Action's Antidotes

In this day and age of technological breakthroughs, everyone would agree that it has its impact. One of the activities that people who go through this detox can engage in is exploring the great outdoors like hiking, mountain climbing, or trekking. But, what are the other things that these activities bring into the community?

Oso Adventure Meals Co-Founder Felipe Vieyra delves into bringing people from different colors together through going outdoor activities and adventures complemented with delicious adventure meals.

Their mission is to provide outdoor food and beverage with uniquely delicious dehydrated meals They are actively working to create an outdoor culture in which BIPOC feels included, safe, and engaged. As a Black and Latino-owned business, Oso Adventure Meals is dedicated to creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable America.

To learn more about what they do, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote!

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Bringing the Community Together Through Outdoor Adventures with Felipe Vieyra

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we're going to talk about the intersection of culture, adventure, and close encounters with wildlife with Oso Adventure Meals founder, Felipe Vierya.

 

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Felipe, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you for having me, Stephen. Really excited to dive into this conversation.

 

Definitely. Now, these are some very interesting topics and one thing that I love to always identify out here in this podcast is ways to think outside the box and ways to think about things a little bit differently. And so, you were on a backpacking trip of sorts when you came up with the idea for Oso Adventure Meals.

 

That's right. That's right. It was two years ago, right outside of Leadville, Colorado, and I had gotten into backpacking so it wasn’t my first time out in the backcountry but it was the first time for one of my best friends, he had never gone backpacking but he loved the outdoors. We decided to go backpacking and we did Jasper Lake Trail, I believe it's called, and so it was super fun. It was definitely a journey that set us up for an even longer journey of entrepreneurship and food and culture and all the things that you named.

 

Yeah, for sure, and so most people go on backpacking trips, especially, it's your first time, it sounds like it wasn't your first time but it was your friend's first time and you're just really focused on some of the basic necessities of life that we often take for granted, like you have to pump the water to get fresh water, you have to set up the tent in every spot to get your shelter and make sure that you get in before the thunderstorms happen, depending on what time of year it is. At the time, though, you were coming up with ideas for a whole new business.

 

It's funny, though, because it was few mishaps. First off, it was like later in the summer too so it was a little — or in the fall, I mean. It was a little like it was a bit of a gamble getting out there and we also started on the trail late, we ended up going to Leadville and stopping for a beer, had —

 

Oh, wow. 

 

I forgot the brewery and we ended up stopping for beer and stayed there a little too long and so we got on the trail a little late. It was also a very steep trail. At some point, I remember grabbing my headlamp and my extra one, me putting one on and handing the other one to my friend because we were hiking in the middle of the night. 

 

Oh, wow. 

 

Yeah, trying to make it to the top and it was his first time so he was like a little anxious. He's like, “Oh, there's gonna be a mountain lion right around the corner. This is never ending,” and so it was definitely an adventurous experience, but I feel like that's what life is about. We finally make it to the top, we pitch our tents, and we're both exhausted and hungry.

The human mind is the source of our thinking. Our ideas, emotions, and behaviors are all interconnected. Thus, influencing how we feel and act. Negative thinking, on the other hand, can contribute to issues such as social anxiety, harmful habits, and stress. So, is it possible to adjust our mindset in order to overcome difficulties and accomplish more in life?

In this week’s episode, Matthew Brownstein delves into the different modalities of hypnotherapy, the philosophy of mind, and how it can help to adopt the right mindset to live life happily. 

Anahat Education Group, Inc. CEO and Founder Matthew Brownstein aim to nurture individual and group success by providing leadership, vision, and purpose for all of our interpersonal relations. Matthew has dedicated his life to offering wisdom and truths that relieve suffering while promoting health and enlightenment.

Want to learn more about hypnotherapy? 

Listen to this podcast of Actions Antidote.

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The Art of Hypnotherapy and How The Mind Works with Matthew Brownstein

 

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I'd like to have with you a more specific discussion around the topic of mindset. Most of my interviews are about people who pursue their own paths, go after their passions, and hoping that by being inspired by those stories, you would adopt more of the mindset that, “I can, I will, I should, I am going to be the one to pursue the path that I really want to.” Today, my guest, Matthew Brownstein, is someone who actually focuses on helping people adopt the right mindset. He is the CEO and founder of the Anahat Education Group.

 

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Matthew, welcome to the program. 

 

Thanks for having me here, Stephen. 

 

This podcast is all about mindset and you've spent a lot of your life studying the human mind and how we can go about adopting the right mindset. 

 

Yep, my whole thing is mindset. That's why I felt we'd be a good fit. My background is meditation, spirituality, philosophy, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming. Yep, all of those modalities just point to the mind and how important the mind is in helping us to live our very best lives. 

 

Now, when it comes to those different modalities that you're talking about, whether it be your spiritual background, your philosophical background, meditation, mindfulness, broader practice around it, or even the neuro-linguistic programming or essentially how we're talking to ourselves, do these all go in tandems or do you tend to adapt it more along the lines of which one is going to resonate with this specific person, maybe someone's a more spiritual person, another person is more into the intellectual philosophy, maybe another person's more into how you train your mind? 

 

Yeah, I think they all go in tandem, the way that a plumber would walk in with every tool, or at least in the truck there's every tool, but you have to cater, whether, so even for myself, it's not like every time I go into meditation or do hypnosis, I'm using all of those modalities but, generally, the work I do is client centered so I would just say, “What are your goals?” or, “Where are you blocked?” like where's the issue, where's the goal, and then we just pick the best modalities to help to move towards that, and being client-centered work, I will often present the modalities that I think would be best, like, well, we could use hypnotic programming for this, maybe we could do hypnotic regression for this, maybe you just need to learn some self-help techniques. Once I present what I think could be the best options, I love it when the other person, whether it's a client or whomever, actually picks the modality and then they're that much more empowered to realize it's their journey, not me, I'm just the facilitator. 

 

I see, and so does it often happen that your client will then either try something and have...

For the past years, covid pandemic has hit us. Making almost all of us isolated in our home. A lot has experienced stress, sadness, loneliness, and mental health disorders including anxiety and depression. How can people help the community at the same time improving mental wellness?

In this week’s episode, Justin Kruger joins us to share the goodness of helping people in need, homeless individuals, foster youth and seniors, and especially to people living with a mental health challenge.

Project Helping Founder and CEO Justin Kruger, helping others having a positive impact on the community that creates happiness within it. Their goal is to improve mental health by providing accessible experiences that foster meaning and connection. Making impactful organization to leverage the mental wellness benefits of volunteering both on you and your community. 

To find more of what they do, listen to this episode!

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Improving Mental Wellness Through Helping the Community with Justin Kruger

 

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re about to try a little bit different of a format for this episode. Usually, I just come on and interview a guest and my guest today is Justin Kruger, who started the Kynd Kit program, which we’ll be talking about as well today, but I also brought on a couple other guests, Hallie Atencio and Phillip Hill, who are coordinating alongside myself an event next month to actually build some of these Kynd Kits to build a little community through this program. As you know, both mental health and community building are very important, very near and dear to my heart topic as where we are in culture today.

 

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Welcome to the program. How’s everybody tonight?

 

Justin: Good. Thank you for having us. 

 

Hallie: Yes, thank you so much. 

 

Phil: I’m doing great. Thanks for having us. 

 

Fantastic. Well, Justin, let’s start with you. First, I like to orient my audience here. Tell us a little bit about these Kynd Kits. What are Kynd Kits all about and what do people do when they do a Kynd Kit?

 

Justin: Sure. So, the Kynd Kits are a program of Project Helping, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we developed the kits about six years ago now, not in response to COVID but in response to the challenge of people are busy, how do we fit volunteerism into their lives, so we developed kits to really be a volunteer project in a box that has 100 percent of the materials you need in it to do something good for someone else. We now have almost 40 different projects that you can do in a box and so there’s a lot to choose from. One example that’s really popular right now is we have a kit where you make sight word flashcards and a reading game for first-grade students. So you open the kit and it has everything you need, you make about 75 flashcards. I have kids so I know what sight words are but for those of you that don’t, they’re words that first graders have to have memorized by sight before they move on from first grade. A lot of kids, if they don’t get to that point, they fall behind in their reading. So we partnered with local schools and we partnered with the Barbara Bush Foundation and we built this kit to have those sight words on them but also you make this little like paper bag monster reading game so when they get a word right, they feed it into the paper bag and that’s how they practice. So that’s one example of almost, like I said, 40 different projects.

 

So when I think about these projects, I oftentimes think about certain family activities, drawing turkeys at Thanksgiving or making Easter eggs at Easter. Is it a similar arts and crafts type of project?

 

Justin: Some of them are, some of them are definitely not. Because there’s so many projects, we want it to be a meaningful experience for the kit builder, that meaningful experience is what’s good for your mental wellb...

Sexual exploitation is becoming a well-known issue. Rape and sexual assault cases in our society are rising at an alarming rate, and to combat such crimes, we must encourage people to increase awareness and concern, particularly among women. What will it take to end exploitation in the sex industry?

In this week's episode of Action Antidote, Rev. Bonnie Gatchell joins us to enlighten us and provide hope to those women trapped in the snares of exploitation, as well as to raise awareness of the issue. Rev. Bonnie Gatchell is the Director and Co-Founder of Route One Ministry, a ministry that serves women who have been sexually abused by the sex industry. 

Her mission is to provide the church with a theological framework as well as practical means to better serve, receive, and care for women who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, and gender-based violence in all of its forms.

Tune in to this episode to find more!

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Preventing and Responding to Sexual Exploitation, Violence, and Harassment with  Rev. Bonnie Gatchell

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the problems that keeps a lot of people settling for less and less than what they really want and really deserve out of life is this feeling of disempowerment, and disempowerment can come in so many different forms we can identify it in our own lives and we can identify in others. My guest today, Bonnie Gatchell, has found a way to not only empower herself to solve some of our biggest problems but also empower some others that are really, really in need, really in a place of some genuine disempowerment with her organization, Route One Ministry.

 

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Bonnie, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much, Stephen. I appreciate you having me. 

 

Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. So, Route One Ministries, you help women who were tricked into the sex industry. Can you please explain to us, first of all, how it is that this happens to the people that it ends up happening to?

 

That’s a great question and I even like the wording that you used with “tricks,” kind of the quotes around it. So I think the misunderstanding about women who are working in the sex industry, maybe strip clubs or in prostitution, I think particularly around strip clubs and then maybe even pornography is this belief that they choose to be there or there’s a lot of freedom in being there, that they are sufficiently financially backed up by being there, supplying for, but the truth is, the average age of entry here in the United States is 12 years old. 

 

Oh, wow.

 

Yeah. I think that’s a great response that you said, “Oh, wow,” and I think a lot of people don’t realize that. I think the other thing for Route One, when we think about women being sexually exploited, I think no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up so if we think from that premise, no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up or a woman in prostitution, then we have to ask the question what has brought this woman here, and there’s a lot of different reasons for each woman but the biggest driving factor is some source of poverty. Maybe it’s financial poverty or emotional poverty or spiritual poverty, I think a lack of education, so some kind of brokenness that has happened in their life, trauma that has happened in their life that has brought them to a place of being exploited. And I think, directly, some women have even been manipulated through force, fraud, or coercion, and then forced to work in the strip clubs and they’re given a fake name and a fake identity and fake background story for the sake of their clients and to protect the men and women who are essentially pimping them out and trafficking them.

 

So, you said the average age of entry is 12 years old. What is a genuine story or a typical story of a 12-year-old? Because, I don’t know,

At some point in life, we are hindered from seeing what we desire. Perhaps a lack of self-confidence and motivation drives us to be lost in the path. Nevertheless, how can we overcome these barriers through guidance and predictive science? 

On this week's episode of Actions Antidote, we talk to Bryan Dik, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of jobZology. Bryan Dik shares his knowledge and the science behind finding the meaning and purpose of workplace worth for life. Bryan Dik is a vocational psychologist and professor of psychology. He focuses on career pathways and guidance among students and for everyone. He has published four books including Redeeming Work and Make Your Job a Calling. Bryan Dik is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer of jobZology which helps people discern their calling and live with purpose. 

Want help in finding your own calling? Do you want one? Listen to this episode to find more!

 

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Finding Your Calling and Purpose of Work In Your Life with Bryan Dik

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about something that I really wish that I had when I was younger, when I was coming out of college and considering careers, which is a product that really helps us examine who we are, what really is going to make us satisfied and what’s going to make a satisfying day to day life, because, like many people in my general age range, a lot of us went to college and picked something that we’re interested in, picked something that maybe we’re good at in school but didn’t really think about this day to day and what really drives satisfaction with work, which is something that ends up being probably the first or second biggest use of time during adulthood behind sleeping and maybe something else. My guest today, Bryan Dik, is a professor of psychology at Colorado State University as well as the co-founder of a product called jobZology, which is a product that helps a lot of outgoing college students as well as other career change people examine what they really want to do and find a career path that’s going to be way more fulfilling.

 

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Bryan, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. It’s a joy to be with you. 

 

I’m always glad when people are happy to be discussing their pursuits with me on this podcast because it’s such a positive community of people in a way just talking about what we’re doing and I say this because at the time of recording, we’re in the middle of Denver Startup Week, which is another area where you see a lot of people just talking about their pursuits, talking about what really drives them and so, Bryan, what drove you to start jobZology? What were you observing that made you decide that this was worth your time, your effort, your sweat, everything else that people say?

 

A little context. I’m a vocational psychologist and one of my roles at the university is training our PhD students in counseling psychology to facilitate career counseling. A lot of magic happens in a career counseling relationship, it’s very powerful. But it’s also not always accessible for lots of people. And so one of the motivations behind starting jobZology was thinking about ways to democratize the career assessment and counseling process so that, in a very efficient way, a much broader array of people can experience the kind of support that they might get in career counseling and have access to the information about what makes them unique and how the ways that they’re unique intersect with opportunities and needs in the world of work so that they can make informed decisions about their lives. 

 

And so what prevents people from getting access to the resources they need to really dig deep inside themselves and figure out what’s going to drive them to a satisfying day-to-day life? 

 

Yeah, well, I think lots of things.

For anyone who wants to kick-start their business or reach new audiences with your message, how do you craft articles that top publications would actually want to publish? 

In this episode of Action Antidote, Erica Holthausen will walk us through the process of writing, why it's important, and how it compares to other types of writing. Erica Holthausen is the founder of Catchline Communications, a consultancy agency that helps clients get published in esteemed publications. Her clients have by-lines in some of the most prestigious industry trade journals and business magazines, including Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Thrive Global, and EHS Today.

Listen to the podcast to find out more!

 

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Writing Articles for Publications and Appropriate Publisher with Erica Holthausen

Welcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that stops a lot of us in our pursuits is when we see what someone else is doing to manage their pursuits, and we can't picture doing it ourselves. This can be especially true with the mission of marketing or getting ourselves noticed. Now, this is true whether your pursuit is to start your own business and get it to succeed, or whether your objective is to find the right job, the right position, the right role with a company. 

My guest today, Erica Holthausen, is the Founder and Leader of Catchline Communications. What she does is, she helps people get their articles published in many different publications, as one of the possible many mechanisms that we have out there to get ourselves noticed. It doesn't have to be a social media blitz campaign. It doesn't have to be the standard methods that you always think about when you think about marketing. Because the mission is just to get yourself noticed, regardless of what your pursuit is.

 

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Erica, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much, Steven. It's great to be here.

 

Oh, thank you so much for hopping on Actions Antidotes. Let's begin. Tell me a little bit about Catchline Communications. Because you help people not only get their publications out there, but also determine what's the right publication to reach their audience.

 

Yeah, that's a big part of what I do. It's easy to say I know this publication, like Harvard Business Review, or Inc, or Forbes. I want to be published there. But before you jump in front of all of the other steps, knowing what your business goals are, like why do you want to be published anywhere? Why do you want to write articles for publication? What are you hoping it will do for your business? How do you want to use these? What is the business purpose that underlies all of this?

The more you understand why you want to do this and what your goals are for writing for publications, the easier it becomes to — I call it creating filters.

You use those goals as filters to say, "Okay, this is what I want to do. These publications will help me get there. These won't."

 

What types of pursuits? What types of businesses and objectives are the types that people should be thinking about writing an article for publication, as opposed to some of the more, I would say, "traditional marketing techniques" that we have now with the social media blitz campaign or everything else?

 

So, the obvious easy ones are professional services businesses. So, if you're a consultant, if you're a business coach, if you are anything that does professional services, those are easy, easy fits into these publications. Less obvious, but equally true are, if your industry has an association or has a trade journal, that's an opportunity to write for them. Because other people in your same industry are always looking for smart, actionable advice that is going to allow them to do what they do better. So, if you're in the supply chain world, there are a ton of publications regarding supply chain.

One of the reasons you might suffer from a lack of creativity boils down to time. You have become so busy, so there's no time for your creativity. But, what would life look like if you value your time as much as you value other things? 

In this week's podcast, join us as we welcome our guest, Katie Burkhart. She is an entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker. Katie has founded several companies and is currently the CEO of MatterLogic, where she and her team support leaders and organizations clearly define what it means to be a purpose-driven business. She advises business owners on how to align their time with their goals and run a purpose-driven company. Listen in for ideas on how to maximize your time and become more successful in all areas of life.

 

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Creative Thinking and The Value of Time in Business with Katie Burkhart

Welcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that we all need to try to do to achieve the life that we want, no matter what form that takes, focus on what really matters. We live in a world full of distractions, there are distractions everywhere, and we all now have a portable distraction in our phones, purses, wherever we put our mobile phones ready to distract us at any one given point in time and, sometimes, the difference between someone that truly succeeds at achieving what they set out to achieve, achieving the life they really want, and someone that doesn’t quite get there is how often we get distracted and how long we allow ourselves to get distracted for. These distractions can come in, of course, many different forms and my guest today, Katie Burkhart, is all about helping businesses focus on the things that really matter in order to achieve their mission. She is the mastermind behind a system called MatterLogic which she implements through her organization, MatterPulse.

 

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Katie, welcome to the program today.

 

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

 

Definitely. So, first of all, MatterLogic is the system you implemented. What did you view in the world that made you decide that this system was something that businesses needed to help them really focus on what matters?

 

That’s a great question. So, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of extremely passionate leaders who are excited about their big idea and how they’re going to improve or otherwise change the world, but I’ve also watched those same leaders struggle to pull themselves in one to many directions at any given time and, as a result, really stunt their growth and their ability to do what it is that they set out to do. In particular, I think about conversations with people where it’s like, “Well, this trend is here. We should be pursuing that,” or whatever and, all of a sudden, whether it’s between more ideas and things that they could do, because I find people with big ideas tend to attract ideas naturally, or through other things that are pulling their attention away from what it is they set out to do is that we need to go about fixing this and, inherently, gravitated towards the purpose of the model. But what I found in that process was that it wasn’t overly well defined. I ended up thinking, well, the issue is really that people don’t have the right data, they don’t have the right information, we should be trying to build technology to support that. But quickly, it was, actually, we don’t really even have a good definition for what it means to run a purpose-driven business, really to reap the benefits from it. Most people look at it as, “Oh, you did something impactful and it’s inspiring,” and I’m like, well, okay, but once you have the statement, and we’ll debate whether that’s the right definition later, what does that mean for how you run your business every day and what does that mean in benefit for how you grow your business?

 

And as you said, focus,

Interested in the cuisine of Ghana? Internationally, West African cuisine is popular. But chances are you don't know or have never tried any of it before. Broaden your knowledge and learn about authentic Ghanaian cuisines and their culture.  

In this episode of Action Antidote, we spoke to Joanna Stein, a private chef and event planner about how she immersed herself in new west African cuisine flavors. Joanna is very passionate about cooking and helps their family business in catering services. She is dedicated to having everyone get a taste of Joanna’s kitchen authentic West African Food, Ghana.

Whether you're a wanderlust or you're just someone who just wants a mental vacation, Actions Antidote will take you on a trip. Listen to this episode and get a glimpse into the country’s food culture.

 

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Authentic Ghanaian Cuisine and Cultural Practices with Joanna Stein

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Those of you who’ve been listening to my podcast, especially the last few episodes, know that I’m really interested in travel, but if you’re really open to travel and travel experiences, you realize that travel is actually a two-way street. Sometimes we get up, we go out, we get in our car, on a train, on a plane and we go visit another place, but sometimes people and experiences from other places come to where we are and that’s something that has happened to me quite a bit this summer, including only a few blocks from my home where food available from my guest today, Joanna, the founder of Joanna’s Kitchen, is available at my local grocery store.

 

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Joanna, welcome to the program. 

 

Hello there. Thank you so much for having me.

 

Definitely. So, Joanna, you make food from your original homeland of Ghana and I’m sure that there are a lot of people listening to this podcast who have never had Ghanaian food or never even had West African food and so what I’m wondering is what can people expect when they try it and what should people be thinking about going into the experience? 

 

So, Ghanaian food is very flavorful, it’s full of spice. I do definitely try to make it more of a medium mild so everybody is able to enjoy it but I also do have gluten-free option, I have vegan option, and then meat option. I try to make it so that everybody, regardless of your dietary restriction, you’re able to enjoy the cuisines, a little bit of everybody. So it’s just full of flavor. I’ve had a lot of clients from all parts of the world tell me that it kind of reminds them of like their grandma’s cooking or their back home cooking so it definitely feels good to be able to connect with people from all over and not just Ghanaian people.

 

When you talk about the spices, are you talking about being like heavily spiced, and if someone were to want the full authentic Ghanaian experience, would this most likely be a level of spice that overwhelms the average American here in Colorado or anywhere else?

 

Yes, I would definitely say the average Ghanaian is more of a high to an extra high so it’s more peppery and more spicy and, for me, my experience is just for you just to try our cuisine. So I definitely have the spice there but my goal is more of the flavor. And so like our bell peppers, we use lemongrass, I use a little bit from every cuisine so we use like curry, we use nutmeg, and so I feel like it’s amazing to be able to like see the same ingredients that we use here make the same dishes and so that’s why I also offer cooking classes because I love to be able to show people that you can make this dish, like it’s not unique ingredients that I’m getting sort of from Ghana, like there is certain things like palm oil but most dishes you are able to create yourself as well.

 

Oh, wow. Yeah, because your business is not just about the food, it’s about the catering and the cooking classes.

Are you at a crossroads in your life and don't seem to be making progress toward your goals? We all know that we should give our all and aim for excellence in all that we do, but what happens when this desire for success becomes toxic? Everyday, we look forward to something productive, successful and even joyful. However, not everything will go the way we wanted and that could lead to self-doubt and languish. As a person, we also make mistakes leading to unfortunate events. Fortunately, there’s an antidote. 

Our guest for today is Audrey Holst. She is a recovering perfectionist who coaches audacious top achievers on how to stop micromanaging their lives with perfectionism. Audrey helps people struggling with the fear of failure and mistakes. Join us as we break down what’s preventing you from success and how you can focus on your progress. Stay tuned to learn more!

 

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Ditch Perfectionism, Strive For Progress with Audrey Holst

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a bit about perfectionism and this is something that I’ve observed prevent a lot of people from following their dreams. You’re waiting for the exact right time, waiting for the exact right setup, the exact right thing or excessive amounts of research and perfected your product, you’ve crossed every t, dotted every i, as they say, and you’ve accounted for every possible scenario and I can’t stress to you enough how many times I’ve seen this really get in the way of people’s dreams. My guest today, Audrey Holst, is the founder of Fortitude & Flow and she specializes in helping people overcome this tendency toward perfectionism which is so prevalent in our culture today.

 

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Audrey, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks so much for having me. I can’t wait for this conversation. 

 

Definitely, Audrey. Now, I want to start off with the foundations. What are the origins of perfectionism? What makes someone really feel like they need to have every last little thing perfect before launching anything or before sharing anything with the world?

 

Yeah. So I think the first thing to understand about perfectionism and perfectionists is that nobody wakes up at age 30 and says, “You know what, that perfectionism thing, I haven’t tried that yet. I’m gonna try that on for size,” and then they just automatically all of a sudden start with these perfectionist tendencies. That is just not anybody’s story. So I did over 60 hours of interviews with perfectionists, people who self-identified with perfectionists, and every single one of them, I asked them questions, I had them tell me their stories, and every single one of them had origins in their youngest years. They could think back when they were a kid in their household, in school where perfectionism had its beginnings and then how other places in their life either helped to stoke the fires of perfectionism or actually helped them work through it.

 

So, how I look at perfectionism is it’s a survival mechanism, which is why perfectionism tends to flare up in times of stress.Share on X

 

When people get stressed out, when people are in new situations, that’s when they tend to go towards that tendency more, which is one of those things that can be really difficult for people that are maybe entrepreneurs or in spaces that require a lot of agility and being uncertain because it really flares up those perfectionist tendencies and it can be a huge issue.

 

Wow. So you’re saying most of it begins at childhood and then, at some point in life, the people around you either reinforce it or send you in the opposite direction. Have you heard a lot of good stories about people being sent in the opposite direction, saying, “Okay, I grew up perfectionist,” and maybe had a perfectionist family, or I think our education system with our pass/fail grades reinforces perfectionism,

Navigating to the world of business is quite ambiguous. Not everyone has fully understood what it takes to grow the business and understand how intellectual property works. For many businesses, intellectual property secures more than just concepts or ideas; it also insures actual business assets, prevents unauthorized use of inventions, creations, and ideas, and grants one or more inventors exclusive rights.

Erin Austin, a consultant and a lawyer, will indulge us how the concept of intellectual property works and why it is important to understand it fully. She helps entrepreneurs to grow their business. Let's dive in, and listen to her today!

 

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Listen to the podcast here:

Intellectual Property Rights, Code and Implementations with Erin Austin

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to talk about intellectual property. It’s a topic I think that a lot of people either overlook or don’t completely understand because it is a bit nebulous. Not everyone really understands when you come up with an idea or when you come up with a process, a product, even a logo or a company name, what it means to have that intellectual property, how that resonates with your business, and what you need to do to protect that for your business to operate properly. My guest today is all about intellectual property, Erin Austin. Her business is called Think Beyond IP and she helps anyone looking to grow their business to understand and navigate the world of intellectual property. And she also has a podcast called Hourly to Exit.

 

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Erin, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much. I’m very pleased to be here. Looking forward to this conversation.

 

Definitely. Thank you so much. I’ve wanted to talk with people about intellectual property for quite a while because it is something that people, they either overlook or don’t know how to wrap their heads around. What does intellectual property mean at its most basic level?

 

Great. So, first, I’m going to do my lawyer thing and I’m just going to say that what we’re going to talk about today is just information. There’s nuance to everything. Even if we talk about some examples, there’s always going to be something that’s different for everybody so we’re talking in generalities and if you do have specific questions, then you do need to consult with your own lawyer. With that out of the way.

 

Thanks for the caveat, there’s no one formula, you can just say, A plus B equals C, there’s always going to be something about your situation.

 

Absolutely, absolutely. Intellectual property, so, as you mentioned, there are four categories: copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents. I will just say right off the top, patents is a very specific area of the law. I do not practice in it. We all are familiar with patents, probably. The pharmaceutical industry, obviously, they get patents on their medications and people who create inventions get patents on their inventions. I work with people in the expertise space and most of what their intellectual property would fall into the first three buckets: copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Copyrights are things that are original and that have been put down in some concrete form, which also could be digital, so when you write something down, when you paint a painting, when you take a photograph, when you shoot a film, when you create blueprints, those original expressions, once you put them down in whatever the concrete form is, the copyright, meaning the exclusive right to make copies, distribute, create derivatives of that material belongs to the copyright owner.

 

Trademarks denote the origin of a good or service.Share on X

 

So, whenever you see the trademarked golden arches of McDonald’s, you know that’s a McDonald’s. Whenever you see the trademarked brown color of a UPS truck, you know it’s a UPS truck.