's a very broad question. So I'm going to give you a very broad answer.

 I think one of the biggest questions that people have today is anything that's happening, anything that they read in the news, anything that they see happen on the street, et cetera, is how does this impact me and my future and my ability to be successful in whatever it is that I'm doing, right? To thrive in this ecosystem that we're in. And it sounds like a very selfish question, but it really, I don't think is, right? We're no good to anybody else unless we are strong ourselves.

And then once we're taken care of, it's easy to help the rest of the people around us in the world, et cetera. So I think that's the big thing for people is, hey, how are things going to help? So let's take Canadian politics right now. I'm coaching a CEO right now around the strategy for his organization, and he requires some funding through government grants. Okay, great. But what is going to be happening in our political environment come September?

Is the opposition going to say, hey, we want a non-confidence vote? Yeah. And that's going to destroy the current government and all funding is going to come to a screeching halt or do we have another year year and a half etc right so those sorts of things are a concern um even what's happening in the u.s for for their politics it's a concern for canadians uh and people in the U.S. alike. So I think for most people, it's like, how are these things going to impact us? And it can be the smallest little thing that puts people into turmoil.

 How do you see this sphere reflected within organizational behavior? Prime example, and this one's really, really fresh. CEO just let go two of his employees, small organization. Yeah. For various reasons, right? And the story start. Well, why were those people let go? And of course, the CEO can't be very specific on what those reasons are, because you have to value the privacy of those individuals. So there's a generic answer as to why. But people start making up stories. Right. Is it because employee A was no good, they were stealing, or is it because there isn't enough money in the company and we're going to go bankrupt?

All sorts of things come out. And so people see this information and start processing, okay, well, how does this impact me? Is there longevity in my career in this company? Should I start looking for work? Or, hey, I'm a survivor. I didn't get canned, but now I've got all this extra work. Or am I going to have all this extra work that I have to do to make up for the people that have left? Right. And when they don't have the answers to those questions, they make up answers to those questions. And I tell you, our brains are masterful storytellers.

Our brains, unfortunately, focus in on fictional horror instead of, hey, everything's going to be great. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. And it seems like in times of stress, you know, that becomes even more true that we fixate on, you know, trying to create certainty out of uncertainty, whether or not it's actually real. It's like a mass there's things we cannot control and we try to control. We spend a lot of energy on that instead of what we should be doing, right? We should be focusing on as an individual, what can I control? Focus on that.

And from that organizational perspective, get the work done that you need to get done to continue to perform well, to help the organization advance, to maintain the view that people have on your value to the organization, right? If you start spiraling out of control and become cynical and stop performing because you're just giving up, et cetera, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

 You kind of end up putting yourself out of work. Yeah. It strikes me that you're kind of the perfect person to help in this scenario someone who you know came from was probably very it was certainly probably still you're still very um disciplined but there's a difference between discipline and rigidity you know yeah um so but someone who was like very disciplined and maybe a you know verging on having too much routine perhaps once upon a time to having to learn how to adapt, being potentially a very good person to lean on in times like this when people have to learn how to adapt.

Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that I seem to be a good person for that. So I'll agree with you. Please do. It's also not only for the individual who's impacted, but also for leaders of organizations. Right. So earlier I said when people don't have the answers, they make up their own answers. Well, the answers need to be shared by leaders across the organization. the organization. So what is it that a leader can do to communicate, hey, there is a future and this is how bright it looks and you're part of that.

Or, hey, the future is uncertain. I'll be honest. But I really value you. That's why you're still here. And I need your help to figure out what it's going to look like. And let's make this work. Let's rally together to survive this. Right. So whether it's good news or bad news, those leaders really need to communicate with conviction and belief in that future and the people that report into them. Yeah. So we're kind of we're edging towards we're kind of like on the edge of the curiosity cure now, right? Yeah, yeah. We're starting to edge towards that.

 And it's interesting, because, you know, what you're talking about that balance between like reality and faith, essentially, is what we're talking about, you know, a belief that we're going to get through this, if we can do together and we're going to be honest and blah, blah, blah, right? All the way through. It's like, you know, you want to be honest, but can leaders really be honest?

You know, like how much honesty and transparency do you usually recommend? As much as possible. Yeah. Without sacrificing confidentiality. without sacrificing confidentiality. Okay, perfect. So there are times where a leader will be asked questions.

They may know the answer, but can't share it. And instead of saying, oh, I don't know, perhaps they should say something like, you know what, that isn't an area that I'm able to speak about now, but as soon as I can, I will share that information with you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you want to have, they want you to, they want to know, people want to know that you do know the answer, right? Not that you don't know the answer. That's terrifying, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We want to know that we're, we want to be confident that our leaders know that the answer is, and it's okay. Maybe if, if it's a need to know that we're going to want to be confident that our leaders know that the answer is and it's okay maybe if if it's a need to know at this point right yeah but the curiosity cures the same you know how much like where's the balance right between the hallucination and the reality when it comes to like you know we're leading with curiosity, how, how far into curiosity do you go?

This is a question that I ask myself a lot because I have ADHD and I have a lot of things that I'm curious about. I need some restraint, you know? I am, I'm curious. Okay. Let's, let's back up for a second. Talk about the curiosity curve. So people know what the heck we're talking about. Okay. Yes. Because we've said curiosity cure a few times a couple times yeah right so that that really is about pausing in the moment and asking yourself what you know this something happened and this is why i think it is pausing in the moment and thinking is there an alternate reason why this has happened is there an alternate potential outcome um one one thing i like to do so let's take the example of um uh you're driving down the road and somebody all of a sudden cuts you off right and many people have a negative reaction to that right right?

Once they get over the adrenaline rush of swerving out of the way or the near miss. And there are reactions typically are not all that friendly, whether it was yelling or gestures or speeding and catching up to the person at the next light, getting out of your car and hitting their window, like all that road rage stuff. Right.

 So let's stay away from that. Um, but asking yourself in the moment, what if that person that cut me off actually had positive intent? Right. What could have possibly happened that they would cut me off with positive intent right yeah so you know maybe they were avoiding a squirrel which you know okay but or maybe they were avoiding a child or their steering wheel stopped working i don't know right there's yeah sure so many potential opportunities or maybe it was just a dumb accident that they, they just cut you off and they didn't do it intentionally. Like I know I've cut, I've cut people off by accident without thinking about it. So right. We got to give people a break. Totally. Like I spent like my twenties, I was a little angry and most of my teens actually. Like I spent like my twenties, I was a little angry and most of my teens actually. Yeah. Most of us are at that age. Pretty angry. I was angry, angry at the world, you know?

 Um, and I, I think I remember like specific moments in my life where it was like all of a sudden the light turned on. It was like, I don't have to live this way. It's only affecting, it's only, the only person that it's impacting in a, in a negative way is me, you know, and I have a choice that I can decide to look at things like you can decide, you know, to look at things through that negative lens, or you can decide to look at things through sort of some rose colored glasses, if you will, you know, my company name is literally positivist group. So, you know, the being positive, it's actually not, it's the name that came from something else. But okay, the fact that it's named positivist, there's layers here, right? The it, you know, it makes me want to commit to constantly looking at things and giving people grace and make and not making assumptions right yeah you know that's funny because both of our company names have a sense of that so i often get asked well what is i noble like where'd you come up with that name?

That's a play on two meanings of noble. So noble being how can we do the right thing for people? Of course. And then the other part is noble as in no BS. Oh, okay. So there you go. So both of us, our companies, are really about trying to think of things from that positive perspective yes looking at the world not making it not assuming ill intent but assuming you know either neutral or positive intent right yeah yeah and when we were talking we when we had our like pre, you know, podcast conversation, it just struck me how impactful that mindset is. You know, the folks who I think really try, because it's hard, right? It's hard to maintain that mindset. But there's such a trickle down effect that it just like instantly shot into my brain. Like it affects literally everything in your organization. If you take that approach.

Absolutely. Right. It, it impacts, uh, well, I'll step back for a quick second and just say, it is natural for us to have negative thoughts that come into our head right away. So, you know, if you were late for this call, my mind might have immediately said, oh, you know, it's not going to happen. She doesn't like me. She doesn't care, et cetera. And that's natural. That's where our brains go. Yeah. What we need to do is step it up a little bit as individuals and say, okay, I've had those thoughts. Let's push that aside. Yes.

And start thinking about what could possibly happen, right? Maybe you're Zoom updated or Windows crashed across North America, right? Right? Like that just happened. Yeah. So that's all we have to do is push those things aside for a moment and start to think about what are some of those alternatives. When we can do that, we increase the trust that we have with other individuals that we work with. We increase the quality of communication by simply asking questions of people. And that's where that curiosity cure comes in is asking questions of people. So, Hey, I'm making this up, but Hey, you were, you were, you were late for our call today. That's not like you. What, what's going on. Right.

And then I about ABC and it's like, Oh, okay. But so it's, it's really about trying to shift that mindset and escaping the tragedy that our brain can easily, easily create. Yeah. I think just making sure that you're not impressing your own worldview on everything, like not that, you know, like how am I going to describe this, but just walking through the world with a sense that, you know, just what's coming into our minds isn't necessarily the truth. Right. So just trying to find, it's like the search for truth, essentially, you know, what is the truth? It's not my truth. It's not your truth. It's, you know, something in between the truth literally exists something in between everything. Right right and what that is it like exists in the gaps really yeah yeah exactly yeah and we want to make sure that we don't become the driver of what i call the bitter bus right oh yeah right that's you know i'm upset i'm cynical i don't believe in my co-workers my, everybody's out to get me. And, you know, it's too bad if an individual thinks that. But what they typically end up doing is start talking more, wasting lots of time and resources and energy.

So, I mean, I guess that begs the question, when does our optimistic, positive mindset turn into toxic positivity? Because we hear about that word a lot. It's just a buzzword. It's not like a, you know, a professional term or anything. Um, but what do you, what do you think about that? Do you think toxic positivity exists? We'll start there. Well, okay. So sure, sure it does. But is it prevalent? I don't know. I don't think so. To me, some visuals come to mind. When you talk about toxic positivity, I think of a doormat that everybody wipes their feet on or a big heavy wet blanket or somebody that's always saying yes to everything, even if they don't believe in it. So I don't think there's all that many people like that out there, but sure, there are some. Somebody can identify someone like that. But yeah. The way that I've heard it used is almost like an abusive term where it's it's more correlated almost with like gaslighting, if you know what I mean, where the leadership is like, no, fine. Like, you know, just be positive. Keep, you know, doing those 500 phone calls a day. And, you know, it's it.

Or are they hiding something from the front line? In both instances, you break that trust, which isn't a great thing for the organization, right? So, and I acknowledge there's things that the leadership team can't tell employees because they might be worried there'd be a mass exodus if they say some things, right? But yeah, there's an interesting stat that I saw recently that said the number of, what was it, the percentage of problems that a CEO or executive team knows about in an organization is something like 5%. The next level down, so mid-level managers know about 25% of the problems that are happening in an organization. The front line knows about 78% of the problems going on in an organization. So we need to make sure that we're listening all the way up and down and across the organization. Otherwise there's things that people just won't know. down and across the organization.

Otherwise there's things that people just won't know. Yeah. And okay. So obviously the way that you help your clients execute on strategy, that would be one of your recommendations, I assume is listening like the Gamble Walk kind of, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's really three core areas that I find, three intersecting ideas for an organization to have the momentum they need to be able to have sustainable results. And that's focusing in on both talent and execution and alignment in the organization. So for the talent, it's about having the right people, about developing those skills. It's about the culture of the organization, those sorts of things. On the same wavelength as to what our priorities, where are we going with that. Right. And we know in like practice, it doesn't like we, it sounds very neat and compartmentalized, but it kind of like, it's kind of like test, learn, test, learn, test, learn, test, learn.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is there such thing as like, the more information you have as a leader, the more difficult it becomes to make decisions a lot of the time, because there's more complexity in the decision making. And obviously, there's like a balance between, you know, we want and we need information to make good decisions, but is there such thing as too much information? Do you see people freeze? Yes, me. I'm a prime example of it. So I did an assessment recently, and I forget what assessment it is, but one of the characteristics is, are you a fact finder or not a fact finder? So there's some people that will make split second decisions based on just a gut feel. And there's other people that want to find out all the facts about it. This is something I have to personally manage is how much data do I need before I just make a decision. And so that's a challenge that a lot of leaders have is being able to make the decisions based on both intuition and analytics and finding that balance. And is that something that you typically coach people through? Is that like a coachable moment?

Yeah, it absolutely is a coachable moment, right? And especially as you move up in an organization, you're going to know less and less and less about the detail information and you need to rely on the people around you who should be smarter than you to be able to help you make that decision, right? So a lot of leaders make the mistake of trying to make decisions in isolation. They need to communicate with their teams yeah so leaders don't be alone is the message if you're that might be problematic don't be alone it's lonely yeah yeah well a lot of leaders are lonely it's always here right well absolutely right and think yeah think of the person at the top, the CEO, as one of the loneliest places to be in an organization. Yeah. And we know that, I think we've seen that CEOs or leaders who try to be friends with all their employees, it doesn't always go so well either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've said this to many aspiring managers who have been moving from a team member are now all of a sudden supervising or managing their team. And like, it's not the same relationship.

 It cannot be the same relationship you had before. You can still be friendly, but you're no longer best buddies at work because you're not the boss. at work because you're not the boss. Well, and, and, you know, you, you, there's a real temptation. I remember I succumbed to this early, early on when I first became a manager and it wasn't anything that was critical, but it didn't, it only took me a few minutes to realize, oh, I probably shouldn't have told that person that thing that I told them because they're my friend. You know, I've got another level of responsibility now that, you know, I need to keep things to myself. Like I need to figure out how to do that, you know, do that better. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to age myself here, but it's like the, uh, uh, the amazingly, I know the date, the 1984 Fabergé shampoo commercial, which was, hey, I love the shampoo. And I told a friend who told two friends who then told two friends who told two friends. Exactly. Right.

So you've just told your friends something and they're going to tell their buddy something in confidence. And actually, that can be a very useful tactic if you're looking to promote information somehow. Yeah. Or shampoo, right? Or shampoo. That's exactly it. Awesome. So what's next for you, Kevin Judge? What's next for me? Well, I'm, in terms of what I'm doing, I'm taking a little bit of time off for July. I'm going to try and slow down a little bit and take care of myself physically and mentally. But then big plans on the business side of things as I'm continuing to ramp up, speaking with organizations, going in and chatting with them specifically around, hey, what do you need to do in the last 90 days of the year to actually get those results that you, that you want to have. So looking forward to doing a number of executive power hours is what I love. Okay. So a little motivation, education, little discipline from Kevin judge. It sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Helping them to be as successful as they can be. And is there a specific message that you like to share or is it all individualized depending on the business?

 It's very tailored to individuals and to the company itself and what they're doing on. But I guess if I were to summarize it, it's about really be clear on what is it that your organization needs to do to achieve that success? What are those priorities? And then aligning both your people and money and equipment resources against those priorities and communicating. And that kind of comes down to the whole topic that we've had today. It's about communicating effectively with people. So everybody's on the same page and they're not making up stories in their head and going down the wrong path. Yeah.

Going down those rabbit holes, Alice's rabbit hole. One final question. How do we save the world just kidding can you imagine yeah right no but seriously like how do we get more people thinking about curiosity because i do think that's what um is is i don't know if we can save the world but you know what i mean like yeah get more people thinking about things yeah i you know what it it it i think the easiest thing that you can do that i can do that every individual listening to this podcast can do is just when you're in a moment can do is just when you're in a moment, one, have that sense of curiosity for yourself. But also, if there's somebody that is coachable around you to say, hey, hold on a second, I hear you, you're concerned about ABC. What would happen if you were to stop and think of this in this different way? What other possibilities could there be? Right.

So just to take a moment to coach somebody along to help them with it. Right. So I think that's probably the best, the best way that we could do that. Get people to start thinking differently. Excellent. Excellent advice.

 Thank you very much. You're welcome.

 Thanks very much for having me.

Yeah, it's my pleasure.

 Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

“You don’t need to be healthy to be worthy human being”

Fierce, hilariously honest, and an A-list advocate, Vinny Welsby is a fat activist and diversity, equity and inclusion leader. They are a world-leading expert on dismantling anti-fat bias and diet culture, a TEDx speaker, podcast host and best-selling author. 

Vinny is trans-non-binary and is dedicated to shifting how society views fat and queer bodies through education and compassion. 

Stay in touch with Vinny:

Instagram: @fierce.fatty https://www.instagram.com/fierce.fatty/

TikTok: @fiercefatty https://www.tiktok.com/@fiercefatty

Facebook: @fiercefatty https://www.facebook.com/fiercefatty/

Twitter: @fiercefatty_ https://twitter.com/fiercefatty_

Pinterest: @fiercefatty_ https://www.pinterest.ca/fiercefatty_/

YouTube: @fiercefatty https://www.youtube.com/fiercefatty

Email: fatty@fiercefatty.com

For more on Vinny and their services:

www.fiercefatty.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinnywelsby/

https://www.youtube.com/fiercefatty

Script:

 My first real job, the head boss called me Miss Piggy behind my back and to everyone for two years. I only learned of it after I left and a colleague finally came clean.

Almost daily during lunch, there was talk of eating, quote, healthy and statements that made me feel paranoid about what I ate in public.

There were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people. were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people one of the most memorable ones for me experiences was the time i cheered during a meeting and my boss responded with hey you burned a calorie no Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today.

And you know me, I'm your host, Erin Patchell. And today I'm here with Vinny Welsby. Welcome, Vinny.

Hello, hello, Erin. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk about fat stuff with you today. I am so excited to talk about fat stuff because, you know, very near and dear to my heart, literally and figuratively.

Yeah. Vinny is a fat activist, in case you didn't notice and a diversity equity and inclusion leader they are a world-leading expert on dismantling anti-fat bias in diet culture a TEDx speaker and I watched it it's fabulous podcast host and best-selling author then he is trans non-binary and is dedicated to shifting how society views fat and queer bodies through education and compassion i already love you so there you go thank you oh my gosh where do we even start um i was listening to your tedx and there was one moment i mean there's a few moments that stood out for sure and a surprise towards the end for anyone who's going to watch. I won't say anything more about that. I'll just leave the intrigue right there. But when you said you don't need to be healthy to be a worthy human being, that literally just brought so many tears to my eyes because it transcends everything it's not about being fat right it's about being a person and all the work that we've been doing lately at positivist group and at the train to help project um maybe we'll talk about that at some point i think people who've been listening kind of know a bit about it but um i i just want to just kind of lay that out because um you can be healthy and fat right but you don't have to be healthy what what are we what are we even talking about why are we bringing this you know why is this even a conversation in in this day and age so i just wanted to say when you shared that I it really really struck home with me yeah because I think like that that line of it's kind of the I don't want the right word for but that zinger or the like the full stop because um people like to say it's not okay to say it's okay to say that it's okay to be fat uh because uh fat people some fat people are unhealthy and some people will say all fat people are unhealthy well it that doesn't matter even if every single fat person is super super unhealthy it doesn't mean that they're a less worthy person and so where people go from there that's kind of like well okay well what can I say to that there's not that much you can say to that really apart from okay yeah you know but some people will say no if you are unhealthy then you're a terrible person or whatever but uh that's their stuff oh yeah I don't know let's let's back up a little bit because I feel like we're going I just I brought it really deep really fast so let's come for air um tell me about how in the world this became your focus uh yeah so it is out of out of necessity out of selfish desire of of uh needing this in my life most of my life

 i thought that fatness was uh the worst thing that i could be um and i would do everything i could to not be fat i thought that becoming smaller would change my life would make me more confident would make me more lovable would make me uh you know money rain down from the sky and have hunky celebrities calling me up asking for a date and um when i did temporarily become thin and it's most people's stories that they temporarily lose weight because diets don't work for the vast majority of people when i did temporarily become thin none of those things happened uh yes I experienced more privilege because I had a smaller body however the way that I viewed myself um wasn't changed and my abilities to do the things I wanted in life didn't change um and it was really really painful for me as it is for many people and then one day after many years of dealing with this stuff i saw a message on the internet this is about 10 years ago that said it's okay to be fat and i was like get the fuck out of here what do you what do you mean it's okay to be fat um this was so revolutionary for me i had never considered um that this was an option and i continued reading it was reagan chastain's blog dances with fat i remember exactly where i was sat in my bed with my then boyfriend who had told me that he was less attracted to me because i had a slightly bigger body um and turning around to telling him like did you know this did you know that fat people could be healthy and did you know that uh that you can accept yourself the way that you are and that fat people deserve like dignity and respect? And, you know, it was life changing.

From that moment onwards, everything shifted. And it's been my mission and it's been my life's calling since then to share that same message that you're worthy. You always were. You always will be. Having a bigger body does not mean that you're worthy you always were you always will be having a bigger body does not mean that you're less worthy wow oh I wish that I could internalize that message you know it's going to be a struggle for me to get through this conversation without crying I'm just going to let everyone out there know because like I've been a fat girl my entire life yeah I've been a fat girl and everything that comes along with that you know all of the social rejection that comes along with that like you can tell it's very hard for me to say this and you know it is it is so painful for so many people because we've been told what fatness means is abhorrent is disgusting is a failure and how is that not so painful it is it really is especially imagine being a child oh i'm sure that you know how this feels right yes oh it's just life fucking up stuff these these and all that is is anti-fat bias because those things aren't true it's not true that you're uh you know this terrible human or i am or anyone else who has a bigger body or anyone who has a body that's outside social norms it's just not true it's an opinion it's a dominant opinion um and the moment that we can start unlearning that bias that we have internalized we can be free and that freedom from anti-fat bias oh oh my goodness it's so fucking good honestly i gotta say it's it's really good it's so nice it. It's interesting because, like, you know, I watch you. You know, like, I watch you and I've seen your TED.

And, you know, I've been kind of following some of your social media stuff. And you do seem so free. And I feel like people think that I feel that way. You know? Like, I will go to the beach. Like we went skinny dipping at a resort, you know? Like, you know what I mean? Like there's like these things, like I'll do them and I will be unapologetic about it. But it doesn't mean that I act free, but I don't feel free. How do we go from, I mean, a lot of people don't even act free, you know, it's like fake it till you make it. I'm in that phase, I think. Yeah. What do you think that people around you are thinking when they see you skinny dimping or at the beach or whatever? Like, are you thinking about what they're thinking? I hope that they think that I don't care you know I hope that they think that like there is a person who is having fun you know and being herself and that's what I want that's what I believe that they are seeing um so it's not them it's not me thinking it's them it's really me like yeah so what's your brain saying then um in the in that moment I don't care you know it's in the other moments that um when I'm in the change room and something doesn't look the mirror is like you know it's like whoa that looks really bad or you know when you look at all the cute things that you would want to wear if I look at my daughters who are literally perfect um in the stereotypical sense of the word you know and you're just like thank god that they're perfect you know it's so much easier for them yeah yeah so you're it's that internalized like uh you saying oh I don't look right and my body's wrong or whatever it is that's coming up. But you're you're hoping that people outside are are saying good for her. You go you go and do your swim thing. And so it's.

Yeah, I have I have very optimistic ideas of what people think. Yeah. I live in a little optimism bubble. But you know what? I don't think that's a bad thing. No, no, I think so. So when I'm talking to people doing like one-on-one stuff, I'll ask them like these questions I was asking you because, because, because a lot of times people, it'll be people have different stages of, of, of unlearning anti-fat bias. A lot of times people will say, people are looking at me and saying that i'm disgusting and um then when you when you've worked on anti-fat bias stuff that will start to fade away and you'll have a more generous view of how people might be looking at you because you're also looking at other people with a generous lens when you're really really deep stuck in anti-fat bias you're thinking about other people being like, oh, gross that they are unattractive. And you're looking at yourself.

Oh, gross. I'm unattractive. Once you start unlearning anti-fat bias, you begin by looking at other people with love and compassion. And then the next stage is looking at yourself. So from what you've told me, it sounds like you've already done a lot of work on this stuff and you're taking action. So if anyone listening is kind of in a similar position or if they're thinking other things about other people, wherever you're at, it tells me that you've done so much. And also there is the possibility for that shift so that you can take that compassion you're giving to others and give it to yourself in those moments of like what in the changing room what would if i was stood next to you and i and you said oh i don't look good like what would i be saying i'm like what the heck you know i mean sometimes it's valid sometimes it's like oh you know what maybe that's not the right fit or whatever it is like color yeah yeah yeah yeah maybe that's not the right style for you like I think there's some validity to it do you think I would say you if you said oh I don't look good I'd say yeah that's valid I mean I hope if it were true you would say that I don't know because I wouldn't look at I wouldn't look at someone's body and say, oh, that's not right, or you don't look good. Like, it just wouldn't come. I couldn't, in my brain, I couldn't see it. So anyway, anyway. But this happens at work, and that's the thing. It's like, I strongly believe, and I have heard this story from other people just before you and I started chatting this story from other people just before you and I started chatting.

 I had a friend text me. I'm like, oh, you wouldn't believe, you know, what I'm doing next, like podcast with you. And we, you know, a lot of, it's funny how people who are overweight often attract other people who are overweight. And a lot of my friends are a little bit overweight, a little bit fat. And they're okay. You know, we're solid, like we are like confident fat ladies, and that's fine. But they were saying that they had a wicked story about a boss, they had lost 50 pounds in the workplace. And it was like wild, you know, how, how differently they were treated all of a sudden. It was very obvious. This is a real, this is actually, I think, a huge problem in the workplace. And I strongly believe that I was, I've been held back because of my weight, you know, and that's a problem because I'm smart. Like, you know, like everything else aside, the way I look aside, like I'm a hard worker and I'm smart and worker and I'm smart and diligent and I give a shit. And I think those qualities should far overweigh what I weigh, you know?

 Exactly. And I feel like a lot of people in bigger bodies, they're actually harder workers than people in smaller bodies because they have to prove themselves. So they're just working their fingers to the bone and being perceived as lazy because they have a bigger body which is which is really unfair and what's really driven this home for me is recently i have i've just completed it and i can send you a link to it um is a fat at work report did i tell you about this before oh no remind me yeah it's so i've done a survey with 336 people asking them about their experiences at work and these are all people in bigger bodies um and i've done an analysis and report from that survey and the the stuff that the stories that people have shared are horrific heartbreaking unbelievable when i say unbelievable 100 believable but still you're thinking how do people like this exist in the workplace it's so cruel right um so what we learned from this this report was that um the percentage of fat people that have um said that they've experienced anti-fat bias in the workplace is 95.65 percent oh wow yeah now that is gargantuan. It's just every fat person has had shit experiences in the workplace.

 And then if we put on top of that the marginalized identities, people who are over the age of 50, people who are racialized, people who are disabled and have a lower economic status they are all experiencing this anti-fat bias more more in their life and had have had feel like they've had a greater impact on their career so um this is this anti-fat bias in the workplace a lot of people say does it exist is this a thing not only does it exist but it's a huge thing it's a massive problem and no one's talking about it which is not literally no one's talking about it when I saw what you do I was like oh my gosh yes like we talk about diversity equity inclusion and accessibility and i think people with disabilities also it's not talked about enough so we're talking about that more as well but this is literally never talked about and first person i've ever heard talk about i know isn't it weird and the thing is fat people are the largest marginalized uh group in most societies so it's you know the statistics something like 68 percent of women are plus size so if we're thinking 68 percent of the workforce depending on the company um 68 percent of those people have experienced uh almost all of them have experienced anti-fat bias in the workplace and not just like a little bit these stories are egregious really really not cool wow yeah so what do you do i know that you're working hard obviously you're trying to enlighten people get the word out you know you're you're you're like becoming an influencer you are an influencer but i can see that you're like, you've, you're on a mission. Oh my goodness. Yeah. What do we do? What do we do? It's hard. It's really hard. You know? I don't know. What do we do? Go and have a nap or something. Watch some Netflix. Relax. But actually I ask people like, what, what do they need? What makes, what would make things easier?

 like what's the most essential things it's really really sad but this most like the beginning stuff is uh really basic human uh necessities like having access to a washroom that they can use um having a place to sit having um if they wear uniform clothes to wear so that's the first thing really basic really like basic stuff and so you know how have we not already got the these basics covered but that's the first thing is making sure that we've provided basic amenities if we're in the workplace um the next thing that we need to do is we need to gather data because um almost every single um workplace that asks demographic data will not ask about people's body size they have no clue how many fat employees they have unless it's for wellness initiatives or or for the insurance and then they're not using it as a demographic for for diversity reasons um and they don't know what the fat people's experiences are um and so we need to be asking this this question like what's your body size and if you feel comfortable sharing and how, how's your experience in the workplace?

 So once we've got that data, then we can provide training and start shifting attitudes. Um, and what I do is I start with the DEI team or company leaders because so often a lot of, uh, shit is coming from people's bosses um is uh let me do you want me to tell you some of these stories from like people's bosses yeah okay let me let me let me go let me go to the bosses section because i've so with the stories i've kind of um put them into different categories um so many bosses saying like terrible shit so uh an office manager once said to my face that she would rather die than be fat one of the most memorable ones for me experiences was the time i cheered during a meeting and my boss responded with hey you burned a calorie no um i once worked for a men's health organization and i was told i needed to be smaller from the executive director to reflect men's health i am a woman it made me feel terrible most of the discomfort i experienced at work was pressure to diet and to keep weight off almost daily during lunch there was talk of eating quote healthy and statements that made me feel paranoid about what i ate in public there were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people um this one person my first real job the head boss called me miss piggy behind my back and to everyone for two years i only learned of it after i left and a colleague finally came clean um yeah so the stories go on and on and on uh about you know food shaming and commenting on people's bodies and on an employee's bodies it's just fucked up it is it's totally fucked up um what do you think people are specifically afraid of like these bosses in particular like what is it that they're so afraid of fat bodies um i think it comes down to, are they a lovable, worthy, worthy human? Because if they're not maintaining a smaller body, then they are out of control and they are bad and they are not lovable.

 They are, they are to be rejected from society. Because of all of this anti-fat bias we've internalized we see fatness as this almost death sentence so why wouldn't they be terrified of being fat or becoming bigger it makes total sense and because everyone else not everyone but most people also have that same fear of being fat or being fatter, that we all bond on this communal shame of, oh, I'm being naughty. I shouldn't eat this like sliver of cake. And, oh, I had a bad weekend eating this or I should really lose weight or whatever. That really is for many people very bonding because we all have those same fears so yeah it's a very very normal part of our culture as we all know and what can we if you're a leader if you're a leader listening to this you know and you want to be more inclusive um so Vinny what would you say to the leaders listening to this who do want to be more inclusive?

How do they like notice those moments and change the script? Yeah, it's hard because so many people, it's so normalized in workplaces, right? So this really is about a culture shift within organizations. So we spoke about those like those basic things like basic amenities um asking questions and training but the um the big thing is is making a culture shift and how we do that is complicated but putting in um policies to protect people with with bigger bodies um so within your hr um within your dei policies mentioning that size is a protected class um size is a protected class in a number of locations in the us um it will be coming to a city a state a province near you this is going to happen so you you should get on the the front end of this making so making in your statement your diversity statement we protect people um due to their size and so you would say height and weight um realizing that i don't think we have done that on a positive histogram so i'm just gonna go because you don't you don't think about it yeah no you don't think about it um you could also just say uh due to uh the way that your body looks when someone's body looked if you don't want to mention height or weight um we also want to make in uh the same way that we have policies protecting those protected groups like what would you do if your colleague came in and started saying oh i hate i hate people with adhd i'm someone with adhd oh people are adhd blah blah whatever they were saying ableist stuff there would be a plan that hr has in place to deal with that type of behavior is if someone's being a bigot in the office yeah we don't just let it fly well i said we don't let it fly a lot of places do um and so we don't let anti-fat bias fly we don't let diet talk fly um that's not who we are as an organization culturally that's not our values we're an inclusive organization if that's who you are so um that has to be a learning process people overnight are not going to understand if you just say hey everyone we're changing the rules you're not allowed to talk about um diets and and hating your body people are going to be like what the fuck um this is really strange and why not and also we don't and um they won't know that the stuff that they're saying is really harmful and based in bias. So there needs to be education.

So I wish that there was a simple kind of, oh, just do this, like put something at the bottom of your email signature or something. But it's a cultural shift and changing norms in the in the organization right but it can start with the particular leader so like as an individual you have the autonomy to change the way that you do things yeah yeah for any person yeah call something out or call something in however we're saying that yeah yeah yeah yeah so you could be saying like hey by the way uh in our team we have a uh no body talk um policy and uh talking to you know if someone says something like hey by the way we don't talk about bodies in that way la la la um so you could definitely within your team have that but unfortunately you wouldn't be theoretically backed up by policy within the organization unless that's changed right it would be a microculture that yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what i would do like if i if uh if i had a team a team and i worked in an organization and someone started talking about this stuff i would take them aside and very gently call them in um yeah and um and then influence upward i suppose you know yes it's not already company policy yeah that's what exactly what happens is when i go into organizations um it's because a fat person has influenced upwards and said we need this now right and it's happened because the straight size people in the organization will say it's not a big deal. And the fat, the fat leader will say it is a big deal.

 I know because I've lived it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that doesn't necessarily change how we perceive ourselves, but it helps, you know, so it doesn't absolve us as a like if you're a fat person like I am, you know, out know out there you know it doesn't absolve us for doing that work ourselves either because i don't know if you recognize that quote i think i sent you an email with a little quote in it it's from the dao of steve and they're talking about like how he won't date thin people or something yeah i looked it up i hadn't recognized that i looked it up and i was like what is this what is going on i love that movie and he says um i'm the worst kind of fattest i'm a fat fattest and i always feel that way too sometimes i'm like so it certainly doesn't absolve me from um the work that i need to do to detangle my own biases yeah yeah because we will we will cause harm we'll always no matter what we'll always call cause harm and so um it's a lot easier to advocate for this work and do this work um in organizations if you deeply believe that all fat people including yourself deserve um everything in the world and are wonderful humans. And, you know, you've got rid of that bias. It's harder to advocate when you're agreeing with the oppressor and you're like, oh, I'm kind of disgusting. So it just makes things easier if you think that you're right in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

And I think people should feel confident to just live their lives without judgment you know and be able to do what they want to do and be who they want to be i mean you know i think that would be a beautiful world to live in oh wouldn't it oh and i i know when i was in really in in anti in diet culture and anti-fatness i couldn't imagine that that being a reality because everyone speaks about this stuff you know hating themselves and diets and how can they get thin and um but i want to let people know that it is a reality to um maybe not for everyone because of different dynamics and stuff but it is a reality that there are people out there who are not going to be judgmental towards your body, that you can create relationships and community with people who are, who are like-minded, who are fierce fatties and who will call you out. If you try and talk shit about yourself. And luckily after, you know, 10 years of therapy and all that type of stuff that's where i'm at in my life and it's i'm almost like this is unbelievable it's very strange and so wonderful and it really supports my mental health because here's the thing is you can't stop doing this work um we are bombarded by anti-fat stuff all the time going like go and watch you know a tv show bikini babes on the beach dating show immediately your brain's like oh maybe i should be a bikini babe and maybe i should be younger and maybe i should be thinner maybe i should get botox and maybe i should targeted advertising now on the media and everything constant it's constant so it's a constant kind of balancing of yeah i want to watch bikini babes on the media and everything constant it's constant so it's a constant kind of balancing of yeah i want to watch bikini babes on the beach show because it's i love trashy tv but you know i want to protect my mental health and how can i do both and can i do both and yeah well we have a lot of work to do yeah and that's the thing is i i i teach both sides right i teach help individuals and organizations because you it's really hard to do one without the other yeah and we're going to post you know every possible way that people can get a hold of you vinny in the show notes so folks out there um i know that you do have education that you do public education so people can like buy a ticket to a class um you know, and you do obviously corporate education as well. So if there are corporations out there looking for this type of support, you know, you are fabulous. And I can only imagine how good you must be in a small group.

So, yeah. Well, I think, well, I think I, yes. i yes thank you i'm just gonna take the compliment i was like not everyone likes me god erin no but everyone come on thank you yeah and um the uh the report that i was i was quoting from and talking about it's uh 58 pages of juicy stuff and so um i've got it i've got a link for people to download it amazing amazing yes i cannot wait to look at that that sounds so interesting it is i've been nerding out about it okay when did that was when was that released it hasn't Oh, it's brand new. It's, uh, I'm wait, I've, I've, I've just finished it like last week and I'm like, when should I release this? But everything's live. So people can get, can get, I just haven't shared the link with anyone. So I can, you know, obviously share it with you. And, um, it's amazing. Yes. I can't wait. Hot off those presses.

 If there were presses. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and chatting with me Vinny it's been a pleasure thank you Erin thanks for uh talking about fat stuff with me I really appreciate it oh yeah no it's it's been good we I need to talk about this more I think it's one of those things where it's like you need to shine a light on the dark areas of your life and have you know brought you shame and then that's how you dark areas of your life and have, you know, brought you shame. And then that's how you get out of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's a quote from a controversial vigor, Brené Brown, but I like the quote, shame cannot survive the light. Oh yeah. Perfect. Yep. Yeah. So shine some light on that shame. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

 Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble!

Intro:

The coach may not play the game, but the coach inspires and motivates the players to play the best game possible! Join our discussion with leadership coach and entrepeneur Garen Jemian on how to implement a successful coaching culture in your workplace to inspire your employees. 

Stay in touch: 

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/garenjemian

Website:

https://www.inspireship.com/

Script:

To put on the coach's mindset is to let the other person have the dopamine hit.

You need to have more influence so you can share this with the world.

It takes a lot of time and energy and prioritization to do something that's a long game rather than a short game.

Coaching is where one person focuses their time and energy and presence on helping another one achieve their outcomes.

Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. And I'm so happy right now to be joined by my very good friend, Garen Jemian, who I feel like I haven't seen your face for months because you've been MIA. You've been working. What's that about? Garen, continue. What were you going to say? Nothing. continue what were you gonna say nothing nothing um garen is a phenomenal leadership coach highly experienced working with all different sectors public and private sector he's a favorite in the public sector in the government of canada you know where he's doing some pretty amazing work uh that i wish you know we could we could talk about but apparently we're not allowed to talk about some things. So it's top secret. And what else do I need to say about you? You're the author of Happy People Work Harder. You are the founder of Inspireship, which is a coaching and consulting firm in Montreal. And you're just an awesome person. Hi, Garen.

 I'm going to hire you for my intros forever. Okay, good. From now on. Consider it done. That's so amazing. And yet, you're the one wearing a shirt that actually is so inspiring that impacts society and people. We're trained to help. um i know we're going to talk about something today and i i kind of wish we were talking about your project instead but i'll pass that over to you well you're just going to have to start a podcast then so that i can come on your podcast and talk about it we have one it's called inspire talk it's an open podcast where we actually have um participants interacting with the dialogue. So it's kind of we'll definitely have you on board in the next couple of months. Oh, I am totally there. You know, I'm there with bells on. I will literally bring bells and a cowboy hat. So we are talking today about building a coaching culture. And I know in the last conversation that we had in the last season, because this is the second time now that you've been on the podcast, I know we touched on it just a little bit. But this is something that's so important to both of us.

 So I think it's awesome that we're going to give it a lot of attention. I'd love to just start by like, what is your definition of a coaching culture and tell me about one or two of the challenges or the opportunities that you see here that you've worked within in terms of the businesses you've worked for can i start by telling you how i discovered the concept and and we just go there because as you were talking i'm like how did i get into this mess so i used to i used to uh own and operate a nightclub in downtown montreal and that's as far as i'll go in talking about that but um some peers in the industry and i would have this uh this competition of who could be the best boss ever and so we're a bunch of nightclub owners and we get together and we shoot the breeze and we're like, you know, who's more liked? Who's more effective and all that stuff. And we're just trying to be the best boss ever. And these are some pretty renowned business owners in Montreal.

And so I went on this quest and I tried everything. And mostly I was trying to be the most liked, the nicest person, the most generous, the most flexible, the most understanding. the most generous, the most flexible, the most understanding. And the problem is we weren't getting out. My turnover was still high. My turnover was so high when I would just meet people. I wouldn't even want to get to know them because they'd be gone in less than a month. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? And of course, inherently the industry has high turnover, but it just wasn't good enough for me. So eventually, I went to university, studied coaching, came out, and I kind of saw something there that I didn't figure out as a leader. And so I kind of felt like I was always coaching, but I didn't know what I was doing or why.

So I went to study the methodology and understanding what it actually meant so that's kind of what got me started and so i ended up selling my shares i i start getting into coaching and i start working with some organizations and every leader starts asking me the same question which is how do i motivate people yeah i was like how do you motivate people so then i go on this next quest of how you motivate people and and the book came out so very soon after I realized that we need to be teaching coaching competencies and coaching mindset to every leader in every organization in our country ASAP yes and I'd like to make a distinction there's a coaching mindset and there's coaching competencies. You don't need to be a coach to have a coach's mindset. Correct. Yes. Right.

The being of the coach is completely different from, you know, getting two, three thousand hours and becoming a masterful coach. You can just have the coach's mindset. Yeah. And so that's tough enough, though. It's huge. That's pretty tough. It's a coach's mindset. There you go. Done. pretty tough. It's the coach's mindset. There you go. Done. It is. It is. And so I believe that if you can equip all your leaders with some of those competencies of getting out of the way, believing in the best of everyone within your team, understanding how people interact, how people behave, how the psychological impacts of humans in the workplace, understanding how you can set better objectives that intrinsically motivate employees to get them growing in a direction of desirability and truly understanding how to maximize your team's potential. Imagine what an impact that does.

 And we tend to think that it's for the employees. It's not. I'm here to tell you my job is to help my clients and my clients are the leaders. When we teach this stuff, it's to help life better for the leaders. Imagine if you had to work less hard, you can empower people. They became more autonomous, more creative, more accountable. You'd have to put in probably a bit less work. You could delegate better. What else? Hang on. You can trust people more. Yeah. Imagine you could be less reactive and more strategic more often. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of promises, but I've been working in this space for almost 10 years now.

And I can tell you, it's not. It's not magic, but it's also not like woo woo. It's not, you know, this is like real, real shit. It is, but it takes a lot of time and energy and prioritization to do something that's a long game rather than a short game. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to do that. Oh yeah. And you have to let go of game. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to do that. Oh yeah. And you have to let go of control. Well, I like that. I like being a little out of control. Yeah. Not, not when you have like really stringy, stingy KPIs and you gotta deliver results and you have to find the balance between delivering results and being hands off. Yeah, for sure.

Yep. You have to find the balance between delivering results and being hands-off. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But there's also like the middle path, which is the coaching. You know, it's not like it's those two. Those are the two spectrums, right? There's a third way, and that is the coaching culture. Yeah. Yeah. So how would you define the coaching culture then? Let's go there. Other than obviously the skills of the coach, how does that reflect amongst the team? I'm going to, I'm going to Kung Fu this one and ask you, how do we define the word culture?

Oh yeah. How do I define the word culture? Well, I mean, it's, it's the sum of all of the artifacts, behaviors, you know, desires, motivations, skills, intentions, you know, of a group of people. And we're going to get into this later, though, and it doesn't have to be the whole organization. That. Yeah. I know I'm supposed to be doing a lot of the talking but i haven't with culture i have more questions than answers and the one thing i say is like whenever i hear people talking about how we change culture and it's like it's just like it's so methodical i call bs totally i call bs and i get paid for this stuff and i show up and the first thing i say is it it's it's so hyper complex at best we're trying to solve for this yeah and then hopefully if and the first thing i say is it it's it's so hyper complex at best we're trying to solve for this yeah and then hopefully if you solve for a lot of things you look at something as a whole consistency consistently and say i like this right yeah and i should have mentioned also like systems processes governance like that's all wrapped into it as well yeah of course and each one takes what an aeon to solve for so um so how do we define culture how we work and how we behave and interact with each other okay yeah if you want to keep it simple sure uh yeah i mean no no i mean definitely i i feel that it's something more than that though too right it's like the energy of a place um it's what it feels like how do you measure the energy um I mean you can only mention measure it through the feelings of the people that are on the team yeah and the problem is that people have lives so depending on what's going on in their lives you can have the best culture and if someone's just not feeling it because something really wrong happened at home that morning, that'll impact culture.

So it's like it's the employees and their families and the environment and the country and the world all impacting this in this infinite matrix. Yeah. And so how do we define the coaching culture then? What is unique about something that we would call a coaching culture i would start by defining what coaching is okay and i and you know me erin i'm like i like things so simple so simple so if i were to like hyper simplify this and bring it down to the common denominator i'd say coaching is where one person focuses their time and energy and presence on helping another one achieve their outcomes okay yeah i like to simplify that way right um and so a coaching culture and i think achieving that person's outcomes needs to be like emphasized. So it's not like your agenda. It's their agenda. Ideally. Yeah. Ideally.

 Organizations do set objectives and expectations. So sometimes the leaders have to set the objectives, but at least we give the leeway to the employee to select how. Exactly. If they can't choose the what, at least let them choose the how and give them the time and space to figure out what's best for them um so coaching for me is that coaching is also um it's about believing in other people's potentials it's about stepping out of the way it's about relinquishing your ego as a leader. It's about putting the spotlight on someone else. It's about trust. Yeah, all that stuff. So a coaching culture for me would be, what if all the leaders within an organization kind of ran with that MO? Yeah. We always talk about like putting the hat on right we have the coach hat as a manager you may have a coach hat you have a leader hat you have a boss hat sometimes right how does the coaching culture kind of integrate these different personas that you might have as a manager or a leader, do you think? Or can it? I would start with, yeah. So I'm just going to dig into some of my material in my brain.

 So we'll do two things. One, we'll start with, we'll do three things. One, start defining what leadership is and building some self-awareness. Then we'll dig into the hats. So then you've got the manager the leader the mentor yeah the coach and most people think that if you'll ask you you leaders out there you're listening to this and i want you to think on a scale of one to ten how much of a coach are you and you're going to give yourself a score but what i've learned is most leaders who think that they've got a coaching stall or actually have a mentoring style yes and there's a distinction there mentoring versus coaching i don't know if we should dig into this now but once you've got that aside then you can dig into something else like leadership styles yeah and if if you if you subscribe to goldman six coaching is one of the leadership styles which whatever um so you've got what you've got the visionary the pace setter you've got the affiliative democratic um you've got the this is from daniel gulman interesting you've got the coaching so it's innovative in there command and control okay so the boss interesting yeah so something happens is by creating the distinctions of, you know, what style of leadership comes out with you by default and then which hats you're putting on and when and why.

Now the leaders are starting to understand what coaching is and isn't and what everything else is. And they start seeing the distribution or at least the, you know, how often they choose what style and why. Right. often they choose what style and why. Right. And then we'll go into realizing that a lot of people in stressful situations will tend to gravitate towards the command and control style. And then I'll ask them, why do you think that is? And it turns out that command and control is so effective that when it's time and you pull out, you know, your biceps and say, do as I tell you because I said so, and you really pull out your authority, it's very effective, especially during times of crisis. And then as the leader, you're like, that worked. And it was really easy. And so it's easy to fall into the trap of going into command and control because of how effective it was the first time and the second time.

It's just eventually that edge blunts and you start losing your people. And so we need to get them to realize that command and control is good during certain times of crisis when time crunch is happening. But you got to kind of spread it out. You can use it perhaps maybe 5, 10% of the time, but then the rest of the time you might want to lay off, lay off the trigger a little bit. Well, and it strikes me that if your people are constantly coming to you for guidance and they can't make their own decisions and they don't know, you know, how to influence upward, right? Like how to help you make decisions. And you have to, you feel like you have to use that command and control. You might just be living in survival mode a little too much as a company. If it's the situation, that's just a downward spiral to burnout. I mean, go down that path. So if your employees keep coming to you for, with their questions, why are they, why is this happening? Why do you have to be the number one decision maker in the company? Have you set it up like that? Maybe that, and, and, and someone gave it away to me.

Uh, recently we were talking about, um, just coaching in my own personal coaching development. We were trying to figure out the posture of the coach. What's our role, you know, and why a coach shouldn't give the answer, but always struggles not to write. Like you want to give the answer to something. And it turns out that he or she who finds the answer first gets the dopamine hit. Oh, interesting. You feel good about yourself because you solve the problem. Oh, interesting. You feel good about yourself because you solved the problem. And to put on the coach's mindset is to let the other person have the dopamine hit. Yeah. You don't need to be the hero. I actually, when I did my coaching program, I think that was the most transformative thing for me. And I know we, you and I have talked about this once or twice before. But it was knowing that I didn't have to be that person anymore. I didn't have to shoulder that load because for me it was, it's exhausting, right?

It's exhausting having to make the decisions. It's exhausting having to be the one who, you know, has to know the answers to everything. Like, yes, maybe there is a dopamine hit, but it's countered by that the energy expenditure how much energy it takes so um for me the most transformative thing was knowing that i didn't have to have all the answers all i had to do is ask the right questions and and it was the word have to yeah as a coach and but if if you're a manager do you feel like you have to or there's a part of you that feels validated when you when you can and so you want to because if you don't have the answer man let me check it out and leaders define their value yeah by their by their expertise so you'll get promoted to team lead why because you're the best at what you do and the team gets promoted to manager why usually because of their competence their their hard skills not because of their leadership competencies not because of their soft skills but because of their hard skills so they're graded by how good they are at their job and now all of a sudden you're at management level or director level and honestly, sometimes at VP level and sometimes at C-suite level where they're still measuring their worth by their competence. Yeah. And it's not.

Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Very similar. You got to level up. You got to let go of the fact that you have to be great at something, especially in tech, when you always have to be up to speed with the newest tech that's coming out. And oftentimes I'll get leaders being promoted to the director level and beyond in tech. And they're told to let go of the continuous learning and focus more on leadership and management. And they're saying, well, once I stop learning, I become irrelevant. Right. So your identity, actually, your whole identity has to change. Right. So if I'm, yeah, if I'm like, you know, my entire career to date, I have been validated, I've been promoted, and I've been, you know, I've been, I've been given accolades for being a technical expert. Now, you're telling me that I'm going to be measured by a whole different set of criteria. Like, that's crazy to me. That's such a crazy shift. Can you tell me about one of the companies that you work with, obviously don't mention any names necessarily, but that you've supported through this transition? Yeah. And that's what I love and hate about what it is that we do. I'm like the most private public figure as in the work I do is, um, I get to work with so many people, but I can't really announce any of the things that I do. So there's not, there's very little documentation.

Uh, so listeners and watchers out there, you're just going to have to trust me, but don't whatever. so having said that, I know all the details. Yeah. So, so, so repeat that question with regards to one of my clients. We're talking about the coaching culture. Yeah. How did you help them navigate or, you know, maybe they're navigating because this is not like a one-time deal, right? This is the process between, you know, that technical mindset to that leader mindset that we're talking about and creating the coaching culture through the process. Tell me a story. Once upon a time. Yeah. So I'll preface it with this. Sometimes we build a coaching culture intentionally, transparently, and very tactically. And sometimes I do it inconspicuously. As in, on this side of the spectrum, you've got full buy-in from the CEO all the way down. And the entire organization is going to get a crash course. Like we're talking like super crash course, like nine hours, maybe 12 of like coaching, training and, and, and workshopping over, let's say a two month period. And everyone's kind of speaking the same language. And then from there we'll, we'll use the 70, 20, 10 models. So training workshops.

 And then after that, we go to level two, which is group coaching, right? Having mastermind chats of challenges that they might be having. And lastly, individual support. So how do we make sure each person gets to where they need to be? That's on the super fun, amazing side of what we do because you can create an entire program and bring in experienced coaches and mentors guiding these leaders through the process okay but you don't have to be that intentional and invest that much i mean you should but whatever i think you should yeah of course you should uh but you don't have to to still get some of the benefits for instance let's see you're a small company you've got 20 leaders and you decide to provide leadership coaching to each of the 20 leaders without even having the training and the development stuff but they're just going through individual coaching well to be coached is a huge transformational experience yes and as you're being coached, you sort of, it kind of, you, you sponge up some of what's going on. You start not, I won't say imitating, but emulating what the coach is doing with you to then using those same questioning and presence and active listening and all that stuff. You automatically start doing it with someone else without knowing it.

Yeah, that's true. all that stuff, you automatically start doing it with someone else without knowing it. Yeah, that's true. So that's kind of where I say it's like, however you want to attack the coaching culture piece, as soon as you start introducing external resources, coaches or facilitators or both, you start having those positive impacts. Yeah. And I would caveat that these are ICF certified coaches or coaches following ICF competencies, the International Coach Federation competencies, because there's lots of people who call themselves coaches out there that don't really follow the same methodology or frameworks.

So I think it's, you know, it's not the same kind of leadership that you're going to get from other types of coaches in terms of leading by example. That's the sad thing. Yeah. I believe in coaching so much. I mean, it's what I do. Yeah. But even calling myself a coach, I will do it so sparingly. Yeah, me too. It's kind of like rather than saying I am a coach, I'll say I use coaching as one of my skill sets to achieve the outcome. 100%. Yes. Right. Yeah. And I use that to help differentiate myself just a little bit, just to say that it's not my only focus. Yeah. It's kind of the mindset is there for sure. Yep. But that coaching, when you wear that coaching hat, you know that you're following those ICF competencies. A hundred percent. Yes. A hundred percent. The client doesn't know it, you know that you're following those ICF competencies. A hundred percent. Yes. A hundred percent. The client doesn't know it, you know it. Well, and you can sometimes, if, you know, sometimes I will say, I'm going to put my coaching hat on here, you know, it depends on what they've come to me for. Sometimes they come to me for coaching. So they're expecting more coaching than anything else.

Other times they're, you know, they're going to come to me for advisory services, um, or mentorship. And then, you know, sometimes I will just throw on my couching hat every now and then, you know, um, so ICF quiz for you there, which one of the competencies do we need to, to introduce right off the get go to make sure that we're all on the same page? Uh, building a contract. Yeah yeah so setting clear agreements yeah let's coaching what it isn't which hats i can use how these sessions are gonna go um way to go garen what yeah quiz being icf you know absolutely so so if they don't know what coaching is how do you how do you it's like kind of like giving them a card telling them how everything works totally yeah and sometimes my client will come and be like i don't need coach garren today i was like okay yeah i'm like okay which which coach do you know which which version of me do you need they're like i need mentor friend and uh and boss i need the boss sometimes they're just like i just need you to listen to me because i just i just need to let something off my chest today. Totally. Yeah. And that's the agreement. I'm like, fine. So for that moment, I'll just use some of the ICF competencies, which is intimacy, trust, full presence, caring and scrap everything else. And I'll just be there. And if there's an opportunity to coach, I will. And if, and if the person doesn't want or need to be coached that day, then I'll always serve my client before I serve anything else. Yeah.

And that's what being a coach really is. That's what following the ICF coaching competencies and the coaching philosophy really is, you know? So at the end of the day, it's extremely client focused or customer focused or, you know, whatever you want to call it. It's like leadership 101. Person focused. Give a give a hoot give a hoot we can say shit on this podcast can we but nothing worse than that when i'm when i meet with people and i'm like it's like a leadership um intro class i'll be like, hmm. Just like the first slide will just be like, give a shit. Yeah. If you don't care about people, just be a manager and just try not to manage people. Just be like a one-person manager managing processes and systems. Okay, yes. Okay, yes, exactly. Don't be a people manager. I was going to say, if you're managing people, you have to care. You have to care about them. I'm sorry. Okay. Yes, exactly.

 Don't be a people manager. I was going to say like, if you're managing people, you have to care. Like you have to care about them. I'm sorry. Okay. And do you think we live in a society where a hundred percent of managers care about people? No, I mean, no, but they ought to. Yeah, they ought to. That's why it's the public service announcement. If you don't care, leave. Well, it was, I think it was Margaret Van Amelsvoort, who's a, one of the, one of our amazing coaches and mentors who I worked with in a previous role. And she's from the government of Canada, or was before she retired. And she's the one who told me that people managers should be spending 50% of their time managing people. And I was like, okay. And I, you know what, I started using that in conversations because I was in business development. And I thought this was like, you know, management slash leadership 101, that you should be spending a lot of time, the majority of, or at least half of your time, actually actively managing, supporting, serving, guiding, teaching, mentoring your people, right? Directing sometimes, whatever, all of those things. And I was shocked to hear that that was actually like almost universally untrue in the people that I spoke with. Right. And what do we call those? I call them, I'm so mean. I do it with a smile. So I'll talk to leaders who are just like very hands-on. Yeah. And, you know, they're having like a bilat, like one-on-one, like once a month or every two months. And I said, yeah, yeah.

 Oh, yeah. There are some that have like four know or one-on-ones a year anyway i say and then i i talked to him about how they got promoted and how competency becomes key and how trust and all that stuff happens yada yada but i say is it not possible that you're just a truly high functioning individual contributor that has more responsibilities than others totally and they're like fuck i think that's it yeah and it happens a lot so building a coaching culture is getting them to think differently it's the horizontal versus vertical development isn't it so what you know versus how you think so context versus skill yeah for sure yeah context and that's the thing it's like context the vertical development can only be achieved through um through gaining knowledge and in the systems like so the system systemic knowledge and your systemic knowledge can only be gained really through people you know um It's the best way to learn. It's the best way to learn, build context within an organization.

I know there are certain companies now, it's kind of a movement, I think, out of the IT sector in the United States, where they're starting to build talent management ecosystems where the specialist can make as much money as a manager, like a technical expert can make as much money as a manager without having to be a manager. So it used to be like, if you wanted to break the glass ceiling or whatever, in terms of, you know, your, your compensation, you would have to become a manager. That's starting to no longer be the case now, which is really smart. Do you feel that there's going to be um a decline in people wanting to go into management i would assume so yeah i think there are a lot of people that just don't want to be managers but they want to make more money for sure and you and you ask those people like why are you doing this and if you dig enough money money money's there, but you're like, okay, so you've gone into a leadership role. You, you don't feel like you have natural leadership competencies. You don't feel like you have natural leadership traits, skills, and all of those characteristics, but it comes with the money. from the very core into becoming a leader, the organizations kind of like, you know, sponsoring this, like we believe in this person. I'm like, dude, you're so far from where you want to be. Why do you want to do this? And eventually they're like, I just wish I can just focus on like, and they're very like technically skilled people. Like, why are you doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So can we, can we even, is it, is it worthless to try to create a coaching culture or to transform someone from a technical expert to like a real leader without desire? Is that even remotely possible without desire, without desire? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So a little plug here. So my A7 model. Right.

So I follow literally seven words with that start with the letter A. And it used to be A5 for the record, right? Oh yeah, it's A7. I had to add the seventh one, the seven, because I had, I'll get to it. So the first one was awareness, which, and they're all interchangeable, of course, but awareness, I now know. But attitude, that's the second piece. And attitude could be like our positioning our posture but also our desire so if if you learn something like aka 99.99 percent of horrible bosses don't know it zero percent of people come to me like garen help i suck said no one right and those who need it the most want it the least. I'll say that again. If anyone's listening, those who need coaching the most want it the least. For sure. If you want to know who needs coaching, watch anyone who's resisting or turning their backs to it. Almost every leader who comes to me to get coaching for their team.

And I'm like, are you taking coaching? No, I don't need it right i'll bet you what your red flag which percentage of your clients that like keep wanting more and more and more and you're like dude i wish you were my leader like like you don't need more coaching they're like i want to be better i was like i love you no we need to get you a more important job then you need to have more influence so you can share this with the world yeah exactly that yeah yeah i lost your first question hang on i think my question that you didn't answer from like 30 minutes ago was to give me an example of a company that you worked with okay so um the best example that i'll tell you is you go into an organization and from the very top, you get the buy-in. From the very top, you've got, and this happened more than once, in different sectors where, you know, one or more member of the C-suite shows up before I talk and they do the intro. 

And they tell you why coaching is so important and they tell you how coaching changed their lives and they tell you how coaching helped them get to the c-suite and then they're like and ladies and gentlemen garen i was like sweet that's the best intro ever and we're talking like sometimes multinationals sometimes you know billion dollar corporations and that guy's introducing coaching and you're like, maybe I shouldn't have worn the Hawaiian shirt today. But that's the idea. So you get the full buy in. And just with that, you ask me the sorry and the part I'm going to connect it with. You ask me if if there's no desire, can you get it? Oh, yeah. And the second in a7 is the attitude well when you get your bosses bosses bosses bosses boss who runs the company come up and telling you who you know your manager and the c-suites coming up to you and saying this is important how do you think that impacts your awareness and your attitude oh yeah you sit up you look around you pay attention and yeah their endorsements everything yeah so the ceo or the c-suite showed up and and told you this is important yeah they literally start sitting more straight in their chairs their computers get closed their phones are tucked away they grab their pens they take the caps off their body language changes for the duration of the program so you know it's like it's not even just building a coaching culture i think you're talking about culture period when it's endorsed from the very top yeah everyone follows but if it's a do as i say not as i do as i yeah do as i say not as i do, as I, yeah, do as I say, not as I do, all of a sudden our message becomes not as important because the big boss ain't doing it. Yeah. So what do we do in a case where the boss kind of sucks and won't endorse, you know, they won't endorse it.

The CEO, the top person won't endorse something that you believe is really important in culture changing. Yeah. Are you asking me how my sales pitches go i mean if you want to go there i i i'm i'm so brutal like i wouldn't hire me but they weren't going to hire me anyways so i'll just call out what i see in the moment right yeah i'll literally call them out i'll say you're a do as i say not as i do kind of guy you don't want this for yourself you're asking me what i can do for your organization i kind of feel like it's like going to a dentist and saying what can you do for me like you don't do that right and i'll never go into a meeting selling code you've seen me aaron i don't sell you don't want it i don't care why would i want to sell something to. You don't want it. I don't care. Why would I want to sell something to someone who doesn't want it? Yeah. Why? Trust me. It ain't for the money. There's nothing worse than showing up and having to earn your keep for something someone doesn't want. So even if you're charging almost nothing, they still won't see the value in it. Of course. Yeah.

 So so so that's how my sales pitches go what if you were talking to like a director who really wanted it you know so they really want it they have a budget but they know that their ceo is never gonna come down and talk you know like you know they're they know that the ceo won't endorse it or whatever um but they will. And they're passionate about it. How do you feel about that? That happens at least, I want to say 50% of the time. Yeah. And what I say to that is, it's the ripple effect. If you can infiltrate an organization with one department, that's the subculture piece. What if we can make this department kick ass so much that the entire organization looks and says, what are they doing? Right. So I, I like that one. It's kind of like, um, like, like infiltrating. It's very tactical. I'm like, watch us transform this department.

Watch us transform this team. Watch us transform the leadership within this team and If you can if you can get enough of buying and the results that you're looking for there You know within the organization. It's kind of like a vaccine and you know Any anti-vaxxers there, you know, it's like it's like the the the coaching the the coaching vaccine how's that yeah but that's the idea it's yes yes so what do you do with that you let them know that you can impact an organization as high as the glass ceiling is and that often happens um i work with many organizations where you know the slt the senior leadership will okay a budget for this kind of stuff yeah and then you'll have one or two leaders will opt for it and they make it very like it's not for everyone very small budgets huge companies tiny budgets and you can only work with like senior directors or vps of like this massive organization like seriously that's your budget you have a three thousand dollar budget for this year to help leaders grow sure um so you help this one leader and your job as a coach is to help this leader so much Your job as a coach is to help this leader so much that it transforms the reality. Yes. Your job is to just be the best darn coach you can be. And I'll tell you what happens is that that one leader goes back and tells their friends of what coaching did. And then a few months later, I'll get a call back from HR saying, we got another one and another one and another one. And so that first leader grows to three, four, five, six leaders within an organization working with. It takes time.

 Like there are some organizations I've been with for several years and you know, words getting around and it takes super long, but I, I like to believe that over time with small incremental, you know, impacts, you're going to get to a point where you'll be like, why aren't we doing this for everyone? There absolutely will be a time. How do you, um, how do you influence the, you know, your, you know, your primary contact in terms of like how um how they can or how you could potentially support them in building a coaching culture not just coaching individuals um i think there are opportunities and conversations to talk about there are opportunities and conversations to talk about like sparks moments of magic where you can be like see what we did here what if we had more of that and and you know it rarely has to come from me it's usually them saying i wish we can just do this with the whole organization. I'll get the HR. I've had more than one HR director come to me and be like, please talk to my CEO. He's a monster.

 And I'll say he because they were all he's. But they're like, please help. Please come and speak your truth. And honestly, I've had 0% success when the HR rep is calling SOS and I got to come in and do a sales pitch for that. It won't work. But what it means is that those who have the awareness and the desire, you don't need to sell to them. You're already, it's kind of like saying I have a cavity. It's like the dentist hasn't, doesn't have to sell you his services or their services. It just seems like, would you like me to solve your toothache?

 Um, and so I rarely go in and say, uh, in saying that these might be some pain points and these are some things I can solve for you. I feel like the awareness is already there societally. I feel like coaching has exploded since 2018, 2019. And if you're great at what you do in the organizations, awake enough and internally value it enough to allocate some money to it and time and energy and advocate um become ambassadors of that positive change then okay i don't really have to do more than that so the grassroots culture change it sounds like is probably the most effective then yeah yeah yeah grassroots ideas especially if you have that glass ceiling that you're talking about yeah yeah yes yeah it may have to be but correct me if i'm wrong i feel like there's been such a huge burst with regards to culture in organizations with regards to toxic management with regards to coaching and its positive impacts the human side of of business and how it impacts the results positively i like to believe that most ce CEOs are well aware of coaching and it's possible and it's positive outcomes. I just don't know if I remember the part where I said those who wanted, wanted the least needed the most. Yeah.

It's about the, it's the self-awareness piece. I think CEOs, if you're listening, I don't think you understand yourself and your organization well enough. Sometimes, especially when what you think, but what other people say are two different things. Yeah. So I'll, I'll talk to the CEO and the, and it's, it's about external self-awareness. So internal self-awareness, how well I understand myself external, how well I understand how other people perceive me. Right. So both awarenesses I think might be off so the ceo might think we don't have a problem or at least not not a deeply rooted one and so we might think it might have to be topical it might be an ego thing it might be the survival i think in a lot of cases was that i think it's i think it's survival in a lot of cases you know survival of the ego survival of the company um you know a lot of people especially ceos don't really want to admit what's really going on under the hood because that means that they have to acknowledge it um and then probably take some kind of action towards it so yeah aren't we now coming close to um we've had this chat about umism, validation, I'm good enough. But if I'm a CEO, and I have to admit that I'm flawed, or I'm not perfect, what happened? Yeah. It's like, it's coming really close to imposter syndrome. But this is exactly what a coaching culture helps deconstruct, right? It helps us feel safe to learn, my God, like we are whole people. We are each perfectly imperfect, right?

And, you know, I think having a coaching culture just helps us really understand that like, I'm whole, or I could be, you are too, right? And what are we going to do together now, now that we've established that we're both imperfect, you know, how do we move forward? Uh, I, I saw, I saw a celebrity wear a t-shirt. I like, I just said flawed human. Right. And, um, I had told you, I went through like two years of rehab of, uh, like I was like, I was a perfectionist and it was ruining my life. And, um, I'm not, I'm not cured, but, uh, I'm, I'm now accepting and being very okay with the fact that not only am I not perfect, but I'm now accepting and being very okay with the fact that not only am I not perfect but I'm like extremely flawed and it's liberating so it's like I teach public speaking right and they're like how do you do how do you prep for like an eight hour monologue you know right I'm like you can't really you can't so so how do you do it and I get on stage and whether I say it or not, I think my opening line is and always will be, I stand before you a flawed human being. I'm imperfect and hopefully perfectly imperfect.

And I hope that that gives you the permission to allow yourself to be imperfect with me. Yeah. Now we begin. i don't you know there's there's there's two foundational pieces that helped me through that i know we're going i swear we're not going too off off road here one um the more i learned the more i realized i don't know much i know nothing at all i believe is your quote yeah and what's the second one realize I don't know much. I know nothing at all, I believe is your quote. Yeah. And what's the second one? It's don't believe everything you think. Oh, 100%. Right. Which is great, because now my brain's not always my friend. Sometimes it's my foe. So even when I'm on stage and I'm the subject matter expert, I'll literally show up and be like, whatever's on my slides, it's what I know now. I might be wrong tomorrow.

So challenge me. If you find a hole in it, let's talk about it. And I'm not going to say I'm right. I'm just going to be, maybe. And the word maybe has gone, it's just so liberating so imagine if you're a ceo and you're saying this is what i know now what don't i know the awareness the first a it's what don't i know and accepting the reality that there's a lot of stuff you don't know there's a lot of stuff you probably suck at and just by admitting to it is very liberating and the world is have a work transforming so quickly that it's impossible anyway. So stop trying. I can't keep up. No, it's like I make myself every time I, I'm like, this is how it is. The next day I'm a liar. I swear to God. Exactly. So I'm right until I'm wrong. Yeah.

 So coming back to the CEO, imposter syndrome, insecurity might come in. Ego might comeoster syndrome uh insecurity might come in ego might come in survival might come in um perfectionism might come in results over people might come in um it's rarely a money thing when you when you look at the investment for establishing a coaching culture if i mean i don't want to throw numbers but it's really not that expensive. If your company is generating $100 million and all you have to do is invest $100,000 for like a year worth of training for like, I don't know, 100 people. Yeah. Right. What's the price per head? A thousand bucks. Try going to university and studying. Try going anywhere to study. It's like every certificate is like five to 10 grand now. Totally. Well, and what this does, yeah. And what this does, like creating this coach mindset is creating, really is creating that beginner mindset, that growth mindset that you're looking for. So that people will learn how to learn faster, you know?

Anyways, I think this has been a phenomenal conversation uh thank you very much sir for joining me uh us perfectly imperfect beings uh and i was thinking about when you said um imperfect human on a t-shirt i was like can't we just sum that up to like human we can just simplify that to human yeah yes yes uh the the misconception is that humans can be perfect which is quite egotistical i like to do a quick plug though yeah there's a movie okay i love because you said beginner's mindset yes and the movie is about getting to like black belt or perceived mastery. Okay. Realizing that true mastery, you need to that whole unlearning thing and coming back to white belt, that beginner's mindset. And the movie is Jet Li's fearless. Okay. So well done. I need to watch it. Watch what happens when Jet Li becomes the master, but then when he falls to true mastery, it's, it's amazing. And honestly, I like to, I base a lot of what I do, hoping to get to that tabula rasa, the blank sleep. Beautiful. I'm not there yet. Maybe someday.

Thanks Erin.

Thanks Garen. maybe someday

Thanks Erin

Thanks Garen

Don't forget to stay weird stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble!

With over 20 years of experience in talent management and organizational effectiveness, Founder of Stay and author of a book with the same title, Kelly MacCallum brings passion, energy, and a depth of expertise in enhancing leaders, cultures, and teams. With her practices grounded in science and data, Kelly drops gems on creating a workplace culture that employees will never want to leave!

Stay in Touch:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kellymaccallum

Purchase Kelly's book today, and transform the workplace culture tomorrow:

https://www.amazon.ca/Stay-Create-culture-theyll-leave/dp/B0CZBGY3PT

Script:

How you make people feel is everything.

 Culture isn't the CEO. The culture isn't HR. The culture isn't one leader. The culture is the collective personality of the organization. And you have a part to play in that.

When organizations figure out how to take that and tap into that into the workplace, you know, you have the potential to be doing some really powerful things. We're responsible for culture. It's like, no, everyone's responsible for culture. Nice try though.

Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. And I'm super happy to have Kelly McCallum on the show. Kelly, say hello. With over 20 years of experience in talent management and organizational effectiveness, founder of Stay, and the author of the book with the same name, Kelly McCallum Brings Passion, Energy, and a Depth of Experience in Enhancing Leaders, Cultures, and Teams. And we have some really juicy content, I think, that we're going to talk about today.

So Kelly, before we get started, I just want to tell everyone that I am a huge fan of yours, and I have been for about six months. I feel like a lot of the content, the stories, you're such a good storyteller and the stuff that you share just speaks right to my soul because I know it's so complicated, the world of work, but you have such like an honesty in the way that you speak.

 Well, thank you so much, Erin. Thank you for having me today. I am like super passionate about this topic and I'm a passionate human in general. So, you know, I think that authenticity that you see, like, I think it's just me. It's just the way I am. So, you know, I'm glad it comes through in my writing because it's, you know, it's who I am. So really, really pleased to be here to chat with you today. Fantastic. So for those of you who, for the people who don't know Kelly, tell me who is Kelly? Kelly is a enthusiast that wants to make work lives better. I think, you know, all of us, you know, put in all these hours to work for these organizations or ourselves. And, you know, I think, you know, we spend so much time doing it, but so many organizations really fail at making it anywhere near as satisfying as it can be.

I don't think it's a hard thing. I think it's just an intention thing. And, you know, over time, companies just get complacent, and they do the same things the same ways, and they just don't stop to think that there's a better way. So I kind of exist on this platform to help people see that there's a better way and just kind of challenge some maybe traditional thinking when it comes to workplace culture. Totally. And some of the stories that you share, I think really do a good job highlighting that. One of the ones I think that I saw recently was you mentioned that some of the best jobs that you have or that you had or the best job that you ever had was the worst possible interview experience. It was totally a leap of faith. I loved that. I was like, yes, this is basically the same. I have the same experience for sure.

Well, it's so funny because you hear all these universal truths and advice on LinkedIn. If you ever have a bad recruiting process, absolutely don't take that job. I mean, that's terrible advice because maybe the recruiter's having a bad day. Maybe somebody in the background's hurting their process. It could have nothing to do with the hiring manager, has nothing to do with the role. So I mean, yeah, they could be red flags, but like, I think there's just more to it. And I think a lot of it's very nuanced. And so I like to use the stories, you know, to validate my own perceptions and to question my own perceptions and to question the perceptions of others as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And especially when you're working, if you like that, like creative work, you like working with founders, you like to have autonomy in your work. And a lot of people on this podcast who listen to this podcast are those people, you know, they're the weirdos in the workplace. Right. I don't actually think they're so weird, though. I think it's actually pretty common. I'm sure we'll get into this in a sec. For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's like, we feel like maybe we feel like weirdos or growing up, you know, we felt like outsiders at some point. And then we come into the workplace, and we sometimes don't always fit. Sometimes we fit better in a creative environment, you know, and that always, I don't think that always goes as smoothly. It's a little bit more chaotic sometimes.

 Yeah. Chaos is okay. I always say embrace attention. Yeah, for sure. Embrace attention. I love that. Okay. So when I was stalking you on LinkedIn, I pulled out three questions that you said that you basically had tons of experience in. And what you said specifically was, I know what inspires employees. I know what drives them crazy and I know what it takes to keep them. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is what inspires employees, what drives them crazy and what does it take to keep them. Obviously knowing the diversity of human experiences, not everyone we can paint with the same brush, but if we are generalizing a little bit, trying to stay balanced and using our experience as a guide, what inspires employees? I think humans are remarkably consistent. It's in our biology. So there are certain things that tends to drive our behavior. And there's something very powerful called intrinsic motivation. And you hear about intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. And all that really means is that people are motivated to do something just because of the result or because it feels good, not because you're going to get a tap on the back or a paycheck for it.

 So when that like when that desire, like is driving our behavior, like tapping into that's like just so important. So, you know, again, there's sort of a science behind it. And, you know, I'm far from the first person to ever talk about this, right? I think originally, Abraham Maslow talked about it in 1943. And he had a book on motivation and personality. And he talks about this hierarchy of needs. And I'll get to that in a second. But then later in the mid 2000s, a guy named Dan Pink wrote a book called Drive. And that book, like it's probably the most impactful book that I've ever read, like my favorite business book by far, because it speaks to the power of intrinsic motivation. Now, he doesn't go in and tie it together with workplace behaviors.

But all of my theory and all of my insights all come from linking intrinsic motivation to the workplace and the work of Maslow. So if you think about Maslow's pyramid, most of them have, most people have studied this in school. If you haven't, I'll do like my quick, my quick diagram on this. At the very, like the whole thing about that is what drives humans. There's like a, there's like an order of things. So, you know, before you can get into, you know, self-actualization and all these inspirational things at the very base of his pyramid, he talks about physiological needs. So if you think about that in the workplace, like if you're not making enough money to feed your family, it doesn't really matter what else is going on in the organization. All you're going to think about is I don't make enough money to feed my family, right? So it's foundational. We need to know we're going to have the basic provisions of life.

Second on that pyramid is safety. And so in work, that could, if you're a manufacturing plant, that could be safety on the floor. But in most workplaces these days, I would define that as psychological safety. And so in order for you to feel like you can do anything at work and be intrinsically motivated, you need to have a safe environment. That means your manager can't be a bully. That means you need to feel safe to say what's on your mind. You need to feel like your peers aren't making fun of you. So those things are very, very important.

So once you have those two sort of foundational pieces out of the way, they don't matter anymore, right? That takes the idea of money off the table. So money is not necessarily a motivator, but money is very important. So you can't, you know, you got to keep that in mind. But then when you get into the other pieces of Maslow's pyramid, it's belonging, it's achievement. And this is where it starts to align with Dan Pink stuff. And Dan Pink would say that the three intrinsic motivators are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And I would throw in their sense of belonging, because I think that's very important, especially in the era that we're in today, because that really speaks to inclusion, diversity, and equity. 

So when I talk about autonomy, it's about being able to choose where, when, and how you work. So that whole flexibility thing. So the more that we're entrusted and empowered, more that drives us to want to work. And I think that's why you see so many people getting hyped about remote work these days, right? It's like the whole argument about remote work. The reason remote work is so compelling is because you're providing your employees with autonomy. And when you do that, you tap into that intrinsic motivation. And so if there's like, there's a million good reasons for remote work, but that to me is the main one. So if you can give your people that kind of flexibility, it's really worth your while to do so, because we know that engaged and inspired employees drive business results.

So even if you're a miserable person, you don't care about your people, like you should care about your people because they drive your business results. So even if you're a miserable person, you don't care about your people, like you should care about your people because they drive your business results. So profitability goes up, productivity goes up, revenues go up, customer satisfaction goes up. So all these things are like super important. So leveraging these intrinsic motivators is pretty much everything. So, and we have mastery and mastery is all about learning and growing, right? Having that sense of accomplishment.

So, you know, it's like people say, well, why do people play video games for hours? Right? It's like they don't get paid for it. Right? What is it about it? It's mastery. Like it's addictive, right? So if you can bring that sense into the workplace, that's super powerful, right? And then there's purpose. And, you know, this whole Simon purpose. And you know, this whole Simon Sinek, you know, you know, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it, right? So a sense of purpose. And you see this a lot in areas like healthcare, you know, somebody you ask anybody who in their right mind wants to work in healthcare right now? Well, they're driven by a sense of purpose.

 And that's why they do it. Right. So when you bring those three things together, and when organizations figure out how to take that and tap into that into the work you know you have the potential to be doing some really powerful things oh you sure do um i mean it sounds simple but i know like when you get in there and you're in the trenches it's not so simple right well no because we don't prioritize it people get all caught up on they just get caught up on the same old, same old. It's like, oh, we've got to do leadership development training and we've got to do this and we've got to do that.

 And, you know, they don't stop and think about like what's inspiring. I mean, a good example of that is, God, the most archaic thing to exist that's, you know, it existed back in the early 90s and probably further back, probably the 50s, is the annual performance review. Nothing, there is nothing in the HR world that is more archaic and ineffective, but still so pervasively used. And they do it because they don't stop to think about another way of doing it. Yeah, it's an afterthought. It's like, oh, we just have to take care of it once a year. And if that, like... Yeah, this is just how we do things, right? For some reason, for that one thing, nobody has stopped to think, why should we not do this? This is really ineffective.

 Or some companies have, but it's, you know, the big challenge with that is coupling performance with compensation. And by doing that, you make things very rigid, when, you know, rigidity is not really what inspires people. No, I would say maybe we could bump the 100 question employee engagement survey into the same category, you know, for large companies, like, well, I feel like there's better ways we can do things, you know, that are actually going to achieve some results here. What would you recommend for a company that's looking to transition away from the annual performance review? I mean, continuous performance management is, is like, that's where you're going to see better performance, right? So you do something management is like, that's where you're going to see better performance, right?

 So you do something in the moment that's great, I tell you it's great, you're going to do it again. If you do something that's not so great, I still need to tell you, and sometimes leaders find that hard. But if you make like feedback part of your culture, and you start doing this on the regular, and like, the other thing about that is leaders asking employees for the feedback. So, you know, maybe you bring me in to chat about how you thought I could have done better in a certain way. And you give me that feedback and then I might give you some feedback and say, well, you know, had you supported me in a different way, you know, that we might have done a much better job together. And so there's like a mutual accountability. It's a conversation. It's not this once a year call to the principal's office where you're given a grade. Right. So and then you learn in the moment what you need to do to adapt. And then you don't have to deal with things like recency bias, right? Like how many leaders at the end of the year, they're like, okay, we've got to do your annual review for your 20 people. And so they're freaking out because they've got deadlines. They've got to write goals for these 20 people.

 In two weeks after you write these goals, you've forgotten the goals that you've written, right? Because that's the type of, that's just the type of process it is. HR hates it because they have to herd the cats. Nobody loves it. But what works really well is this, you know, regular feedback cycle. And it's just something we need to practice, right? Yeah. I always like to, there's a lot of, I feel like there's a lot of responsibilities that HR believes they're accountable for, that it's really the, the manager's accountability. Yeah. Yeah. And leaders love to put it on HR. You're responsible for culture. It's like, no, everyone's responsible for culture. Nice try though. Totally. Yeah. So what are you seeing is like the trends in terms of employee retention? Like you wrote a book called stay, you know, which is about what, and I think you are like that is the most important thing for companies we need to keep people I just I don't think leaders understand how much it costs a company when people leave it's crazy what it costs right and I mean and I've got this I've got this fantastic like pdf that I downloaded from LinkedIn. It's something that LinkedIn put together with Gallup and it's the cost of disengagement and it's the cost of losing talent.

 And it's, it's exorbitant. Like it's so much money. And if people were far more proactive in, you know, understanding what their people want and don't want, they could like save so much money. Like it takes itty bitty investment, but it saves them. It would save them so much money and so much intellectual knowledge walking out of their company, right? Like it's just, it's- The history, the whole history of the company, it's the culture of the company that's leaving every time someone leaves. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I've done over 1500 exit and stay interviews in my lifetime. So I've got the voices of all these people rattling around in my head, right? I've also conducted like 1000s of employee surveys. So I literally, you know, I go to sleep at night, and I hear these voices saying, why do they do this? And it's always the same thing. So when people leave people, I was like, oh, people leave for money, or they leave for a promotion. That's not why they leave.

 They leave because they don't feel valued. And that's different. It sounds the same, but it's not the same. Because when you don't feel valued, it can be about not having your ideas heard. It can be that you're micromanaged. It may be that you found out that the more junior guy who was just hired, who has less experience and isn't as good at you at your job is making more money than you. Like that's not about compensation, right? That's about how you've made someone feel. It's like being passed up for a promotion. It's when your leader takes credit for your work. It's being disrespected from your colleagues. How you make people feel is everything, right? So that's what it comes down to, right? When people leave, it's, I mean, sometimes they leave for more money.

Sometimes it's just that. It's it's usually sales people so I think like sales people I think they're like the exception to Maslow's pyramid there's just some people that are just super wired to care about money right and that's why we like them as sales people you know that's why they make great sales that's why they make that's why not everybody does it right but yeah they're a different breed but they're you know but they're they're they're they're very driven by money and because of that they they achieve great things but that's actually backwards to what uh the research dan pink um talked about because they did work with london school of economics and mit and they actually proved that trying to incent people with money actually decreases their performance. Money is not a motivator. It's actually a demotivator. And it all has to do with performance stress, like not being your most creative, best self. So highly recommend that book. Like I can't recommend it enough to anybody because it does talk about those studies and what people learned about using money as a motivator because it's not what you think. Might be time for a reread. It's been many years since I read that. Yeah, yeah. And it stuck with me. It's funny how certain books just do that, right? That one. Yeah, that one's right there. So yeah, what can you do to keep them? Well, that's where my book comes in somewhat. So I'll give myself a shameless plug. But it's not what you think.

Like the book, I actually wrote the book. I had no intention of writing a book. So there was a client of mine who was on a budget. And so I was trying to figure out how to work with them. And I thought, oh, I'll do all these how-to guides. I'll create all these how-to guides that I can use with future customers. And then I'll just, you know, sign them on for some coaching. We can work through the resources. So I did a bunch of them. I did one on stay interviews and I did one on micromanagement and leadership and whatnot. But then I got to how to create a culture. And I thought, oh, this is going to be one of the longer ones.

It'll probably be at least 10 pages. And then I kept writing and then I kept writing and then I kept writing. And the next thing you know, I had this 150 page document. I'm like,'t a guide this is a book and so a friend of mine looked at me and said it is a book I'm like yeah but I'm not an author like what happened what happened with that I had a good friend of mine Leslie she uh she helped me uh you know add some more color and stories to it but if when you read it it, it sounds like a guide, it's because that's exactly what it was written as, as a guide. And it's all about, you know, creating a very intentional culture.

 Again, like, so starting with purpose, like, what is the purpose of your organization, you know, and then defining values that are legitimately the values that align with your organization and how you want to do things and like not doing them because of the right things like everybody drives me nuts there's like the same list of values integrity and it's like okay like who's who's who's not running on integrity right like and you think about uh well you it's funny but you think they're not going to tell you that you know but you're putting it on the wall and it's like come on like that's a terrible that's a terrible value unless you can really be like you know that should it on the wall and it's like, come on. Like, that's a terrible, that's a terrible value.

Unless you can really, like, you know, that should just be the benchmark. That should be like, that's not a value. That's like, like level playing field. Right. But if you think about it, like Enron back in, I don't remember, was it 80s, 90s, whatever that happened, like they had these like golden values. Integrity was one of them. And these guys like were embezzling money and fraud and all of this stuff. You're like, okay, your values, your values were kind of meaningless guys. But, but then you get the opposite. You get a culture like Zappos. Now we don't like in Canada, we don't know a lot about them because they're a shoe company from the States, but we hear about, we hear about their culture because their culture was so revolutionary until Amazon bought them and kind of destroyed everything, which is kind of what happens. But the guy who originated Zappos, he just thought very differently.

And one of their values was deliver wow service. That's pretty clear what that means. If I'm an employee, if I hear deliver wow service, there's like not really a lot of different ways to interpret that. And I had a personal experience with Zappos. I bought a pair of shoes from them a number of years ago now, must have been a long time ago now. And I ordered the wrong size. Okay, so I get these shoes in the mail to the wrong size. And I hate that because it was my brand and I just made a mistake, right? Well, so I called them, I thought, I'll call them. But the first thing that was cool was when I got onto their website, the number to call was prominent. Right. That's so I called them. I thought, oh, I'll call them. But the first thing that was cool was when I got onto the website, the number to call was prominent. Right. That's interesting. That's different. And then when I called within two rings, I got a human being. Hmm. What? What? Like, what's like, oh, hi. And I'm like, oh, this is my predicament.

 My shoes, my size, whatever. And they're like, no problem. What size do you need? It's like, I need, I need the six and a half. a half okay cool we're going to send those to you right away and they said when you get time you can send back the other shoes we'll send you a slip and and and you know uh you just got to drop them off at the at the mail i'm like so you're not gonna bill me twice and do this refund no no no and i'm like wow there you have it wow right. Right. So deliver wow service. I'm like, they need it. So when I hear other organizations cite customer satisfaction as one of their values, I'm like, Zappos can say that because they deliver on it. But what are you doing to deliver wow to your customers? Right. I just have a thing like that just popped in my brain that I just have to say. And it's like, you couldn't have that ethos. What they did there, it's like something that I like to talk about, which is let's assume that people are generally good, you know? Yes. Assume that people are generally good and like work from that as a foundational, like, you know, principle. Just be a good human. Assume that other people are good humans.

 Are there going to be people who like take advantage of it? Yeah, but not most of them. Sure, you know, and then we can do the things that are right. If we make that presumption, if we presume that people are generally evil and wanting to take advantage of us, you know, we're going to build a whole culture and a whole company that's based on different kinds of principles. Yeah, and that's not where I don't think anybody wants to be there, right? Well, and you know what? Look, maybe that's a valid thing. Like, look to your customer service policies, you know? Well, everything, right? That's the thing about your values. Like, they've got to be entrenched in everything you do. So, you know, there's the whole exercise that organizations have to go with to start with, where do we even start about what our values are?

You've got to figure out what they are. You've got to figure out what it means because sometimes like like a lot of organizations really like these one word values i'm not a fan of them because like when you have one word like transparency like as an employee when i see transparency that could mean you tell me what everybody else is making you tell me about every single you know financial decision the company's making. When maybe what the company means is we're going to be transparent in the why we make decisions. Right. So if you don't define what that is, then people kind of, you know, make up their own truth. So it's really important that your employees understand what the values mean so that they can live them out. That's why Zappos was clever. They were easy. They didn't have behavior statements. They just, they just said things like deliver while service. Right. Right. Yeah. We can interpret that, but there's only so many ways we can interpret that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And you know, those people were empowered. Like if they had like, I guarantee you, if I, I don't know, for whatever reason, I wasn't happy with how they answered my question. I bet you, if I started making demands, like, well, I want you to send me two pairs of shoes, they probably would. Yeah. It's a silly, it's a silly notion, but you know, it feels like, it feels like they're that kind of organization or they were, they were. You feel respected, you know, nobody wants to buy from someone who you feel disrespected by. Absolutely. So what does it take to keep our employees? We are in a very challenging climate right now. There's been a lot of downsizing. I don't think there's very much trust in the world right now between, you know, AI, generative AI. We don't know who's who or what's what, what's the truth.

 I think the, you know, obviously the economy is very challenging for a lot of people politics is fracturing a lot of families even communities um so i'm seeing like really low trust environment what would you recommend to an organization who you know they they want to keep their employees they value their employees well if you want to value your employees you listen to what they have to say right so you don't know what you don't know. I think that's a Taylor Swift line, isn't it? Yeah, you don't know what you don't know. But yeah, that's the thing. Like a lot of people make assumptions, even with engagement surveys, right? So you ask your people for all this feedback, and you get all this data. And then I've done this where you present the data to an executive team, and they go, I know why that's like that. And they go off and you're thinking, well, that's not it at all. When I read the comments, that's not what I'm picking up from that. So there's like a bias that they think that they know what the problem is. And this is where self-awareness is such a problem, right? 95% of people think they're self-aware when only maybe about 10% of us are right. So all of that creates bias.

And then they, they create these overcomplicated action plans and that never make an impact. And they wonder why it's like, well, because you really didn't listen. Like you did kind of, but you didn't do it in the right way. And every person and every organization is very unique. So, you know, what is happening in that organization at that time? What stories are your employees telling? Like, what are the legends and like, what are the truths that they're spreading around to create this culture and to create the system of beliefs? You need to understand what those are. And if you don't have trust, you don't have anything. So you need to find out, like, first and foremost, do your employees trust you? If they don't, nothing else that you do is going to matter. Literally nothing else that you do will matter. Like they have to, they have to trust you. And that's the safety. That's part of that. It's part of the pyramid. Like that's the foundation. You take that, you take that foundation off and everything kind of tumbles. Yeah. Right. So you're right. And it's tough because we've got layoffs, right?

Like organizations are doing layoffs en masse and they i mean i mean i get it they have to they're under pressure from you know inflated costs and shareholders demanding value i mean this is a capitalist society we live in they they have to make profits so layoffs come with that and it sucks and it's there's like a human element to it but it makes the people who are left behind very nervous right like it's like oh am i going to be next why did they do that like they told us we were good they told us they weren't good and so now you have a really fractured uh organization who's going to take some time to heal and until that trust comes back you can't expect these people to be, you know, engaged and inspired and, you know, full of purpose and in all of this, right? Like you have to deal with, you have to deal with the issue at hand. And you do that by being transparent, right? This is what happened. Take ownership of what happened. Tell them what you're going to do to make sure that that doesn't happen again. Build trust, keep communicating, keep being transparent, right?

Authentic. Employees can sense disingenuous personality a mile away, right? They know if you're full of it. Like, so don't try to be full of it. Just be real. That's what people want, right? Yeah, throw your cards for sure. Exactly. Would you say there's any hope for a company if this CEO, if people generally sense that the CEO is untrustworthy? I mean, it depends on the organization. It's hard because the CEO drives the culture. But I have seen leaders create really strong microcultures, if you will, right? So they can insulate their team from it to a certain extent. But I mean, largely the CEO will, I mean, at the end of the day, depending on how involved they get on that particular team and whatever, you know, it can undo it quite well. But I have seen these microcultures actually positively impact greater culture, right? So you Yeah, so you get this team who operates in a certain way and it changes around all the people around them.

 And so you get like almost like a grassroots culture. Right. So that's really cool when that happens. But yeah, ultimately I think the senior executive CEO, especially like they gotta be, they gotta be legit. And if they're causing trust issues, you're probably going to have people leaving in droves. Yeah. Yeah. I think the microculture thing is very interesting because I see this a lot with clients. I get people who are, you know, senior level managers, low level executives coming and saying like, I need to make a change. Like there's, there's like something critically wrong, blah, blah, blah. It's cultural. They want to do something, but then there's only so much they can influence upward right well they can and that's the thing like i i also want to encourage leaders not to take that victim's mindset and stop saying oh i can't do this i can't do this i can't do this like yeah but what can you do like you can talk to your people you can do a stay interview with your people you can find out exactly what they love about their job and why they stay and what it might take for them to leave and you might be surprised on what it is that might make them leave it might actually be very much in your control right it might not have nothing to do with the you know the fact that the ceo's uh you know not a very trustworthy character right like it could not be that at all but if you're like if you're smart list again, it's all about listening, listening and action. I know it sounds simple.

Listen, act. And if you're not going to act, don't pretend like you're listening, because that just makes things worse. Right? Completely. It's so true. Okay, so yeah, so that's good. So tell me a little bit about your book. Are you planning on going on a grand tour? What's going going on are you going to create a workshop from it are you going to write another book I don't I don't have any I have like like I said the book kind of wrote itself and then someone convinced me to publish it and then a bunch of people bought it and you're like oh that's interesting I thought might like you know your friends always buy your book because they're nice like that but like I've actually sold a lot more copies of it than I thought I would so that's fun and I'm getting some good feedback which is great um but you know like I haven't planned workshops I haven't planned any talks um I like it's it's kind of there if I want to though like I know I could build a talk on it because I could you know I could literally talk about intrinsic motivation for for hours and it's in there it's part of it and you know how it all plays in with how to create a good culture it's all baked into the book um i would love to do i actually would love to do a book on leaders creating microcultures because inspiring leaders right like they can they can do so much good right and there's so much like again as much as there's so much that's out of your hands there's so much that is in your hands and god you just got to realize it and so that might be I don't know, that might be the next one. I think that would be a fantastic book.

Honestly, one of the things that I'm concerned me is the number of women leaders that are leaving the workplace to try to start their own business or actually start their own businesses. actually start their own businesses, either becoming consultants or, you know, doing something freelance and just like piecing out of the workplace completely because they're tired. Well, yeah. Frustrated, right? Well, there's lots going on there, right? There's, first of all, there's moms, right? So like there's so much responsibility in having a families. And if an organization has not embraced a flexible workplace culture, whether that's flex hours or remote work, I think about like, I think about my daughter, like she's, you know, she's, she's 30. And she's been working for a few years now, when she first started working, what was really important to her was going into the office and meeting her friends and having a coffee and all of that. And then COVID hit and she had like two kids in COVID.

And then all of a sudden it's like, I don't know how I would manage like dropping the kids off at daycare, picking them up. And if I didn't have this ability to work from home. So she's really lucky. She's got a great employer. They have a remote policy, flexible work. And as a mom, that is a game changer, right? So, you know, whatever else she gets frustrated with, with this organization, like she knows she's got it really good. And this is a really high priority for her. And then, you know, I think, I think we're doing better in terms of equality in leadership. I think at least with women, I think we have a lot of work to do with, you know, all the other employee resource groups. That's like a conversation for another, for another day.

 But, you know, I think, I think women have really held their own. But yeah, they have additional challenges, especially when they, when they have families. Yeah. Well, this has been an awesome conversation. I feel like we could keep talking for hours, but is there anything that you wanted to like, if there's like one more, what's like one thing that you want everyone to know about, about this topic? Well, I think, you know, culture is everything. I mean, there's that old Peter Drucker culture eats strategy for breakfast. Like the, I was watching a, a talk from Collision Conference and one of the CEOs there, he's from a company called BenchSci.

He was saying, culture doesn't eat strategy for breakfast. Culture eats everything for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And what his point was, like everything impacts, like culture impacts everything. Like if you blow it in one area, it can completely destroy your company. So if you don't nurse your culture, your organization will suffer. Like big companies have, you know, gone out of business because of cultural issues. Right. And so it's really important. We used to think of it as soft and fluffy and HRE and all of that. It's like culture is powerful. And I think that's what like every, everyone needs to know that. And everybody needs to know that they have a place in culture because the culture isn't the CEO. The culture isn't HR. The culture isn't one leader. The culture is the collective personality of the organization. And you have a part to play in that. Yeah, absolutely. Culture. What was I going to say? Culture is the best survival tool. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Like, like, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's everything around you, everything, it's your community, everything around you defines what you do. Right. And you can be in culture is interesting. Like, I think I had a post about this the other day.

Like, you can be in cultures. Interesting. Like I think I had a post about this the other day. Like you can be in one culture and do the exact same thing that you do in another culture and have completely different results. I remember Simon Sinek talking about a story of running into two different baristas. I can't remember where he was, but he was talking about like the barista at one coffee shop was like really excited and, you know, gregarious and doing great customer service. And apparently that barista had the same job at another, like another store. And he saw the same guy at the other store and the guy was discouraged, demoralized, not friendly. And he was like, what's up with this? And of course, it's like, well, in this environment, I'm empowered. You know, in this environment, I'm not, I'm not recognized, right?

So exact same person, same skill set, two different cultures. Yeah. And everyone wants to actualize their potential. So you want to be somewhere, you know, that nurtures that for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Well, how can people, uh, get in touch with you because you're awesome and everyone should follow you. Well, follow me on LinkedIn, Kelly McCallum, MAC. Um, uh, you can, you know, read the book if it's interesting to you.

 I think I will warn you, it's a step-by-step guide on how to create a culture. So this is not like a book full of, you know, lots of, you know, super ideas. It's like, it's really a how-to guide. So this is not like a book full of, you know, lots of, you know, super ideas. It's like, it's really a how to guide. So that's, that's what it is. And so if you're looking even as a leader to build a microculture, it's a really good place to start.

The book is available on Amazon, all countries. Yeah. And again, like if you, anyone wants to chat anytime, questions about what I'm saying, just send me a DM on LinkedIn. Happy to chat. Awesome. And I will post all of those things in the notes, in the notes for the podcast on all the platforms. You'll have easy access to Kelly at all times.

Sounds great.

Thanks, Kelly.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble!

Learn more about our new project: https://trainedtohelp.com/

Connect with Erin on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/erin-patchell

Script:

An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down. Hooey. Yeah, he is absolutely bang on.

You cannot do it by yourself. You need a whole team around you.

If you're in Ontario, I would highly recommend, you know, reaching out to your local community futures development corporations or CFDCs, because they have quite a bit of support that might be able to help you.

Today on Weirdos in the Workplace, I want to talk a little bit about becoming an entrepreneur. And I really don't mean becoming a business owner and I don't mean becoming a solopreneur or a independent consultant. I do mean becoming an entrepreneur and growing a business. business. Growing a business, I have learned, is very, very different when it comes to entrepreneurship versus growing a business incrementally and slowly over time. Entrepreneurship is, at least from my experience so far, much more intentional, much more strategic, and much more growth oriented.

I think until last October, I wouldn't have even really called myself an entrepreneur. I would have called myself a business owner. And then before that, of course, I was an employee in my previous role. And before that, I would have been self-employed. I would have called it being self-employed, which again, is not the same thing as being an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurial people take significantly more risks. So that's something that I'm still kind of getting used to. And then my husband who is much more risk averse than I am is starting to get used to this idea that, you know, this is going to be a significant time, money and energy investment for both of us, since he's one of the co-founders for the train to hell project. But let me tell you the story a little bit. 

So back in October, 2023, so we're looking at what was like eight months ago now, about eight months ago, because we're now into June, early June 2024. My, my team member, Sarah, who is a friend of mine since grade five, my first friend, if you've listened to some of the podcasts before, I've mentioned her a few times, my first real friend, Sarah, who is now my team member, who is now my co-founder. She has a partner named Tim who is, he's in a wheelchair. He's now quadriplegic. He had MS, was diagnosed with MS, muscular sclerosis, when he was about 33, 32, 33 years old. And so Tim's case progressed quite quickly. Within about four years, he's in a wheelchair and now he is currently paraplegic. So I've been hearing stories about how Tim and Sarah, you know, try to get around the world and how challenging that is. I've been hearing these stories for quite a long time because they've been together for, I believe, around seven years now, something like that. And it's, you know, it's a struggle for me to hear it because I want good things for them and I'm their friend. It's obviously a huge struggle for them. And one of the major issues was that, you know, even though she's good at doing the research and asking around, a lot of employees at retail locations, if they want to go out for, you know, lunch, or if they just want to go to the store, unless it's a large store, like a big box store, the employees usually don't know.

They don't, they're not informed. They don't have the education. They don't have the training to understand, you know, what is, if their location is actually accessible, you know, how they can accommodate different types of people. So it's a really big challenge for them. And it's a challenge that is, you know, common across many, many, many disability categories. Basically anyone who has a challenge moving around the world in any way. And now we know that, you know, the last in 2022, the statistics came out from Stats Canada, indicating that 27% of the population of Canada, 15 years of age and older, has at least one disability that makes it difficult for them to move around the world or to interact with the world, the physical world.

And so this was kind of in the back of our minds. And Sarah was part of the, or is part of the Accessibility Committee in the town of Carlton Place. This is where we live. And she, you know, learned that there was a business owner in town who had had kind of like a negative feedback from someone with a disability when they came to the location of their cafe. And the person with a disability learned that it really wasn't as accessible as it had been promoted to be. So this is a really big issue because, you know, we want people to be able to, we care about people, you know, we care about customer service. Retailers know that customer service is everything, especially nowadays, because if you're not going to do it well, guess what? Someone else will. And so having spectacular customer service, knowledgeable team members who can serve all of your customers with dignity, respect, and transparency is really, really important. But the very big issue is, you know, there's so much information to learn here. 

So what we're doing with the Train to Help project is we're shining a really big light on this and we're creating really interesting online learning for people who are required by law to learn about disabilities and how to serve people with disabilities in the workplace, because we do have something in Ontario called the AODA, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. And they've got a customer service standard, and that customer service standard requires employees to be trained on the AODA. And there's very specific requirements there. So I know this sounds all very probably technical, but suffice to say, we want people with disabilities to be able to move around the world with more trust, to trust that they can explore the world, that it's safe to explore the world and that they'll be accommodated. And they know where they're going to be accommodated. So that's the whole goal of the project. Well, and why me, I guess I could say that, you know, me and my husband bring together a very unique blend of skills, you know, him being a software developer, which is a very key component, component, and myself having come from the learning and development space.

So we know we have the two of us along with Sarah, who is kind of our subject matter expert. We have a pretty good team. And then we've brought on four additional people to bolster up different areas where we need support. So we've got an amazing team behind us. But that didn't happen by accident. We started talking about it in October. And then, you know, by the time January rolled around, we realized, you know, I don't think this is just pretend anymore. I think we're really going to do this. So we had committed to it really in January, which is less than six months ago. And then by the time February rolled around, we had already applied to be part of Ignition, which is a program by Invest Ottawa within the Invest Ottawa ecosystem, a venture ecosystem. It's the first program that you can start with when you have a business concept. And so we started with Invest Ottawa, our program started in April. And ever since then, it's been an absolute whirlwind of, you know, creating our demo, getting our demo and applying to Collision Conference, which is on July 17th, you know, and then beginning on the MVP, the pilot, minimum viable product for our pilot, which is running August 14th is the launch date for that. And so we set some very aggressive timelines. And we did that very intentionally. A, you know, because if you're going to do it, you might as well do it and rip off the bandaid. And I would say that's true for anyone. So really this message that I'm sharing today is about like how to get something accomplished, you know, how to actually do it. If you have an idea, how do you get it across the line? How do you bring it to fruition?

Well, these deadlines aren't manufactured. I'm not making them up. So as the leader, as the CEO, and you know, I hate titles, so I don't call myself that, but as the person who's driving the performance of the company, the performance of the company, it's up to me to create deadlines and create some pressure so that we can, you know, pressure. And we've got to be careful because we want some stress because without stress, there's no result. But not so much stress that we burn people out. So we need to be very careful, like how much we're pushing on that gas. people out. So we need to be very careful, like how much we're pushing on that gas. But we do need enough pressure to actually get things done. And I think it would surprise you how quickly people can get things done when they're motivated to do something and when they have a passion for it and when they have the right skills, when the skills aren't holding them up. Now, if you have to learn a whole bunch of things, it takes a long time to learn, right? So that could be a roadblock for you. But if you can find the right people to come alongside you and help, and they have the right skills, and they also have the right passion and the right mindset for it, then you can create some real magic. And that's kind of what we're noticing now. some real magic. And that's kind of what we're noticing now when we brought on Jackie, a great project manager, when we brought in Alex, who's a phenomenal instructional designer, when we brought on Noemi, who has a passion for semiotics and user experience and customer experience and graphic design and marketing. She's like a Swiss army knife. Um, when we, when we brought on Debbie, who is another person with a disability, um, who's an amazing finance administrator, administrator, and we've worked together before, and she's going to be helping with making sure we stay on budget for the project. Um, and then when you, when you put all the things together and you, you know, you, you see what your skill sets are and what you're lacking and what you need, and hopefully you have some money.

So it's really hard to do anything unless you can find the money for it. So create a plan. Go talk to your family and friends and people who you know in your network. Convince them that your plan is viable and maybe they will actually loan you some money towards it. And that's how you get started. If you don't have your own capital put to put in, you need to convince people that this is true. And the process of convincing other people is also going to convince you and make you more aware of what, you know, the project has, the potential that it has, the real potential, and also its flaws and also its gaps. And so you're building this over time. There is definitely one thing that I know for sure, though, you cannot do it by yourself. You need a whole team around you. I've definitely talked about this kind of concept before as well. But even if you're, if you think you're alone, then you're probably not ready to be an entrepreneur. And you're probably not ready even to start a business necessarily. You can certainly be an independent consultant or a solopreneur and kind of manage to do things by yourself. But if you're trying to grow a business, absolutely no way in hell. You need a whole team around you, whether that team is part-time, contract, casual, full-time, mentors, advisors, full-time mentors, advisors, specialists, like you need to develop your whole ecosystem of support.

So if you're in Ontario, I would highly recommend, you know, reaching out to your local community futures development corporations or CFDCs, because they have quite a bit of support that might be able to help you. Any kind of economic development agencies, your local chambers of commerce. If you've got a business like Invest Ottawa, it's some kind of accelerator program or incubator program, definitely reach out to those, especially if you're in thinking about a high tech company. But you need to bring people, you need to bring your story to people and you need to bring people along with your story because it's going to evolve. It's going to change like, like pretty much constantly.

You know, our, our story has changed so much. Like I thought it's so much harder to do it for yourself too. Even, you know, I'm, I'm a business coach and I help other business owners kind of hone their value propositions and take their product to market sort of where I fit in. But even myself, it's so much harder to do it for yourself than it is to help somebody else do it. So when I was first starting Positivist Group, I did engage a business coach and I'm not, you know, ashamed to say that whatsoever. I think every coach needs a coach, uh, maybe multiple coaches even. So, uh, there's certainly no shame in getting help. Um, and it's okay to help for people to see what the process looks like. Uh, That's just part of having a growth mindset. 

So if you think that you have to have everything perfect before you can share with anything with someone, I would suggest that's a very toxic sort of mindset to have if you're in the place of wanting to start and grow a business. You're going to have to get very comfortable with people seeing behind the curtain and seeing the process if you want to be successful. I haven't heard of anyone who's been able to be successful without that kind of support. So I know that those of you are out there, I know because I talk to you all the time. And you know that this is exactly the thing that I preach. So this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's talked to me before. But our experience with Invest Ottawa was really good. It has been good and it's still good. We're not, well, apparently it's like Hotel California. Once you get in, you can never leave. California. Once you get in, you can never leave.

And I'm starting to see how that could be true. But we've had so far, I think it's been eight weeks that we've been within the program, within the Ignition program. It's been a very good experience. We've made a few friends. We've certainly sought the advice of many of the mentors that they have available there. And then the beautiful news is that it doesn't end. So once we've kind of aged out of the ignition program, we can begin to take advantage of their other programs, the flex program specifically. So I'm going to actually recite on June 20th. If you're available, you should join us. If you're from the Ottawa area, please join, um, register. I'll make sure there's a registration link in the, uh, in the event, in the event, in the script, the podcast script, I'll make sure there is a link to register for the Ignition pitch competition. So I will be going up there and I will be speaking stream of consciousness for three minutes and not a second more, apparently.

 And then there will be an opportunity for both the crowd to vote. So there's a crowd winner. And then they've got a panel of judges as well who votes for the best pitch. So come and, you know, hopefully you can help us win because Sarah, my my partner in crime here, Sarah wants to win both of both of them. So certainly I think we've got the crowd in the bag and it's pretty much up to me. So I'm going to share my pitch with you and you tell me what you think. And if you think that there's anything that I can do to do better, I would love to hear your feedback. So here we go. Disability is part of the human experience. By age 60, nearly half of us will have a disability that threatens to diminish our freedom in the real world. My name is Erin Patchell and the Train to Help team imagines a real world shopping experience where everyone feels welcome. We have a multifaceted solution.

 The first part is a membership platform that equips brick and mortar retailers with the up-to-date knowledge featuring the best AODA compliance e-learning on the market. The second part is a website for our members to attract customers with disabilities and their caregivers to their establishments and provide transparency of information. Let me tell you a story about Tim. With multiple degrees, world travel, and even a stint as a model in Japan, Tim's life was vibrant. Diagnosed with MS at 32 years old, he was in a wheelchair within four years. Now as a quadriplegic, his world would be very small without Sarah, his partner, and my business partner, who fights daily to keep his world bigger.

But this isn't just for Tim. Currently 27% of Canadians age 15 years and older have a disability, and they spend about $55 billion annually across 141,000 retail establishments in Canada. In the past eight weeks, we've surveyed retailers and customers with disabilities, uncovering a significant gap in understanding. 100% of small retailers had not implemented AODA training. 100% of employees who were trained admitted to not actually learning anything. 90% of customers with disabilities believed businesses did not understand their needs. 61% did not feel valued as customers. And these retailers actually really care about their customers, but they struggle with how much there is to learn. Sole proprietors especially fall through the cracks of accessibility laws, even though if they're discovered, the fines for noncompliance are extremely expensive. The good news is we're trained to help. Our seven-member team, including three co-founders, brings expertise from engineering to sales leadership. We have the belief, the skills, and the experience to transform the train to help project from a project into a movement. We're preparing for our pilot party in August and we have 15 confirmed businesses and over a hundred employees participating.

They will proudly leave with trained to help certificates, t-shirts, storefront signage, and a dedicated member page in our searchable website, allowing people with disabilities and their caregivers to explore a bigger world with more confidence. We have five more spots for pilot businesses. So if you know an independent retailer who'd be great champion for this project, we'd love to connect, or they can join our waiting list for our November, 2024 launch. Together, we're empowering customer service teams, enhancing retail brands, and making every customer's experience memorable in the right way. Join us in creating a world where inclusion is a retail cornerstone, not an afterthought. So what did you think? Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it. But again, if you are confused, it's a kind of a big concept to try to jam into three minutes. It is a somewhat complex solution. So I'm curious to see if it actually spoke to you the way that I hope that it speaks to the judges.

 So I guess we'll say that we're just at the beginning here. You know, we're, we're putting our pilot out in August, August 14th. We have quite a few local businesses who are signed up for the pilot and that's very exciting. They're bringing their employees and everyone by the end of the night is going to be all trained up. They're going to be hopefully compliant with AODA and, and more, hopefully using those skills every day to bring a little bit of joy into somebody's life. But it's just the beginning. We have a long road ahead of us, like years, you know? So I'm going to talk a little bit about just like maintaining my own energy through the next little while, because obviously I'm putting out a podcast. We're developing a software company. Positivist group is also running, you know, smoothly and, and humming along. Um, and then I also do quite a bit of volunteer work. For example, I'm on the board of directors with the ICF, the international coach federation, Ottawa chapter. Um, and so, you know, I do grant writing as well for nonprofits for free. for free. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's definitely going to be a challenge to manage my own energy. And I think that's true for all entrepreneurs, right?

 So really, I've got to say, what I've really just been focusing on is the basics, sleep, exercise, walking every single day for at least an hour, hour and a half. A lot of the time I'll do that while I'm talking on the phone with a potential podcast guest or potential customer or just a friend of mine. And so I can kind of manage to do some walk and talk phone calls and get some exercise at the same time being productive and, and also taking care of myself. So finding ways to do that. Also, I'll just take a day off if I have to, like on Tuesday, my mother and I are going to go to a spa together for the day. And I'm not stressed out at all about that. That's a lie. So, but sometimes you just need a day at the spa and that's okay too. Um, and then just making sure I'm hydrating. Uh, so sleeping well, eating well, getting some exercise and hydrating. And I know that if I'm doing all of those four things, usually my energy can maintain, um, for the 12 to 15, sometimes hours a day that I need to be working.

And in order to, to bring this project to a successful start, it's not even started yet, we're really at the beginning. And so, you know, finding ways to make yourself finding efficiencies in your schedule, and finding ways to keep yourself healthy are going to be really, really important. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I know it's a little bit different. It's our 10th episode. So every 10 episodes, I'm going to be doing a solo podcast. And I think because my life is revolving around this project, I'd love to take you with me on the journey. And so I'm going to be sharing, you know, a little bit about what's going on on the back end and how we're doing and how we're feeling. So if you have any questions about that, questions about, you know, what does it feel like to be a software CEO? I don't know yet. what does it feel like to be a software CEO?

 I don't know yet. I don't know how to answer that question because it still feels like a little bit of sort of this doesn't really feel real yet, even though it's very real. It's certainly real financially. So therefore it's real. But it still feels a little odd. So anyways, if you have any questions about that, you've got this twinkle in your eye, an idea that you want to maybe think about, um, let me know, and then we can chat about it. So one quote that spoke to me this week is from Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. And I'm really feeling this one. An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down. Hooey. Yeah, he is absolutely bang on. Until next time, have a beautiful day at work.

Don't forget to stay weird stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble

Ever wondered what the key to securing the future of family farms for generations to come could be? If so, join our conversation with Lauren Sheil, a financial planner and trusted advisor. With his background growing up on a small farm and his focus on eliminating debt, building wealth, and leaving a legacy, this is a discusison you do not want to miss out. Stray tuned to be one step closer to building wealth, and financially planning well for the future.

Website: https://lcsfinancial.ca/

Stay in Touch: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/laurensheil

Script:

The shares are worthless if I'm not there.

The world has become a lot more complex.

Every year, you leave $100,000 inside a company, the government's going to come along and say, oh, look, there's $100,000 there. I want 15% of it just for nothing. And so we take that money and we just move it over here where the government can't get at it.

Nobody wants to die, Lauren. We're all going gonna live forever.

There's there's that and that's just delusional, everybody dies.

Well but we're all delusional.

The story of the day and this is a true story based on a previous client and you know obviously paraphrasing a few, a few little things, but Lauren, I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts about this, this story, this business case. All right. As the owner of a generational family farm, I've always been proud of our old school values and family first culture. My grandparents started the farm and it's been passed down to my father and now to me and I hope to my son in the future. We faced many challenges over the years but our commitment to keeping the farm and the family has never wavered. However, as I look to the future, I'm concerned we're not preparing like we need to be. I'd like to retire in the next five years and the world has gotten so much more complicated. When we bought the farm from my dad almost 30 years ago, it was a much simpler time. I know I don't know what I don't know and I've been resistant to change and putting together the necessary checks and balances, such as insurance, legal documents and policies. We've always operated on trust and mutual understanding but I also know the world's changing and we need to adapt and the last thing i want is for us to have to sell the farm so enter lauren shale thank you for coming on the podcast lauren uh lauren's a financial planner and trusted advisor

I'm just listening to you talk i'm like am I supposed to say now?

You say something whenever you want to say something.

So enter Lauren Sheil, a financial planner and trusted advisor. Lauren has a relational approach that we think would really support clients with this particular challenge. With his background, with your background, Lauren, growing up on a small farm and your focus on eliminating debt, building wealth and leaving legacy. I think you're you might be the perfect person to help us navigate with these challenges. So before we get started, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Fabulous.

Tell me what makes you a great person to help with this kind of challenge?

There's a lot going on. And, um, uh, as you mentioned, I, uh, I grew up on a small, it was more of a hobby farm. It wasn't really an actual operating business farm. I, my father was actually a corporate executive and, uh, and he, uh, he moved to this, we bought this farm he grew up on a generational family farm in the 1940s and 50s and uh and by the late 70s he was starting to feel the itch a little and uh so he bought a small uh small farm outside of town and basically played gentleman farmer on the weekends while he was being the corporate executive in the city during the week. I adore that. I totally adore that.

Yeah, it was fun. It was an interesting dichotomy of his of the way we we ended up living because uh because you know um well I won't get into all the detail about that but we we kind of grew up the uh the the location itself was just kind of outside the outskirts of town um not too far from a fairly large city um and uh and so the uh the relationship and the dynamics of the town itself and the people that we interacted with was was very diverse there was a number of um family farm in the area it was a big dairy farming area um as well as um the townies as you want to call them um and so so uh so that was kind of the environment that i grew up in and um and uh i got into uh this business after having spent 20 years almost um as a marketing executive in the canadian music industry okay working with creative individuals musicians um and so on and I learned a lot um about small business essentially and and might and even what i refer to as micro business which is um one and two people operations that are that are uh almost cottage industry-ish um in a way but uh but that can grow to be extremely large operations uh from a financial standpoint um but still operate with kind of on a shoestring of just a few people and and farmers tend to do that um that it's one family basically running this operation but it could be a multi-billion dollar operation and you don't and you don't necessarily see that or notice that until you do a little bit of digging so right so that's kind of how I come at this um that uh that that it's well it's a very simple structure um mom dad couple of kids all work on the farm maybe maybe one or two neighbors who are employed employed part-time or full-time or whatever um but uh but they're running a multi-million dollar operation a shoestring of uh of personnel uh and that's and that's what you see in a lot of the uh a lot of the farms especially the especially the dairy operations they can be hugely hugely profitable uh enterprises with five people interesting okay so you know it's so hard right? Because I feel like sometimes the farmers are this like last bastion of the handshake agreement.

Yes. You know, in a lot of ways, or the small town entrepreneurs, you know, and I'm from a small town. So I work with a lot of them. I work with a few people in similar scenarios as this as well in a different, totally different capacity than you do. similar scenarios as this as well in a different totally different capacity than you do um and it's like it i feel like that's almost like what we're missing in the rest of the world but at the same time we need to like help them um have some of the tools to make sure that because they're not wrong the world has become a lot more uh complex i was just going to say you you mentioned that in the story yeah in the discussion or the story there that you launched this with that the world has changed the world has changed significantly and um in preparation for this uh I did a little bit of research yesterday just uh kind of boned up on some statistics and uh one of the statistics that jumped out at me was that less than 8% of family farms have a written succession plan.

 And that's, I mean, it doesn't have to be complicated. be as simple as son a purchases asset b from father i guess he would be a but yeah i know you're there and it doesn't it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be um a 60 page legal document it just needs to be something that's written down that everybody involved understands yeah um and uh and so that uh when the time comes there's no confusion and there's no there's there's no indigestion at uh at family thanksgiving dinner totally yeah where does insurance come into play here this is really your bread and butter, right? Is the insurance industry?

Yeah. Let's back it up a little bit first. Sure. Let's back it up. When we start talking about succession planning in a family business, there's two, well, a number of factors that need to be brought to the table and and then first one is that a family farm is treated differently by CRA than any other business so the one one of the things one of the first things that you need to understand when you start talking about succession planning in a business like this is how the CRA is going to treat the sale. And without getting super technical, everybody understands or everybody has heard the term capital gains.

So, under Canadian law, under CRA rules, the capital gains tax is charged, the definition of capital gains is essentially the value that an asset has increased, the amount that an asset has increased in value from the time you bought it so the so there's there's two numbers that come into play there's there's the purchase price which is referred to technically as the adjusted cost base um and the sale price which um is is the and then the difference now oftentimes what people will say is well what if i bought the business from grandpa for a dollar the cra doesn't accept that as the sale price the cra says the sale price is actually fair market value right so if so if the if the product if the assets are gifted to you the cra doesn't care no the the the assets were actually this and whether you paid that money or not that's what we're going to calculate taxes on so so that's the first thing that people need to understand is that uh when transferring assets between family members between or or a close friend or whoever if you don't sell it to them for fair market value you're still going to pay the taxes yeah at fair market value um the other thing to the other thing to recognize is and the conversation comes up all the time is that um under the, there is what's called the capital gains tax inclusion rate.

 And for a Canadian controlled corporation, the first million dollars in change of share value is exempt from capital gains. is exempt from capital gains so um this comes into play a lot with with small businesses where where i will be having be having this conversation and uh the business is worth you know it's a small business maybe it's worth half a million or one or two million dollars and they're like well we don't need to do any tax planning because we're not going to pay any tax on it anyway because of tax exclusion. Which technically is true, but only under certain specific circumstances.

The way the law is written, it says that the first million dollars in change, it's actually $1,016,000, whatever. And it changes every year, it goes up every year. The way the law is written, it basically says that this first million dollars of share value is exempt. So that means, number one, it has to be a corporation but you don't have shares in sole proprietorships right so if it's not and so if you're not incorporated there's no tax there's no capital gains inclusion rate there's no there or rather there's no capital gains exclusion everything is considered a capital gain um so if you're a mom and pop shop that didn't incorporate, if you're a partnership that didn't incorporate, this whole idea of the first million dollars is exempt from capital gains is false because it has to be incorporated. The other thing that people overlook or don't realize is that a lot of these small companies and again i work with very small companies a lot of these small companies their greatest asset is actually the people who work there for sure so if i'm selling my business and i'm essentially the business yeah then the shares are worthless right i'm not there so then what ends up happening is you're not selling your company for shares you're selling the assets of the company and then winding down the corporation right yeah and the asset sale if i'm selling a truck or inventory or a contract, service contract, whatever, that can't be brought into the capital gains inclusion rate either. It's not share. Of course. Yeah. So these are the little stipulations inside the CRA rules that people who are especially small business operators really need to understand. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not an accountant, so I can't give you actually accounting advice. This is just a situation that I've seen over the years.

Now, translate that back to farm businesses. Now, translate that back to farm businesses. The CRA has basically said that farm businesses, because of their nature, it being a family operation a lot of the time, don't have to be incorporated. But because most of the asset in a farm property is actually in the land. This is now the land transfer that's happened that can be done between family members without having a corporation a lot easier if you are in a corporation but you don't have to and then the other thing that the discussion that ends up happening is, okay, then we go back to that same scenario of, okay, I don't really need to do a lot of tax planning because I'm only going to sell a business to my son for a million or a million and a half dollars. Then you have the discussion of, if that's what you're doing junior might not have the credit oh yeah go to the bank and and uh fund the taxes that are coming to you because because it's as i said earlier a lot of these farm operations you look at them you drive by them on the highway and you're like yeah that's a million dollar operation that's a million dollar operation no no that's a 10 million dollar operation and you don't even realize it yeah it doesn't take long you got 100 acres of land you got um you're you're putting out um i grew up in uh as i said earlier i grew up in dairy corn country so you got 100 acres of land you're cranking out you know a couple of hundred thousand bushels of corn a year um you got 200 head of cattle uh and those and those dairy cows are producing a are attached to a production contract with the marketing board. And, you know, you've got a $10 million operation. For sure.

 Yeah. And, and Junior isn't going to have the credit. No. To buy that. And that's what, that's where we kind of intersect, right? Because my job is to help senior let go and figure out how to get junior to start leading and, and to know what they need so that in five years, you can't do this in a year or even two years. A lot of the time, sometimes it takes junior five years to get ready to have the cap to not just the capital but the the credit to be able to take this on right and to have the skills to take this on so oftentimes what ends up happening in my experience at any rate and maybe you can you can speak to this too but um oftentimes what ends up happening is is uh we'll take the example of of my friend david who i who I went to high school with this guy, a dairy operation, southern Ontario, where I grew up, who went to university and did the agribusiness courses and everything else. And dad creates a partnership with Junior. And dad slowly steps away. And Junior slowly buys the shares.

It takes like 25 years to do that. It can take a while. Because there was no way he was going to be able to come up with a loan for the million or three dollars that the CRA was going to demand to make that transfer. So now they do it over time. Yeah. So that's kind of one of the first things that I would say in a situation like we discussed earlier is, yes, okay, you want five years, but really how much time do you need? want five years but really how much time do you need because if if senior is 60 and he wants to retire at 65 that's one thing but if he's gonna kick around and dabble yeah buy and you know drive a tractor once someone else there for the sake of driving a tractor, then maybe we've got 25 years. Sure. Yeah. Every single scenario is different. Yeah. Another situation I knew of where they did something similar to this and senior, again, a second generation senior. So this was like a three generation family farm, senior again a second generation senior so this was like a three generation family farm but uh but senior was 85 years old and still going out and cutting hay and doing whatever else just because he wanted to be there so this brings me to the the i mean maybe we're everything all roads lead to insurance but i mean you hope you always hope you're going to have another 25 years when you're six years old but what if you don't right so then yeah you're you're right all roads tend to lead to insurance in one way or another um there's there's a couple of things when we get into succession planning too that uh that we have to understand about the family dynamic and um and we get into what i call a state equalization because if there's two or three juniors and only one of them wants to take over the business we've got to figure out a way to treat the other two fairly right and so that's when we get into family trust structures and funding certain things with life insurance and also where we talk about how do we make thanksgiving dinner go smoothly yeah without having some of the uh the children feel like they've been shafted.

 Sure. Because, again, we've got a $10 million operation here. And one son took over the business. Yes. And the other, and so now he's managing and controlling this massive asset. These other two kids are left to kind of go out and make life on their own without the benefit of this functioning business. So I recommend in situations like that what I call an insured asset transfer process, which is where we take a life insurance policy that is funded by the proceeds of the business. And that life insurance policy now is designed to do three things. It's designed to offset some of the taxes that would come to you if a senior died suddenly and complete that transfer quickly. We would have the life insurance policy there to do that, but it's also there to provide the other beneficiaries with enough money that they feel like they've been treated fairly. In a case like that, we've got to, again, I keep coming back to the value of the operation, but we've got a $10 million operation.

 We've got one son that's running the operation. I know we've got a again i keep coming back to the the to the value of the operation but we've got a 10 million dollar operation we've got one son that's running the operation i know we've got two other kids that are sitting there going i need or i should receive three four million dollars from my drone and so we we can set that up as an estate utilization approach through a family trust or through just through a well-funded and well-designed life insurance policy right yeah and this is why partnering with people like you lauren is so important yeah i think um yeah you've got a lot of uh insight under your belt there and you've been through a lot of these scenarios.

So, you know, there's an emotional, a palpable, emotional resistance to this kind of structure. In a lot of cases, the folks that I've worked with, it's been, you know, it's a process of kind of getting to that, that, to that point where they're comfortable having a conversation with you or, you know, or someone like you, right. And that's part of my job is to get them there. someone like you, right? And that's part of my job is to get them there. But what would you say to someone who's in that scenario, who's a little bit resistant? Well, we want to figure out what they're resistant to. And there are some misconceptions in the world about what life insurance is for and um and there are some there are some issues people don't quite understand about the um the tax treatment of things and so the number one thing that people need to understand when they start talking we start talking about life insurance the number one thing I think people need to understand is that it is essentially a tax-free asset.

The proceeds of life insurance pay out tax-free. And again, depending on how you structure it, that is a very valuable piece of information for a lot of people. So not just in farm corporations, but again, if we go back to the other corporate structures that I mentioned earlier, if you're sitting on a company that has a couple of hundred thousand dollars or so retained earnings, just sitting inside the company, everybody knows that to get that out you got to pay dividend tax of course but if the um but if instead you use the money inside the company to pay life insurance premium you're moving the you're you're transferring the asset from a taxable environment to a non-tax environment or a tax deferred. So now as it sits, that money sits in, when money sits inside a corporation, it attracts tax, just the regular corporate tax rate stuff, just as it sits there. If you then, if you use that money to purchase a life insurance policy, that tax stops, that passive tax as it grows has stopped because the money has technically been spent. You can't write it off as an expense, but it's no longer just a passive growth that's happened.

 So that's just taxes when stopped. And then when the individual dies, the owner of the company dies, the company receives the proceeds of the tax, the life insurance policy tax-free, and it can be paid out to the heirs of the corporate owner through what's called a capital dividend account, the notion of account that's created on debt by CRA, which is, again, a tax-free account. So now all of this money has been, has come out of the corporation tax free without having to be paid on it without having any dividends charged on it or anything like that. So that's so that's a structure that we use all the time for all corporations whether it's a farm corporation or not but it works and then it works with that farm corporation obviously just as well as any other. Well that's a good angle because I think I think every single one of my Well, that's a good angle because I think every single one of my small, but certainly the farm clients, the generational family businesses got something in common. None of them like tax.

 I explain this to people all the time is when we put a life insurance policy inside a corporation, what we've essentially done is we've moved money that's from one pile that the government is taxing every year. And you leave $100,000 inside a company, the government's going to come along and say, oh, look, there's $100,000 dollars there i want 15 of it for sure um just for nothing and so we take that money and we just move it over here where the government can't get at it and it sits there and it grows it does its thing because life insurance policies grow with dividends and everything else and it grows tax deferred government can't get at that money while it's in life insurance falls right then when the then when buddy dies the uh the cash drops into the company and gets dividended out to the heirs of the company through this cda that that is tax-free so it's so we've uh moved money from a taxable environment to a non-taxable whereas if we just left the money in there and as it grew when the government grabbed their growth tax every year so they're taking the money off of this and then when you try and dividend it out they're going to take tax on it again tax so the only time the only time in canadian tax law and just about any western world tax law where the same dollar is taxed twice yeah well that's definitely an angle that'll attract some of these folks i think um and knowledge is power right i think you'd probably agree knowledge is power uh the other thing the other thing is like life insurance companies, life insurance gets a bad rap. Because there's always...

Nobody wants to die, Lauren. We're all going to live forever. There's that, and that's just delusional. Everybody dies. Well, but we're all delusional in the same way. That's just delusional. Everybody dies. Get them. No, the point is, though, that we've all heard the horror stories of somebody who paid into this life insurance policy for years and years and years and then never got paid but but uh but they're almost what i refer to as the uh as as the urban legend because because everybody talks about this stuff and they they think about it and they're like oh i heard about buddy and i'm like okay who was it where where did he live what was his name right how long ago was that they don't have the specifics because it actually never happens probably not no no it's I haven't heard of that before for the record so what's that i haven't heard of that for the record i'm just gonna live forever that's my right there you go there you go now the other the um I don't want to I don't want to gloss over this and I yeah bring it up I meant to bring it up sooner is that there's also a thing in uh a relatively new thing in life insurance okay um that's uh that's critical illness insurance okay basically living it's basically uh it's basically um as one of my friends put it um it's it's insurance for the unsuccessful heart attack so there's been a lot of those yeah what's an unsuccessful heart attack we're getting really good at you know bringing people back to life after these we're getting we're getting really good unsuccessful heart attacks and unsuccessful cancer yeah and unsuccessful you know so these are things that you get it don't die but your life is altered for sure so so we have so we now have what we call critical illness insurance which pays out um upon diagnosis of one of these major illnesses so long as you survive 30 days and um because if you don't if you die after if you die before 30 days it's just like a trick sure um but uh but if you have a heart attack and survive but you can't work the farm the same way you used to nice to get a little bit of money to to kind of offset your lifestyle um and and other things disability insurance is harder to get because um because it's based more on your income and if you're under reporting your income like a lot of small business owners and farmers do if you're now nobody nobody under reports their income come on no but if you're under reporting your income um yeah they are critical illness insurance policy doesn't care no um you purchase a you purchase an insurance policy that pays you a hundred thousand dollars on diagnosis of a heart attack or heart disease then that's what you get whereas if you say I make a hundred thousand dollars a year and i need a disability insurance policy that's going to continue my income at that level now you gotta prove that you make that kind of money before the insurance policies before the insurance company's going to approve you for that policy for sure so yeah we could go into underreporting income too and why that's usually a bad idea for the record like but on actually though if you're trying to grow your business it's it's you know there's there's a bit of a it Even corporations, small business corporations, if you want to simply pay yourself dividends from the growth of the company, which a lot of entrepreneurs do, they just pay themselves dividends, then you don't even really have to under report your income because because it's all your income's all in the company and you're just taking out what you need to live on and i've seen that that scenario play out a number of times a number of times as well yeah where where we've got a like a meeting just last week with a with a gentleman who uh who has a company makes probably $2 million a year. He pays himself 60 grand a year.

Yeah. Just because that's all he needs and everything else lives inside the company. And he was in another one of these situations where now he's got all these retained earnings that are attracting all of this tax. So I was like, well, I understand why you don't want to pay yourself a lot of money. So I was like, well, I understand why you don't want to pay yourself a lot of money. Protect this pile of retained earnings here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're a treasure trove of knowledge, Lauren. Yeah. Is there anything, any final words? You know, one of the things I like to ask, you know, at the end of the podcast is if you were in this person's shoes, or if this person was your client, what's the one question, the most important question that they ask themselves? Well, as I said, at the start of the story that you laid out is fairly common, but it was also a little bit vague in terms of some specifics.

So I would want to know what type of farm we're talking about here specifically, because there are different approaches and different considerations if we're dealing with a dairy farm that has a big milk quota versus just a straight up cash crop situation. I'd want to know how many kids there are for that state equalization conversation. And I'd want to know how the transfer, the first generational transfer happened because uh because when we're talking about adjusted cost base on the taxes we want to know how far back we have to go um but I think the number one thing that people need to understand when they're doing succession planning depending regardless of whether it's a farm or other type of business you've got to get your head around capital gains tax um and how that's going to affect things and i'm not an accountant so you need a good accountant yeah help you understand that and then once you get your head around how the capital gains tax are going to be treated then you need to engage uh someone like myself yeah who can uh work on ways to um offset or defer that tax for as long as possible and and um and the way we do that nine times out of 10 is with a permanent life insurance policy that grabs that asset, shelters it from tax and moves it forward. The the other piece of information that I didn't get a chance to discuss earlier is that when we're dealing with a permanent life insurance policy a lot of people will sit back and say well i don't get the money until I die and that is not true or not necessarily true okay um the uh permanent life insurance policy is has has this cash value component. The cash value is your asset. 

You can withdraw portions of it. You can't withdraw it all because it collapses the whole policy, but you can withdraw portions of it as it grows and generate an income that way. You can also use it as collateral for a loan and borrow against it to get more money. Right. And now you've created another expense for yourself in interest. So any interest that's going to be charged when you borrow money against that policy becomes write-offable. Right.

So you can use that to fund your retirement if you if you get a large enough life insurance policy with a big enough cash balance you can borrow enough money against it to fund your retirement and then when you eventually pass away um because everybody dies need to break it to you but everybody dies um that was my that was my uh donald trump impression everybody dies you need to do your ted talk on everybody dies but uh the the uh the point being that that uh when you eventually die the life insurance policy pays off the loan and then right and then then away you go right so there's no there's no residual there um and there are companies out there there are banks out there that uh that structure these deals they understand how permanent life insurance works and they structure these deals in such a way that you don't have to repay them while you're living okay yep makes sense not really but you know why you have lauren guys don't worry all good you're in good hand this is why lauren knows stuff so we don't have to yeah well i mean the point is the point being if you borrow if you borrow against your life insurance policy. Don't worry about it. I won't say it about the bank, but if you borrow it right from the life insurance company themselves, they won't insist on a repayment plan because they know they're going to get their money when they die. Yeah, that's fair.

That makes sense. Yeah, that does. All right. Well, thank you very much you very much sir has been a pleasure and an honour Iappreciate that. 

I appreciate the opportunity absolutely thanks for thanks for uh listening and uh i hope i didn't uh confuse everybody anybody too much but uh i'm sure in the show notes you'll have my contact information. So we are putting your contact information in the show notes and your website. So don't worry, folks, if it made no sense, Lauren knows what he's talking about. And, you know, we can guide you through it. You're a good, you're a good guide. A good guy and a good guide. There you go.

That's it.

All right.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Intro:

Max Brault has a vision: To build community by showing the world that Canadians with disabilities contribute to society―and to successful business ventures. Join us for a riveting conversation on accessibility and inclusivity in the world of business!

Stay in Touch with Max:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/max-brault

Script:

 The cost of changing something is all about understanding how you're going to spend the money.

 Leading people into thinking a place is accessible when it's not, I think is the most, probably the most important thing that I'm hearing from people with disabilities.

One third of the Canadian population has some form of disability.

No one wants to go somewhere where they're uncomfortable or they're feeling disrespected.

You know, and of course the reaction is, well, we'll write off your pizza. And I'm like, no, I'm not looking for a handout. What I want you to do is stop putting the garbage can there.

For anyone listening this is a true story uh that was provided to me by one of my colleagues sarah and her partner who is paraplegic and so um this is her story. I visited a cafe with my partner who's in a motorized wheelchair. Their marketing said they were wheelchair friendly, but we didn't find that to be the case. The doorway was uncomfortably narrow. Objects like chairs and a garbage can made it hard to maneuver.

 The bathroom was uncomfortably small for his wheelchair, and there were no low tables or a reachable check-out counter. When I told the manager they gave me a free coffee card, which was a nice gesture, but free coffee doesn't solve the problem, I decided to talk to the general manager who said they'd bring forward my ideas for change, but we never heard back from them. I honestly think they just don't know how to help. And this experience showed me that most places still have a long way to go to be truly accessible. And this is Erin, like, you know, breaking the third wall here. But this is a story that has, I think this has happened on a recurring basis for her and also for a few other people that we know as well. And I'm sure Max, you as well. And every time she has an experience like this, she says it makes it harder to take the risk the next time. It's not just about getting in the door. It's about being able to feel comfortable somewhere. So enter Max. Welcome to the show, Max. Max Brault.

 Hi, Erin. How are you holding up?

Hello. I'm doing good, sir. Max Brault has a vision to build a community, build community by showing the world that Canadians with disabilities contribute to society and successful business ventures. Unafraid to challenge conventions to make positive change for the disability community, Max aims to identify accessibility issues for corporations, governments, international community, non-governmental agencies, and more to provide strategic solutions to address them. So that is a big goal, sir. It is. And it's by people like yourselves helping me achieve that goal to let everybody know that I exist and what I do in this great world of ours. Yes. And we, we appreciate you for it. Um, did you want to tell some people will be listening to this and others will be obviously watching on YouTube, um, or shorts or whatever. Uh, but did you want to tell the folks, uh, watching slash listening, why you care about this subject?

Well, you you're seeing is is that i'm an elderly gentleman with uh gray beard gray hair wearing a nice shirt rocketed out with a bow tie um what you're not seeing is this visual as i'm sitting in an electric wheelchair uh i'm an individual who's had a spinal muscular atrophy since i've been born. And so over the years, I've been, I've experienced all kinds of lives. I've had a physical life where I was able to walk and run and play rugby, to the point now where I am confined to an electric wheelchair. So I've kind of lived the two lines, but always having this parasitic SMA behind my back. And as well as I've been in and out of the business world, I've worked for the federal government for close to 20 years, and I've run my own businesses. And, you know, this is a common story. It's a story I hear all the time. And I've experienced some of these issues myself.

And to be honest with you, I've come to put a hard wall when they happen. And I kind of note the place where it's happened and I make sure I never go back there. It's my wife who wants to take the flag and start fighting and making the changes. But I realized that sadly, like your friend, for every one of those that don't really take accessibility seriously, there is one that does. And at the end of the day, our money is harder, right? And we want to spend money to the organizations and places that want us to come in and have a good time and be seen there. And so I'd rather spend my money there. And so that's why when a place comes up like that, I have a tendency to ignore them and then move on to the ones that do want my patronage. and then move on to the ones that do want my patronage. And look, I could spend hours talking to you about what to do and not to do in this situation. But I think that, you know, internet is becoming a more and more viable tool.

 There are, you know, Google Sites. There's what myNZiv is doing with AccessNow. there's a whole bunch of different information that's starting to become more at our fingertips about what places are becoming accessible and what places are not. And I, and I think that again, taking a little bit of time and going to these sites and taking a look, which ones work for you might be a really good, you know, good starting point to avoid having that because I know a lot like your friend yeah um when I go out with my wife when I go out with my friends I don't want the evening to start off with with with a moment of man this place is not accessible and they treat me like crap I want to go out and have a good time I want to have a smile on my face I want to be be laughing and joking with the people I'm with. Yeah, absolutely. It's never going to be frictionless, but it's as frictionless as possible when you're going out. And what's the latest statistic from StatsCan? I think it was 27% of the Canadian population has at least one disability. And I'm sure that's underrepresented. Not everyone, of course, is in at least one disability. And I'm sure that's, you know, underrepresented.

 Not everyone, of course, is in a motorized wheelchair, but at least one disability, which is it's that's more than 25% of the population and climbing, you know, given we have an aging population, right? Well, oddly enough, the one group that has the highest percentage of disabilities is individuals that experience some kind of pain, which floors me every time I see that statistic. Right. But because it's defined as pain, we have to make some assumptions that's, you know, everywhere in the body kind of pain. Right.

So you can have a back pain, you can have a shoulder pain, you can have, but it's still kind of an obstacle to your physical environment, right? So going out is already a challenge, because you're experiencing pain, you don't want to go somewhere where, again, you know, you want to go somewhere where, yeah, you might be having pain, but you want to mitigate it by having a good time with your friends and your family. The ROI has to be there. Yeah, for sure. And I am someone that has a pain disability and a few other disabilities as well. But in terms of pain management, like I have to know if I'm leaving my house, it better be for a good reason. I better have a good experience and feel comfortable there, you know?

So, and I don't, I think that probably most people know um so and i don't i think that probably most people feel that way they don't no one wants to go somewhere where they're uncomfortable or they're feeling disrespected you know yeah so yeah it's it's a big it's a big thing and and you know again it it goes back to you, where you spend your hard-earned dollars, where do you spend, you know, the whole, you've heard of the spoon theory, right?

And I don't know if your audience has heard of the spoon theory. But again, if you only got so much effort or not effort, energy to go out, you really want to make sure it's something that you're not going to experience another issue on top of it right and so the spoon theory is a really great explanation of that and and uh and i get that um but what what what places need to do is is that the statistic you said you know 27 it's a massive population i mean from my point of view i don't like saying 27 because i'm kind of always used to rounding it up so i just started saying you know one third of the canadian population has some form of disability and in today's world where making money um is becoming a challenge or you got so many competitors competing for that same dollar isn't it in your best interest to make your place fully accessible where you can't now there are occasions that you can't and i get that i understand that but then don't be like the situation where you advertise you are and you show up and it doesn't work out 100 transparency and like accurate information not gaslighting people into um maybe gaslighting is the wrong word but misleading people into thinking a place is accessible when it's not I think is the most probably the most important thing that i'm hearing from people with disabilities um but when you know you are going to invest in something, at least do the research to know when you're looking at making an investment, make sure that you're including that divert the disability accessibility lens.

 If you're going to spend the money anyways, there's something that I heard the other day was something like, there's something that I heard the other day it was something like you know in order to include accessibility as a feature I guess within a renovation it's something like costs five to ten percent more than it would for the regular renovation I don't know if you've heard a statistic like that Max you know I I've been hearing, one thing I need to take a step back and I need to tell you, right? Yeah. I come from a real estate family.

My father basically ran a real estate management company. He basically owned and bought hundreds of condos in, in and around Montreal and Ottawa. Um, and so I grew up with, with this reno idea because whenever my father would buy a new place or whenever somebody would leave, he would have a team that would come in, fix it up, clean it up, make it ready. Right. Um, the reality is, and I'm going to call this a bad word, but you can say it's bullshit. And what I mean is, is that the cost of changing something is all about understanding how you're going to spend the money.

And what I mean is, I'm going to give you a great example of what happened to my friend of mine. My friend of mine owned a bar and he was really excited one day I was going to come in and and check out his bar because he's like I just fixed it up it's fully accessible come in and check it out and so I showed up and log behind I had to go to the bathroom so I went to the bathroom and I came wheeling out and I'm like hey you know uh James not working out for me so I'm gonna go in the back in the back alleyway and what ended up happening is is he bought a door that can go into the stall what he didn't check is that it hit the toilet right so i couldn't even wheel in like a walking person could walk in close it but i still couldn't wheel in because the door hitting the toilet didn't give me enough space to get around to close the door. Is that a wrong thing? Yes, because he thought the guy who installed it installed it for the door to open outwards, not inwards. Is that really an accessibility cost or is that just not double checking? Yeah. So. Quality control issue, I guess. Yeah. I honestly believe renovation costs, right. For a lot of things, if you do it right, it's going to be the same thing.

 I'll give you another personal experience. I had to redo my, my, I bought an old house so I can make everything accessible. Every time in a room, the number one question I had my, with my wife is what we won't touch this room for 20 years. So what are we going to install? What do we need to do? Well, the first question is insulation, you know, making sure everything's up to break up the code, the windows, everything was up to code. And then what are we going to put in there? You know, are we going to put in new plumbing? Are we going to put in new electrical work? Are we going to put in whatever, lighting? But it was all about accessibility as well. And I did not feel out of my pocketbook that my accessibility was more or less than what the normal bill would have been. If that makes any sense.

 I don't think it is. I mean, my mother is a kitchen designer, kitchen and bath designer, and she's done numerous accessible kitchens and baths and they cost no more. It's literally about the design. The design doesn't cost more. the design the design doesn't cost more you know um there may be a few bells and whistles you want to add or something like that but um it's not significant right it's not and and you know like if you want to put an elevator in a house yeah okay that's a cost but then the question you need to ask yourself is that really a necessity? Yeah. Right? And it might be.

You know, it might be a necessity. But in 90% of the cases where I heard an elevator being installed, it was a nice to have. It was not a necessity. Yeah. Right? So I call BS on it. Right? Yeah. right yeah and and where it starts to become expensive is if you're if you're um a restaurant or or a barbershop or something in a very old location that might need you know a ramp for stairs or might need um the bathroom wine because it's in an old structure. But at the end of the day, you're not widening that bathroom for me, you're widening that bathroom for your overall clients, because your clients are gonna appreciate a loiter bathroom, if you get where I'm coming from. Yeah, revisit the story. Yeah.

So because a lot of the things I felt like you know of course we've talked about um you know some things that are easy to kind of fix some things that are like obviously more of an investment but what I'm hearing in the story is like the doorway is uncomfortably narrow okay fine that's a renovation you know objects like chairs and garbage cans well to me that's like that's education and just awareness you know um my my biggest beef about garbage cans is they always put the damn garbage can by the push button right they do if i gotta i gotta press the button i gotta reach over a garbage can now i i don't know about some of you folks right most garbage cans are not a problem but some of them are disgusting they're overfilled there are not something i want to reach over and press another button but i gotta move the garbage can because I can't reach over that. Right. Yeah. And, and it's never easy to move a garbage can because they're heavy. Like some of the industrial ones are heavy. They're weighted at the bottom so they don't tip and they don't move easily. Right.

And the last thing I want to do is move a garbage can that all the garbage falls on me. And, you know, I kind of like looking good. I don't like looking, you know i kind of like looking good i don't like looking you know like full of garbage uh either way folks but it's still i don't want garbage all over me so that's probably one of my biggest beefs it's why is it always there right um the other thing that they mention is you know trying to provide feedback and and of the, maybe not resistance, but the friction around that. I mean, you've got to be able to take feedback as a retailer and implement it and have a process for that. And again, this is where money makes the change. The places I go to frequently, I go to a local restaurant here, Big Rig here where I live, near where I live. And they did that the first few times, the garbage can was right by the push button. And I would show up there with my family and have a pizza there. I love the pizza there. I know I'm not advertising for them, but they've seen me come a few times, right? Like it's kind of hard to miss a guy in a wheelchair who shows up, right? And by the third time, I was like, I went back and I talked to the management, and of course the reaction is, well, we'll write off your pizza. And I'm like, no, I'm not looking for a handout.

What I want you to do is stop putting the garbage can there right yeah exactly right like like just take a little bit of time find another location for the garbage can inform your staff to put it in this place because it doesn't work for a person like me right next time I went in there, lo and behold, the garbage can was located somewhere else. That's a beautiful thing. That's yeah. Right. Simple. But it's because they recognize that I was an ongoing, ongoing customer and I show up there on a regular, consistent basis. That's the problem. The problem is, is that those other places don't understand that if you don't suitable for us we're not we're not going to show up all the time right yeah right yeah and so you know I go back to something that my wife and i always talk about and i think a lot of people talk about is the customer service is is becoming a challenge and it's becoming a challenge just not only for people with disabilities but for everything right now right yeah i hate generalizing that but but it is right yeah so i you had a big part in um the accessible canada act i know this about you um tell me me what was your role in that. Tell everyone what your role was. Well, part of my role, my role was more is to socialize the document. So I worked on a handful of items, particularly to it, but I spent a lot of time running from department to department, asking them what their take is going to be in it. So we identified departments that were going to have some element that would fall onto their lap to be responsible for.

So an example would be ESDC, Employment, Social Development Canada has a really big labor element. So we wanted to make sure that anything we talk about employment was going to be suitable to what their messaging was at to be suitable to what their messaging was at the same time or what their future messaging was so then we would go back and make sure that whatever we wrote it would it would be sound to that degree the other thing is I spent a lot of time um really working with the community to make sure that what our concerns were going to be embedded in it which is one of the coolest things I get to tell you is that um this is the only piece of legislation ever designed built for canadians by canadians but also by can with disabilities. The act itself is solely based, well, not solely, I would say 80% based on literally a room full of 200 various people with disabilities talking about how to do certain things. And that's where the seven pillars came up. I don't think there's a piece of legislation that could say that. Okay. For the folks out there you know how is ace how do you feel like aoda the act of the different acts how do you feel like they contribute to supporting just the real lives of people with disabilities as you're walking through the world wanting to engage in you know regular the kinds of activities that everyone wants to engage in we the thing is we got to keep in mind that there are there are two ways to do things right there is um we tell society uh what needs to be in place and then we tell all the players in that society how to appear to that particular directive. Right. Or we could live as a free living society. And then we just do our things and just hope everybody lives comfortably and exists comfortably. Sad thing is that doesn't exist.

No. Right. So we need laws we need laws to tell people how to ensure a minimum standard of adherence to ensure that you're not being disrespectful for people right and the way i see it as you know the first big move was the charter of rights you know people with disabilities were listed in the Charter of Rights. But the Charter of Rights basically said, thou shall not be discriminated against. Honestly, anybody who's listening to me, we've all been discriminated against numerous times. Yeah. Okay, so we need to refine that a little bit better, right? And I think what the Provincial and Federal Acts will do is it will start ensuring that people understand their rights, but it also starts to a certain degree with organizations, understanding how to provide us those rights, what they need to do to ensure that our rights are being up here too, for a very simple reason or a logic is you know let's use communications as we're starting to work in a more heavier computer lived world where emails is pretty much the most common way of communicating why can't our emails be fully accessible why can't i email create an email send an email and then a blind person on the other end or a person with a neurodiverse on the other end who i don't know can read it and understand it and they can function with this why can't we have that world and that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. That makes any sense. Yeah. I mean, I can see definitely a use for AI in that space for sure.

Not that, you know, this is what we're talking about, but you know, as you, as I was imagining, you know, solutions to that specific case of, you know, translating for different types of disabilities, I can write it in my, you know in the way that I'm comfortable speaking and it can be translated somehow into the way another person can understand. Right. What a beautiful way to use artificial intelligence.

 And I got to tell you, some of the stuff i'm starting to see with the i love this word in french melange with the melange of ai and and and other technology and accessibility all coming into like like a pot like a hot you know sauce totally and some of the stuff that's coming out of this is awesome and yeah you know i'm kind of a little jealous of people who are young and disabled now because i don't think their their world because the technology will be as harsh as mine you know they're going to have apps they're going to have things that are going to make things to a certain degree a lot easier look i'm not saying all things are going to be eliminated but i think there are a lot of things that will be yeah right and and ai and technology is going to be some of the driving factors to this yeah i mean i think it's a beautiful goal to try to make the sandbox as big as possible for people with disabilities to play in you know um how do you make a bigger world that's I think that's a beautiful idea you know uh i i was just reading a report yesterday from a colleague of mine uh who was talking about the Louvre, the museum in Paris, in France, Paris, how they are literally designing and building an experience that's fully accessible for this population.

 Wow. And for the record, I went to the Louvre many, many, many years ago when I was still walking, and that place is massive like you know whatever you're used to times the white pen and that's the signs of the Louvre okay so by them trying to make it accessible an accessible experience that's a heavy investment no no shit sorry yeah you, and part of my philosophy too is to work with people like you to make everybody aware that it exists because that's philosophy you built it, they will come as bullshit as well. You need to advertise the living heck out of what people are doing to make this a more accessible world. Yeah, and you need to band together. You need to find alliances, partnerships, collaborations. Yeah.

And, and it, it, it's interesting. I've been finding that like a lot of folks in the space are solopreneurs or like micro organizations micro companies you know like under 10 people and so it's really hard to make a really big impact unless you're collaborating with other people by yourself you know if you're by yourself or you're just working with a few other people so yeah that's it's really important yeah yeah the, yeah, that, that's a whole other side argument. Totally. Yeah. We can talk about that, but yeah, the, the, the reality is, is that for at least the foreseeable future, a lot of the driving forces will be from small entrepreneurial companies with people with disabilities but here's the really cool thing i will say in canada the uk australia united states and a handful of other countries these organizations have the first time in a long time the opportunity to actually grow to become multinational corporations the question is is who yeah who and how yeah yeah so for um a smaller you know perhaps a cafe chain who are interested in becoming more accessible uh and and have a few obstacles in the way, literally and figuratively. What do you say to them? What are your final thoughts?

Know your customers. At the end of the day, you're fighting for 10 cents all the time. And so sometimes you need to spend a dollar to get the 10 cents. But if you make your environment not only exclusive you know accessibly exclusive for people with disabilities you're opening it up to the whole community as well like that's the beauty of accessibility the beauty of accessibility it's not just you make the door wider and now just wheelchairs could come in and that's going to show up. No, you're going to see mothers with carriages coming in. You're going to see a whole lot of other group of people that, wow, I can get in here easily or whatever. You have lower counters. You're going to have a whole bunch of group of different people coming in. You're not going to put your garbage can by the right place, the wrong places.

 You're going to have more people who are as experienced and nicer and say, I'm going to come back and spend another dollar here. So, you know, know your customers, you know, and listen to what your customers are telling you. And then hopefully you get to survive a little bit longer and make some money. Yeah. As you were speaking, the thought popped into my head that accessibility is inclusion. What do you think about that? It is. Yeah. Right. How many, like, I don't know how old you are, but I remember the time when you used to go to malls. Yeah. And malls didn't have the self-opening doors, right? I know. They had the pull on them, right? Or the rotating ones, yeah right or the rotating ones yeah or the rotating ones right yeah who can get in those so go to a mall now how many of them have self-opening doors and if they don't how many of them have push button doors they all do why because it works for everybody well and the acts you know at a certain point they have to yeah it's legislated i'm pretty sure I would say it is but but i think from a from a from a mall point of view it was pretty much a no-brainer wait a second you can make doors open easier but it still closes so we don't lose the heat in the wintertime yeah let's sign up for that well and that's the thing it's like a lot of these um these retrofits or whatever they are um they're they're just good business you know what i mean like a lot of these decisions it's just good business in the end you can make it a win-win yeah yeah and the other thing i'll add um accessibility is also not an expensive equation and and we need to start having conversations with people and the answer cannot be about money because you know as stephanie cadeau says the the chief accessibility officer um when you're going to retrofit your place design it with accessibility in mind.

So that way it's not an extra cost.

 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 100%.

 Thank you so much for joining me today, Max. As always, it's a pleasure and an honor.

 Not a problem.

Awesome. High five.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble!

Intro:

Meet Sydney Elaine Butler, a powerhouse in HR, DEIA, and neurodiversity. Get ready to uncover invaluable insights as Sydney drops some gems on how to craft an environment where every team member's strengths shine bright to maximize full potential in your team!

Website:

https://www.accessiblecreates.ca/

Stay in Touch with Sydney:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sydney-elaine-butler

Script:

Communication is obviously the most important thing, you know, listening to people, actually like understanding what the real problems are, trying to get to the root of the problem.

 Everyone's mind is different at the end of the day. You know, we all have different experiences and ways we're brought up and all these different things that shape who we are. And that's part of neurodiversity.

 People learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone. diversity. People learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone.

 I think sitting down with them, you know, kind of having that second to actually talk to them, you know, I think a lot of times I feel like I'm at the end of my rope.

During the pandemic, like everyone, our team transitioned to remote work, and it was a revelation for many of us. We have a very neurodiverse team, and I really try to celebrate this despite some of the challenges. During the pandemic, many of us realized we have a strong preference for virtual work, and many of us built new lifestyles around the fact that we don't have to go into the office. On the other hand, for a few of the team, it made them realize that they needed and wanted the structured routine of the office and the camaraderie there. As we transitioned back into the hybrid model, these differences and desires became more vocal. Conflicts arose as we tried to establish new team norms. Those who preferred remote work felt isolated from decision-making processes, while those in the office felt burdened with more immediate responsibilities. Our attempts to find a middle ground only led to more friction impacting our productivity and team cohesion. Okay. I realize we need a more nuanced approach to accommodate our diverse needs. Any ideas? Enter Sydney Elaine Butler, whose expertise in HR, DEI, and neurodiversity seems like the perfect fit to help solve this conundrum. Welcome to the show, Sydney.

Thank you so much for having me, Erin.

So I guess the question of the day for this person here, we don't know whether they're male or female, we don't know anything about them, but they're looking to know how to create an inclusive environment that respects and optimizes the strengths of each team member, regardless of their preferred work setting. And it seems like they want to build like an inclusive and neuro affirming organization. So that's interesting.

Okay. So before we get started and dive right into this, I'd love to have you just share a little bit about who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what your big goal is.

Yeah, so again, I'm Sydney Elaine Butler, the founder of Accessible Creates. And so I actually graduated in 2020, which was only four years ago. But when I studied human resources at school and I was like HR needs to be more inclusive and accessible for people with disabilities and I was also working in a recreational environment having kids teens and adults with disabilities and seeing how my co-workers treated me and also my best friend that have disabilities and versus how they treated our participants and even how our supervisors treated us. And I was like, something really needs to be done. And so I realized I could do more as an external consultant, HR in diversity, including accessibility, focusing on neurodiversity, and really drive this momentum forward. And I think during 2020 and 2021, things were changing in this space. And so I launched Accessible Grace in 2021. And since then, you know, I've, speaking at events, speaking at companies, providing consulting for companies to really understand that sometimes they bring me as an HR consultant. And when I do that, I bring the neurodiversity lens, accessibility lens, disability lens, and then vice versa. When they bring me for that, I also have the HR lens. And so really understanding that it's all interconnected. for that I have also have the HR lens and so really understanding that it's all interconnected and if you really want to make the workplace better that it starts with just trying to do something and so my big goal is actually to have a big training firm and and right now I've found it accessible creates to be that training firm now I'm like maybe accessible creates to be the consulting firm and then also start a training firm to provide best practices for organizations because i feel like so many organizations are just trying to be compliant and that's that's the bare minimum and so how can you actually move beyond that and hiring subject matter experts in different areas because i'm not a subject matter expert in everything but they that can help us work forward.

 Absolutely. Okay. So what is your philosophy around neurodiversity?

Yeah, I think a lot of times people think it's a deficit or they think that, they think it's just autism and ADHD but it's so much bigger than that. And so my kind of philosophy is give people resources they need to be successful based on what they say they need and literally listening to people and being able to understand that people might communicate differently everyone's mind's different at the end of the day you know we all have different experiences and ways we're brought up and all these different things that shape who we are and that's part of neurodiversity and so just really understanding that we all have different brains and that, you know, we all have similar brain types and similar ways of communicating, but at the end of the day, we're all different. And that's beautiful. Absolutely. So what did you think about this challenge that we have in front of us? It's so interesting because, you know, she's trying to, she's like, we're trying to have a very neuro- inclusive team we have a very new inclusive team um i think that based on what you said it seems like she was they were trying to do a one-size-fits-all approach you know and really understanding that you know you have to really look at each individual case and see okay where does this person best thrive does it make sense to have them back in the office? You know, or have them work remotely? You know, how can we best provide these resources? How can we also, it seems to be that disconnect between, okay, people that are working on site versus working remotely. How can we better make that cohesion?

 And I think, you know, having, you know for example I did I do trainings for companies and sometimes now especially the last six months previous before that I was like all virtual everyone was attending virtually these my trainings I was doing through the company but now it's like okay they have a big boardroom and people that want to come on site and come to the training in person can all be in that boardroom. People that still are working from home can access that training from home. And so just, you know, seeing, meeting people where they're at. So what, if you were like working with this company, they brought you in as a consultant, what were the, what are the questions that you would want to ask to really understand the root cause or how would you go about it yeah i would say is there a demographic if like who prefers working remotely versus who works working on site or hybrid and really getting down to the nitty-gritty of why you know is it communication styles what is the communication like on site versus in the remote setting you know do you have any cohesion between making sure that the remote workers know what's happening on site and vice versa and so just these are some of the initial questions I would ask some of the teams that I've been going into it seems like the virtual people are very happy working virtually you know the people who want virtual they're like we're going to work virtually and they they're more like I don't care where people work if they're virtual or on site but I want to be virtual whereas the people who are they want the community aspect like the face-to-face community aspect they're more likely to be like well it's not fun unless everyone's here you know um it's not so much like that philosophy, like, you know, everyone can do what they want. I'll be in the office because that's what I like.

It's more like, you know, I want to be in the office and I want all my friends there with me, you know, I want you guys there with me. Right. And so I feel like it's the in-person camp, I guess, that are more likely to want that like holistic policy around when we're going to be in the office and when we're not going to be on the office or whatever. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think, you know, because they want the greatest sense of community and like you said, they want their friends and colleagues there. And it is completely different atmospheres but i think kind of making the case that it's an individual accommodation sometimes for having the remote work some people try better and really you know providing that space it's like you can check in you know you can be on site but so you know have virtual meetings with the remote employees and again i think then this just needs to be more done to provide that human connection for all you know and and really understand that bridging that gap because you know and understanding that you're not there to communicate at the same time like you don't want the sense of community but it's also like some people thrive better and work better at home and that creating that sense of community is important but then the day you're here to do a job and but also providing different options and you know it's like have a social you know have a you know is it a remote social that's what comfortable with?

 Or it's like, hey, invite people to a social once a week or once a month to connect. It's like, hey, virtual employees, come on in. We want to celebrate you. And maybe we can make it more of a celebration, a reward to incentivize bringing those employees in. And reminding each other that it's all working towards a common goal. Yeah.

And you know being like reminding each other that it's all all working towards a common goal yeah yeah and it strikes me that um when you said that they're they're looking for like one solution it's i think the line was our attempts to find a middle ground only lead to more friction impacting our productivity it's like maybe there is no middle ground yeah i think sometimes people always want that middle ground it's like but can you actually get that middle ground i think middle ground is like the ideal that everyone wants but it's like sometimes it doesn't exist and then sometimes you it it looks different than you thought it would yeah how can how can that look like like yeah I think you know picture again I think kind of again meeting people where they're at and so you know like hey and explain to people the situation and really understanding that it's okay this person needs it to thrive and do well in the work we understand that you want the most sense of community you have you know other people here that are already here that will also like you want to work when i have that sense of community but it's not feasible for everyone and really understanding that you can you you're never gonna please everyone you know i think a lot of times you as a business owner as ceo you want to please everyone and you know you want to obviously have the best things from your employees and get the most the most satisfactory they can do the most and be the most productive but it's not always feasible and being kind of okay with the uncomfortability do you think that this might be a loaded question so forgive me um do you think it's possible to accommodate everyone within an organization or is is there something like, maybe it's not a good culture fit? 

You know, like, where is your stance on that? Yeah, I think you can try your best to accommodate everyone. And so really by listening to your employees, I think I'm really trying to, you know, do the one approach for everyone, you know, not trying to do the one size fits all, but actually looking at individual's needs and say, okay, well, how can we best get you to that part but you know your individual needs being met and you're satisfied completely in every aspect of your job function but you know I feel like as humans we're never fully satisfied anyways and so but just you know knowing having employees know that you will are willing to accommodate them at any time and, you know, see, meet them where they're at and say, okay, what can we do to actually improve this?

Having check-ins with them, you know, seeing how they feel and really having those conversations and having those difficult talks. I'm curious, like, as you, as you're talking about, like, meeting everyone where they're at, it strikes me like something I learned a long time ago when I was managing people, meeting everyone where they're at, it strikes me like something I learned a long time ago when I was managing people, I'm still managing people. But when I first started managing people, it was that, you know, people learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone. And so sometimes meeting everyone where they're at, it, it could be perceived as like helping them be as comfortable as possible.

You know what I mean so what's your um take on like you know how much discomfort is a reasonable amount of discomfort so that they're being pushed outside their comfort zone through learning something while also feeling complete like feeling like a whole person within their company yeah I think as long as you know you make sure that they feel safe and that they feel good about their work you know that's being the mother app but then also being like it's not feasible to do everything and you know it's like a stolen organization and kind of you know kind of frame it like that it's like what you said you know sometimes you have to grow you grow outside of your comfort zone.

 And so, you know, nothing to ask you to do anything dangerous, not to ask you to do anything unsafe, but just, you know, kind of pushing the envelope a little bit. So for people who, you know, don't want to come into the office because they like it virtual, do you think it would be reasonable to to suggest like, know different activities you know to go in the office even though that might be kind of outside their comfort zone or what how could we um push people who want to work virtually not push them but encourage them to be in person every once in a while yeah i think kind of like having different activities you've had team building activities that you can't that you can do them virtually but it would be better in person it's like and really highlights like this is going to be for connection and you know help i mean this is why you want to do the um activity and do the event because i think a lot of times companies just try to do events and activities and and the employees eyes it's like well why are we doing this you know it kind of seems meaningless to me but it's like hey we're trying to build team morale between our remote and on-site employees you know we want to thank you for all your hard work in both spaces you know and that kind of incentivizes you know having people come in person and i think also somehow like i think it's kind of to say because i think like not making it mandatory actually you know, having people come in person. And I think also, somehow it's kind of to say, because I think like not making it mandatory actually would kind of, then people are like, oh, if we make it mandatory, then people have to come and they're going to be more willing.

 I feel like actually the opposite is true. You know, it's like, if you don't be as mandatory, people, they feel like forced and they feel like they have no autonomy. But when they chose to do it and it's voluntary then they're like oh no i want to do it and but you explain the reasons of why and the team building or the creating this atmosphere then people think huh they'd be more actually more motivated to do it yeah for sure i completely agree with you i think people are forced they're much less likely and then when they show up they're not showing up with that like you know that mindset that you want them yeah they're just trying to like i was forced to be here i'm at the laboratory instead of like oh they generally want to be here and they because of why they're here yeah exactly like they know that people they enjoy are going to be there they know that there's going to be something interesting happening like um yeah maybe there's options um you know maybe they go there and they don't have to do exactly the same thing as everyone maybe there's like you know different varieties of things that yeah i think like yeah i think having like different activities for like different types of people again you know like it's like oh you're more social like have like a more like have like a dance party or like you know like have a right take a playing class you know oh you're more social like have like a more like have like a dance party or like you know like have a take a playing class you know like you're still with other people but you're working on another activity you can like share show with each other and just you know I think catering to those different types of people yeah for sure um how can we enhance how would you recommend to a team like this who is probably distributed and you know hybrid remote flexible whatever you want to call it um how would you recommend that they structure their communication so that everyone's on the same page or as possible yeah i think you know leveraging things like slack i love slack yeah i think Slack's such a huge platform. And other things like Slack. I think there's other ones that have similar. I can't remember the name of right now. The Flex Room that comes to mind.

But really having that sense of community. And you can play posts when there is events, you know. And post the different things happening within the organization. And that, you know, people that are working on site can communicate with each other via slack and also people working remotely you know everyone can be communicated there either in the direct channel or they can message each other directly and so i think that's a huge way to foster that communication and i think even leveraging video calls such as this you know understanding that you could be on site we could still have virtual meetings with people that are working from home or working remotely and so understanding that there's all these different tools and we have so much technology and platforms these days and so just really leveraging that yeah for sure um what else is important to making sure that your team like what are the what are the systems and tools that you would recommend?

Yeah, I think like the system is like kind of doing like, if you're the manager or if you're the CEO, just kind of touching base with your employees and like seeing how people are feeling about the current circumstances of their work and they're working virtually or they're working on site, seeing how people feel of seeing, does it make sense to do a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meeting with everyone that's no matter if they're remote or hybrid, and really having more cohesion. I think a lot of times right now, it's like even though everyone knows it's the same organization, it seems like there's two different organizations when it's on site and hybrid or remote. And so having more of those cohesion and using those tools that we used when everyone was remote you know and really so just because you're back on site does not mean you should lose all that great technology and those systems you hadn't played previously to connect everyone yeah um for the often it's the people who want to be on site who um may be like more frustrated a lot of the time if assuming that there is um when in in an environment where there's a respect for autonomy you know so we're talking about an organization here who has a respect for autonomy they don't currently seem to have a standardized protocol for coming into the office or not being in the office you know um so when when folks aren't getting what they want they can tend to get really frustrated right in this model it seems like the people who are virtual't getting what they want.

They can tend to get really frustrated, right? In this model, it seems like the people who are virtual are getting what they want. The people who are in person aren't getting what they want. And so it seems like they're starting to get very kind of more, you know, frustrated and vocally frustrated about it. In terms of the emotional atmosphere of the company, where would you start there? Yeah, I think really understanding, I think we're making assumptions that the virtual is happy and then the onsite is angry or more angry. But I think really understanding it's like, okay, where is everyone at, you know? Yeah. Like, you know, even just like doing a survey check, it's like, you know, kind of, are you on site? Are you remote? How do you currently feel about your work? What needs to be improved? What do you think needs to be improved? And so I think really understanding that, again, it's going to be an individual approach, but seeing where the gaps are and it's like, okay, this is, you know, it's going to be an individual approach but seeing where the gaps are and it's like okay this is you know it's like is it because you know is it everyone in your department there is it people in your department that are working virtually and then you like feel like you're missing people in your department is it into departmental you know is it people in different departments but you need to connect with them, be that they're virtual and I'm on site.

And so just really seeing where the gaps are, really understanding where employees are most frustrated and where they think that the most problems lie and how it's like, what kind of also what level of frustration or what level of emotion are they feeling? Is it at 10 out of 10 they're very frustrated or like i'm getting slowly getting more frustrated and really understanding where they're at i was like i'm just starting to get frustrated and i think when you break it down like that because it's like i hope like i think a lot of times too oh they're mostly frustrated we have to like do it now but actually when people start getting frustrated is when you should start like okay this person's starting to get frustrated how can we get it back to not frustrated you know instead of oh this person's super frustrated obviously you want to help them too and come up with solutions but not just focusing on those people that are what's end right um if they were very frustrated i'm curious like what kind of interventions would you recommend if it was like these people are going to leave?

Take a second to actually talk to them you know i think a lot of times I feel like people undervalue the importance of conversation in the workplace and it is having someone to feel heard you know and i think a lot of times people are like oh we don't think people are frustrated but they don't actually know how they're frustrated and you know we just see that there's a problem but it's like there's so many different correlations and so many different variables that could be making this person frustrated that's a mix of the home life that you know how they feel about the work they're doing the circumstance of being on site versus having people virtual and it can be a myriad of things but if you don't know that if you don't have that conversation with someone it's like oh i think you know you don't want to just diagnose the problem and be like well it's probably because there's virtual and then they're on site and at that first glance that's what it looks like you know they want that sense of community but it can be a lot deeper than that and seeing if they're that frustrated it's probably multiple variables right uh okay so they were very frustrated and it was something that hadn't been like say we're not it's not something that like it's been they're very, very frustrated, it's probably something that's been happening for a while. It's probably something where that, you know, they've vocalized and maybe it hasn't been fixed yet.

 Right. Like, it's just something they're feeling like, well, this is never going to change. In that case, what do you, what do you tell the leadership team? In that that case what do you what do you tell the leadership team yeah i think again really listen to your employees and listen to the people you're managing and again really understand where they're coming from kind of put yourself in their shoes and really and like have the empathetic ear you know but also that that willing to okay this is the problem and this person's feeling this way it's probably other people that are feeling this way maybe not this exact same but probably similar um and so kind of working on a solution to solve the problem and being transparent with them when you know it's okay we're trying to work on the solution because i think a lot of times managers or leadership are working on the problem but they don't communicate that to the employee so the employee feels like nothing's being done you know nothing's being done nothing's being done but sometimes the complex problems they take time to solve by just you know being transparent with the employee hey you know thank you for you said about and we're working on a solution but it is taking a bit of time um please bear with us or it's like we kind of hit a snag and trying to come up with a solution um is there any other things that you would like to see change you know or hey that that solution isn't feasible i'm sorry you know can we work together and come up with another solution for any other problems or, you know, other, any other solutions towards this problem. And really again, having that clear communication because a lot of times you're just left in the dark. Yeah, that's true.

A lot of the times you're not followed up with on the problem. It's almost like the problem, you know, people just pretend it doesn't exist anymore almost, you know, because it's, I don't know. I'm almost like the problem, you know, people just pretend it doesn't exist anymore, almost, you know, because it's, I don't know, I'm not sure what the, that's never been my problem. And I'm sure that's never been your problem either. So, okay. In terms of neurodiversity, you mentioned that communication is obviously the most important thing, you know, listening to people, actually, like understanding what the real problems are trying to get to the root of the problems, and then proposing solutions. Obviously, sometimes there's negotiation around that, like with a leadership level or manager, manager level, sometimes there's policies that need to change. or a manager at your level. Sometimes there's policies that need to change. But what is the relevance of the way that we communicate, the different people communicate in a neurodiverse organization?

Yeah, so I think, for example, if you're sending mass emails and communicating, it's like someone does not like communication, you know, and it's like, i prefer for you to say it aloud and it's my best process information i remember but then the flip side also if you're just communicating everything in a meeting and we'll have the transcriptions and not you know not sharing that intervention right after then that could get muddled you know and so for example I best communicate when I see written like when I see an email when I see a slack message and if you just say instructions to me or you say something to me I'd be like I can kind of get it but like if you wrote it down I would get the full picture more and I remember I worked with an organization and I worked with the CEO, directly with the CEO. And he would send me voice notes all the time. And he would be like, you know, saying I did a great job. We wanted to improve. And I would get it. But I was just like, I told him to send this to me in an email. Send it to me, you know, via Slack. Because that's how I best process information.

And you really need to meet people where they best process information. You know, and I think a lot of people are like we're really happy systems play so that that's gonna take more time out of my day but when the person doesn't understand what you said to them that's gonna end up taking more time of your day so just you know communicate how people need you to communicate like hey can i send you a voice note hey can i would you prefer text do you prefer email what is your preferred method of communication yeah how do we build that you know preferences not just communication preferences but all preferences into the process in an individualized way rather than having to like you know I'm a manager and I'm communicating I'm getting to know my employee. I understand their preferences, but then I have to do that with every single person that's on my team. And it becomes difficult to remember, you know?

So how do you recommend building that into the process of an organization so that there is like a memory of some kind? Is there anything for that? Yeah. I think even just like having it included right when the employee is onboarded is a huge step i think onboarding right now is very much the employee the new employee learning about the company but the company doesn't really take much time to learn about this new employee and so it's like hey what is your preferred communication what is your preferred different channels you know how can i best help you thrive with this organization how can I best help you be productive at this organization what do you want to get out of this organization and so really having that conversation and the employee should be onboarding the employee to the company and the company being onboarded to the new employee and i think you know when you when you have a new manager you got you know promoted or moved to a different department within the company you know having that mechanism it's like okay even like leveraging excel or having a document that has that you know this is the employee's name this is the preferred communication this is preferred x y and z and just having that because yeah it is a lot but once and then when you especially when you first start but once you you know you start doing it you start doing repeatedly and you start doing the process over and over again it kind of becomes muscle memory but even we're human we forget things you know so having it written down somewhere that you use all the time but I would I would say like just a excel file the employee name and having that information there. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. I haven't seen this before.

Maybe there's a tool out there that I'm not aware of, but what would be really interesting and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this is there a tool that's been designed so that you can blast the communicate, like whatever communication it is, if it's a team you know organization level team level individual level but then you can send it in multiple formats you know what I mean so you don't have to you know you don't have to send the emails make the call you know do the slack do the text whatever it is you know but you can just do it in one place and then it goes and gets sent out in all the places. Is that overkill?

I feel like that's not overkill. It's a very interesting idea because I feel like so many processes now being automated. And so it's like, it's just part of that. But I think for the productivity, you know, that makes sense. And it's like, watch, it's a thing although someone's like thinking about it right now also um because i feel like people always come up with new ideas and coming with things to just make the processes better but i think when you still have i think you still need that human approach at the end of the day because because it's like it sounds nice and to have these you know the animated email to call to whatever the preferred channel is but I think when it really comes for that person and knowing that person's making an effort to communicate with you how you best need to be communicated it's going to sink in a bit more when you know it's just coming from a platform it's just like did they you know and so I think it makes a difference yeah I think so I think it would be interesting to have something where if like if I'm a if I'm better at stream of consciousness you know and I like meaning like I like I know a lot of people who just like to take audio you know they do audio and they send their audio um audio grant I don't know what it's called just like a recording um I know quite a few people who've been starting to do that, but like I'm, I prefer it in an email as well because it works with my whole system better.

 So I, I mean, I want them, I want everyone to be able to communicate way, the way that they feel it's easiest to communicate, but I want to receive the information in the way that I need to receive the information. I'm curious. I wonder if there's a way to like, you know, you know, create a system around those two things. Now we're going to start a product or something.

Starting a new business now. Yeah, exactly. Sounds like we're starting a company. okay um what else do you want to tell these guys like what is the bad news and what's the good news like if you just like could boil it down to like you know the most basic hardest information that you they need to hear what do they need to hear yeah i think that well kudos on being a neurodiverse team that's not the end all be all you know i think people are like oh we're a neurodiverse team or we have a neurodiverse organization and i feel like sometimes people don't really understand what that actually means or like you know it's like at first glance it is neuroinclusive in a neuroinclusive organization and team but it really isn't and so really understanding and also that you can't satisfy everyone and that you can just try your best but meeting people again where they're at and really accommodating those individual needs is what makes the difference you know I always say like you know trying to make your organization as inclusive and accessible as possible obviously where you can but you're still going to need to accommodate those individual needs i think sometimes people think oh well we are inclusive enough we're accessible enough but it's like people people can still each still going to each have the individual needs that need to be met are you accommodating those you know or making every effort to accommodate those. And so I'm making sure that they feel like they're included at work on an individual basis and not just as an overarching.

Right. Okay. Awesome. Thank you very much, Sydney. Been a pleasure and an honor.

Thank you.

We'll chat soon.

Sounds good.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Intro:

Ready to crack the code to business success?

Join us as Lisa Strangway, the powerhouse behind The Marketing Station, reveals the keys to unlocking your business's full potential. From deciphering consumer behavior to crafting captivating brand stories, get ready to revolutionize your approach to thrive and succeed.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your business to new heights with expert guidance from a seasoned marketing pro!

Website:

https://www.themarketingstation.ca/

Stay in Touch with Lisa:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/lisastrangway

Script:

What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? 

You know, when we're so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it's easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another. And eventually you're not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with.

And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that.

 I'm the general manager of a local retail chain known for our trendy clothing and accessories. For years, we've enjoyed success and a loyal customer base, but lately we're facing a crisis. Sales are dwindling, foot traffic is down, and it feels like we're losing our once loyal customers. It's clear that recent shifts in consumer behavior and market trends are taking a toll on our business. Our brand identity feels stuck in the past and our social media presence is stagnant and dated. We're struggling to understand our customer base, which has become increasingly vague. Despite a desire to change and a budget set aside for marketing support, we're not sure where to start. So how can we adopt our marketing strategies to resonate with today's consumers? How can we revitalize our social media to engage our audience effectively? And what steps can we take to regain the trust and loyalty of our customers? Enter Lisa Strangway, owner of the Marketing Station. Lisa is known for innovative yet practical marketing strategies and disciplined social media implementation. How can Lisa help? Welcome, welcome, Lisa.

Hi, Erin. How are you? I'm so good. I'm so happy to have you on the show. I am thrilled to finally be on this show. I love it. I'm a big fan. So now I get to be part of it.

I love that you listen to the show. So folks, Lisa and I, and Lisa is the founder of the marketing station now in its 10th year. Congratulations.

Thank you.

She is an amazing friend of mine. We've known each other literally for a decade now. I can't, it blows my mind. I can't even believe that.

Wild.

And she's definitely highly, highly experienced and seasoned as a social media expert in content marketing and strategic planning for businesses. So I think that you're just the perfect person to help with this issue.

Well, it sounds like a very familiar story. I have, I have dealt with situations like this in the past. With path clients, or, you know, just colleagues that I've talked to in this field in the retail field specifically. So yes, I can definitely help here.

Yeah. It does seem like this is something that I this is definitely something that I have personally seen as well, not with just clients, but even just friends who are owners of retail stores, having to just, you know, things, I find things, you know, when we're so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it's easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another.

And eventually you're not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with. Yeah. And also don't forget that the speed at which things change these days is astronomical compared to even 10, 20 years ago. so you could set yourself up in a business um two years ago and it's already changed in terms of um digital capabilities so it's really important that you stay on top of uh trends and uh data right yeah um okay so for the folks out there uh who are new to the show, we're in season two of Weirdos in the Workplace.

 And this year, this season, we are focusing on supporting with practical problem solving with businesses. So every time we're doing an interview with a professional problem solver, just like Lisa, folks are coming on and we are going to be kind of doing some real brainstorming together. So today we're actually going to be looking at this problem through a model called the six thinking hats by Edward de Bono. And the six thinking hats, there are six hats, as you can imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. There's the red hat, which deals with emotions and intuition. There's the black hat, which deals with caution and risk. The yellow hat, which is optimism and benefits. The green hat, which is creativity and alternatives. And then the blue hat, which is process and control. So we're going to basically look at this scenario through all of these different lenses.

Okay, let's get started.

So starting with the white hat, Lisa, white hat deals with information and data. So, you know, in terms of the insights that this retailer could gain from the world or that they should be gathering? What is your advice on that?

Yeah, so this is probably my favorite category. There's a couple things they should be looking at. First of all, look at your sales activity and take a look at the sales figures there and figure out which products and what type of inventory is actually selling. Look at your, and then for the products that are selling, figure out who is actually buying that product. So I know that they have a loyal fan base, but is that, or not fan base, loyal fan base, but is that not fan base, a customer base, but is that loyal customer base actually still purchasing items? Who knows? You have to do the digging and find out. And collecting information from, customer base is super important. You can do that through surveys, um, or through, um, you know, just talking to them in the store. Um, social listening is a really big tool. So take a look at what people are saying online and, and start to figure out what they're looking for right so maybe that's cool like are there any specific platforms that are used for social listening or is it more just like like sensing um you know through through like. So just reading comments, you know, which will give you a good sense of what people are looking for, for sure. You go to any Facebook group for a town or whatever, or a city, and you can even ask a question in there and see what people are saying. But, but there are apps and things available to you with the specific use of social listening. Interesting.

Okay, cool. I interrupted you. You were going to say something else, I think.

Well, I lost that train of thought.

Okay, the train of thought has left the building.

Yeah, seriously. In terms of competitor analysis, is that relevant these days you know because i know there's sort of two different thought ways of thinking around it i know folks who are very customer focused and they don't care crap about their competitors and people who are you know obviously customers are important but they also want to see what their competitors are doing and you know make sure that they're balancing everything.

So what, what, what's your opinion on that? I always a hundred percent recommend doing a competitive review. Okay. I would, I would look at your top five competitors and see what they're doing. What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? Are they, what kind of technology do they have? So are they offering, you know, online purchases, free delivery, you know, all of these things are going to help you get a good picture of where you stand within that competition.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the red hat, emotions and intuition. How, as a consultant, marketing consultant, do you advise your clients on that, that storytelling aspect that you just shared a minute ago?

Like how, how do we tell a story that evokes emotions? And yeah, let's stop there. Let's ask that question first. Right. Well, first you have to really understand who your customer is and who your potential customer is, right? So that's why the research part of this is so important. What are the values? What are they looking for? What do they, you know, what do they aspire to be? What's their lifestyle like? And all of that. And then the best way to engage with them emotionally is to craft the story. engage with them emotionally is to craft the story so craft not one story several stories that you can publish on your website and on social media that will with the goal of appealing to that side of them right so appeal to their emotional side so if your target market is, you know, a busy mom of two kids, full, and she works full time, and she values quality time with her kids, with her family, you know, you craft a story around that somehow that relates obviously back to your product but how how can your product or service appeal to that part of that target markets world right so that's an example but right yeah so in the case of like this general manager who's managing a local retail chain really you don't know what stories you're going to necessarily tell about your business until you understand your customers. Is that what I'm hearing?

Absolutely.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So it sounds like customer really understanding the customer at a deep level is the most important starting point perhaps. It is the most important starting point. And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that. Hey, so I am curious. How much can we trust our gut instincts as entrepreneurs? Yeah, I'm a big believer in gut instinct. Okay. Yes. Now, having said that, it's really important that that's not the only thing you rely on.

So it's gut instinct plus data or research or any kind of quantitative, you know, results or data. uh you have to have you have to have a balance of two now and i would say if you're just focusing on data then you're missing that part of you you know your gut which you know if you're the owner or the general manager of a business to me that says that you have some type of passion for that business so if you don't have an instinctual gut feeling about it, then maybe you're not in the right business. It's interesting you say that actually, it just struck me like, you know, what if your product or service, you know, isn't quite perfectly aligned with your passion anymore?

 You know, like, how does it ever see see that in your clients does that come up for you um like yes but it's it's not it's not something that is like easily detectable because especially with an owner I think an owner and a manager are two very different roles so I'm just going to speak about ownership. If you're the owner of a business and you're not quite passionate about it, it's going to show in your results and it's going to show in the amount of time and work that you put into securing the future of your business.

Okay.

Which means doing the homework now and and doing you know investing in your business if you're not passionate about your business anymore you're not going to be taking those steps so yeah I have seen that um and um it always makes me sad yeah it always makes me sad because maybe at one point this person was passionate and something happened along the way you know they got disillusioned or maybe uh they just decided this isn't something they wanted to do but i've seen other times uh situations also like sometimes health related you know oh yeah health and stress you know there's lots of I think reasons why people can become disengaged um yeah yeah definitely uh yeah and sometimes I've seen it where they're just at a place where they're kind of ready for retirement and you know they just haven't really done the planning and they're just sort of checked out a little bit so that's I've seen that too. So that's, those are big feelings around that. Yes. So the black hat is caution and risk.

And you did touch on risk, I think in the first question as well, but what risks, I mean, the obvious risk of, you know, if you don't have revenue, you don't have a business um other than the obvious risks you know what what do you see for their business if they don't make a change immediately well if they don't make a change immediately well i would kind of uh use different wording for that if they if they don't start doing the work um to figure out what changes need to be made then they're going to cancel themselves out if they can't evolve they're going to lose their audience and by audience I mean customers yeah so the risk is you know not knowing not knowing who your target market is and maybe going too broad.

You know, if they use strategies and tactics that is meant to appeal to a very broad fan base or target market, they're going to miss out because they're not, they're not going to be providing, um, a product that is actually needed by a specific target market. Okay. Um, have you noticed that business, our, our, our business is niching more than they used to. Is this a trend? Yes.

 Okay. Yeah. It's something I've noticed for sure because uh you know with i think with technology today it's a lot easier to uh drill down into your um into your target market and really figure out uh through research methods and stuff figuring out exactly what their needs are and sometimes you find out that maybe you can narrow down your product offering to really hit that mark for them. And so you're decreasing maybe what you're offering, but you're increasing your sales and maybe the frequency in which people are buying. So that's why niches sometimes work. Yeah. Is there any time where you would not recommend a niche?

 I think it just depends on the product being offered. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard to answer that question without knowing specifically. Well, if we use this example, I would recommend that maybe they niche down. But again, I'd have to know more about the target market. Right. Yeah. Okay. right yeah okay um i'm curious about if we could go into that just a little bit um so when you're creating like a customer persona along with a client what are the steps that you go through for that like what is what's the really important things to identify um well i always ask the client to send me whatever data they have.

So it's, and a lot of times I don't get it. But it's, you know, give me a general sense of who is coming into your brick and mortar store, right? I look for, you know, general observational data probably is what I'm going to get. So the age, the sex, the purchasing patterns, frequency in which they come in, any kind of anecdotal data they can give me. You know, do they know their customers?

Do they talk to them do would they recognize them if they were walking down the street you know are they coming in with strollers are they coming in you know a certain time of day I need all of that whatever the owner can give me will give me a bit of a broad picture and then I drill down and what I do is I look at that industry and I look at what the typical customer would be right so there I mean that research is available out there on the internet and I so I look at that and then I compare it to you know what I have from the owner and I see what the gaps are, if any. And so that helps me round out what the, what the persona would look like. So it's a lot of research. It's a lot of talking to the owner and looking at survey results. If I'm lucky, they have survey results, but you know, startups don't have survey results. If I'm lucky, they have survey results. Right. But, you know, startups don't have survey results.

 So, yeah, it's a little bit of both. And I come close. It's not an exact science. No. But I do come close. Yes. I mean, as someone who owns a business and is, you know, I've been part of a few startups, my own and other people's, you know, sometimes it's like, it feels like a little bit of a risk, you know, deciding to like focus on one or, you know, a cluster of particular customer personas, like a target market. It does feel like a risk. And I think that sometimes that that's a trap that I think people fall into is not wanting to pick a person, pick someone who you believe is going to buy your product. Well, again, we're going back to that whole thing about too broad of an audience. You know, it's like, you know, how do you craft your messaging? How do you how do you how do you craft your messaging?

How do you develop your creative? I mean, everything stems from your customer personas. So if your customer persona is everybody in the whole wide world, how are you going to get your messaging across you know to the whole world you know if every single person is a potential customer right we're not gonna hit any marks right you know you just think of it as that you know put it down the funnel and then at that at the bottom of the funnel you have like the cream of the cream uh you know the people that are most likely going to buy from you and figure out what is going to get them to buy yeah that's what a customer persona is supposed to do right okay so going back to black hat and caution and risk um i'm curious because i think this is like a very natural, you know, human behavior to want to minimize risk.

And we know that, you know, in most cases, diversification minimizes risk, except I think when we're talking about a target market. So but it feels like a risk. So what do you do as a marketing professional to help it feel like less of a risk with your clients? You mean developing that target or that exact? Yeah. Well, I have to explain to them that, um, oh, well, I mean, this is what I always say to clients. I say, you know, you have to start somewhere. So let's, you know, so far, yeah, you haven't tried any strategies.

So why don't we try this strategy and this strategy and see how it goes. And then we'll revisit it in three months. Honestly, like marketing is, you know, it is part science, but it is part gut instinct, like you said. And it's a lot of, you know, data crunching and stuff. But at the end of the day, it's not an exact science. Okay, so and anybody who says it is not been in marketing for very long. So what I say is, let's just try it. What I say is let's just try it.

I can tell you as a professional and based on my years of experience that you're going to get better results if you focus on a particular market and you craft your messaging to that specific market. But if you don't believe me, let's try it for three months, see how it goes. And then we'll look at the results and we can pivot if it doesn't work. So that's how I, I, I'll, I always get a yes when I, when I kind of position it that way. And, you know, all I want is success for the client. Right. 

So at the end of the day, I'm not going to recommend something that I don't think is going to work. So I put the power back in their hands and I say, you know, it's your decision, but let's, let's try it and we can always change it. Yeah, definitely. And you'll learn something from it. Right. And I'm sure there's always something to learn from, from a test.

 So, yeah. Okay. Yellow hat is optimism and benefits. So what is the good news here? Well, the good news is that this store has had a loyal customer base and they have had a lot of success in the past. The other positive thing is that they are looking to make some changes, to pivot, because they know that they need to do something. And they do have a budget, which is huge. They have set aside a budget. So right there, that tells me that they're serious. And that's the positive thing about this is they have the right mindset to pivot and change and grow. Oh yeah. Mindset is literally everything.

And you know, people who poo poo that, like they haven't, they just haven't gotten there yet. You know, like. Mindset is everything. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So green hat, creativity and alternatives. Is there anything like outside the box that you'd recommend here? Or one of the other questions that I would ask in the scenario is if you were working with no budget, where would you start? Oh, I have a lot of ideas for this. This one, I mean, okay. The first thing I always say is, okay, let's take a look at your network.

See who we can collaborate with. That's a, you know, a win-win situation for both that doesn't actually require any kind of payment, but maybe it's a, it's a collaborative promo on social media where you're, you know, partnering up and offering a huge prize and you do some type of contest, but definitely collaboration is the first thing I would look at. Okay. And the second thing I would look at is try and step out of your business for a second and imagine what it could be. So more than a store. Okay. So this is a store, but what could it be other than that? You're selling clothing, but could this be a meeting place for women?

Could you have fashion shows could you do you know i don't know any type of little event wine and cheese events um sure take a look at what you know what can you do in your space that will make it more of a destination okay and what it already is yeah so for brick and mortar stores i always look at those two things and um it's bound to create traffic i love that yeah make your business a destination. Yeah. Blue hat, process and control. So how do we, you did touch on this earlier, but like specifically, you know, you're testing a new campaign.

 You know, we're working with this business, this retail chain. We're testing a new campaign for them. How do we know if it's been successful right so uh whenever you whenever i start a new campaign um i do a full marketing plan for it and part of the marketing plan is making sure that you identify what your specific objectives are but every objective needs a measurement tool absolutely or else you're just throwing money out the window.

So we call them KPIs. So key performance indicators. So you always do that. That's the first thing you do. So for a new campaign, I would look at social media data. So the reach, engagement, impressions, website analytics. so how many more people are visiting the website how long are they staying on the page are they uh clicking on anything you know that type of thing uh and then surveys so uh if you've never surveyed your fan base, I keep saying fans. Can you tell I come from a different world? We forgot to mention Lisa spent a long time with the Ottawa Senators in marketing. I'm never going to get that vocabulary. Well, raving fans. We're all trying to create raving fans, are we not? Yes, yes. 

 Raving fans

Yes. Yes. Rating test. So surveys, you know, and I would hope to God that they would have some type of database, customer database. But if not, that would be one of my recommendations is to either start collecting email addresses so that you can survey on a regular, on a consistent basis. So whether that's once a year or once a quarter, whatever it is, it's consistent and you create a baseline of numbers and then you measure against that every time you survey. So, and you'll be able to get some good data that way.

For sure. And of course, sorry, sales sorry sales obviously are you selling anything you're not selling anything then the campaign probably didn't work no okay so that is that is interesting though because there are a lot of people who focus on marketing that you know there's different you know goals when it comes to marketing you know brand um reach or brand awareness there's different, you know, goals when it comes to marketing, you know, brand, um, reach or brand awareness, there's community building. There's like a bunch of things, obviously revenue is one of those things.

Um, like what is the, like what, what, I mean, revenue is that number one, the number one goal? Well, I have to say it depends on, it depends on the business I'm working with. Okay. If we're using this, I'm using this as the example. It's a brick and mortar store. Obviously, they're doing all of this because their sales are dwindling.

 So I would say the number one is to increase sales by X percent. And you need to figure out what that X is. So, you know, I would ask for sales figures for the last year or two, even to see what the sales trends have been and and then figure out what a good KPI would be for that. And so I say, yes, sales for sure for this, but they did mention that their social media was dwindling and there was no engagement whatsoever um so you know the second one would probably be to increase awareness increase awareness of the store and increase engagement with the content that they're putting out um and engagement could mean clicking a link that goes back to the website.

To me, that's a valuable result from a campaign. If people are actually, you know, taking action on the content that you're putting out, that's what you want at the end of the day. At the end of the day, you want people to go to your website and make a purchase for sure yeah or walk into the store and make a purchase totally yep awesome um any any final thoughts i want to actually help the store so yeah it's too bad it's an additional store yeah yeah this is well it's an optional store based on you know numerous experiences that I've had with clients and um but but certainly you know if you're you're out there listening to this and you're thinking is she talking about us uh Lisa might be a good person to chat with oh absolutely I love retail um and I love, you know, I have so many ideas when it comes to retail. I used to manage, I used to do the marketing for shopping centers. So I understand the retail cycles. I understand, you know, the ideology behind retail strategies.

And I just love it. So yeah, I love that your example to this story was amazing. Well, this is this is like, like I said, it's like it is a real story. It's a real story. It's an amalgamation of a couple of stories that I'm, you know, we're aware of.

So yeah, we hope that this resonates with people. And I think it will because it is, you know, a common issue, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming, Lisa. I am happy to be a weirdo in the workplace. I am very happy. You are an official weirdo now. I love it. Yay. Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble. 

Intro:

What does it take to redefine your business and reach your full potential? In this episode, we sit down with Peter Georgariou, the CEO and Founder of karmadharma, a full-service marketing agency dedicated to helping organizations achieve their goals. With a background spanning national sales, marketing, and operations at top media companies, Peter has a wealth of experience guiding SMEs and non-profits through strategic planning and brand-building. But his true passion lies in being of service to others - whether that's supporting his wife and two daughters, or amplifying the impact of the organizations he works with. Join us as Peter shares his unique perspective on how businesses can evolve their value proposition, leverage their strengths, and make a lasting difference in a fast changing and digital society!

Website: http://www.karmadharma.ca

Stay In Touch:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergeorgariou/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/karmadharma-agency/

https://www.instagram.com/karmadharma.agency/

Script:

I am very aware and my sense of urgency is very high on how short our walk on this planet is.

That's what culture is going to be changing every time something changes within the organization.

People are going to read this. My friends are going to read this. Maybe they don't see me in that lens, but I think that's where the magic happens, Erin, like getting them into like being out there as themselves and letting go of the good and bad opinions of others.

 Let yourself jump off a cliff once in a while and see what happens.

Here's all the benefits for you. Here's how this is going to change your world.

My favorite thing is to sell it, to change somebody's mind from like resistance to like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. I'm going to do it. Bring it on.

---

I'm Jordan, CEO of a five-year-old consulting firm. Our journey has been rewarding, but we're now facing challenges in a rapidly evolving market. The demand for digital transformation and specialized services is growing, pushing us to adopt and stay relevant. Securing long-term contracts has become tougher in an economy filled with uncertainty, impacting our revenue and growth plans. Competition is intense, with both new and established firms fighting for the same clients. I realize I need help to navigate these turbulent waters, redefine our value proposition and get us from where we are today to our big future goal of becoming the go-to consultancy for digital transformation, guiding businesses through the complexities of technology adoption to enhance their competitiveness and innovation in the digital era. And so I'm me, Erin. I'm very happy to have Peter with me today, the CEO and co-founder of Karma Dharma, a B Corporation. And Peter, I'd love for you to just tell us a little bit about you and what you do and why you do it.

Get started there. I want to change the world, Erin, while I'm here. Life is short. So yeah, CEO of Karma Dharma, we're a strategy and creative agency here in Ottawa. And we're slowly moving into a little bit of what you guys do into that people and culture as we realize people need a little escorting along their journey to help them along. So anything from strategic planning to full service, creative agency from creating brands to websites to you name it, and we take them to market. So that's us over there. And why I do it, I want to help individuals and organizations have the courage to be themselves in this life, kick some ass, you know, like it's, it's, I am very aware and my sense of urgency is very high on how short our walk on this planet is. And I'm assuming walking asleep at the wheel is not a great life. And designing a life of meaning is not easy.

So we'd like to help them in that journey. So this is a fictional client of ours, we're going to pretend that we're working with this client. But, you know, what would you say, you know, when you read this story? How did you feel?

 I feel like when I hear the word compete to start, Erin, I get nervous. I think that's especially working with a lot of small businesses. And in the B Corp world, there's a lot of small businesses, solopreneurs, as we've chatted about. And they're starting often from that scarcity mindset. So I think the mindset from the beginning is something I like to work through with our clients. I think there's plenty of business for everyone. There's always been competition in every industry. Sure, it can vary a little bit, but digital transformation right now, I'd say is a hot topic like sustainability consulting. I figure there's a lot of people trying to do that. So I think there's a lot of demand and he needs to figure out how he rises to the top of the supply chain.

Okay. So what would make you a good person for Jordan to work with on this topic? What's special about you?

Gotta call my mom for that one, Erin. I think we ask good questions. I think we really want to work with our clients to a shift that mindset, like I talked about, and help Jordan find his why, because there's one thing there's doing digital transformation, but why this is his jam, why this is his life's work, or why it's part of his life's work. And what's his zone of genius and all that like where is he really the guy for this or his organization is the place to go and figuring out you know it's not any ingredient in their recipe because there's a lot of overlap in the industry and there's a lot of commonality and digital transformation but i would say there's an ingredient set that i'm convinced that Jordan and his team have, um, that we can help Tice out, you know, and tease out, I should say, um, and then help him develop messaging to go to market with that.

Like how to, how does he convey that people have difficulty distilling themselves, the essence of themselves and why people should care. Um, so we joke that we're professional distillers over here, minus the gin. But yeah, I think we are a good fit to help him figure out how he is different in the market. Because there's either you're the cheapest option or you have to differentiate. There's only a couple of ways to win. And so he's got to figure that out. And not just against the people his size i find a lot of the people we talk to compare to themselves so there's nobody doing it exactly like us but there's a lot of substitutes for them there's a lot of different ways to do it or they have this philosophy oh the big guys are eating my eating my cake um and so i think it's just navigating that conversation to figure out where they are mentally at the organization and then helping them elevate above that into their own spot.

Okay. Um, so you said that, uh, well, one thing I love that you said was the zone of genius and Patrick Beck, that David, I don't know if you know that gentleman, he wrote a book called your next five moves and it's awesome. So I highly recommend that to anyone listening. But he called it the zone of fascination. And I just love this idea of like the zone of genius and zone of fashion fascination.

Tell me how do you tease that out of a person?

 Um, I think in all your secrets. Yeah, no no are you kidding no they're not that secret um I think it's creating early on a zone of trust here and with these people like literally having a conversation around you know why are you doing what you're doing beyond the table stakes I need to feed my kids and all of the just stuff, how we show up just to pay our bills and to bring them to a spot of meaningful contribution. You know, I believe we're all here to be of service to our communities and to allow people to dream a little bit about that and to go beyond the functional aspects of work and why this lights a fire in under Jordan's bum or, you know, like why is this his place? So I think it starting from creating a zone of trust where there's no wrong answers and not a safe space, cause there's no pure safe space, but creating a brave space where this person can, you know, speak to what their challenges are, their fears are, why they aren't showing up as their best selves or something I fought with a long time imposter syndrome.

Why, oh my God, it can't be me. Why do I have the answer? Why would they believe in me? Like a lot of us are fighting this in certain different ways. So just leveling the table or the playing field that he's human, we're human. You don't have it all figured out. Neither do we, neither do your competitors. So why don't we just really hone in on your spot and your sweet spot? And in a, you know, I was born in the U S I've been up here for 40 years, been a long time, but I find in Canada, we are very conservative business wise. And we are very fearful of quote-unquote bragging, whereas, you know, you told me at the beginning of this call, there's nothing wrong with selling. So I think that getting out and saying, hey, why are you awesome? Why should they pick you? And it's okay to tell people you're awesome. You don't have to be a jerk about it, but I think you can go out and tell the market you have something that you believe no one else has.

And oftentimes, if other people are doing that, perhaps it's your why that's going to differentiate you. You're doing this to rebuild your community, to save the planet, whatever that might be, right? To help people, small businesses get out of and compete with the big boys, whatever that might be for him and his business. of compete with the big boys, whatever that might be for him and his business. I think it's diving deep and getting out of talking about the senators and the weather. It's just harder than you think for some people, because even in the way you positioned your case study, it's a very transactional, I'm in a competitive land state. How do I stand out? And then, okay. So these are very versus, okay, how do you make this your life's work?

 You're going to spend 40 years at eight hours a day. That's a lot of frigging time. Why don't we just make this something that at the end of your days, you look back and say, Hey, I made a difference while I was here and reposition what you're doing through that lens. Yeah, definitely. It strikes me that the kind of what I would have called sort of the BHAG of the case, the guiding businesses through the complexity, the becoming the go-to consultancy for digital transformation, guiding businesses through the complexities, blah, blah, blah. As you were talking, kind of struck me that there is no why, you know, there's nothing that has to do with a why in that statement whatsoever. Not that this is a real case, but this is again, something that I've seen over and over and over.

Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I think that back to the transactional nature of, of businesses or, or jobs, right. You know, people are in this because I need to provide and it's not available to everyone. I even think at times it's of the privileged few who get to think about something beyond just putting food on the table and being up a couple rungs on Maslow's pyramid. I think it's a privilege. But I also think it's a mindset, you know, whether you find that through the work or outside of work, you know, becoming that best version of yourself in service of the world is low key or the goal of every human in whatever form that takes for them. really helps them stand out. And it helps them stand out even in their language and how they communicate that once they found that resonance in their inner self, not to get too woo woo.

But, you know, once they've done that, all of a sudden, it even infuses meaning for them into what they're doing and the impact they could be making. And hey, all of a sudden, I'm going to walk you through a digital transformation that's going to, if you get this right, cut your costs, allow you to compete with bigger players, allow you to provide for your family or those trips or whatever that means. Digital transformation could change the lives or will change the lives of entrepreneurs and businesses and their employees and all these things. There's a massive ripple effect of Jordan getting this right. So now we're talking, we're not just talking about switching, you know, to your project management system.

 We're talking about helping people live a great life, you know? So I think there's something underpinning any product or service that can, if you are passionate about it and it's not just transactional, I think there's an opportunity there to have people dream bigger a little bit. Totally. And like you say, like, I think, you know, your why doesn't have to be changing the world over that many hour why. No. It could be, you know, I had this idea in my head. This is me talking. I literally had this idea in my head since I was a child that I wanted to be an employer. And that was because I wanted to be able to give people somewhere to work, you know, somewhere I wanted to help them have a life, right?

 Right. So that could just be the goal. It could just be, you know, I want to give my employees the most people possible, a great life and somewhere stable to work, you know, because there's a lot of unstable work in the world. There's nothing wrong with the why being, you know, just your internal community. That is your why. I don't know. A hundred percent. I think changing the world is intimidating. I mean, I put it out there, but I think everybody's could just be, I need to provide for my elderly parents. I could like, it could be that gamut is huge, but it is usually beyond the business itself, right? It is, you're generating this money and this income to use it as currency or as energy to go fulfill what you want out of this life, right? So I'm with you on that a hundred percent.

So if Jordan's your client, you know, and he's coming in, he's saying we need to stand apart. Yep. You obviously, you mentioned you start with why the self-awareness, the understanding of, you know, who, who, who they are and what kind of impact they want to make, whether it's the community or the world, where do you go from there? Then we start working on, you know, this is the branding side of the house for us is really how they want the world to perceive them. Right. So there's, there's the branding side of the house for us is really how they want the world to perceive them, right? So there's the what they do that a lot of people get lost in. And it's very, you know, just, hey, I do A, B, and C. And this is, you know, usually you go to a lot of websites, they say, I do A, B, and C, it's gonna be great versus, hey, here's what's in it for you, Mr. and Mrs. Business. Here's all the benefits for you. Here's how this is going to change your world. Here's all of that. But we also work on what we call brand tone and personality. So personality-wise, how do you want to be showing up?

For us, you come to our site, people might be like, oh, I love these guys, the people who tell us that. And then the other people who never show up because they thought we're dope smoking yoga teaching god knows what and so they just leave so i think there's having that courage to stand up for yourself and not just what you say but how you say it and being okay like yo this is me this is us this is the way we roll this is how it's the beginning of that engagement with people and if they feel energetically like, these are my people, or Oh, my God, these guys are scaring the crap out of me. It's pretty good. They know it up front, because you'll start to find your people a lot sooner. Because so many websites or comms pieces are just so tofu, they don't smell like anything, they don't taste like anything. They're bland as hell. I'm not saying Ottawa's worse, but I don't know. I see a lot of that.

And I would say, you know what? There's something about standing out is hard for people. Being different is really hard. Like I decided not to call Karma Dharma, Peter G's media media company right i said ah this is this is what I believe in and if they don't like it they can kiss it um but the ones that do love it and i would say to jordan like as we move towards it how do you want to be perceived or there's a great question out of a conference a month ago and i can't remember the lady who said it, but she says her question was, who are you uninterrupted? Like if you would just go tell the world everything about you, your org, and you didn't have to worry about how you thought they were going to receive that information and you could just speak like that, A, it takes courage, but B, we like to work with them on that first draft. And I will tell you, we've done a lot of this where like, they're quite nervous to put that out in public. You know, the website piece or whatever, it's like, okay, people are going to read this.

 My friends are going to read this. Maybe they don't see me in that lens. But I think that's where the magic happens, Erin. Getting them into being out there as themselves and letting go of the good and bad opinions of others. You know, and there's that, you know, that book, The Five Regrets of the Dying. I can't remember the name of that lady. She worked with palliative care and I would definitely. And so anyway, she goes through the top five regrets. And the number one is, I wish I had had the courage to live a life in line with my values and who I was and not to have compromised. So I find when I come full circle to doing like brand work or the teams doing the brand work for these companies is so many of them are fearful to be truly themselves in this world. And ultimately, it's so sad. You're like, wait a minute, you're paying us to help you go tell them. And then you're still like, what if they think I'm silly or stupid or not good enough, or Johnny and Mary over there are saying it different than me. And they seem to be kicking ass. And I'm like, well, you're not Johnny and Mary. And I think you standing up as yourself is the ultimate gift to yourself. That's not easy work, Erin.

I don't think for a lot of people, right? To just like show up because you are going to have the haters and you got to, we really want to print these t-shirts. We need some courage ourselves. I want to have these t-shirts that says F the haters. You got to let go of these people who are just not your people. Yeah, absolutely. I will say something though, that you said right at the beginning there, I want to, I want to touch on this because you said something like, you know, they might come to the website, they might see karma Dharma, they might freak out and run away, but that's okay. Cause we're not their people or whatever. Yeah. I want to say like, if, if anyone's listening and they go to karma Dharma's website and they're like, Whoa, if if anyone's listening and they go to karma dharma's website and they're like whoa freaky like they're not I would I would hold on to that feeling for a minute because that might be exactly what you need you know you might need to be a little bit scared if you're getting a little comfortable um I know I feel like the best moments that I've had, the best learning, the best mentors, the best teachers are the ones who challenged me. You know what I mean?

The ones who were like, I was like, I don't know, man, like, I feel terrified to go there. It sounds like a lot of work, you know, maybe it's not like do it anyways, because to me, that's where all the growth happens, right? But then everything else you talked about through that entire, you know, that last couple of minutes was all about fear. A lot of it was about fear, right? So- Amen, yeah, for sure. So facing your fears, if you can support people in facing their fears, I think that that's the most valuable thing that you can do for other people. What a gift. And it just happens to be, we do branding and marketing, but I would argue that back to my intro saying, helping people have the courage to be themselves in this lifetime.

And I'm still client number one for me. I went to a conference six weeks ago and this lady gave a workshop on imposter syndrome and took my breath away, Erin. I was, I can't believe I'm still battling this at three months from 50, you know, and, but it was just an extreme motivation for me as well to take that leap of faith into, okay, I still have some letting go. I'm not, everything I've said is very far from preaching from a place of mastery. It's really from a place of practice that I'm still working on, talk to our team about all the time. And letting go perfection is not possible. It's actually a, it's a plague, this perfectionism thing. So anyways, I think full circle is this journey of stepping forward into courage or back into fear is a constant decision at every moment in your life. And you have these opportunities and sometimes you just need some people on your side to help pull you forward a little bit.

Absolutely. Yep. Or drag you kicking and screaming sometimes. Maybe. Maybe. It's funny you say that because we talk a lot about, you know, we can't do your pushups for you or we can't want it more than our clients. So sometimes as we can open up the coaching mindset and approaches, we can present it to you and help you find that solution for yourself. But the dragging rarely works, right? We joke about it and I get it. And sometimes you get dragged along and you're like, thank God I did. I mean, I have teenage daughters and most of the time I lose, but occasionally I drag them along and win. But helping them find that intrinsic motivation within, right. To help pull them out of their shell or that conditioning that's been like, you know, protecting them from judgment or whatever that might be and letting them like, you know, just peek open a little bit and looking out. or whatever that might be and letting them like, you know, just peek open a little bit and looking out.

Maybe it's not the dragon kicking and screaming. Maybe it's let yourself jump off a cliff once in a while and see what happens. Yeah. Mama birds are doing it all the time to their baby birds and there are lots of birds around, but yes. You got it. You got it. So what is the relevance is the relevance to, you know, the market research, competitive research, you know, all that jazz, like, what is, is that important to your process? Or is it, you know, mostly like really getting to know yourself at a fundamental level? I feel there's like the right answer and my answer and I don't know if their mind's the right one, Erin. We do a lot of competitive research just to see how the other brands are positioning themselves, how they're presenting themselves both visually and in their messaging. So it's really good to see that. The counterweight to that is sometimes that can get you away from what you're trying to accomplish because you're like, Ooh, yeah, we should do that. Or we should say it like that. Or I love that you start going to see these websites or documents and you're like, you know, they've got it nailed down or they got a big marketing team. I don't know what, but so, so yes. And still hold space for, despite all, when I launched Karma Dharma, or I would say this for crap, any restaurant out there, if you did your market research, you'd say, oh, well, this market's saturated.

There are tons of players in this market. You know, there's a million marketing firms or there's a million even the strategy side of both of our businesses there are lots of people who can help you do this um same for restaurants so why the hell would you ever go open up if you see because the market research could tell you oh there's no space there right or it comes full circle to the intro of your question of your case is i'm competing big and small and all of this. And you're just like, I got to go. And then immediately you're in this scarcity mindset. I've got to go eke out my little bit of this. And I'm not so sure that's the healthiest place to be launching from. So I think back to the people thing. I think anybody's business, your people are out there. They are waiting for you. You need to find ways to go help them find you, obviously. But so I say yes to doing your homework. Don't ever not do your homework. But I'm a bad example because I started the business. I had no business plan. I said, hey, I know a bunch of people after a long media career, and I'm going to go call them and see if I can start a business and go. So I feel there's that, there's that agility, you know, you guys do agile work at your shop. So, you know, there's that ability to make some quick decisions on some initial hypotheses and have your MVP, your minimum viable product and go test it out and let the market tell you versus you kind of stewing over it endlessly on these fake website pages or your endless business plan. So yes, homework and get out, ship your goods, get out, let the market tell you if it sucks or not. And that's a hard place to be, I think, for a lot of people, because once again, there are going to be people tell you it sucks and that hurts, but there's going to be a lot of people who love you too.

Yeah. What's the, what's the saying? It's like strong opinions loosely held, right? You want to go out into the market with, you know, confidence. But if, you know, based on the feedback that you're getting and feedback as quickly as possible, talking to as many people, delivering to as many people as quickly as possible, regardless of whether you think it's perfect or not, because guess what? It never will be. And that's tough for people. Yeah. I have a preamble, Erin, if Lynn Lyons was your thing, is I reserve the right to change what I'm telling you today, tomorrow, if I learn new stuff, right? Because strong opinions loosely held. I get new information. If I were to look back on our last seven years, my batting average on the correct hypotheses is for sure under 500.

 There's just so many been wrong, but there's been a lot of good. And in business, you're making decisions every moment of every day almost you know so there's a high volume of decision making and kind of got to let go of those other pieces because i thought this would be great oh six months later that was stupid uh you know but but you learned something right you learned i think that i was drawn to the agile like the agile space and agile frameworks because of the fact that I'm so often wrong that's funny well what do you think about Jordan absolutely suck your instincts suck I think my instincts suck my instinct about people are great my instincts about like the broader market suck um but I what I'm really good at is helping people not be perfectionists and just get something out there.

And then let's see what people think. Let's actually ask them. Because when I make I learned like my assumptions are are just terrible. Like I can't make assumptions. This is probably one of the reasons why I try not to make any assumption. So what would have your what was your answer to the market research question? assumption.

 So what would have your, what was your answer to the market research question? I think it's a yes. And because I think people want to feel like we've done our due diligence. So from a business perspective, you, I think we have to do some market research for sure. But the market changes, especially right now, the market's changing very quickly. So I think going out and, and talking to people and being and being okay, even like with your business, like holding your business somewhat loosely as well, so that you can have the space and the mindset to shift if this are or aren't working. If they are working, you do more of that. If they're not working, you do less of that, right? So, but I do think, I think that the research is important to help you understand what the variables involved are, right?

I agree. And I really, you said holding your business loosely. I've figured actually it was someone from Invest Ottawa actually who told me the worst tech companies are these guys who are married to the technology they've created and not the problem they're trying and not the problem they're trying to solve. So they're like, look at my widget or my features in this. And then they're, well, nobody's going to pay for that or wants that. And then I realized for us, I guess, us Karma Dharma back to the full circle on the why is we know why we exist. We want to be a movement for individual and organizational fulfillment.

We want to help these people live their best life. So the products and services we offer today may or may not be with us in five years or 10 years, because I'm not married going to have a creative agency or we're going to really focus on this section of the business where more really all of our energy is towards the impact that we want to have. And we'll figure out how we layer in business services to create that underneath. And that is loosely held big time, like, you know, and I'm saying this to my team, Hey, I'm not sure. We'll have all these products and services in time probably, but maybe not. But that just allows us this space for that growth mindset to find different ways outside of ourselves or find partners who do things we don't do and bring them in. 

And like, it just allows for a much less rigid structure around how we want to solve these problems. And I don't know, I would like, clearly I'm biased, but I'd like to gift that to people to more loosely held vision of their business, right? And what they're trying to accomplish will allow for a lot more inputs to come in when they're ready to receive them. Yeah. I mean, it does. I mean, similar to your work, the work that I do is often considered an investment for clients, you know? And so it's tempting to want to go in, and this probably goes for any business, digital transformation included, Jordan, where there is an investment to be made.

You want to, you know, your clients want to believe that it's, this is the last time they'll ever have to do it. Right. But the, yeah, but I mean, chances are that this is maybe the first time they're ever going to have to do it. Right. When we go in and we support with um culture shift shifting a culture guess what culture is going to be changing every time something changes within the organization someone goes on mat leave someone especially small business you know what i mean um so you need to be continuously improving that and i think same with your marketing materials too. You can't just, it's not just a one time deal, right? I don't think. this November.

 Thank you. And my wife and I are not the same people we were when we got married. And so we've had the ability to grow together and stay together and learn together. But the same for your organization. When Jordan started his business, we look back on stuff we did three months, six months, 12 months ago, and we don't recognize ourselves, right? Because we've changed the way we're approaching problems has changed like our, from proposals to content to you name it. Everything's changing all the time because we have individuals have changed. And people want so much certainty. I feel there's like this fallacy of certainty. No, no, no. This is the right thing. And we've got it nailed.

And then, okay, tomorrow the market's going to shift a hair imperceptibly and sometimes you have mega shifts like chat gpd gets launched 18 months ago and then every service business in the world is you know uh having to pivot but i think often change is so small and minute until you see it like six months later and you're like hell a lot a lot's changed in this little while and so I would say back to back to Jordan or to any small business owner is what we're doing today is a stake in the sand for who you are today um you know and a lot of our work funny enough if I come back to Jordan and the case study is you you know, we're finding in, we do the strategic planning work like you guys do.

And so there's part of it there, you know, okay, here's where we are today. We're at point A, we want to essentially a strat plans. Here's point B, we want to get to point B and here's what it looks like to get there. And we're realizing back to the culture work you guys do, Erin, is the bigger issue is not identifying point B. the bigger issue is not identifying point B. The bigger issue is that gap and who do you have to become to achieve point B as individuals, right? Because there's no org change without the people changing it. You are where you are because of who you are today. And then helping them becoming mindful and change that thing. And to your point, culture changes every time there's a mat leave or whatever that might be. But holding a little grace around the fluidity that is life and business, right? And that's not always easy.

 Yeah. Okay. So this has been an awesome conversation. And I just want to say thank you for coming on the show. And I have one final question for you. And that is, if you were Jordan, what's the one question he should be asking?

I think it comes back to, if I only get one, Erin, I think it comes back to initially like, why you and why is this your life's work?

Awesome. That's really good. All right. Thank you for joining me, sir.

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

It was awesome.

 Thank you so much for inviting me.

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.