Weirdos In the Workplace

Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose and how these practices can transform our world of work. I'm your favourite weirdo, Erin Patchell. Today we're going to talk about something I'm surprised it's taken 35 episodes for me to delve into, and that is how to create a coaching culture.

I have worked in what I would consider a deep coaching culture for about the past ten years, and I believe I've made considerable contributions to the foundation and practices we've used to totally entrench this philosophy into daily practice and culture. If you're curious what this means and how this can impact you or your business - stay tuned.

First, let's get a few preconceived notions out of the way.

Coaching is not "woo" or some kind of magic. It's very much entrenched in cognitive psychology and behavioral science and there are very good reasons why coaching, when done well, has enormous impacts to people, teams and organizations.

Coaching is not counselling. The common denominator is that both coaching and counselling do both work on belief systems, emotions and self awareness. Coaching is more forward focused and goal oriented whether those are personal or professional goals, where counselling works more on detangling issues from the past that are still affecting you today and goes much deeper into psychological and emotional wellness.

Coaching is not a "pat on the back". I heard this once from a previous client, and I literally had to take a mindful pause before I said something I'd regret. Coaches are not cheerleaders, there to motivate and encourage people. That is not coaching at all, and certainly not coaching as certified by the international coach federation. In fact, if you're not in a little bit of discomfort during every coaching session, I'm not sure your coach is really doing their job well.

So now that we've cleared that up - what is coaching?

Directly from the ICF's website: ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.

We all have goals we want to reach, challenges we're striving to overcome and times when we feel stuck. Partnering with a coach can change your life, setting you on a path to greater personal and professional fulfillment.

I would also add, coaching trains our thinking frameworks. Your coach will help you first expand your thinking broadly outward into limitless possibilities. The idea is to remove and detangle the psychological barriers to possibilities first, before going inward and focusing on the highest achievable priority. At all times, the coaching client is in control of their ideas and their actions, to create complete authority and self determination in the process. It is always their choice to choose their own adventure. Over the coaching relationship, as the coaching client achieves milestones - first small milestones - baby steps - and then larger milestones, the client will notice they are gaining momentum toward their goals while also building context, emotional intelligence, confidence and greater autonomy over their own personal story.

There have been numerous studies about the benefits of coaching within an organization, but here are a few.

• In a study conducted by the International Coach Federation, organizations with strong coaching cultures reported a 60% higher level of engagement and 51% higher productivity compared to organizations without such cultures.

• A global survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the mean ROI for companies investing in coaching was 7 times the initial investment, with over a quarter reporting an ROI of 10 to 49 times.

• A study by the Center for Creative Leadership reports that 77% of organizations reported that coaching had a significant or very significant impact on at least one of nine business measures. Leadership competencies and team functioning were most frequently cited as being positively impacted.

• Research from the Institute of Coaching cites that over 70% of individuals who receive coaching benefited from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills.

• According to a Gallup study, organizations with a strong coaching culture have 60% higher employee engagement compared to those without it.

There is a reason why the most successful and innovative organizations in the world - Google, Adobe, Facebook, Deloitte, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Spotify - have some kind of coaching program embedded in their organization whether it be during onboarding, for high performing managers, for executives or a peer to peer coaching program.

If you are looking to embed a culture of continuous learning, coaching is practically a non negotiable.

If you have a little bit of a budget for coaching, start with your CEO and leadership team first.

If you can expand that budget outward, put cohorts of managers together and develop a group coaching program to drive consistency in values, philosophy and approach in their work, break down silos, collaborate and communicate more effectively, use their emotional intelligence and practice both thinking big and then clarify the details.

If you have even more of a training budget, get your managers trained as coaches. Better still, get your sales team trained as coaches.

Let me tell you about my experience. I took my first coach training program with Erickson Coaching International in 2019. At that time, the thought of becoming a professional coach wasn't even a glimmer in my eye.

I took the program to better understand the coaching solutions that the company I was with offered to clients, how to collaborate better with our coaching team, and to be able to be a better leader in the organization.

Little did I know, that program changed the way I thought about almost everything, and changed the way I actually behaved in real life. It imbued me with a new confidence, patience, resilience and grit.

I can remember the exact moment when the shift happened. Paul Gossen, our trainer, said "you know you're doing your job, when the client is doing all the work." And while I'm pretty sure that was a tongue in cheek comment, it made me realize that I couldn't force change. I could only hold space and time so the people around me could draw their own conclusions and find their own path to truth (whatever that is). I could demonstrate curiosity and non judgement. I could lead by example to show that we don't have to be afraid of not knowing and we don't have to be afraid of learning; that before we contract our thinking, we need to expand.

I've been working with ICF certified coaches for almost 10 years, for a good part of that time directly serving and managing a team of coaches and trainers, and there is a special energy, wisdom, humility and patience that comes with both learning and practicing coaching - because guess what, it's really freaking hard.

It feels a little bit like a rebirth - so many rebirths after so many small ego deaths in the pursuit of become a worthy coach. Then, one day you'll surprise yourself. A situation will happen that would normally trigger a cascade of behaviours - something you've been really trying to change about yourself but has been stuck to you like glue. Every time the behaviour emerged, you've felt a twinge of guilt or shame, but you always shrug it off because there is shit to do - so much to do, all the time. But today, something changed, and you realized that you didn't react the same way you always were. You were patient, curious, open minded and kind. You demonstrated a coach mindset, and you loved the way it made you felt.

If you are interested in building a coaching culture, my advice would be to take a coaching program yourself, if you haven't already. There is literally nothing that can create a conviction about coaching than experiencing it for yourself. There is a reason that most people who have been coached are huge advocates for coaching.

The most important thing about a coaching relationship is the literally the coaching relationship. Is your coach the best fit for you? How do you know? Do you feel a trust with them? Are they asking questions that expand your mind and push you outside of your comfort zone?

How do you know if you're being a great client? Well, great clients are first committed. They want to learn. They are willing to lower their guard down and practice vulnerability. Great clients lean into the discomfort and embrace the suck, as Brene Brown likes to say, knowing and having confidence that it's through this process that they will come out the other side and see life and make decisions through a new lens.

If you're a manager, how do you integrate coaching into your practice? Remember that coaches demonstrate curiosity and patience. Coaches resist jumping in to solve their clients problems - we truly believe the client has the inner fortitude to solve their own problems and, in fact, they must solve their own problems in order to grow. But the manager wears more than one hat - you need to know when to be the coach and also when to be the mentor, the advisor and sometimes, the boss.

I have helped literally hundreds of people become coaches, in some capacity, whether it was helping to pick a coaching program or advising them on consulting practices. If you want to explore whether becoming a coach is right for you, give me a shout at [email protected] or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/erin-patchell and I can send you a long list of informational resources I've gathered for folks in your exact situation.

Remember, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

This is Erin Patchell signing off - stay weird, stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble.

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[Visit coachfederation.com to learn more about coaching and find a professional coach.]

Welcome to 'Weirdos in the Workplace', the podcast where we like to break the conventional norms and forge our new path to authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose with practical solutions. I'm Erin Patchell, your guide through the maze of workplace diversity and accessibility.

Today, we're talking about an audacious and, frankly, idealistic concept: creating a boundaryless workplace. The concept of a boundaryless workplace is an environment that is consciously designed to eliminate physical, social, and organizational obstacles or - boundaries - that may prevent people, especially those with disabilities, from accessing, participating in, and excelling at work. The goal is to create a universally accessible space that accommodates all employees, enabling them to engage fully, effectively and productively and creatively in their roles. This concept extends far beyond compliance with current standards.

Stay tuned. [Intro music]

It's a mission that some might say borders on the impossible, because let's face it, the spectrum of human needs is broad. But since when has 'impossible' ever stopped us, right? The idea of a beautiful and seemingly impossible problem is something that has inspired people for millennia and we've proven time and time again that we can make the seemingly impossible, possible.

So, let's talk about this conundrum and see if we can come up with an elegant solution to test in the real world. This is a situation where when you're trying to do right by one team member, you can inadvertently encumber another. How do we turn potential win-lose scenarios into win-win scenarios? How can we choreograph a workplace that celebrates the ebbs and flows and dances with the capabilities, desires, limitations; stretching every person a little bit outside of our comfort zone to slowly grow in our areas of development while maximizing our current abilities and special interests..

When we talk about creating workplaces that are as diverse as the human experience - ethnicities and cultures, disabilities, gender and sexual orientation… we're talking about intentionally increasing the complexity of our work and nuance in decision making. Why would we ever consider doing such a thing?

In the pursuit of diversity, we often find ourselves at a crossroads. We may find that what is beneficial and supportive of one group may be at the detriment of another group.

How do we weave these conflicting requirements into a tapestry that doesn't just work, but works beautifully for everyone?

For example, our colleagues with hearing impairments find it helpful to be face to face in person or through Zoom in order to read body language and facial expressions, however individuals with ADHD, cognitive or visual challenges may find video conferences physically challenging or cognitively exhausting and individuals with physical disabilities or pain challenges may find meetings at the office very difficult to attend.

The idea that we're going to find a solution that is perfectly elegant and removes all discomfort from everyone is totally unrealistic and actually impossible. We need to agree on what is a reasonable amount of discomfort - where is the bar? Even physically capable and mentally healthy neurotypical individuals still struggle to fulfill all their obligations - taking care of their bodies, eating well, getting to and engaging in their work, taking care of their families, taking care of their homes, finding time for friends, finding time for sports and hobbies… are you exhausted? Cuz I am.

Comfort isn't going to drive us or our companies. We need to find tools that transcend and motivate us past our feelings of discomfort.

But first, what the heck is a boundaryless world?

We're talking about a world where physical accessibility is intentionally designed into every aspect of our lives. Every person could use the same pathways, entrances, elevators, restrooms, tables - whatever - and workstations are both ergonomic and accessible as needed.

Technologies including websites, software applications, and digital documents, would be standardized to comply with W3C to be usable by people with various disabilities, such as visual or hearing impairments. They would also enable the use of assisted technologies like screen readers, TTY devices and speech to text services.

Social inclusion starts at the preschool level, with schools that are designed so that all people can participate and cultures that promote collaboration and kindness, with students helping each other to succeed.

In turn, organizations don't need to promote inclusivity, diversity, and equity because it's so ingrained in the systems, policies and culture that it's second nature. The culture is sensitive to discrimination and fosters a sense of belonging for all employees, while simultaneously encouraging personal and professional growth, getting outside our comfort zones and encouraging discipline and productivity.

Team members aren't afraid of failure because the organization believes it's just part of the learning process. The company proactively sets people up for success, making sure that directions are clear and providing mentoring and the checks and balances when individuals are taking on new responsibilities, performing new tasks or need more help. In other words, it's OK to fail - but creating a safety net so that we prevent catastrophic failure, which is pretty critically important mention.

Communication methods are adapted to meet the needs of all team members, such as offering sign language interpretation or providing written materials in different formats.

Information is presented in clear, straightforward language, with options for visual and auditory processing, to support individuals with learning or cognitive disabilities.

Accommodations such as flexible scheduling, work-from-home options, and customized workloads support diverse cognitive and mental health needs.

Recruitment is designed to be accessible and to attract a diverse range of candidates, partnering with organizations that are specialized to help place people with disabilities into roles that can leverage their strengths and curiosity.

Training and career development opportunities are made accessible and are tailored to grow employees strengths and areas of development.

This is just a little snippet of a vision of what is possible. Can you imagine feeling totally embraced by your organization, knowing that you're truly appreciated as a human being, knowing that there is a place for you, that it's safe to bring your full self to work, and that they are invested in growing the spark of possibility that is your potential into a raging fire.

Donald Norman, the author of the Design of Everyday Things and a real pioneer in the field of user experience said, "The real problem is that designers often do not understand the people they are designing for. The result is products and services that do not meet real needs." and this might be even more true than it is anywhere else when it comes to designing accessible workplaces. We're each only an expert in our own experience, which is why it's so important to solicit the opinions of others, specifically the people who matter in any given instance, especially when it comes to products, services, solutions, organizational systems and cultures, that are desiring to become more inclusive. We literally can't be inclusive in a silo - it's impossible.

Creating a vision isn't just fluff. It's about crafting a collective story of 'us', who we are, what we stand for, what we desire more than anything and what we believe we will become in the future because of our hard work. You can build a story where each chapter is as engaging as the last, building over time to an incredible arc. Build a story of imperfection, of figuring it out and stumbling sometimes down the path toward your big hairy audacious goal. The Hero's Journey.

And there have been many steps already made toward this dream. Legislation like AODA access to ontarians with disabilities act, is a big step in the right direction although it doesn't go far enough yet. Organizations are redefining their values in a big way to align with concepts like autonomy and self-determination, innovation, transparency and inclusion, in order to put these values into action, policies are being developed to create safer and more flexible work environments, sharing information, collaborating, breaking down silos and hierarchies, and making accommodations the NORM not the EXCEPTION.

We start with empathy, understanding that our shared human experience is a mosaic of unique perspectives. We embrace flexibility, knowing that the strength of the team lies in its adaptability. And we approach every solution with creativity, recognizing that the 'standard' way may not always be the 'best' way.

As we wrap up today's episode, let's remember that 'impossible' is not a fact; it's a challenge. It's a challenge to innovate, to empathize, and to create. Our mission to craft barrier-free workplaces is a journey of a thousand steps, and each step is an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to redefine the very idea of possibility.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Until next time, keep breaking barriers and building bridges in your workplace. This is Erin Patchell, signing off. Stay weird, stay wonderful, and stay don't stay out of trouble.

Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast where we celebrate authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose, and how these qualities lead to more successful and more inclusive workplaces. I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Pachell, and I'm on a quest to turn business philosophy into business fact. If this isn't your first time listening, you might know that I tend to weave the concepts of strengths based teams and strengths based philosophies into almost everything that I talk about. Because in my mind, it's one of the things that connects these ideas of empathy, inclusion, stress and wellness, agility, design thinking, the future of work - hashtag future of work - performance and profitability all together, it's what I call a "linchpin" concept, and if you get this one right, it will unlock benefits in so many other parts of the organization. It has positive consequences. So this is what we are going to talk about today. Stay tuned.

Positive psychology has a focus on cultivating what is best within individuals and societies, and the ideas dovetail elegantly with the objectives of accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion in our modern workplaces. Strengths based philosophies recognize and celebrate every person's unique contributions, which is a core fundamental in the work of DEI and accessibility. When we acknowledge that each individual has unique talents and limitations, companies can tailor their work environments to be more accommodating, ensuring that all employees, regardless of physical or cognitive abilities, can leverage their strengths effectively. This environment not only acknowledges but values differences, seeing them not as hindrances, but as opportunities for innovation and creativity. Remember that the first step in design thinking is empathy, right? So if you want to strengthen diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, you need to get on board with the idea that a diverse cross section of talents, perspectives, and backgrounds is critical, full stop for your organization's success. Folks like me who advocate this style of work, we suggest looking beyond the conventional indicators of ability and potential, like university degrees or perfectly written resumes. Those are two things that are very commonly requested in the professional environment, but are also more often indicators of privilege, family support, and socioeconomic status than they might be of long term potential. So taking the strengthsbased approach naturally leads to more diverse teams, not just in terms of demographic characteristics, but also in thought, problem solving styles and creative approaches.

Diversity and inclusion is the natural consequence of a strengths based philosophy that truly understands and implements its principles. When team members believe that their unique strengths are seen and valued, they experience a sense of belonging and significance within an organization. An inclusive culture is one that not only invites diverse individuals to the table, but also listens to them. It engages with their ideas and gives them the space to shine. And I think we probably all know that by now. A lot of us have seen the posters. But by focusing on what every person does best, organizations can create teams where everyone feels empowered to contribute their best work and can foster a stronger sense of ownership and pride in a collective effort. So in practice, a strengths based approach can lead to policies and practices, such as flexible work arrangements that accommodate different working styles or levels of energy professional development programs tailored to individual growth trajectories and recruitment strategies that look beyond the traditional criteria and uncover a broader range of talents and backgrounds.

So we're trying to make the boxes a little bit bigger and the boundaries a bit more flexible. Ultimately, that positive psychology and strength based philosophies aren't just about feeling good, they're about achieving excellence and high performance through the genuine appreciation for every person as a whole person. Strengths, areas of development, idiosyncrasies and personal dynamics included as managers and as leaders, we really want to focus more on identifying and developing each person's innate talents and strengths, rather than concentrating on improving their weaknesses. And that's really important. And that doesn't mean that we all don't have to improve. We all have developing areas and we all need to put some energy into improving our developing areas or our weaknesses as well as in our strengths. But it does mean proportioning a larger amount of energy towards developing our strengths in a strength space organization. Getting to know your people is an absolute fundamental.

That's how we learn to recognize their strengths and how to support them and how to grow them. Every person has natural abilities that can be leveraged in addition to learning new skills. And if we understand our natural abilities well, they can actually help us learn new skills faster. So, for example, ten years ago I took an evaluation. It's a psychometric assessment tool that I took and it evaluated my natural abilities, different kinds of strengths, motivation, style, personality style and learning style. And one of the things that I learned was that, and I'm a voracious reader and I've been reading my entire life. My parents still tell tales of the bookathons that I used to crush, right? And I didn't learn until I was like 30 years old that actually reading is not my strongest learning channel. My auditory learning is much stronger than my reading.

And so once I learned that I had a more natural ability to learn through listening, I was able to pivot that. And now I almost exclusively listen to audiobooks instead of reading books on paper. And that has significantly improved my ability to remember the things that I'm hearing now. Right? So how do our workplaces and our workflows change when we pivot from correcting weaknesses to amplifying strengths? How does our collective output transform when each person is not only permitted, but encouraged to bring their full selves, their most authentic selves, their virtues and their strengths to their roles? And how does this approach change the way that you work in every single facet of your organization? Let's walk through the employee lifecycle, right from recruitment all the way to offboarding or transition or retirement recruitment. Let's start there. Recruitment selection. So in the traditional approach, you have candidates that are assessed, usually against a standardized set of criteria, which can sometimes overlook unique talents and potential. Because the only thing that you're seeing is the information that you're being provided by them via their resume.

And their resume may neither be evidence of their successes nor their potential. It really depends on how they view themselves and their personal brand and if they've done a lot of self awareness work. And I'll tell you, most people haven't done a lot of self awareness work. And so it's a lot of the time up to the organization to introduce this as a theme. But even before you even glance at a resume, you have to put out a job description or job posting for a role. And a lot of the time you may not even glance at a resume that doesn't meet the most important criteria in terms of the competencies. And that's not to say that competencies are important. They're definitely important, especially when it comes to equity, having a complete set of competencies and understanding exactly how we're evaluating those competencies is really important.

But the strengths based approach also focuses a little bit more on identifying what candidates naturally do best. So character, curiosity and the desire to do the work are also valuable considerations. In addition to those acquired skills and experiences. We know that if somebody has a desire to learn a new skill, they will much more often exceed our expectations if we provide them with a learning environment where they're both supported and pushed outside their comfort zone. So interviews and assessments are designed to uncover that Latin talent and potential contributions beyond the job description. For example, we might use strengths finding tools or behavioral interviews that ask candidates to describe when they have felt most engaged or energized. When it comes to onboarding, the traditional approach is often that new hires receive a fairly standardized introduction to company policies, procedures and tasks. And if we're lucky, the culture, job shadowing and mentoring is often included as well.

But it's usually more task oriented to help the employee get up to speed with their job faster. And so the strengths based approach, the onboarding, becomes much more personalized, with a strong emphasis on understanding the employee at a more personal level, helping the whole team understand how their unique strengths fit and contribute with the company's goals. Mentoring and coaching programs are also very commonplace, and the onboarding process now becomes a training ground, a breeding ground for inspiration, aspiration and potential. And it's often in the onboarding process that employees are introduced to the idea that our success is our success. In strengths based environments, teams support each other. They care about each other's career development, they care about each other's productivity and performance, and they care about each other's health and wellness. Also, when it comes to training and development, the traditional approach, if it exists at all, then some organizations, they barely do any training and development. It's often focused on addressing weaknesses or gaps in skills.

And so the standardized program for employees, they have standardized programs with similar tasks and accountabilities. And honestly, I think in a lot of organizations we're lucky if learning and development exists beyond onboarding. And if it does exist, very often it's like a subscription to coursera or LinkedIn learning, or something like that. And that's about it. When we're developing a strengths based approach to learning and development, like any program, it starts with the commitment to learning. You literally can't take a strengths based approach without a solid learning and development ecosystem and structure. You just can't. The entire philosophy is contingent on growth and development in order to achieve high performance.

It's kind of like a choose your own adventure a little bit. So the only alternative to creating this type of environment, the strength space environment, with the learning and development embedded as a core commitment. The only alternative to this would be to hire people who already possess the skills to do the job, which is what a lot of organizations do for good reason. It's a lot simpler, that's for sure. But you'll never get the same level of creativity, collaboration, innovation and purpose, and you certainly won't be advancing your DEI and accessibility goals. So in our strengths based approach, development programs are tailored to amplify employees'inherent talents and curiosity while still providing opportunities to address those areas of improvement. Employees are encouraged to take on projects and roles that align with their strengths, which enhances both their learning, the absorption of information, and how much they love their jobs. Now, performance management in the traditional approach, performance reviews tend to highlight what went wrong or where the employee needs to improve, right? If you're lucky and your organization is a bit more mature, you may have a more equitable competency based performance management model as a standard that each person is being evaluated against.

If you're even luckier, you'll complete these performance reviews more than once a year, which is a crazy thought for a lot of people. And they'll be used to generate legitimate feedback and used to create a personal development plan. And if you're even luckier, your managers will have some coaching skills and can use the results to support your talent development and career advancement process in your organization. AnD if you're really, really lucky, your organization is not using performance evaluations to coincide with salary reviews, which is always a bad idea. They should always be two separate and disconnected conversations. Now, in the strengths based approach, performance management becomes performance development. Performance management is kind of overrated, to be honest. In a strengths based organization, we don't manage performance per se.

We develop performance. It's a continuous improvement process at the individual level. While we don't ignore areas of growth, performance conversations happen frequently, like all the time, ideally weekly, and center around how employees use and expand their strengths to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. They become coaching conversations. Your success metrics now are way more aligned with output and results when it comes to promotion and advancement, rather than the traditional approach where promotions are often based on tenure, past success and prior roles, mastery of a specific skill set, or who likes you in the organization. Because that happens typically in a strengths based organization. Advancement really is about identifying where an employee's strengths can best contribute to the organization. And this might involve even creating new roles or adjusting existing roles to allow employees to continue to grow their strengths while maximizing their impact and ability to support your customers.

Remember, Albert Einstein famously said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. An individual strengths, their job fit, their job and performance, and their employee engagement, their retention and their advocacy for their employer and their loyalty for their employer are all intrinsically connected. Our jobs are not simple anymore. In the last 30 years, jobs have become more and more and more complex, and so it's not surprising that not every single person can do every single job well. We need to be really, really thoughtful about how we're matching roles to specific types of people and like in the last episode, like specific types of personas as well. Tom Rath, the author of Strengths Finder 2.0, said, if you spend your life trying to be good at everything. You will never be great at anything. And that's kind of the philosophy by which strengths based organizations thrive.

And yes, it does make human resources a bit more complicated, that's true. But if you do it well, your organization will thrive. So ask yourself, in your workplace today, do we have the right people doing the right jobs at the right time? How can we make small but highly impactful changes to the work that we're doing and the different workflows and the tasks and accountabilities? Remember, everything's incremental. We don't have to change the world. We don't have to have a revolution. We can just make really small, tiny changes and see how it goes. Most importantly of all, the leadership style that you take with a strengths based organization really surrounds empowerment. We want to empower others to recognize and use their unique capabilities.

Erin Patchell:

We want them to feel like heroes and put them on a stage. Just like Lao Tzu said, a leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, we did it ourselves. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed the 33rd episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, diving into strengths based organizations. If you'd like to hit me up, you can email me at Erin at Positivist, Ca Erin at P-O-S-I-T-I-V-I-S-T Ca. You can find me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or. I think that's about it.

Erin Patchell:

Until next time, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we explore how authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose lead to creating workplaces where people and teams thrive. I'm your host, Erin Pachell, and today we're peeling back the layers of what makes us tick. As entrepreneurs, we all have different strengths and areas where we need more support.

So how do we understand our entrepreneurial personas? How do we leverage them to create high performing and visionary businesses? And how do we make sure our strengths don't become self sabotaging? Let's think about it's. Good day, everyone, and I hope it's a beautiful one wherever you are. So today we're talking about entrepreneurial personas. What is an entrepreneurial persona? Well, it's the unique blend of traits, tendencies and skills that define you as a business owner or business leader. It's how you approach challenges, seize opportunities, and interact with your team.

But here's the kicker. No two personas are exactly alike. There are literally hundreds of tools like the big Five model, Disk, myers, Briggs and Enneagram. You've probably recognized the names of some of these things that can help us gain insight into our personality preferences and natural tendencies. And I'm probably going to offend people who love these personality tests. And I love them too. So don't get me wrong, I do love them. I think they're really interesting.

I think it's interesting that we can kind of analyze ourselves and based on what someone decrees as our personality, it can make us feel a myriad of different emotions. And like I said, I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but I do think you could almost do the same thing with a Horoscope. I'm a Sagittarian when I grew up, and I don't know if it's a self fulfilling prophecy or not, but I think as a person who read Horoscopes when they were younger, I do feel like I've sort of molded myself into that typical SAGITTARIUS persona. And I'm curious to know if that rings true for you as well. When people tell us we are something, we kind of start to believe it anyway. So the same thing can kind of happen with these personality tests and it doesn't mean that they don't have value. That's the other thing, right? Even the Horoscope has value because as even a young Sagittarian, I would look at it and I would think, oh, that's me. Like I identify with that.

Or oh, that doesn't sound like me at all. But either way, it was helping me think about myself and become more introspective about asking the question, am I that way? So these tools all have different algorithms. In the case of the Horoscope, it's your birthday, right? They have different algorithms that help us compartmentalize and simplify our preferences into a profile that we can use to develop personally and professionally. And frankly, it doesn't matter how accurate they are. It really doesn't. Anything where you're confronting your true self and asking those questions is going to be helpful for you. So I think it's important to remember this is a tool, all that to say. But the real question is, how does better understanding a persona translate into business success? That's what we're here to uncover.

And as I've worked with entrepreneurs, I've created four personas in my mind that I think encapsulate a lot of the different qualities we see in entrepreneurs. And they are the visionary, the strategist, the implementer, and the shepherd. Every person has each of these personas within them at different strengths. Some louder and more of a natural fit and others quieter and perhaps worn only when necessary. You might identify yourself as a visionary or a strategist or an implementer or a shepherd, but no two people within any of these categories are exactly the same. We are all a complex combination of many variables and this combination, all blended together, is your key to success. But embracing your entrepreneurial persona isn't about fitting into a prescribed mold. It's about recognizing your inherent strengths and learning how to amplify them while simultaneously creating environment and culture where your strengths don't become self sabotaging.

Because as different as we all are, and we are different, we also have a lot of similarities. And it's those similarities that we're looking at when we compartmentalize and create mental models like this and personas like this. For example, if your primary influence is a visionary and if you're an entrepreneur, I don't know what the statistic would be, but high probability is what I'm going to say. You're likely brimming with big ideas, always looking ten steps ahead and your challenge. Sometimes the details can slip through the cracks and you tend to continue to layer plans on top of the other without ever finishing any of them. If you're a strategist, your natural tendency is to gather information broadly enough to figure out what not to do and then focus your energy on creating plans of action. Many visionaries believe they're strategists, when in fact, they are completely two different personas. Although sometimes these personas can live comfortably in the same person, one of the personas does tend to be dominant.

Ultimately, the strategist's ultimate goal is to simplify and make decisions that can be delegated to action. The visionary, left to their own devices, tends to delay decision making in favor of keeping their options open until another persona, either one of their own or someone else's, forces their hand, or perhaps the situation itself forces their hand. So you can see how there's a very distinct difference between the visionary and the strategist. If you're a strong implementer, you want clarity and a plan of action that is very black and white. You don't want all the details, you don't need all the details. You just want to know what the exact path to implementation looks like. Now, the risk for an implementer is to not care as deeply about the big picture sometimes lacking the scope of understanding to know when to pivot. So you can see implementers are very focused.

On the other hand, if you're a strong shepherd, you'll see almost everything in nuance and shades of gray and struggle with wanting your environment to be friction free. You're very idealistic a lot of the time and sometimes carry a little bit of that visionary within you. You do care more about the external experience or your team's experience than your own experience internally and you will sacrifice yourself for what's best for your team. So typically the Visionary is idealistic with a long time frame, the Strategist is more realistic with a long time frame, the Nurturer is idealistic with a shorter time frame, and the implementer is realistic with a shorter time frame. So you can see there's a little bit of overlap in between each of these personas as well. How many people are living rent free inside your head? More than you think. And I'd encourage you to get in touch with each of those personas. In which scenarios do they all bubble up to the surface? Are there any that are very loud or very quiet? Regardless of which of these personas is the strongest within you, the danger is if you create an environment that idolizes any one of these personas without recognizing they can just as soon become vulnerabilities, you run the risk of creating an echo chamber full of yes people.

And if that's the case, your team will find it very politically challenging at best to give you the hard feedback you need to focus, prioritize and adapt your personas to make sure you are doing the right things at the right time. In most of us, our dominant persona feels easy, like it's our natural selves. I talk about building a strengths based organization in a lot of these podcasts, and that means making it easy as possible for us to live in that dominant persona so we can take advantage of being in a flow state for as much of the time as possible. The only way to do that effectively is to build a balance of these personas. Let's pretend that you had all four of these different personas and they were all in balance. You can see how the way that their personalities are structured, they can create a check and balance within the person. And so if you have the Visionary, you have the Strategist, you have the implementer and you have the shepherd, kind of your bases are taken care of, you have the vision, you can narrow it down, you can implement it, and you can take care of the people around you, right? If we are focusing solely on one persona, let's say the Visionary, because it's easy, because probably it's the predominant persona in a lot of the folks who are listening to this podcast. If you're completely engrossed in the visionary state and you're able to stay in that flow state you're not going to get a lot accomplished like, let's be honest.

And so the theory behind strength space teams is that rather than having to develop the four personas inside yourself, which can take a lot of energy from us, if we have to build strengths from our weaknesses, essentially from our weaker personas, then we build the structure outside of ourselves instead. So instead of having those four personas inside myself that I'm trying to strengthen, and maybe one or two of them are very weak, and I'm trying to build them up and put a lot of energy into building those strengths in those very weak areas, I recruit people who have those natural abilities, those natural personas, and I partner with them. So to summarize, instead of having to build a balance of those personas within ourselves in order to create those checks and balances and momentum, we build the structure externally outside ourselves, vis a vis our team members and our belief systems. So that's a completely different modus operandi. In order to do this, we need to believe on a deep, personal and authentic level that our strongest persona, the one that we've probably fallen a little bit in love with, is on the same psychological and hierarchical playing field as all of the others. Because we need to find that balance in order to be successful and because we have a specific tendency or strength in one specific persona. It's very normal to put that persona on a pedestal, but that makes it no better in quotation marks than any of the others. Without the visionary, our dreams wouldn't be as expansive.

That's true. Without the strategist, we wouldn't be able to tune out the noise and prioritize. Without the implementer, we wouldn't be able to turn the plan into action. And without the shepherd, we wouldn't live our values and nurture the cultural ecosystem that actually grows that vision. It's no surprise that in many organizations, the visionary plays at the highest levels. Often it starts with the vision it does. But since we believe that every person has a visionary inside themselves and anyone can choose to grow this muscle if they choose to do so, this isn't a God given talent. We realize that the persona we wear has at least as much to do with the environment outside influences like our upbringing, our opportunities, mentors and friends as much as it has to do with natural, inborn strengths.

In different types of organizations, you'll find that different personas are glorified. But the visionary often almost always stands on top. If you identify as the visionary, it's very wise to practice something like stoicism where you can find balance in the values of wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. You need to practice humility. All right, so you've leaned into your strengths, you've embraced your entrepreneurial persona, you're proud of those strengths, and you've acknowledged and given yourself grace for your developing areas. Now what? It's time to build your dream team and if you're a solopreneur micro business owner, you probably don't have the skill yet to create this kind of strengths based ecosystem. Your dream team really has to come from inside yourself, and you'll have to balance and try to express each of these personas within an order to maximize your progress. In this case, I'd highly recommend reading The E Myth Revisited, where Michael Gerber takes you through his three personas the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician.

Understanding these three personas and how and when to wear each of these three hats will help you navigate through the earliest days of running a business. When you're the only person on your dream team, your mantra really is, who do I need to be today to succeed? And if you're slowly growing and you're thinking about hiring that first person, by the way, if you have not watched the video on YouTube, I think it's called like the first follower. You need to go right now and watch that video, and I'll link it below as well.

But when you're thinking about hiring your first follower, it's really especially important to think about what is that persona of that person going to look like. Your first follower might be the most important hire you ever make. Once your business is large enough that you can begin recruiting contractors and operational staff, you can start to think about which personas should be brought outside of yourself. And obviously, we start with the first follower. Often that's the persona that takes the most emotional energy to maintain, but that doesn't mean that you're going to abandon that persona completely.

But it becomes more passive rather than active, being used when you need to adapt to situations, communicate effectively with others who have a strong persona in that area, those sorts of things. So it's an integrator persona. It's not an active persona per se. The idea here is to create a symbiotic relationship where your strengths feed into theirs, and vice versa. For instance, if you're a shepherd focused on building relationships and fostering a positive culture, you might benefit from having a strategist on board, someone who can analyze trends and help you make data driven decisions so your strong sense of empathy and justice doesn't override your strategic priorities. And remember that diversity is your friend. A team with a range of skills, experiences, and perspectives is a team that can tackle any challenge that comes its way. So I guess the next burning question, at least in my mind, would be how do you create an environment where every person, regardless of their persona or personas, can truly shine? Regardless of your persona, if you want to build a strengths based organization and a strengths based team, it has to extend beyond your own philosophy.

We need to build equity into the system to make it extremely difficult for this ethos to be dismantled or used for selfish purposes. And believe me, anything can be used for selfish purposes, if we're not careful.

We need to create equitable hiring, development and advancement frameworks. For example, when it comes to hiring, employ diverse recruiting channels, standardize your job descriptions and use inclusive language that focuses on competencies. Conduct blind resume reviews, perform structured interviews, and even better, host diverse interview panels to bring different perspectives into the process. Make sure your recruitment team has taken training on unconscious bias. When it comes to developing your team, make it democratic with equal access to training resources. Teach your managers coaching skills and how to help their employees.

Create personalized development plans. Create a mentor and sponsorship program to support underrepresented groups. Offer skills based training. Make sure you have a seamless performance feedback process that's broadly implemented and measured. And when it comes to promotion, establish clear promotional criteria based on performance and competencies. Allow any employee to apply for roles. Conduct regular pay audits to make sure any disparities are addressed. Or even better, practice pay transparency and develop a common understanding of how compensation is distributed based on education, experience, performance, or many other factors.

Be accountable to each of these elements. This is crucial in order to maintain the momentum and consistency in the practice. So tracking diversity metrics related to hiring, development, and promotion setting equity goals, using employee surveys to solicit constructive feedback, and reporting on the results. Report your progress with transparency as well and the different actions that have been taken.

Building a continuous improvement culture right from onboarding a new employee at the end of the day, your business is a reflection of you. By understanding your entrepreneurial persona and building a complementary team, you're setting the stage for success because of your strengths, not in spite of your strengths. And there you have it, fellow weirdos, a little dive into the world of entrepreneurial personas.

Remember Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism said, "knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment."

And Carl Jung said, "your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens?"

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey today. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review.

Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible in your world of work.

This is Erin Patchell signing off. Stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Erin Patchell: G'day friends and welcome back to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose can lead to more visionary organizations. I'm your host, Erin Pachell, and today I have a very special guest with us. Everyone meet Asmaa Moussa.

Asmaa Moussa: Hi, thank you.

Erin Patchell: Welcome to the show Asmaa thank you.

Asmaa Moussa: So much for having me.

Erin Patchell: Awesome. And what are we talking about today?

Asmaa Moussa: Community, I think.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, I think so. Community building. I think that's something that we both care a lot about.

Asmaa Moussa: Yeah, very much.

Erin Patchell: Very much. Awesome. Stay tuned.

[Intro music]

Erin Patchell: All right, everyone, let's get started. Asmaa is a new permanent resident to Canada, and I know she's already starting to make waves in the National Capital Region where we live. She's a Meta certified community manager and the founder of Moussa Media. Now in its fifth year, Asmaa is also a founding member of the ClickFunnels Community Management Team and helps thousands of clients in her company's groups to improve their businesses, careers and lives. And she's also award winning Community Specialist from 2021.

Erin Patchell: Welcome to the show, Asmaa.

Asmaa Moussa: Thank you so much. I'm super excited to talk everything community with you.

Erin Patchell: Fantastic. I'm so curious, what does community mean to you?

Asmaa Moussa: Well, I'm super passionate about community, and I really like that you are as well. So that gives us lots of things to talk about. I started my community career in 2018, but I've been passionate about that, well, before that, it started maybe even when I got graduated. The whole idea of how community and how networks can change people's lives and can create very important impacts in their professional and personal careers hit me immediately after my exams, my school exams. So that was a very nice story. I would like to share it with you. I remember that I was very active in school, by the way.

Asmaa Moussa: I was active in all the students unions, attended events, organized events and everything. So I remember that I was in one of those events, and the instructor was very interesting, so he was discussing how the digital world is changing. That was 2008. Okay? So it was before everything that we're experiencing now. So everything he was sharing was revolutionary for me. It was amazing. So I listened, I was very attentive. And then I remember towards the end of this lecture, he shared his number.

Asmaa Moussa: And I remember that there were very few people who picked out the pen and actually took the number, but I was one of them because okay, so I was weirdo when I was even younger. So I remember that after my exams, I was just trying to think, what would I do with my future, how life would go on and everything. And I remember him, he just popped in my mind. So I decided to pick up the phone and call him and that is so hard for an introvert like me. But something inside told me that this is an area that you want to explore. So I called and I asked him about the project he was talking about. And he told me that, unfortunately, this is not available yet in Alexandria.

Asmaa Moussa: Okay. Alexandria is where I lived, in a small city. It is Mediterranean in Egypt, so we did not have lots of opportunities there. So we had a conversation and I was ready to hang up. And then he told me, do you speak English? And I said, my English is nice. So he told me, why don't you come for an interview? And it turned out that this interview was for training college students on the same project that I wanted to work in. Okay. So I wanted to work as an employee, but things turned to be I was teaching people how to enter that field.

Asmaa Moussa: So the interview went really good. And by the way, that man did not help me at all when it came to the interview or entering the project because he never knew me. Okay. It's just the idea of having connection with someone else. So the interview went well and I got hired for a very good salary. I remember that it was even around what my own parents were making back then. Yeah, it was amazing. And it was training and I was going to deal with people at college and I was not even graduated yet.

Asmaa Moussa: I just finished my exams. I remember that I was the youngest person in that project and I was the first one of my whole college who started working in a good place. It was a governmental project. It was amazing. And then something just hit my mind that networks are great thing to have. These are very important asset that anyone can have. And having the courage to make that contact and to ask and to try to find explore different opportunities, that was amazing. So I think that it started with me back then, and then many other series of events supported that belief.

Asmaa Moussa: So you can tell that I am passionate, right?

Erin Patchell: You absolutely can tell. Yes, you 100%. That story so clearly demonstrates how community is not a passive process. It's an active process, an extremely active process that it takes energy to cultivate a community.

Asmaa Moussa: Absolutely, yes. This is 100% something that I figured out. I'm so grateful that I learned it when I was so young because it positively impacted my whole life, my whole career, my whole mindset, because I approach things way differently than most people do because of these experiences that I got.

Erin Patchell: So we all know that. I think that building your network can help you reach a goal or become more successful in whatever way you define success. I think, in a lot of different ways that people define success. What other benefits does a community bring, do you think?

Asmaa Moussa: Support above all that you know that there are other people out there who have similar interests, who share similar ideas who have the same hopes. And we are humans, we are social creatures, right? So we want to feel that we belong no matter what we think, no matter what are our interests. And especially for people sometimes like us, it's so hard to find those connections with everyone around you when you are an entrepreneur. So that makes you a little bit different kind of person. Okay? So you might not find the same interest like any other housewife or regular employee. Okay. So it's really nice to know that I have another person, that there is an Erin that I can contact her and ask her that. I had this idea when I was sleeping and I couldn't sleep and I have to execute it right now.

Asmaa Moussa: So not everyone can understand that. And having access to community is one way to make sure that you do not feel excluded, that you do not feel like you're an inferior person. So this is an amazing part of the community that I'm also very interested in creating and developing and making sure that it is there whenever I'm building a new community.

Erin Patchell: What is the differences? Or maybe I don't know what the differences are, if there are any differences, but what would you say between building a community in real life face to face versus building a virtual community? What would you say are the differences or the similarities?

Asmaa Moussa: I think that building a community in virtual life, it is easier in a way, but still it's harder. But if we try to think of how easy it is, it's as easy as opening a search bar and looking for entrepreneurs in Ottawa. Okay, so you can easily search and try to find yeah, it would take you some time to explore different places and make sure that their values are the same and everything and make those connections. But other than in real life, in physical life, it's hard to approach every person that you meet in the street and say, are you an entrepreneur? Are you an entrepreneur? It's not going to work that way. Okay, so it's a little bit easy. The digital space has created this whole world where we can connect with people who have the same interests. And it doesn't have to be only in Ottawa, it can be anywhere else. So I was in Egypt and I had a community of people in the US.

Asmaa Moussa: In Canada, in Germany, in South Africa and everywhere. So that is the beauty of having the online and the digital space. And while I grow older, I really appreciate the physical and the real life connections, but I still value the opportunities that this digital space had opened for us, because without that, I would have never been having this conversation. With you right now or never had the opportunity to work with ClickFunnels, for example, or gain all the experiences from the people that I learned from. So that's why I'm a little bit passionate about the digital space, but I can definitely see the advantages and the beauty of having a real connection with someone and shaking their hands and having a meal with them. It's also amazing.

Erin Patchell:

What are the characteristics, do you think? I mean, as a community builder yourself, like, you're a community builder. I think that you probably network also with other community builders. What are the characteristics that make up a person who's great at community building?

Asmaa Moussa:

You have to start by loving people, right? Yeah. It's important to know that everyone can provide something, that everyone has something to share and to see the good in every person that belongs to that community that you're trying to build. It's very important that you create a very safe space for everyone to share whatever they want to say, as long as it's not abusive or hatred or whatever. But you have to create this area where people are free to share their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their struggles, no matter how small others might think there is. So, for example, we're working with software, and that means we're dealing with people from all different kinds of backgrounds and experiences. So we're dealing with someone who might be who might have just opened a computer today. They have never had to deal with a computer before, other than for work or something. So I can literally coach someone on how to open a new browser and maybe search for a specific criteria on Google.

Asmaa Moussa:

And in the same time, I'm dealing with other people who are very technically advanced and help them troubleshoot very difficult issues. Okay, so it's important to create communities that are open for both of them, that are acceptable for both of them without judgment. So I want to create a community where the person who just tried or who's just starting his online career or starting his software building journey, I want him to not feel intimidated. And in the same time, I do not want the other person who has very high technical skills to feel like he has the right to mock the other person or underestimate what they bring to the table. Okay, so having this inclusive community is extremely important.

Erin Patchell:

Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of entrepreneurs that build communities. I'm trying to figure out how to word this best, but I feel like community or or creating a community can sometimes be like an ego driven thing rather than becoming part of a community. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like everyone wants their own community, but if we all have our own community, then there's no community, you know what I mean? Because we can only be a part of so many communities. And so I'm curious to know, do you think for entrepreneurs, it's better to start your own community or if it's better to join another community or somewhere in between?

Asmaa Moussa:

I would definitely recommend that people start by joining other communities because it's easier. First of all, it's easier to go to a well established community and see how people are reacting and look at the problems that they are having. Engage in conversations, build relationships with other people. So this is how you create the true and deep understanding of the people that you want to gather around you. Okay. And then within the time after you develop clear understanding of those who you want to serve, maybe you can craft a specific area that you want to explore more or that you want to have a network or a community where you share more about that very specific niche. Okay. So for example, there are tons of communities about entrepreneurs online.

Asmaa Moussa:

So I would go to that one and start building the relationships and maybe I notice that there is a need or there is a certain problem that I can personally solve and then I would start gradually to build my whole network and my whole effect around that just small carved area.

Erin Patchell: Good advice. Yeah.

Asmaa Moussa: Thank you.

Erin Patchell: Is that generally the same advice that you would give your clients?

Asmaa Moussa: Yeah, 100%. Because it's important for my clients to know that one of the important advices that I give them is to go where their customers hang out. Okay. So it's important to understand the customer that you're trying to serve. Right. I really hate when someone thinks that they have a solution that's going to help other people and they have never had the time to speak with those other people. They have to spend the time to understand the kind of issues that they are having, the pains, the struggles, and what exactly the solution that they are looking for. If you do not know that, if you do not know the kind of language that your people are using, how can you serve them? How can you help them? This way, you're not going to go anywhere.

Asmaa Moussa: So it's always better to immerse yourself in the places where your customers are hanging out and develop that deep understanding of what you can offer based on what they need, not just based on your own vision of what they might need. Does that make sense?

Erin Patchell: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. What would you say if I'm and I am an entrepreneur, so you can talk directly to me about this? What is the fastest way to build a community?

Asmaa Moussa: Okay, so the real truth is that communities take time to be built. Okay? So effective communities require tons of work, tons of effort, and tons of time to be created and built and nurtured because you cannot just create a group on Facebook and have 100 of your friends and say that you have a community. This is not a community. A community is a place where people, not just you as an entrepreneur, where people have the opportunity to share their ideas, to share their questions, experiences, issues, wins, challenges and failures. Okay? So this is what a community really means. A very successful community is a one that the owner is not the only one that's engaging, to put it that clear, okay? A good community is a self sustained community where other members are the ones that are sharing the most posts, are the ones that are answering the most comments or threats, okay? So this is when you know that you have created a good community. So it takes tons of efforts. However, we have discovered a little bit of a trick that we use in order to build a community faster, but then you would still have the work to leverage that group or that community that you have created.

Asmaa Moussa: So this strategy is based on creating a coaching week or a challenge. And the whole idea starts with something that you can help your clients with or your audience with within a very short amount of time, okay? Something that they can actually create within, let's say, five days. So you host that challenge where people sign up for that. So you have the benefit of building your list and having all these emails that you can nurture afterwards. And this is a whole new topic that we can spend hours talking about. But you would have that list and then you invite them to a group where you would deliver the content of that challenge. Okay? So, for example, if you are a business coach and you are serving people who want to start their own businesses so you can create a simple five day challenge that starts with developing a business idea. Understanding your Avatar developing your core offers, coming up with marketing plan and so on and so forth, so that by the end of the five days, your audience would have a clear plan on things that they can start.

Asmaa Moussa: You made that transformation for them. You've helped them within five days. So that is an amazing way to build a community where the people inside of that place understand the value that you can offer. So they would stick there, they would come to you for help and maybe they want to sign up for higher ticket offers that you've got. So a challenge might be free or very low ticket offer, but then afterwards there is an opportunity for a serving people for $0. And this is extremely important part of any business because not everyone is ready to invest with you. And it's a good way to give back to the community by giving them free value. Then you would have others who might be interested in working with Erin and to explore the advice, the high ticket advice that you can offer for them, so you will get extra business on the site.

Asmaa Moussa: So it's a win win.

Erin Patchell: That's awesome advice, and I might just do that.

Asmaa Moussa: I'm a huge fan of free value or giving back to the people who are not ready to invest at the moment. Because everyone deserves to have this break and not having the budget does not mean that you do not qualify for success.

Erin Patchell: Oh, I am so with you on that one. I am all about giving free value as well. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we decided to start the podcast in the first place. Right?

Asmaa Moussa: Of course.

Erin Patchell: Yeah. And lots of other endeavors as well, so that's great. Do you have any projects coming up or anything you'd like to share with.

Asmaa Moussa:

The listeners at the moment? I've been going very deep and immersing myself in another way to create community and to develop your fans around the business that you have. I've been exploring the idea of memberships. There is this concept that I am very convinced about at this moment that having courses is dead. Okay? If you're creating a course, if you're a course builder, this is dead. Stop doing that. And instead, it's better to develop memberships. So the whole idea is that people that you should develop memberships where people come to you and listen to the content that you have and in the same time offer them a community where they connect together and learn. From you and try to understand how they can apply whatever content you are giving to them and apply them in their businesses or in their lives to have this place where they can network and share whatever questions they have.

Asmaa Moussa:

I think this is a much better model than just having a course, selling it and putting it out there for the people to buy. And when you create a subscription and have a community, again, have a community attached to that membership where you continue to offer value to your members, this can create great value for the people that you want to serve. So there is this saying that keeps popping in my head that says people buy for the product, but they stay for the community. Right. This makes lots of sense. And we have seen that. I've seen that so many times over and over and over again, and we're making huge success with that. This is something that I'm working on with my clients at the moment, developing successful memberships for them.

Erin Patchell:

That's fantastic. Well, I think that sounds like a great idea, and I've actually seen a few examples of that, in fact, in a few different groups that I've been a part of where it's the same model. And I think that does work exceptionally well when it's done well. For sure.

Asmaa Moussa:

Exactly. So just stop doing courses.

Erin Patchell:

Everyone develop membership for individuals. For sure. Yeah. For B to C. Definitely.

Asmaa Moussa:

Exactly.

Erin Patchell:

Yeah. Awesome. Really good advice. Asima, thank you so much for joining us today, Chris.

Asmaa Moussa:

You're very welcome. Always happy to be here.

Erin Patchell:

Really appreciate your words of wisdom. And I'm going to remember that people may buy your products, but they stay for the community. 100% amazing. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Asmaa on the power of community and how to build community in your business. If you want to get a hold of Asmaa to help you build community, connect with her at www.moussamedia.com.

In the words of the great Annie DeFranco, building jetties in a current is a surefire way to move lots of water. This is how you take the energy that's coming in the form of current and you shape it.

Erin Patchell:

That's a metaphor I think perfectly applies to community building. That's all for today. Until next time, remember to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Welcome to the 30th episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose lead to more visionary organizations. I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Patchell, and your host. And today we're going to talk about a topic that is very personal to me right now because it's something that I'm actively going through as we speak, and that is, what do you do when you're making a lot of amazing progress into all your goals? You're juggling a lot of balls and you keep telling yourself, oh, that's a good problem to have.

Maybe I've got too many clients, too much interest in my business, too much creativity, I'm pursuing so many beautiful goals, but all of a sudden you feel like you're a little bit overwhelmed. Hmm. So if that resonates with you, then stay tuned.

[Intro Music]

I think in almost every single conversation that I've had for the last two or three weeks, there's been a moment where I said, you know, though, that's a good problem to have, right? It means that I'm motivated. It means that I'm getting shit done. It means that people are aligning and engaging with the work that I do, and it means that there are opportunities in the business landscape that I'm capable of problem solving.

And if you, maybe, listened to my podcast with Joel Silverstone a few weeks ago, you'll know that I'm definitely a "yes-and" person and I believe in saying yes to opportunities. But that's not infinite, right? We can't say yes to infinite possibilities and opportunities if we have limited availability and capabilities. And I expect that many people who are listening to this podcast are "yes-and" people as well.

You probably want to make the world safer, a better place, a more productive environment, a more joyful way of living, and more sustainable. But we can't be sustainable and do everything. We do, have to narrow down our priorities and focus and then get things done before we move on to other opportunities. We've got to have some kind of balance between thinking big and then zooming in on the details and actions. And the last couple of weeks, I've been finding my own work life increasingly unsustainable. And that's one of the reasons why the podcast that I had intended to put out today didn't go out.

I am actually re-recording this basically on the fly and it's going to be a little bit later coming out than it would normally. Normally I like to post my podcasts like, first thing Wednesday morning, and it's currently Wednesday at 12:15 P.M. And I literally just decided to rerecord this basically stream of consciousness and post something that I thought was a little bit more real and related to my current life.

Sometimes you've got to ebb and sometimes you've got a flow. And while I'm a little bit tired right now, I'm not burning out. I think there's a very, very big difference between being tired and burning out. I'm lucky that basically all of the work I do gives me energy. And that is actually sometimes part of the problem because I'm so passionate about it and I'm so purpose driven and motivated towards these goals that they can sometimes be a little bit all consuming.

I personally think that burnout often happens when we're... the work that we're doing does not give us energy back. But what do you do when you're tired because you are working really hard towards goals that motivate you and that give you energy? So that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about burnout. The burnout to me is a completely separate topic. How do you manage doing great things, a lot of great things, being motivated and making sure that you reach your goals while also managing many other things. For example, I have a family, right? I have three teenagers who are in my life. I have a husband who I deeply care about, who I want to make time for. I have friends that I deeply care about, who I want to make time for.

And I also have very, very big goals with respect to my business and doing great work in the world and doing good for the world and my community that I absolutely need time for. So when I failed - keeping that word held lightly, holding that word very lightly, when I failed to post my podcast at the usual time of 09:00 a.m. this morning, I didn't guilt myself over it or shame myself over it. I just accepted that this has been a crazy time for me and that I'm going to rejig things a little bit and do things a little bit differently this week to make sure that everything works. So for me, that's number one. I'm not shaming myself. I'm not forcing myself to maintain a schedule, a specific schedule, just because I have decreed that that is how things are done here. And the second thing that I'm doing is planning.

I think as soon as you get to the point where you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed with all the balls that you're actively moving towards and keeping in the air, you need to stop and take a minute and take a breath, maybe meditate. Find something that is going to help you slow down and then do the planning that you need to do. Do the thinking that you need to do in order to make sure that you're focused on exactly the right priorities. If we stay in that fight flight freeze mode too long, then our bodies will start to get overwhelmed and it won't be a motivational stress. It'll become a more toxic sort of stress. So recognizing once you've gotten to that point where you're thinking, how the hell am I going to get all this shit done? That is exactly the point where you need to stop. I promise you that it can wait. The projects that you have on the table, the goals that you're moving towards that no one's pushing you towards but yourself.

Those are the goals that you need to just put on pause for a day or two, stop and reevaluate, go back to your strategic plan if you have one. And if you don't have one, start one. Start with your mission, vision, values and your strategic objectives for the year. Review it in detail and figure out where all of these priorities align underneath them. Most of my activities align generally under three categories. The first category is revenue building activities and those are any activities that are directly tied to revenue generation such as delivering business to clients, creating proposals and strategic business development. Not just business development like any business development activities, but for example, like following up with key potential clients. The next category is revenue supporting activities.

So that would be your business development and marketing, building strategic partnerships, but again very, very targeted, very targeted to your specific customer profiles. And then the next category for me is community building activities. And a lot of the time these are the free things that I tend to do. For example, we developed and promoted for Small Business Week this week an elearning course that will help small businesses begin to do business with the federal government and support them in applying for their ProServices supply arrangement. So this is generally for B2B service suppliers. Or the Small Business Book Club that I run once a month. Or this podcast as an example. Or the free or pro bono coaching and consulting that I do for different types of diverse businesses and business owners.

And while I would love to just be able to do those community building activities full time and those are the things that often create so much energy for me because I absolutely love doing it. But profit always has to come first. You can't have a business without profit and so your passion projects always have to take slightly a backseat sometimes to those other activities that I mentioned before. And of course throughout all of this there is also the business side of it. So in addition to either of these three categories, we have to do human resources, we have to be recruiting, we have to maintain operations. And while these activities are extremely important, it's extremely important to do them exactly at the right time. I try to make sure that my efficiency in these areas are as maximized as possible because they are not revenue generating and they are not community building or leading towards the purpose of my organization. They're simply maintaining the structure and integrity and sustainability of the organization as a whole.

As I'm planning, I am thinking about what do I prioritize, deprioritize or delegate in order to make sure that I have the time to do the things that are the absolute most important for my business and for my clients.

As a person with ADHD, it's sometimes really easy to get swept up in the romantic ideas for the future instead of continuing to work through and complete the projects that we have on the table today. And so that's always the first place that I start. Those beautiful ideas that we like to brainstorm don't have to go away forever. We just put them in a parking lot. We use Miro which is a whiteboarding tool that I love personally and we have a parking lot ideas brainstorming space where anyone from the team can add their ideas so they're not lost in the ether. They're great ideas, they're just not ideas for today. And I do tend to focus on revenue generating and revenue supporting activities as much as I can because I know that the faster that I grow my business the more resources we have to do good in the world and the more people we can hire and delegate to in order to get work completed.

And I think it's really important to do the work and the labor that comes with planning your short, mid and long term objectives, holding sometimes those mid and long term objectives somewhat loosely in order to make sure that you're driving towards your future goals while also maintaining current sustainability within your current resources but also making sure that as the business evolves, you're mapping it into a system that is integrated and as simple as possible.

Since I want this to be a positive and proactive exercise I have to make sure that I'm not in a position where I'm struggling and putting out fires and overwhelmed to the point where I can't really function anymore. I have to always be very familiar with my own feelings and the feelings of the people around me and my own body to make sure that I'm catching any situations before they become emergencies. We don't want those good problems to have to become bad problems to have. And we know that life can sometimes throw us curveballs. So leaving availability for things that are unexpected should always be very important. And that's not just mental availability or schedule availability it's also emotional availability. Sometimes I think the best thing that you can do if you're feeling overwhelmed and your schedule is filling up like crazy and you're not entirely sure what it is that you need to reduce or remove, the best thing you can do sometimes is just to take a day off, do some meditation work, really slow down and just process everything.

Sometimes it helps to phone a friend or a coach or a mentor and get their feedback, get their perspective be really honest about what you're going through if you feel stuck or if you're struggling or even if it's your inspiration that's taking you in 15 different directions and you're just not sure which direction to pick.

Remember, we don't have to do everything all at once. We can chip away at things we can move things forward very incrementally, breaking them down into tiny, tiny steps and tiny pieces of work and then slowly building on there. But it only works if you keep going back to what you're building on and continue moving forward. And there are definitely limitations to how much we can all do all at once. And I am definitely finding myself at pretty close to the end of my limitations. So I am going through this process actively. If you want to go through this process with me, we have a small business book club that I host once a month and it's full of beautiful entrepreneurs and business owners who we're willing to be super authentic and vulnerable with each other.

And even though I help businesses with this exact topic, I always say a business coach, she needs a business coach. A leadership coach needs a leadership coach, an executive needs an executive coach.

We all need coaches, we all need mentors, we all need support around us and community around us and I encourage you to join.

So feel free to send me an email at [email protected] or feel free to PM me on any of the social media platforms that I'm on. Typically you can find me at Erin Patchell or some combination thereof.

And this has been the 30th episode of Weirdos in the Workplace. Don't forget to stay weird and stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble.

Erin Patchell: Good day, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose leads to more visionary organizations. I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Patchell, and today I have a very special guest with me, and his name is Oliver Wolfe. Say hello, Oliver.

Oliver Wolf: Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Erin Patchell: What are we chatting about today, Oliver?

Oliver Wolf: I think the natural direction of things will go towards conscious sales; what that is, what it means, what it's about, how to implement that into your life. Business harmonization. And then I think a topic I like to speak to is just like, how to navigate a holistic life, related to that. I have twin toddlers and a conscious relationship, and so that requires intentional attention. And so balancing all those things is always a very fun topic. And I don't really call it balance, I call it rhythm, but we'll get into that.

Erin Patchell: Awesome. I love it. All right, stay tuned, everyone.

[Intro music]

Erin Patchell: All right, gang. Oliver is a devoted family man, as he mentioned. He's the co-founder of Beyond the Peak, Inc. A premier Conscious Sales Agency, and the Conscious Sales Institute that facilitates the Conscious Sales System and sales training programs. Oliver is also a well loved business strategist with a focus on systems leadership and operations.

Erin Patchell: Oliver, welcome to the show.

Oliver Wolf: Thanks. Bit of a mouthful. I know. A lot going on.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, you've got a lot of things happening all at the same time, eh?

Oliver Wolf: Totally. Yeah. And I think there's definitely a very big through-line as it relates to the word conscious and what that means and such. So I'm sure we'll get to dive into that.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, let's dive into that right now, because as you are sitting in front of me, and because this podcast is audio only, other people, they won't be able to see you, unfortunately, but pretend you're me, and you're looking at Oliver right now, and I'm seeing Oliver's lovely face. And right behind you there's a large picture, a large picture of a wolf. And obviously your last name is Wolf, and your previous business was the Wolf Syndicate. And so there's a wolf theme going on. And I love the imagery of the wolf and I think it's amazing. But what I'm curious about is the connection between consciousness and empathy, which is something we've talked about as well in previous conversation, and the wolf pack, because I don't always think those things go hand in hand. Tell me about that.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah, I love that. First of all, it's not that it was intentionally thought of. Like, okay, wolves, wolf pack, empathy, conscious, that wasn't intentionally put together. A lot of and I think anyone who really follows their heart and their soul's calling, they end up having everything come together. It's the classic line of Steve Jobs. You can't connect the dots moving forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. And so I think that's sort of what happened here is it's just unintentionally the dots being connected.

Oliver Wolf: And so when I think about, okay, how does a wolf pack, which can often be seen as potentially violent, it can be potentially seen as aggressive or any of these kinds of things. The reality is wolves are a territorial species, and they don't just go out and create aggression unnecessarily only when their territory is actually moved in on or their family, I guess you could say, attacked or targeted. And so even with that last statement, that's where I think that it really becomes a very empathetic thing because wolves and their packs are incredibly empathetic to each other, to their aligned purpose as a pack and their desire to survive and thrive as a species. And what I think is also important as it relates to if we want to hang on to empathy as a whole, one of the things that I adopted… or one of the many things I adopted from wolves is the idea of, like, everyone or every wolf in a pack has a purpose, otherwise it does get banished, right? And this kind of resonates with Jim… what's his name? Sorry. Not Jim. Is it Jim? Jim Rohn.

Oliver Wolf: Jim Rohn's. You know, you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with. Show me your five closest friends, I'll show you who you are. So it resonates with that of like, well. I'm very selective of the people in my wolf pack and the empathy that comes with saying, hey, you know what? You aren't a fit here, and the best thing I can do for you is release you from this. The best thing. There's all this "people pleasing" stuff that happens in the world and there's this huge misconception around. Not letting them down is the better thing to do. When in truth, keeping them around in a place they shouldn't be is way worse than letting them know they shouldn't be here and hurting their feelings immediately. But then them, of course, feeling released and relieved and so on and so forth.

Erin Patchell: Tough love, right? Like tough love is love, really, it is, yeah.

Oliver Wolf: So when I hear, oh, how does wolfpack and empathy go in hand in hand, I'm like, how does it not? Right. That's how I perceive it.

Erin Patchell: Well, and if you think of the wolfpack, as you're talking, I'm thinking… think about the profound level of trust that they have for each other and commitment and discipline and all of the things a lot of the characteristics that we would want to, I think, develop in a team. Right?

Oliver Wolf: Yeah. Well, and the reality is so my logo of the wolf syndicate, which is still active, it's actually my hold co.

Erin Patchell: Okay, perfect.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah. So it's the hold code to my organizations, and the logo is actually it's five wolves, one facing forward and the other facing sides. The idea is that they trust that each other's back is covered by the fact that the others are watching the other directions. That's the idea of the logo and the wolf syndicate is like, we all have aligned values that allow us to focus on what's in front of us and not worry about what's behind us because that's covered by someone else.

Erin Patchell: Absolutely. And I feel like what you just said leads us so nicely into business harmonization.

Oliver Wolf: Right. Good call.

Erin Patchell: So convenient.

Oliver Wolf: It's all there, right, looking backwards.

Erin Patchell: Yes. Tell me about business harmonization.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah. So in its simplest form, the way I like to define is basically business comes down to three elements. It's people and systems coming together under a common goal. Right. And so the harmonization of those things is what creates success. I kind of like to think about it in terms of like a music symphony. And so you've got the instruments, which are like the system, so your saxophone and your baritone and all those things, those are the systems in a sense. And then, of course, the players are the people.

Oliver Wolf: And then I like to think about the visionary and the goal as the conductor. Right. So for those of you who don't know music, in short, the conductor is not just waving his wand around and then he's of no use.

Erin Patchell: He's looking good.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah right? He's literally coordinating yeah, right. He's literally coordinating the rhythm at which everyone plays each part. Because when you read music, there are slowdowns and speed ups and crescendos and decrescendos and all these things, and it's the conductor who actually manages at what rates those things are happening. And so that, to me, is that third element of the goal and the visionary holding that goal. And then that's what's really cool, is when you have a really good symphony, you hear one sound, that's what's powerful.

Oliver Wolf: And so if you can make your business come together and create one sound instead of like, oh, our sales department has this goal and direction and they're going this way, and our marketing department is thinking about this and they're going that way. And then everyone's kind of just doing their own thing, creating silos and all this stuff. That's not business harmonization. That's not one sound. Right. So that's what I like to think about, is how can I create that one sound as a business?

Erin Patchell: Yeah. And we're in similar businesses, we have different kinds of clients, but I feel like our approaches are similar. I don't call it business harmonization, but I think it's a lovely way of describing it. And I know that it's a lot more… it's so simple. We just need to get them to harmonize. Right, totally. Yeah. So tell me about some of the more interesting challenges, especially these days, like post pandemic. What are you seeing in the world of work with your clients?

Oliver Wolf: Sure. Well, I can definitely speak to a few different areas, so I'll speak to when it comes to, again, just the theme of business harmonization. Right now, one of the biggest things that brings businesses into harmony is their commitment to their core values, which inherently means clarity on their core values. I really like to speak about core values a lot because a lot of businesses just write them down, not very intentionally and not very thoughtfully. Once they do, they slap them on a wall. Once they're slapped on a wall, they think that's enough and that's that. And unfortunately, it doesn't land for people, it doesn't become internalized. And so this is where I see often the biggest gaps in the organizations that we work with and just the organizations that I'm around.

Oliver Wolf: I go to a lot of masterminds and conferences, all that kind of fun stuff. And there's definitely a big theme around. If there's a business having… struggling so much of the time, it's just immediately down to the culture. And when the culture is not there, it's usually because the core values aren't being internalized. Right. And so, for example, for us in our organization, how we work with core values, first of all, one of the tips, and a lot of this can be discovered from EOS and the book Traction. They do a good job on talking about how to come up with core values and all that kind of stuff. I really do appreciate it.

Oliver Wolf: And we've adopted a lot of the ethos of the core values, especially. We're not on EOS anymore. We've moved to like a differences.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, Traction is great.

Totally. Yeah. It's a great book. I actually love the story, the Fable. I don't know if you've read it get a grip.

Oliver Wolf: No, if anyone listening is into Traction and or check out Get a grip. Yeah, it's cool. Basically what they do is it's a fable, it's a story of a company that looks to install EOS and they have an implementer come in and it goes through a lot of like, here's what could and couldn't happen. And anyways, it's a very good book. It's fun to read.

Erin Patchell: Awesome.

Oliver Wolf: So coming back to the core values, the way to think about it is like, okay, who are the best people in your organization and what are the characteristics about them that make them so great and that you appreciate about them? Right. It's a really good place to start with your core values.

Oliver Wolf: We came up with six when we founded the organization and since then have only modified one about six, seven months ago as it related to witnessing our team develop. So we went from like two years ago, two and a bit years ago founding to now. We're at about 30 people on the team, half full time operations and half salespeople. And the way that we've really done a good job of propagating our culture is when we hire, fire, recognize and promote people based on core values. Again, that comes from EOS, but how we do it, I think, is what's pretty special is in Slack, we have a celebrations channel. It's literally called celebrations and core values. And when we celebrate anyone, whenever possible, which is majority of the time, you associate it to a core value. So you say, hey, celebrating Kelvin for outcome driven because he did blah blah blah, celebrating Aldrin for radical responsibility because blah blah blah.

Oliver Wolf: And by creating that because again, humans want to be recognized, humans want to be seen, especially team members. It's such a key part of all of this. And so when someone sees someone else being seen and why they're being seen, in other words, associated to a core value, it fosters the culture. It paves the way for that culture because they're like, oh, well, for me to be recognized, I need to be radically responsible. I need to have win win mindset, I need to grow or die. Like these are our core values. So then they do that and then it permeates. Yeah.

Erin Patchell: Grow or die! Oh my gosh, yeah. That scales up big time.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah, totally.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, that's really good.

Oliver Wolf: That's one of the big ones, for sure. Big one that comes up a lot in this space of like, business harmonization.

Erin Patchell: Yeah. So business harmonization, if I had to summarize it as operationalizing your values, how would that sound to you.

Oliver Wolf: To try to summarize what business harmonization is as a whole? Not really.

Erin Patchell: Not hitting the mark?

Oliver Wolf: No, your statement there is a part of the puzzle, right, okay. It's the part of the puzzle that relates to the people element. And it wouldn't be all of it either. Because now the other important part when it relates to people is the idea of conscious leadership, right? And so if you think of 15 commitments of conscious leadership by Jim Dethmer and just following that as much as possible, that's a big thing. We permeate into our culture as well. And that's a huge part of business harmonization, in my opinion, is recognizing that every person is a person, which unfortunately in a lot of organizations is not considered. So that's another element of just that one of the three pillars of, again, people, systems and a common goal.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so systems then how do you support in the system sense?

Oliver Wolf: So our agency, specifically so, again, our agency is a conscious sales agency. So we only work in the sales portion. We work with coaches, consultants and experts. And we come in at the point of when someone applies for a program to the point of signing a contract. Now, if we're speaking about specifically how our agency operates, then it's really everything to do with automations, integrations. We're in such a powerful time right now, the amount of output a single human can put out now because of automations and all these things, it's mind blowing. Now, again, Chat GPT coming in and AI and it's like the amount of output per person right now is insane. That's sort of the systems element is the combination of, like you said, operationalizing, procedurizing, creating all your SOPs, all that kind of fun stuff, and just constantly thinking to oneself, can this be automated or systemized or delegated or something of the kind and then documented so that it can be scaled.

Oliver Wolf: That's sort of the system side in its simplest form.

Erin Patchell: And then integrating the change side of things, I would assume?

Oliver Wolf: Yeah, for sure. And actually, how do you mean by that? Because I assume I know what you mean, but I'd love to hear what you mean by that.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, I'm assuming change management is a big part of your work as well.

Oliver Wolf: Right.

Erin Patchell: Yeah. Awesome. So how do you evaluate whether a business is healthy or do you do a gaps assessment? What's the process?

Oliver Wolf: There one of the things that actually I learned from one of my mentors, Alex Sharfin, who runs the SOS program, so he's coached like thousands of businesses, all this fun stuff. And he said one of the things he does when he goes into sorry, and he used to evaluate companies for sale, and one of the first things he did to evaluate a company is he would go from the top to bottom and ask what are the goals of the company? And then every layer down, he would see how far it would take to get to someone who says, I don't know. And he said, without a doubt, every single time that it was too high, the business was no good. But every time that it went to the janitor or whatever you want to call it, if they knew what the goals were too, those were the businesses that had explosive success. And so, in short, again, it kind of comes back to what I said earlier. It's like, how aligned is everyone and everything to the goals? That's ultimately what matters because it focused attention on very clear outcomes is what is needed. So that's, again, what I've seen, and again, the opposite is so painfully true. I've come into organizations where it's such a mess, right? There's all these different ways that things are happening, all these different directions and goals and so on and so forth.

Oliver Wolf: And it's literally like it just creates anxiety when there's just no like, oh, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it, and this is how we're doing it. Right?

Erin Patchell: Yeah. One of the things that I go in and help with, and similar to you, organizations that are feeling misaligned and chaotic a lot of the time… a lot of the time they have like, I would, I would say, like a creative culture. They want to nurture a creative culture. But you know that creative cultures, it usually means having people who have a lot of ideas, a lot of "ideas people". Right. So you've got a lot of people with a lot of different micro visions of how things should develop, what's your advice for organizations like that out of curiosity?

Oliver Wolf: That's fun. Yeah. This is actually something that because we have a pretty creative culture as well, and we've solved that with the operating system that we use, which is like it's SOS by Alex Sharfen. And in short, what it comes down to is, first of all, a lot of people who come up with ideas are always afraid that their ideas will be lost. And so they feel like they need to get them out as soon as they have them. The issue is that when you get a lot of ideas out as soon as you have them there, it basically throws a grenade into what's already planned and what we're already moving towards, right? So it's like, hey, we're going in this direction and like, oh, idea, boom. Left turn. And then it's like, oh, idea, right turn.

Oliver Wolf: Oh, idea, left turn. And then instead of a straight line, you're doing this whole crazy maze. And so what we have is we literally have something called the Ideas and Priorities list. We use ClickUp for our project management software. And so we have an Ideas and Priorities list and within it we basically add ideas that we have and we ask ourselves, can this wait the week? Can it wait the month? Can it wait the quarter? Can it wait the year? Depending on what it can wait. And as you kind of filter yourself through it, we tag it accordingly. And then on that relative meeting so either our weekly meeting, our monthly meeting, our quarterly meeting, or our annual meeting, we review those tagged ideas. And so very urgent and important ideas will go into the weekly and we'll discuss them on the weekly to see if it's worth changing the plan for the month or changing the plan for the quarter and anything else, it gets pushed off to the next and the next and next.

Oliver Wolf: And of course, and I'm sure you've seen this time and time again, so often you throw an idea in that you thought, hey, can wait till the month. You get to the month, you look at the idea like, that was a dumb idea.

Erin Patchell: Yeah.

Oliver Wolf: Glad we didn't do that.

Erin Patchell: Yes, it's worth kicking the can down the road a lot of the time. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah. So my experience is pretty similar, too, and it's always a process, right. And it gets more and more complicated the higher the responsibility level of the individual who's the big ideas person.

Oliver Wolf: Yeah, well, what's interesting, too is the higher up you go into the hierarchy of people who think to validate themselves as idea generators, the issue is they believe that's their value and that if they aren't pumping out ideas, they are failing or their worth is reduced or something like that, they're falling behind or whatever. It's a big ego thing. Ego is important. Ego is good, but it is something to check in on one's ego to think like, well, why do I feel like I actually have to put out ideas in order to be worthy or worth it kind of thing? So it's a whole other dialogue, letting go of that belief that one must have ideas to be of value.

Erin Patchell: That's a really good insight. Absolutely. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because I think we could talk about that for another hour. But I do want to touch on…. how has… I've got two questions. The first is going to be I want to know how being a father, becoming a father has changed your philosophy a little bit. Or if it has… I assume it has. And then my next question is going to be what is next for you and your business partner, David? And you can take it from there.

Oliver Wolf: I would I would love to meet the person who says their philosophy has not changed once they become a parent.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, maybe I wouldn't want to meet them.

Oliver Wolf: Maybe there's something wrong there in their noggin, but no. Yeah. So let's see how the philosophy has changed. At the end of the day, for me, ultimately, it kind of just comes down to there's more that I'm responsible for and so decisions have a larger impact. So I think ultimately, if I tried to just summarize it all, and I think parents could probably very much resonate, it's just you just feel like your decisions have more weight, therefore your decisions require more thoughtfulness, they require more of you. Such that and again, it's not about never making the wrong decision, but it's about making the best decision with the information you currently have. And again, now that there's more people, you're accountable to being more intentional about getting information and more intentional about how you look at the information and more intentional about the decision you ultimately make. So I think that that's really how my philosophies changed.

Oliver Wolf: I went more from like, come in guns blazing kind of thing on a decision of like, okay, let's move, let's go, bam, bang, bang, to like, actually, you know what? Let's take a moment here. Let's really evaluate the environment and then take a step forward.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, that's great. And what's next?

Oliver Wolf: Yeah, for us, again, so we've thrown around the word conscious and conscious sales a lot. In short, basically, we want to make conscious sales no longer the outlier, but the standard. What conscious sales is in its simplest form and there's obviously depth to it, is it's empowering people to make an educated buying decision that's aligned to their highest selves. What that means is an empowered, educated decision. It's like a lot of people, when they come to buy something, it's usually from a space of like they have a pain, right. The only reason someone's going to buy something is because they have a pain that they want to resolve in some shape or form. And to empower them is to not have them focus too much on that pain that you have them come from a dark space versus actually reminding them that they are good with what they have and they get to be greater. A lot of the messaging and marketing out there is like you're not enough, you need this to be enough, right? Conscious sales part of it, the empowering part is like you are enough and you get to be more, right? And then so the big thing that I love is about buying decision whereas most sales trainings and sales dialogues and such and the standard right now is like get them to buy right? And so what we recognize and appreciate is get them to decide whether a yes or a no.

Oliver Wolf: Both are equally valuable because I guided them to making an educated buying decision. And then finally, it's like line to their highest self is again, that it sort of speaks to what I said earlier, but it's like, again, these people typically come from a place of fear or pain or this, that, the other. And they can often make a decision from that place as well. And so we need to be shepherds of making sure that they're deciding from the right place for the right reason, where there's a lot of power in being a salesperson, especially if you're a good one. You know that if you wanted to, you can manipulate them into getting into buying. It's very powerful and therefore, as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. And so this is what's really cool about conscious sales is that all the techniques and strategies and tactics and things that people use in sales, they're still used generally in conscious sales. It's just from where you come from the lens you look at it through and how you apply them, right? And so that's a lot of what conscious sales is.

Oliver Wolf: In a summary, it was still pretty long but I'm trying to summarize a lot to it.

Erin Patchell: I'm sold. Well done.

Oliver Wolf: And so the three stage offer stack we have just to talk about what we're doing next. And I'll try to make it short. So we have like our highest tiered thing which is a conscious sales agency. So we work, like I said, experts, coaches, consultants, they need to be at least a million dollars in revenue a year. The reason why is that they need to have the business operations in place and generally optimized and streamlined and they need to have the lead flow or the call flow to be able to support a conscious sales team. There's a lot of mistakes that happen with hiring salespeople and that warrants a whole other conversation. But if I can at least share, one important tidbit is hiring a salesperson will not solve your sales problem. There's a really big nugget here.

Oliver Wolf: A lot of people do this. They hire a salesperson, but they don't have a sales environment for the salesperson and they forget that as the owner or the coach or the whatever they're able to sell because obviously it's personality led, right? And they don't have a documented system, they just have their system. And so they're basically like, well, I can sell it, he can sell it, I just got to get an A player salesperson. They'll figure it out. But the issue is you hire a player salesperson in a nonexistent sales environment, they will look like a C player.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, absolutely. You got to set everyone up for success, right?

Oliver Wolf: Yeah. And so the Conscious Sales Agency plays with that scale. Then we have our Conscious Sales system which kind of speaks to what I just said now, which is to have a salesperson you got to have the environment. The environment is the system. So we have a done with you offer where the system we install into our agency clients. We will do it with you to install into your business for you to manage with all the SOPs and automations and all the things so that you can install A salesperson. And that's like the mid tier kind of thing, right? So that's usually companies between 400,000 and a million. And again, the reason for that is usually you got to have some kind of a tech person on staff and usually that tech person on staff comes around that level.

Oliver Wolf: Until then, usually the owner is like I'll figure it out, I'll throw together a calendly and a this and a.

Erin Patchell: That and whatever head cook and bottle washer, right?

Oliver Wolf: Yeah. There you go. And then the final thing is our sort of easiest entry which is just the Conscious Sales training. So it's the method that we use with our agency Salespeople that's enrolling quite consistently above 50%, which is really cool and way above average in the sales agency industry. And what's cool is very low refunds because obviously the whole point is it's someone that was actually effectively enrolled. They don't get nearly as much buyers remorse. There's chemicals behind that. Like there's only so much you can do.

Oliver Wolf: But anyways, so it's learning this method and applying it into your business. And this is where we know we're going to get to make our mark on the planet where we can truly make Conscious Sales. The standard is with this offer that's much more accessible, it's going to be like the beta I think is going to be 2500 or something like that and the full is going to be like five K, give or take. We'll see. And it's a powerful program. We're going through the alpha right now with our internal sales team to take them through that and then we're going to do our beta launch in October. And I'm really excited for that because the ultimate evolution of this, which will be in a year, is we're going to turn into a certification. Where you can get an actual conscious sales stamp that says, I'm conscious sales certified.

Oliver Wolf: And that's going to be powerful for your business to say, like, hey, we enroll people in a conscious sales way. So you can trust that when you get on this call, your best interest is in mind at every point of the engagement, because so many people are afraid of sales because they're afraid to be sold.

Erin Patchell: I love being sold to. Sell me, please, sell it to me. I love that. I have another one. Sorry, this is an unscripted question.

Oliver Wolf: Those are the best.

Erin Patchell: How do you want this to impact the world?

Oliver Wolf: That's a good question. Yeah. So one of my favorite books is Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, and he talks about, like, one of the goals you need to have is one that you know you won't achieve in your lifetime. Right. And so that is what this is. Like, we know that conscious sales, if it were applied across the board in all areas of all businesses and what's interesting, too, is you can also argue, like, sales is in much more than just businesses and sales interactions. Like, every relationship you have, you are quote unquote selling. Every political argument that is happening is a sales conversation.

Oliver Wolf: Right. Sales is basically having someone see what you're seeing and having them see it your way and deciding to move forward accordingly. That's generally what it is. Right. That's what politics is. That's what relationships are. Exactly. Right.

Oliver Wolf: And so if everyone adopted conscious sales, the world would be borderline utopic. And I don't believe in real utopia. I think that humanity would actually get very bored in a real utopia. But I do believe that if a majority of the population came from a place of conscious sales, we would see so many of the world's problems completely and entirely solved.

Erin Patchell: That's awesome. What does utopia mean for you?

Oliver Wolf: That's a good question.

Erin Patchell: Wow. Do we have enough time for another? We have another hour.

Oliver Wolf: That's a really loaded question. And we won't be able to get into full depth here, but I'll at least give a high level because to me, my perspective of utopia is I think of, like, Taoism, right. And Taoism says that there needs to always be opposing things, and without the opposing, the other doesn't exist. Right. The YinYang symbol all that. And the whole thing about Taoism, it's like I think it's zero led to one, one to two. No, one to two, two to three, three to 10,000, and won't get too much into what that means. Look that up.

Oliver Wolf: Taoism, one to two, two to three, three to 10,000. Very powerful.

Erin Patchell: Lao tzu's Tao Te Ching.

Oliver Wolf: There you go.

Erin Patchell: Right there.

Oliver Wolf: There you go. Yeah. So utopia, it's not kind of what typically people think, which is like, everything's good, right? That's not what utopia is, because then if everything is good, nothing is. It's this interesting place of, like, the right balance of and I definitely don't have the answer. It's just this right balance of good and bad and that the really bad things are not happening anymore. But there's enough bad to have us appreciate the good.

Erin Patchell: That, to me, is utopia, the natural consequences, not the man made traumas.

Oliver Wolf: Maybe it's a good way to summarize it.

Erin Patchell: Yeah, there's always going to be natural disasters and things that happen to people, but can we just live without us screwing each other over all the time? That'd be nice.

Oliver Wolf: And again, that comes back to conscious sales, unconscious sales and such is basically screwing each other over by saying, like, hey, buy this thing because I want you to buy it so I can make a paycheck or you blah, blah, whatever. And again, cautious sales. Exactly right.

Erin Patchell: Awesome. Well, it has been a pleasure, sir.

Oliver Wolf: Indeed.

Erin Patchell: Okay, well, hopefully you'll come back and I hope everyone enjoyed this podcast today. So thank you very much, Oliver, and we'll see you soon.

Maria Montessori, who founded the Montessori Method of Education said, "Now what really makes a teacher is love for the human child. For it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission." And I loved that Oliver ended the idea… on the idea of having a big unreachable goal. Now, if you'd like to get a hold of Oliver, you can find him on LinkedIn at Oliver Wolf or at beyondthepeak.co. This is Erin Patchell signing off.

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

Erin

Good day, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose lead to more visionary organizations. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and today I have a very special guest with us. My new friend Joel Silverstone. Welcome to the podcast, Joel.

Joel

Thank you, Erin, and thank you for I've moved up to the status of a new friend. So, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Erin

Ohh, absolutely and soon friend, I think, and colleague.

Joel

And colleague. Yeah. Yeah, well, we go from colleagues to being a friend. That's. Yeah, that's like a that's. That's a game-changer. That means that when we're not working, we can still reach out to each other. Say hi.

Erin

Oh, then we're already friends. Alright?

Joel

Perfect.

Erin

Perfect. OK, so everyone. Joel, I'll, I'll introduce Joel in a minute. But first, I'll ask Joel, what are we talking about today?

Joel

We're talking about improvisation, and improvisation doesn't mean about being funny. Improvisation means a way to think differently and, how we work and how we connect with others.

Erin

Amazing. And I have a lot to say about this topic, too, so stay tuned, everybody.

Erin

All right, everyone, let's meet Joel Silverstone with a playbook honed over two decades across the globe. Joel supports individual talents to become synergistic dream teams through the art of stellar communication, empathy, and interpersonal Influence. What you might not know about Joel is that he is also a second City Advanced Conservatory alumni and has been a performer instructor with improv troops. Theodore Schneider is back ally players. He's taught film, TV and improv acting across the country and in the United States. He uses a lot of the techniques to break down different barriers like and develop trust and, communication and innovation in teams. And so, Joel, thank you so much for joining me today.

Joel

Well, my new friend Erin, thank you for having me on the show, and this is something where you and I have we found something in common, but as soon as we said the word improv, it triggered something with us and we've developed this, this bond over that. So, this is this. I'm really looking forward to having this discussion and sharing with everyone some of the ideas about how improv can help them in their work and in the way that they communicate and help them with their leadership as well.

Erin

Well, I know you and I met at Disrupt HR just a few months ago. It feels like. How long has it been now? When was that June? It feels like another season. Yeah, yeah.

Erin

Oh my gosh, why is It? It has only been like 3-4 months It feels like it was a lifetime ago now. But yeah, so meeting you at Disrupt HR was a real highlight for me because you just have such a calming presence. You know, you're obviously a very talented and interesting person, but then talking to you about, you know, how we can integrate kind of like this, I want to say fun, but it like improvisation isn't always fun, but it becomes fun, more fun as you practice it.

Erin

Right

Joel

yeah, you really got that so well. Like we really complement each other. Erin, you bring the insight, and you have this authority. You have this voice of authority. I don't know if I was ever giving you this feedback, but when you speak, it's like, oh, Erin speaking, everyone, let's listen. So, I noticed that when you were doing your Disrupt speech as well. And this ties in with, you know, what we're going to talk about today as well because sometimes we're not sure how to demonstrate our authority. And again in the trap sometimes of being a boss, and like you said about improvisation, it is fun, and we want to bring that element but It's also learning a little bit more about yourself and how to be yourself in in different situations.

Erin

Yeah. And I think I said this in a previous podcast, but I feel it's relevant here. It's like, I really feel like, you know, that we aren't necessarily like the person who we become by accident. We get to know ourselves better when we become really intentional about who we are and how we're developing and what we want in life. Yeah, so I don't think we accidentally become who we're supposed to be I think we do that through intention, and I think Improv is actually a huge piece of this puzzle.

Joel

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to discussing this.

Erin

Yeah. So, let's do it. Tell me how you got into this space.

Joel

You know, I want to say I got into acting, and improvisation was a part of it. I always was or always have been an actor starting, you know, as a, as a, as a little Joel. So, like, little Archie Little Joel, I was always an actor. And then, when I was maybe 13 or so, my mom put me in an improv group, which actually wasn't really an improv group. It was for teens, and it was owned by social workers. So they what they did is they used improv activities for us to be able to share what we were dealing with at the time and what was hard about that and I continue to bring that into into workshops here is that that's the idea of improv isn't about being funny because here the topics we were talking about, you know, drugs, alcohol, pregnancy, sex, all those kinds of topics that we're dealing with peer pressure We all you know, are generally not funny. As I laugh about them as I say it.

Erin

Right.

Joel

Yeah, that uncomfortable laugh. But that was. Yeah, that improv is about kind of what you just said, which is about learning about yourself. And when we're put into this situation of there's an audience in front of us, and we can't really hide, and we have to say what's going to come instinctively to us, and this is what I love. This ties me into one of the first rules of improv, which is your first thought, best thought, first thought, best thought. And when we start to trust our instincts of our first thought best thought, interesting things start to happen. It's not about being perfect, but it's about taking the steps towards getting there and maybe discovering I never realized that until I said it out loud, and that's basically what happened in these workshops.

So from there, I continued the journey with improvisation within being in Montreal with a group called Theatre Schmeider, which, you know, such a great name and it was so much fun. We do improv on the weekends in, in different bars and then that led me to Vancouver, where I was doing improv with the back alley players, which was in downtown Vancouver. There and then led me to Toronto, where I became a member of the Second City, second City Master Program Conservatory program, and we did performances there on Sunday nights there Monday night, something like that at Second City and then bringing this world of improvisation out into corporate training. So there we go. There's I'll leave that with you Erin. There, there's a lot there's the world of improvisation in 3 minutes.

Erin

You didn't tell me, though. Why?

Joel

Yeah, that's a good point. I never really thought about the why, except for that. I guess I had fun doing it, so I did. I had fun doing the social work one, not so much, but it, but I enjoy I did enjoy the performance aspect of it, so I did enjoy getting up on stage and seeing what would come next, the camaraderie that happens with the other improv, the improvers and yeah, and I do, I do enjoy, you know, I said it's not about being funny. I do enjoy it. I do. Having fun, and I do enjoy laughing, so I do enjoy that part of it.

Erin

OK, that's good. I mean, you've been doing this for, I mean, quite a while when 13 years old. We're not going to age you or anything, but it's been at least a couple of decades. Yeah, we'll say

Joel

something like that, yeah.

Erin

Yeah. And then corporate training, how does that integrate?

Joel

Whatever we do, we get stuck, and so one of the things about bringing it into the training was how do we get unstuck, how do we change up the way that we think. And Improv is it takes me back to, like specifically, I could think back to doing some work with a very difficult audience, and they were coming for a four day in person customer service training. So and, Erin, even as I say that, you know, four days in person, I

Erin

Like, I know.

Joel

Yeah, I start to roll. I'm out of here. Yeah. So people are already arriving with that attitude. On top of that, these people, on average, have already been doing customer service for 20 years. They were in a unionized environment. There were 50 of them coming to the training, and their job was changing. They were basically their job was basically being demoted, and they were in an environment on top of that where they often dealt with a lot of verbal threats and even physical threats often. So there's a high-stress environment. So it'd be crazy to go, hey, let's do why don't we do some improv exercise activities? But the beauty of that is that like it's changing your thinking because when you come to training, what you really want is you want to learn a little bit more about yourself and what can learn about myself that I can actually use and use from this training and improv? Is that which is some of the activities we're going to do change the way that you might see things, hear things, react to things and force you to look at things from a different perspective.

Erin

Absolutely, yeah, and it's reciprocal. You know, it really is or has the potential to be a culture-building activity.

Joel

Absolutely, it really well the same way that it created a bond with us as we talked about some of the values within improvisation. It goes, goes within the culture, and I'll turn it over to you for a second here because I know you also bring a background and some experience with the world of improv. After all, this was a passion idea of yours to bring this into the corporate world.

Erin

it has been, yeah, it was when I was working with the federal government, probably about three years ago, that it kind of like struck me like a bolt of lightning that we have folks who, you know, all of the challenges that I was seeing with the different teams, you know, with their leaders, the sometimes lack of trust or distrust, even the conflict, the kind of like intellectual sort of nature of the roles a lot of the time where everyone's sort of living up in their heads, kind of very academic in a lot of different departments. And really needing to get brought down back and also this culture where it's there's it's like a highly, highly governed culture, you know, lot like, you know, lots of red tape. Everyone knows that, but what people don't always know is that, like, it creates this culture where it's like a culture of perfectionism.

Right. And so, I was seeing this. I'm like, what tools, what you know solutions could we develop and it literally like, like I said, a bolt of lightning improv, you know, gets people out of their comfort zones, helps us get back into our bodies builds. You know, we're learning to use our instincts again, like our gut instincts. We're building trust between people because we have to. When we're in an improv relationship, there's no room for perfectionism. You know, there's no room for, you know, we want to make each other look good. You know, it's a positive relationship. It's not like a competitive relationship. So anyways, and that Harkins back to when I was 13 years old, because I think it was, I think it was 13 actually when he said there came like printer, I was 13 too. When I was introduced to improv in Carleton Place, where I grew up, and it was called imaginex. The program that I did and it was like, you know, a summer day camp kind of program, and I was, you know, I had what we call now selective mutism and back then, you were like, really, really shy. But we know selective mutism is actually on the anxiety spectrum. So, I had a very high social anxiety. I barely ever talked outside of my house. I had almost zero friends. I basically had one friend, maybe two friends whom I would actually feel comfortable talking to, and then I went into this improv workshop. It literally changed my life because it gave me an environment where I felt safe enough to talk. To say what was on my mind, you know, to be able to begin to learn how to communicate, and that was a lot of it for me because I didn't understand the social rules, right? And so improv is it helps you build your framework for learning social rules in a safe environment. And I think that there's a lot of folks who can really benefit from that and team, and I just lost them, honestly.

That's where I started. I started. I mean, people look at me.

Joel

Right.

Erin

People look at me now, and you're like. You have such authority, blah, blah blah. I'm like, I Literally didn't pretty much talk for the first 11-12—thirteen years of my life, like literally.

Joel

That's, I mean, that's to talk about one day. That's just amazing that it helped you advance through that period of your life and go forward there, and I think some keywords that you said that I think number one was that. Well, you said it was about, and you know, a lot of it was about anxiety. So feeling safe was such an important part of that, and I think we see the word improv. You think immediately you know.

Not safe, not safe. The alarms go, yeah.

Erin

Oh yeah, and at first, yeah, that doesn't feel safe. You know, you feel, you learn to feel safe.

Joel

you do, and you know, thinking again back to you know, even my experience and your experiences were teenagers, and we feel so self-conscious. Even when you're as you're talking about in the government, you're gonna feel very self-conscious because it's always you've been following rules and regulations. We it's about perfection, and it's not about taking risks. And that's the beauty of improves when you create a safe environment that this is not about performing because we're not here. We're not here to put on a show; we're here to do some activities in ways that we can, like you said, communicate differently and think differently, but it all starts with actually just really genuinely listening to the other person. When people feel listened to, they start to feel understood. They start to feel safe, and that goes a long way towards, as I said, and that people are all in the same experience. So we're going to be empathetic to the person getting up there. We something we want to succeed, but we definitely don't want them to fail. We want them to enjoy the experience, and they feel the energy of the team supporting them as they're going through this experience it because we're all in the same boat. Well, nobody. Nobody's better than the other. It's not. There's no points, basically.

Erin

Absolutely. Does that lead us to the Second law?

Joel

Well, the second law is there are a couple of them, but one of them is always making the other person look good. You mentioned that too, and you were, as you were talking about your experience with improv is, taking the focus. It's not the focus on yourself, really. It's you want the other person to look good and so, which leads us to the other law, which is the this. Yes. And which is when people are speaking, you're not going to answer with a but or a no; you're going go, you know, yes And or you're going to agree and move her forward, and then you're not going to make. You're not going to end it with a question like, you know. All right, let's go here. Don't you think? And then that's a leading question. And the person has to go. Yes, they've been manipulated.

Erin

You know what I love the most? Maybe the most about. Yes. And I don't know if It's the Most, but right now it's.

What I love the most about It is that It validates the other person's experience

Joel

yes.

Erin

And I think that's something that's the problem, honestly, in a lot of corporate environments.

Joel

Yeah, because we're exactly, we're waiting for the well. The yes is often an empty yes. When people are saying it and then there's we're just waiting for the but. And uh, we don't feel we don't feel supported, yes, and it doesn't mean you have to agree. That's where people fall Into the trap. Yes. And is saying yes to the person yes and offering some alternatives or offers to keep the conversation going forward before we do. You know, it goes into this narrow scope. We narrow it down.

Erin

Yeah, absolutely. It just validates that your perspective Is valid, right? Yeah. Like your perspective is valid, and you know, let's continue the conversation and from there.

Joel

You know what I'm thinking?

This is like, yeah, this is a this is let's segue into this into if you're up to it. Erin, let's, let's try. Let's try a little. Yes, and if you're.

Erin

Ohh gosh. OK, sure, go for it. Let's. Yeah. Well.

Joel

Well, why don't we do this?

What do we do?

So when we do this?

Let's pretend we're both working at positivist.

Erin

Yes

Joel

we're gonna, and we're on the committee to organize a like a back-to-fall party.

Erin

OK.

Joel

You're going to start coming up. You're going to start offering some ideas. And just so you know, at the beginning, we'll try the first round. I'm going to say yes, but.

Erin

OK.

Joel

So I'm not going to do yes, and I'm going to give you yes, but we're on the same committee. We're trying to brainstorm ideas, whether it be a potluck, or we're going bowling, or we're going to go apple picking, you know, whatever that might be. Are you ready to give it a shot?

Erin

Absolutely. Let's go.

Joel

OK.

People love podcasts. We are the weirdos in the workplace podcast. Be prepared for yes, but the autumn party episode.

Erin

Joel, we got to start talking about the autumn party. Holy Man, it's coming up really soon.

Joel

Yes, but I am so swamped right now. This is not a good time.

Erin

When would be a good time, Joel?

Joel

Yeah. Uh, I don't know, you know, reach. Reach out to me again. I don't know.

Erin

Yes, I understand. Would you like me to connect with you next week?

Joel

Yeah, but next week is when the deadline is for all those government contracts. I can't see how that's going to happen.

Joel

Alright, we'll pause there.

Erin

That's good. I was like, yes, would you like me to do it all by myself? Would you like me to reach out to somebody else?

Joel

Well, let's let's let's try this again

Erin

Yes

Joel

Don't change anything. Now I'm going to. I'm going to always answer with yes and alright. Are you ready? And now take two for the office party. Autumn harvest, welcome back.

Erin

All right, Joel. Let's get started planning that Autumn Harvest party.

Joel

Yes. And I am so excited, Erin, to be working with you on this. This is I think this is a, this is a great idea. This is really, really helpful. And I'm thinking I've got, I've got some ideas. Can I send you two or three ideas? Because I'm just a little bit busy right now, we can set a time for tomorrow.

Erin

Yes, definitely. And I would love to take those ideas. I'll think about them, and then I'll, you know, gather the team so that we can chat about it and figure out how we're going to divide and conquer this.

Joel

I love that, and let's let's set a date so that we don't get into a meeting that, you know, a meeting about a meeting. Why don't we say Friday? Well, you know you'll do well. You'll have your ideas. All my ideas, and we can, and the team will have some ideas. And then, on Friday morning, we can start to really look at this. I I I've got maybe like 30 minutes from 9:00 to 9:30. So at least we can get started.

Erin

Yep, let me look at my calendar quickly, and it looks like I'm also available. So, let's plug it in.

Joel

OK, this is going to be a great autumn harvest party, and I'll leave you one thought. I think I'm thinking of Apple picking as one idea.

Erin

Awesome. And I'm thinking we should bring our partners in, too.

Joel

That would be so much fun and be outdoors and be active.

Joel

OK. I look forward to, I'll, I'll drop down some more, but like it looks like on the same page about making something active and bringing family and friends involved.

Erin

Excellent. So I'll see you on Friday.

Joel

And scene.

Erin

So when are we going? Apple picking them now?

Joel

Very well, very soon, apparently. So, Erin, let me let me ask you, how did you feel when I was answering with? Yes, but.

Erin

Yes, but it's frustrating. That's the word that I would use. It's definitely it's frustrating, and it's. Yeah, it's something we've all experienced before, right? Whether you've been an employee whether you've been a manager, it doesn't matter. We all. We all experience that for sure, yeah.

Joel

Yeah. And It seemed like, from my point of view, it felt like you were doing a lot of the heavy lifting like you all the pressure was on you. I don't know how you felt, but what I heard and observed was that it just seemed like. You were. You were trying to come. You were trying to find a a way to get me to open up or to try to come to some agreement or trying to collaborate. And it was just like pushing a rock up the mountain.

Erin

Yeah. And I think that there are alternative ways like if someone's super busy and they're just, it's like literally impossible for starters. Like, it's never impossible. Let's just put that on the table. It's never impossible. But if they feel like it's impossible, I think that there are still other ways where you can demonstrate that, like yes, and attitude and also make sure that you're able to manage your schedule.

Joel

Yeah. Yeah. And so, Speaking of that, yes. And then, how did you feel when I changed and I developed? I had a yes and mindset as well now.

Erin

You were. I mean, you were taking accountability for things, right? So I think that's a lot of it is. I feel like that, yes. And attitude. It's like it was a partnership, you know. But it's a partnership. You are open. It doesn't mean that there are, you know, challenges that we need to solve or dynamics or whatever, but you're open to the collaboration.

Joel

Yeah, that's that's that's a really good way of putting it open to the collaboration. And so it's not saying yes, and I'm just saying yes, for the sake of saying yes and now I put myself into a hole and then I'm resenting you for putting me on this committee. I'm saying yes, and then I'm looking at alternatives. I'll give you some ideas. We'll meet later you could look at them. Let's set a time so this doesn't. So this basically doesn't become a burden on me that, like, OK, I'm. I'm waiting for Erin to send me my time. I said I'm taking responsibility, and that's the idea of yes, and which is exactly that. It should feel collaborative in the world of improv, which is called making an offer so that we're moving the scene forward. We're moving the conversation forward versus the other person is doing all the heavy lifting.

Erin

Yeah. And obviously, both parties have a responsibility within that relationship. You know, because you don't want to be the person. Like I can almost picture, you know, Joel from Take One as the guy who is just like, you know, maybe he's just sick of it? Maybe he's just sick of, you know, having to take all the responsibility for everything. And you know, maybe I am the person who says, you know, constantly trying to push things forward, but then everything goes on, Joel.

You know, soin my, from my perspective, maybe that's not entirely Joel's fault. You know, maybe, maybe there's some shared responsibility. And how Joels is acting Right.

Joel

Maybe. And maybe I'm that person and I and I I am that yes, but type of person and I go take an improv workshop as part of my corporate training, and I learned something about myself, which is, Ohh, I never realized that I've been putting up Roblox. I never realized that I'm not really listening that I'm. I'm not. I'm not taking ownership, and I'm in a rut, and I guess that's what improv also does is that it takes us forces us to think differently. You know, I was at a manager's conference recently, for example, and that's a warm-up. We just did this very, very simple activity that just seems to throw people off, and it's just called zoom zip and ZAP, zoom, zip and ZAP. Have you ever done this

Ein

I haven't.

Joel

But we're not going to do It. It's good when we maybe you have. You have to be sort of a larger group of people. But the whole idea simply is you, you're we're in a circle, and you're literally going zoom to the person to your right, and they go zoom. They pass it around, and it we start off with that, and it's amazing to see the people that It slows down because they're trying to control the pace or they're overthinking, and these were consultants, so this was a really good activity for them to let go receive it? Just pass it on. It's a simple activity; don't try to control it. Don't try to perfect it. Don't try to analyze it or give it a strategy. And it's about let it is about letting go, and you learn so much about yourself when you realize what it is you've been holding on to.

Erin

Yeah, it definitely kind of reminds me of an exercise that I do while I'm writing, and if you Google it, you can Google it. It's called FBR. I didn't come up with it. It's called fast bad RONG, wrong, and literally when you're writing your first iteration, you don't think about it. Any like you don't think about editing. You don't think about like The final product. It's all it is: an information dump. You're literally just. It's like a stream of consciousness, you know, on to paper. And I think that's kind of similar to what you're talking about here, too.

Joel

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you mentioned earlier about the about the in the government, like perfectionism. And I like this FBR because It is that's that's what we do when we are right; we start censoring ourselves, and then we had all these thoughts, but you're stuck on correcting that first paragraph, and then you forget where your train of thought was, and then it comes out as mishmash.

Erin

Right. Or it's just not as creative or innovative as it could be, and that doesn't mean that there aren't further iterations where you're refining and editing. But the first time you do it, you just throw it out there. You know, you just get it on paper.

Joel

I love that, and that's that's really what what happens with improv, because you kind of can't you, you don't. There is no take two. You're just we're going through the mistakes in the world of acting. We'll call it a stumble-through. We're just stumbling through this not because we're drunk but because we're just we're just stumbling through it, and we're allowed to make mistakes, and it's like an agreement. That's what creates the safety within the room. It's an agreement that this isn't about perfection. This isn't about being funny. This isn't about trying to entertain. This is about first thought best thought. Make the other person look good and yes and.

Erin

And that doesn't mean that there aren't obviously time and place for, you know, the polished presentation there, of course, is, but it's not that that shouldn't be the way that we function all of the time in a team. You know, we have to be able to know, you know, when are we doing our, you know, trust building brainstorming, you know that that is the activities and then when and who have to be doing the the polished presentation side of it and everything in between, right? Yeah. There's a time and place for all of these things.

Joel

I really like that thought because the the idea again of that yes and is that we're saying yes to the big ideas before we narrow it down, which is the idea of this polished presentation, which is let's again even your fast thinking when you're writing it's let's get all the big ideas out. Then we could start because what's gonna happen is we're gonna surprise ourselves. Because it's all in our heads. But until we verbalize it and and we surprise ourselves and and and people surprise themselves, and we're like oh, we're coming, we're coming with much more creative ideas and problem-solving than if we just sat there in front of our our computers in our sort of silos.

Erin

Yep, 100%. Absolutely. What else should we talk about? Oh, I don't know. Perhaps our project that we have together.

Joel

Yeah.

Should we mention that?

Erin

Well, folks, Joel and I have developed a workshop series called Improving Mission and Improv Innovation specifically for teams who are interested in sparking curiosity and community and sustaining and deepening trust. And Joel is our lead facilitator, and we're really looking forward to working with both the private and public sectors to support the development of teams.

Erin

It's so exciting to know that you're someone's going to come to do a workshop where they're allowing themselves, you know, they're like, oh, we don't have time for this, yeah. You know, a quote I love is That It You Know, and the camera heart goes exactly, but basically, is this the same problem you're dealing with from last year? Are you still talking about it? And that's the paraphrasing of the quote. But that's the idea of what improv can do and Just, you know, a three-hour workshop To come up with that different perspectives to look at different ways of thinking, to build the trust, as you say. To find different ways as to communicate with each other the amount of progression and innovation and ignition that's going to happen from that in just a few hours of allow giving yourselves the gift of actually moving forward on this Is just, it's just a huge.

Erin

No, I think so. I think a lot of teams really need this. You know, like I mentioned, it's been something I personally been thinking about for a long time and that you've been kind of actively doing for a long time, really. And so I'm really excited about this collaboration, and I think it could very well impact a lot of people in a really positive way and a lot of teams, so Learn about yourself. Learn about your teammates, build some trust, get a little bit silly, have some laughs, and build culture. Move forward.

Joel

Yes, and.

Erin

Yes, and. Yes, and more.

Joel

Yes. And more. Yeah, yeah. You know, it it it does take me to. I'll give you a specific quote on this one, and this is from Winston Churchill and. I assume it was him who said it, but it was "to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often."

Erin

Ah hmm. Awesome, I love that.

Joel

Yeah, really speaks about the perfectionism you were talking about earlier, but we can't move forward unless we challenge our way of thinking or challenge our way of doing things. And we don't get, we just, we don't just go on cruise control or make assumptions.

Erin

Yeah, totally. We can't learn in a silo. We can't learn about ourselves in a silo. We need to be challenged, and we can't create in a silo, either.

Joel

Yeah

Erin

yeah.Not not as well

Joel

no.

Erin

I mean, technically, yes, we can create in silo, but.

Joel

For sure.

Erin

We can't. We can't create as well in the silo.

Joel

No. Well, it's There's only so far you can go until until you you're thinking it is challenged, or you're put into a different perspective, or you're, you know, it just like we can get inspired if you leave the office. You get inspired because you went down to the beach. You walked for, went for a walk in the forest. You get inspired because you changed your scenery. You change your way of thinking.

Erin

Absolutely. Yep. We all take inspiration from the external environment for sure.

Joel

Yeah, yeah.

Erin

Awesome. Thank you for joining me, Sir.

Joel

My new friend Erin, thank you for having me On the podcast this is great.

Erin

It has been my great pleasure.

Thanks again to Joel for sharing with us the power of improv. If you're interested in connecting with him, his website is thisfeelsright.ca.

And if you'd like to learn more about our Improv workshop series, you can connect with me at [email protected]. That's all for today. Remember to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

Hello friends. It's your favourite weirdo, Erin Patchell, and this is Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose and their impact in the world of work.

Today, we delve into a topic that isn't just about recognition but about active change. We're discussing truth and reconciliation, particularly as it relates to businesses like ours.

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King Jr. once said that. In a world where the winds of change are strong, silence is no longer an option, especially for those of us in positions of power and influence.

Stay tuned.

[Intro Music]

Let's begin by grounding ourselves.

Every day, we confront the truth that our company operates on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabek Nation. This acknowledgment demands us to reckon with the profound impact of colonization on Indigenous peoples across this country, also known as Turtle Island. We recognize that our presence here is a result of a history that saw dispossession, erasure, and systemic injustice inflicted upon the original caretakers of this land.

In acknowledging our colonial ancestry, we are acutely aware of the responsibility we bear in addressing the wrongs of the past and striving for a just future. We acknowledge that the path to reconciliation is long and complex, requiring both humility and courage. We are committed to dismantling the colonial frameworks that have perpetuated inequality and we're committed to amplifying Indigenous voices and perspectives.

Our commitment extends beyond words. We are driven to actively learn from Indigenous communities, acknowledging their sovereign knowledge systems and the deep wisdom they offer. We are resolute in supporting initiatives that uplift Indigenous cultural resurgence, land stewardship, and self-determination.

This acknowledgement is a reminder that our work is entwined with the quest for justice, healing, and transformation. We seek to continuously improve our position so we may stand stronger with Indigenous peoples as allies, recognizing that the pursuit of equity, respect, and collaboration must guide our every action.

This acknowledgement is intended to propel us towards a future where we honor the land, honor the people, and honor the truth of our shared history, as painful as that is sometimes. We will work collectively to rectify the past, to forge new relationships, and to co-create a world that celebrates the richness of Indigenous cultures.

What I just read to you is the position statement from my company, Positivist Group.

And if you've followed us for a while, I hope you know that these are never just words on paper - not to me and not to any of my colleagues or partners. But, every vision starts with a little bit of magic and mysticism; it's not perfectly real yet - it only becomes real when we make it real. And it only continues to be real, if we continue to nurture it and feed it and grow it. Like anything, really.

I'm working from a still very limited understanding. I still don't completely know what I don't know, when it comes to serving and supporting my Indigenous friends and neighbours. And sometimes it's hard to know who to ask - I never want to put the burden of teaching on a person who may not have the capacity for it. At the bottom of this podcast script, I will be adding numerous links to resources, so if you're like me and you're interested in learning more there are some easy access opportunities at the bottom.

And today I'll talk about a few things as well even if it's through my more limited perspective, I have learned a few things that might help you, too, as you're seeking to support our Indigenous friends..

But first, I want you to imagine a world crafted to benefit only a select few. A narrow persona that is glorified with any deviation from that standard becomes inferior. That's the colonial mindset. From the languages we speak to the ways we conduct business, whether we like it or not, if you know anything about history you know that our world has been sculpted by it. Recognizing this is the first step.

Despite attempts to deconstruct this narrative, colonial structures and mindsets remain and the more I learn and observe, the truly systemic nature of this becomes more and more obvious. Sometimes the words that come out of my own mouth, from the jokes that I make to the reactions to my kids' behaviour, when I observe them from a third party perspective, I recognize the deeply buried racism, sexism and ableism that skews my thoughts and actions - and am a woman who has a developmental and physical disability and so coming from me, the sexism and ableism is soemtimes shocking. It feels like I should know better, and for someone who is trying to walk a path of increasing humility, justice and righteousness, it's always a little bit disappointing when I notice these feelings come up. I wonder how many have I missed?

Our colonial frameworks are everywhere - from our personal, professional and corporate values, the way we structure our time and energy, the way we teach our children, the way our government is structured and functions… it's pervasive, and when I look at it, it almost seems like a game of jenga. The trick is to dismantle this without the jenga pieces crashing to the ground. We've been carefully removing those inner pieces of the jenga tower, but the structural integrity of the tower is still strong. Is it enough? When will it be enough?

I mean, right now, these questions are irrelevant because there's still so much work we can do and things we ourselves can control. As business owners and business leaders, you have so much more influence in this conversation than many others do. It's our duty and responsibility, as far as I'm concerned, to use our privilege to lift people up.

We can take inspiration from many Indigenous stories and philosophies that echo ancient wisdom and lessons from the land. Within these tales lies an unwavering emphasis on unity, an innate respect of nature, and an insightful understanding of the interconnectedness of all life; the complexity of the human condition. It's a worldview that envisions humanity not as dominators of the earth but as humble co-inhabitants, valuing every strand in the web of existence.

In a modern era dominated by corporate-driven motives and capitalistic pursuits, these Indigenous insights offer not just a critique but a guiding light. They present a vision where success isn't measured solely by profit margins but by the harmony one creates with their surroundings. These narratives remind us that there's more to life than relentless competition and individualistic ambitions, but that both of these things have a place in life as well.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: values. Our values serve as the compass guiding our actions, decisions, and interactions. They're the pillars upon which our purpose stands, shaping the path we tread in the world. We all need to ask: "Why do I do what I do? What drives me forward each day? What kind of legacy do I wish to leave behind?"

Viktor E. Frankl, a renowned neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, once said, "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." This sentiment beckons us to lead a purpose-driven life, one that resonates with depth and authenticity. When our actions stem from values aligned with a larger purpose, we not only achieve success but also fulfillment and a s ense of genuine contribution to the world.

We must continually revisit and refine our purpose and strive to create a world where profit and purpose harmoniously coexist.

And while I'm still learning to turn these values into action there are a few ways that I can help personally that I think greatly supports my clients and I hope will help you a little bit as well. I'm talking about financial stability, equitable procurement, and building inclusive teams.

The first - financial stability. When organizations are financially stable, they can begin to invest more money into their purpose related goals. When working with my clients, financial stability and financial growth is usually the top goal, because without it you have no business in the first place. Once you are profitable, you can lean more heavily into your purpose and begin measuring progress toward your goals, whether connected to the UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the 93 calls to action, or other frameworks, will establish your business as an ally and make real progressive change.

Another big step is equitable procurement. By intentionally hiring Indigenous makers and supporting Indigenous-owned businesses and other diverse suppliers, small and medium sized businesses, we challenge the norms, empowering communities that were once sidelined. This enriches our businesses and our government with diverse perspectives. My company, Positivist Group, advises organizations on the governance, policy and practices around equitable procurement, and provides project-based advice to ensure an RFP or supply arrangement is going to tender in a way that is competitive for all organizations. It's been my personal experience that small and medium sized businesses are totally capable of competing with larger national and multinational corporations and often have a stronger value for dollar, and far superior customer experience and delivery. Yet often procurement processes are designed - intentionally designed - in such a way that makes it impossible for them to compete. This is something that I personally want to burn down and rebuild.

The third, building inclusive teams. What comes first - diversity or inclusion? If your team isn't diverse, then it's certainly not inclusive. But if your team isn't inclusive, can it ever sustain diversity? This is one of the classic conundrums of our times. In practice, it's never one or the other, it's a practice of developing your governance and practices around recruiting, training and developing people, and learning how to value the diverse spectrum of human capacities and personalities. It's harder than building a team of people who think and act alike or who are content with merely following orders, but your results won't be nearly as robust or interesting or valuable.

To end, here's a thought for all the entrepreneurs and leaders tuning in. When you stepped into leadership, you unknowingly took responsibility for every action, every decision, every win, and every failure of your team. It's not just business. It's personal. And this includes acknowledging their history, their truths, and their futures.

Thank you for tuning in. Remember to keep exploring those twists and turns of our weird and wonderful world. If you've heard anything that has resonated with you today, or if you have something to teach me so I can do better next time, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected] or PM me on any of the social platforms - you can find me at Erin Patchell.

Until next time, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.

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Learning Resources:

4 Seasons of Reconciliation Course for Entrepreneurs (BDC)

Government of Canada Learning Resources

Lakehead University, list of resources for educators

Assembly of First Nations, list of educational resources

Indigenous Canada - Free Online Course, University of Alberta

Good day friends and welcome back to another episode where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose leads to more visionary organizations. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, founder of Positivist Group and your host of Weirdos in the Workplace. Today we're talking about the idea of having a Personal Board of Directors. If you've been listening to the podcast, you might know that I'm a big believer in not doing things on your own, accepting the advice and ideas of others, and understanding the radical truth while envisioning with clarity where we could go from here. Having a personal board of directors is critical for anyone who has really big goals.

Today we're answering the question, "who do you need by your side as you scale the corporate ladder or grow your own business?" Stay tuned.

Anyone who's ever started a business and I think most people who are in leadership roles knows it's never just business—it's personal. Hell, it's deeply, existentially personal. We're talking Kierkegaard levels of introspection here. I mean, your business is like your baby; it's an extension of yourself.

Now, I'm not sure I've ever met an entrepreneur who's perfectly mastered the art of balancing head decisions with heart decisions. You're either overly analytical, dissecting every choice like it's a page from Dostoevsky, or we're so passionate about our vision and taking care of our people that our hearts eclipse our heads, and we make decisions that can sometimes end up compromising that very vision.

The reality is that as a business owner or business leader, you are being pulled in a multitude of different directions and this is more true today than ever in a world fully entrenched in a cultural and technological revolution simultaneously. The world, businesses and life have never been more complex.

You know what I mean? That's why having a board of advisors—your own 'Personal Board of Directors'—is absolutely vital.

Let's start by breaking it down. What the heck is a Personal Board of Directors? This is your inner circle, the sage advisors, mentors, and influencers who guide you through the maze of your professional life. This is your ultimate "dream team" for self-development and decision-making, minus the obligations of fiduciary responsibilities.

Remember the wise words of Plato: "Know thyself." But he also should've added, "Know others who know things you don't." Your Personal Board isn't just an echo chamber of you; it's a reflection of different facets of what you need to grow.

Imagine being lost in a forest. Your strategy is like the compass and map that guide you in the direction your business is already headed, your team is the engine that drives you to your goals, but your Personal Board is like having a group of local guides, each with different survival skills, telling you how to find that fruit, how to hack that path, and maybe how to avoid quicksand while you're at it.

Obviously one of the questions that arises is "how do I know who I need on my team?" Well, how well do you know yourself, your triggers, your instincts, your motivations… your fears? Find people who aren't just perfectly aligned with your vision and philosophy. Find people who share similar high level values, but who think and act a little bit differently from you. Find some diversity, in personal history, culture, neurotype and more. In summary, your Personal Board of Directors is your personal "think tank" that helps you navigate the uncharted waters of your career and personal development.

You might be asking, "How do I find these people?"

In the wise words of Socrates, "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." Your mentors are here to make you think. They've walked the path you're on, stumbled over the rocks you haven't seen yet, and—most importantly—have gotten back up. They give you that grand overview, the 'stratospheric perspective' if you will, that helps filter out the noise. It's so easy to get swept up in the details, having people to grab us by the scruff of our necks and drag us out of the tornado and remind us why we're doing this in the first place, is absolutely essential.

Your personal board of directors will come in all shapes, colours, sizes and more. And so what you're really looking for is a person who is willing to challenge you, and you're willing to accept it. You're accepting the challenge. They push you forward. They make you think differently. They help make you think more deeply.

And the best, best, best way to find your own personal board of directors is to become part of someone else's personal board of directors as well.

Like Oprah Winfrey said, "Surround yourself with people who are going to lift you higher."

I hope this episode inspires you to take more time to talk and build community with individuals who you may find, inspire and teach you to be more than who you are right now. The only way to find them is to search, cultivate transparency and authenticity, lower your guard, and become curious about the people you meet. When you meet people who challenge you, who spark a fire inside of you and drive you to want to be more and do more, you know you may have a new member of your "personal board."

That's all for today, stay weird, stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble.