Career Conversations with Ryan Seamons

Show Notes

Ryan Seamons is a father of 5, the founder or Groove, and also a friend. They make physical products to help people have meaningful conversations about work and their careers. So much of that carries over to life at home and how we think about the paths that we are on. A great conversation about making time to have conversations with each other and ourselves to craft the best future.

Where To Find Ryan

• Twitter https://twitter.com/ryanseamons
• Blog https://ryanseamons.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanseamons
• Company https://meetgroove.com/
• Study Mentioned in Episode https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/ 

Transcription below (may contain typos...):

[00:00:00] Ryan: [00:00:00] regret, number one, she said this was far and away.

The biggest, the most common regret that people had, and it was, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to me, self, not the life others expected of me. And so when you talk about the stories, you tell yourself what, in listening, we hear advice from others all the time, right? People think they're coaching.

What they're actually doing is giving advice. Giving advice is not coaching. Coaching is helping you understand what you want and people aren't good at that. 

Mike: [00:00:25] Careers and kids, how do we talk about our own careers? How do we talk about careers to our kids? What are the stories that we tell ourselves about our careers and what we like and dislike about them?  that's a conversation I had with Ryan Siemens who runs a company called groove. They actually make physical cards. 

, that facilitate conversations. About careers. And we talked about careers. We talked about schooling. We talked about education and ukuleles and how to get your kids to do. Anything you want them to do using ukuleles. [00:01:00] So let's jump into the interview 

 well today on the podcast, Ryan Siemens joins us. Thank you for being on the show, Ryan. Welcome. 

Ryan: [00:01:10] Yeah. Thanks. Glad to be here. 

Mike: [00:01:11] Yeah. So Ryan runs company called groove.

I was previously with LinkedIn. He's a multi startup kind of guy too. Um, But groove is a really interesting company. Um, and maybe I'll have you explain it because you'd explain it better, but I will say, I should say you are a father of five as well, which is one of the key reasons I wanted to have you on this podcast, um, to share wisdom there.

You're also a friend. Um, so Ryan tell us what, tell us what groove is all about. 

Ryan: [00:01:37] Yeah, well, excited to be here. And so groove, this is a recent, um, recent company has started and the idea behind groove is we are creating physical experiences to help people be more fulfilled in life. And so we're, we're building a series of, of physical experiences, uh, that are, uh, conversational.

Most of them in nature, and they are centered around work. Around education and then [00:02:00] around family. So our we've really just released our first product for work. It's called career conversations, and it is a card deck. And soon to becoming a career roadmap guide that you can fill out with, uh, to help you think about what's important in your career and where do you want to go?

Uh, so that you can not just have a good path ahead of you, but find fulfillment in work. 

Mike: [00:02:20] Yeah, no, that's great. I think it's a huge need and I'm actually holding the physical cards right here in front of me, your career cards, which I wear are very well done. They're very well designed. Tell, tell us a little bit about how the tell, tell me how the, the idea came about.

Like how, how did you identify this need and how, how did the whole product come to fruition? 

Ryan: [00:02:41] Yeah. So the, the, for me, the idea of guidance experiences has always been an interesting thought in my mind. And this started actually when I was at LinkedIn. So we designed, I got hired at LinkedIn to design the first learning system internally.

At the time we called it learning today, you'll know that as LinkedIn learning, right. Um, and as we [00:03:00] design that, the piece that resonated most with people as we were building that out was something we called at the time. The transformation plan sounds pretty cliche now, but the idea behind it was a walkthrough experience kind of step by step to help people identify, well, what skill do I want to learn?

What content could I learn about and how do I take steps in that? And people just really like that right there. There's naturally we all want to know what's the next step. Like, what's the next thing. So I've liked that idea of telling people the next step fast forward then to about a year ago. Uh, we got introduced to some other companies that were doing, uh, then card decks out there.

One is Stanford. There's something they call the values deck. They don't sell it externally. Another company called Instructure, created something called the drivers deck, which is similar to this. But again, they don't, they don't sell it. They use it as lead generation for the product. Um, we, we ended up looking at 12 different products that all kind of touched on this point.

But for me, I wanted to find something that an individual could pick up and could use in conversation with their manager up here, or even a spouse, and that they could get [00:04:00] the help beyond just the, the cards themselves, the values sort. Um, and that just didn't exist. So we started. Started asking lots of questions.

We ended up doing 200, I think about now we're up to 230 personal interviews that we've done, where we've walked through and gotten feedback on the words, the mechanism that the deck, the approach. Um, and so we feel really good about the feedback that we've gotten and, and finding a set of words that resonate with people that are, uh, that are wide enough for people to identify with and then thinking about, okay, how do we go from.

Someone saying, I don't really know how to have a career conversation or yeah. As a manager, I know I should have this, but I don't know really what to say or people that start with what we think is actually a bad way to start a career conversation. The question where do you see yourself in five years? I actually think that's a horrible way to start a career conversation.

I instead 

Mike: [00:04:43] you should. Why is it a horrible way to start a 

Ryan: [00:04:45] company? Great question. It's a horrible way to start a career conversation because it skips over all of the why. It says cool. Jumped to like, where do you want to be an artist too often? It's easy to slip into normal scripts. [00:05:00] So we say, well, where do I want to be?

Well, I want to get promoted. I want to make lots of money. I want to be famous. It's just easy to think we want those things. But instead when you start by exploring, well, what do I care about? Today. Uh, and, and why do I care about that? And you started consists of the conversation guide that we share has a couple of questions about your past.

What led you to hear about your future? Where do you think you want to go? And then your present? How do we start now? And this is it really for us came because at LinkedIn, so in 2015, they published a study that said that the number one reason people leave companies is because of lack of career development.

They feel like, Oh, I'm not having enough growth opportunity here. And I felt, I imagine you've probably felt this at times where, yeah, I'm am I growing? Am I learning? And so people end up leaving because they think, Oh, if I go to another company, I'm going to get more opportunity. And then, you know, it's exciting for a bit.

And then you fall back into things. And so I believe there's actually, even though you should have plans for the future, there's this opportunity for everyone to grow in their current role to say, what can I do now to be growing instead of just dreaming of five [00:06:00] years in the future? Which frankly, I mean, You're never going to get there, right?

Like if anyone who would have predicted like five years ago, if I would've tried to predict what I'd be doing now, I would have been completely and utterly wrong, like right. Hashtag COVID. Um, and I think that's true of a lot of people. And even if you do know where you want to go, you say, well, my position's really, really set.

Okay. Then what, like what else, how else are you going to grow and find fulfillment other than the job title that you have? There's a lot more to it. So that's, that's why it's not a bad question to answer, but it's a bad question to start with. 

Mike: [00:06:26] So, so then walk me through how your solution helps, because I agree with all that you just said.

I mean, especially the point when you said you slip into cliche terms or cliche scenarios, like this is just what you're supposed to say in this sort of a scenario in this situation. Um, Instead there then to me, it's because there's roadblocks to really understanding, like, I don't even know how to think about that far ahead for most people, you know, they don't know how to think about five years ahead.

Um, they don't know how to assess what's going on today. So they may be, have a vision [00:07:00] for where they want to be. And this relates, I think with kids too, you know, as how are we helping guide our kids into where they can use their skills the most and be the most fulfilled in their work and in life. And 

Ryan: [00:07:14] so tell me about the bear 

Mike: [00:07:16] to having that conversation.

You said it was the why, and it doesn't address the why that conversation. So how do you get to that? Why, so maybe unpack a little bit about how your solution helps people get 

Ryan: [00:07:26] to that. Why. Sure. I think it's human nature. I actually don't know why this is, but we jump, we'd like to jump to the end. We like to know the end of the story.

And we do that often when it comes to jobs, right? What are you going to be when you grow up kids don't say, well, you know what I really enjoy doing. I enjoy this and this and this. And so, yeah, I've been thinking about this path. No, they just say I'm going to be. The coolest thing I can think of that starts with like, I'm going to be an astronaut or a firefighter or a princess or a president of United States, or, you know, whatever that is that people think they want to be.

Um, because we jumped to the end. And when you [00:08:00] understand the why, and this is true. So a lot of what I've we've built into this also comes from my, my work building products. So I was at LinkedIn as a product manager, as a director of product a at tech. A venture backed tech company and the secret to building great products is to not jump to solutions, but to spend enough time understanding real problems and why things are the way they are and then building solutions to those problems.

Similarly, when we jump to the solutions of our career, when we just assume we know the path forward, we're going to miss out on a lot of good thinking, reflecting, deciding meaning-making on the process to say, well, why have I liked what I've liked? What do I do? I really want? And we don't. Necessarily take enough time usually to, to think about those.

And even if we take the time, it's hard to know. Well, what words do I use and analogy we use often to talk about how our product helps people. And I think a good way just to think about conversations in general, that are hard is rock climbing. There are some people who can free climb right there. There's the Netflix documentary.

It's amazing. We watched them. We're just like, Oh, that's so amazing. But 99% of us, we [00:09:00] need some tools. We need a rope, a harness. We want some to show us the way we want some to spot us. It's the same way with career conversations. There's a few people who just know what they want to do and they know they're calling it like, and it's like good for you.

That's awesome. Great. Most people, that's not the case. You need some tools. And for us, those tools are a set of words, a set of mechanics to help you move through a set of questions, to talk through this and think through this and the, the exercise we've built just gives people time. I think frankly, a lot of the value is just.

Spending time doing it, but for a lot of us, it's hard to create that time so that the card and the mechanisms help create that time and the space to say, okay, I'm going to stop and not think about the position I want. I'll get there. But think about what do I really love about work? What motivates me and drives me in my work.

Why does it do that? Let me think of some stories of why that is the case. We get, let me talk about today. Am I fulfilled or unfulfilled in those things that are most motivating to me? What could be different about my current job to do better than that? And so on and so forth with some of the 

Mike: [00:09:54] questions.

Yeah, I think that's a, the space is a huge one. I mean, [00:10:00] there, you were saying that, you know, we like to jump to the end, but it's because we don't, we don't have enough time to even think about what's going on now. And that's often, it's like, there's this need to supply an answer. If someone asked you the questions to need display an answer.

And instead I hear you say. Take some time to actually reflect on what's going well, you know, what are you learning as of right now? And that's just not done. I mean, that's not, there's not a good, there's not a good, uh, there's not a good framework for that, um, professionally, but even like, there's not.

There's not something that's like a message about that even personally, right? Like to take time to reflect on that. 

Ryan: [00:10:43] Yeah. And with kids then, I mean, bringing it to the dad portion and I, it's been interesting as I've been building this product, learning about it, seeing other products out there, what it's done for my relationship with my kids, because I realized, like you said, We hate silence.

We like answers as humans. We just, we are, you know, it's why most negotiating systems go poorly because you [00:11:00] ask what you want. And then instead of waiting silently for the answer you interject like, Oh, and put a bunch in there. And it's like the power of just waiting patiently. Um, are there is power I should say in waiting patiently.

And this is especially true with kids, kids. When you ask them a question, they usually don't many times won't know the answer at first, especially I'm G I have a 12 year old now she's just entering this teenage years and she started to get that a lot of teenagers do where they shell up. Uh, they don't know the answer I don't want to do.

It takes a lot of waiting and time and almost you need to have permission. To not have the answer. And I think that's that for me is a key point why we liked the product that we built, because it, it creates an environment and space where it's okay. Not to have the answer. And so in doing this then with my kids, it's interesting.

Use the cards a bit with my family. We want to build a family deck eventually for couples to talk and for people to talk with their kids about what matters most to them, with my kids. It was interesting experience when we. We actually took the deck. So it's 50 values and motivators. They're not, not really all personal.

Some of them are work-related like compensation or benefits. So we took those out, but we laid all the cards on [00:12:00] the table and we did a little sort with our kids where we just said, Hey, which of these do you think our family embodies? Or which of these do you think are important? Our family, we got it down to maybe 15 cards.

And then I told each of my kids again, for kids who are at talking age, one's three inner centering talking, but I asked my older ones, I said, okay, I want you to pick a card. And, uh, if you don't know what it is, just ask me, I'll tell you what it means. And I want you to tell a story about why you think our family uses it, why this is important to our family.

And it was a really cool experience because, um, even I had my six year old who was like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, Oh, what's that word? What's that word? And he picked one up and we started telling stories of trips of hard things that happened of great things that happened of a lot of things that, that were important to our family.

And it was just. It's not like we've never talked about this stuff, but the words on cards help you have the time. And so I think, you know, regardless of, I think my product's great and people want to buy it, you know, I'll give you your alibi. But more than that, I think it's, it's about setting aside time and an environment where you have some help things to grab onto and you have time to not have the answer and that'd be [00:13:00] okay.

Mike: [00:13:01] Yeah. That, that last line you said not have the answer and be okay. Um, Tell me about how you've maybe struggled with that as a dad in the past, because I think that's an important thing that, that men and dads, especially like, feel like we have to have the right answer. We feel like we have to be the one that has the plan and has the answer.

And sometimes we don't and. Reconciling that I think is, is hard and, and taking time ourselves to reflect on, you know, a plan personally and leading are one of the things that I'm on my, a kick lately is, is you can't lead others until you lead yourself. You can't lead others until you learn to lead yourself in personal discipline and, and areas of fitness and mental health and all that.

And. There's oftentimes where you feel like you need the answer and you don't even have even sort out your own thoughts. So, so tell me a little bit about, you know, your past and how you've kind of reconciled that, you know, maybe when you first had kids or, you know, as your kids are growing up. And, um, can you tell me a story about [00:14:00] that?

Right. I'll put you on this call. 

Ryan: [00:14:03] No, this is, this is great. I love it. So yeah, the funny thing is the more time goes on, the less answers I feel like I have about parenting. Um, but I think that's true of a lot of things in life. Um, so for me, a lot of the, so you said I have five kids ages, three up to 12, and we've actually homeschooled our kids for six.

We're going on seven years now. Um, and so with that, I'm sorry, females is here. 

Mike: [00:14:29] It's all good.

Ryan: [00:14:33] Speaking of the kids, I told them, I told them it was funny. I told my wife, I said, Hey, by the way, you know, at this time I'm doing an interview, let's, let's try to, you know, not, I said, if the kids could not scream right outside my office, that would be great. And she said, it's a podcast about dads. Isn't it.

It'll just be color. Like throw it in there. Well, touché TJ authentic. Oh, it's real. It's real. Um, So, yeah, I like your question around, what, [00:15:00] how do you, what happens when you don't have the answer? Like how do you do that as a dad? So, so we have five kids that just three to 12, we've homeschooled our kids for a long time.

And for us, our homeschool approach has kind of hung on to principals. Principle number one, we want our kids to love learning. And this is probably the primary reason we actually decided to homeschool in the first place. Uh, not because there aren't great teachers, there are some phenomenal teachers in our school system.

Um, but overall for our kids, we felt like the experience they were getting and they were about to have we just said, yeah, I think we want to, we have the capacity and we want, want to do this together. So we want them to love learning and to, we want them to know how to learn. And then every other piece that the curriculum we choose, how hard is it?

Like everything else hangs off of that. And so a key part of that, then when we talk about loving learning and knowing how to learn, we believe the best way to instill that in our kids is to be examples of learning. And that's one of the hardest, one of the big. Uh, things people ask about before the homeschool is, well, uh, you know, how could I do this?

I don't, I don't know if I remember all the math all [00:16:00] day. Like what, uh, ah, I don't even know if I could teach them because they have the wrong paradigm in my mind, in my perspective, they have their own paradigm in their mind. The paradigm is not, you are the teacher bestowing knowledge on your students.

It's you are simply a guide helping them find great. Learning. We're all naturally curious. We are as kids. And unfortunately, for some people that gets kind of beat out of them by the systems that we go through, right. Between schooling and work. And you do what you're told head down and just, but kids are naturally like, you look at a two, three year old, you can't contain them.

Right. They're just looking at everything, exploring everything. And so for me, when I don't know the answer is actually one of my things at times, I think one of the best times I can teach my kids because my kids now get a front row seat to see what happens when you don't know the answer. And I say, yeah, I love saying, I don't know, but then my next answer is, but let's find out, let's go to Google and find out let's open the scriptures and find out let's, you know, go wherever we're going to go for knowledge.

Um, and it's really cool. Especially as my kids have gotten older, to help them learn [00:17:00] things that I don't know to say. Yeah, I don't, I don't really know that. So like we just moved to Cincinnati. Birds are a big thing that weren't a big thing out as big a thing out West. And so we've got a bird feeder in our backyard.

I bought my son as part of his own schooling this year, a birds of Ohio book. And I said, okay, we're going to learn about birds. And so, yeah, you gotta tell me. And he's now been finding good sources and teaching me about all the birds and why they do what they do. And, and it's been a really exciting thing, but creating that environment, being okay, not to have the answer, um, has been good thing.

That can be difficult though, because you have to honorable. And for some parents, I think it's really scary to tell your kids. I'm not perfect. I don't know everything. Um, but I think once you get over that, I think then it's okay. It's okay. Because you say, but we can figure it out. That's that for me is where a lot of confidence comes in.

Mike: [00:17:42] Yeah. I love those two principles, loving learning and, um, you know, learning how to learn, you know, teaching him how to learn. I think that from that all learning can STEM. Right. I mean, and it's kind of like, that's what it's all about. Um, so tell me a little bit about, [00:18:00] um, how this career cards, you know, Tell me about some of the success stories that you had from it.

Cause I'd like to hear about people that have used it and have gotten this light bulb moment, right. And saying, wow, this, you know, I was on a certain path or I thought I was supposed to go on a certain path and instead I'm going over here and it's amazing. And I'm so much more fulfilled and happy and focused or whatever.

Ryan: [00:18:22] Great question. A couple of two stories. I'll share a story that, um, Yeah, two, two stories. I'll share one of someone who I think thought they had everything in their career and kind of realize something about the career and another person who from the outside, you wouldn't think they were doing well in their career, but was actually in a really good place.

Um, so the story about someone who thought they were kind of had it all, they are a developer and they work at Raytheon. Defense contracting company, they got paid well, right out of college. Like everything, like, they were like, this is sweet. This is what I wanted to do. This was like my dream, like, yeah, I've made it.

I'm working for a big company doing cool, important development things. Well, they found out [00:19:00] a few months into their job that they hated their job. They were like, this sucks. I really don't like doing this. Um, but they, I talked to this person a couple of times. Um, and they can never really explain why they're just like, Oh, I don't know.

It's just, I don't know. I guess maybe I don't like developed, like maybe I should. So they were doing what we do. Right. We grabbed for other, like, maybe I should go back to school. Maybe I should change this. Maybe I all, it's my boss blaming all these external things, um, which is really natural. And I've done that before I, as we were developing these, I said, Oh, Hey, let's sit down and let's go through this conversation together.

I'd love to get your feedback yeah. On it. And then let's use this. And so we said, okay, I went through this conversation and talked about, well, what's important to you. And why are these things important to you? And then we got to the point, okay, are you fulfilled or unfulfilled today in these things? And there are a couple of attributes that they said, yeah, I've got these.

Okay. But you know, most of them like really low, like, yeah, I'm not getting this at all. Uh, one thing that really stood out was they had mentorship and sponsorship is one of the cards and they, they put that really low and I asked them, well, what does this mean to you? So the cards don't have definitions.

They're just the words in a big, important part of the cards is, well, what does this mean to [00:20:00] you? And for a lot of us, we haven't. If we know what these words mean kind of, but then it's like, well, I guess I've probably never had to articulate, like, what does purpose mean to me? What does leadership mean to me?

What does a, what does respect mean to me? Like how do I define that? Is that my company shows me respect or is it me? I feel respected or, you know, there's all those things. So we started talking about definitions and as we talked about the mentorship, I asked the question, was there a time that you were fulfilled in you job in this?

And he paused and said, well, Oh, actually, yeah, there was a time recently, like just a few weeks ago, my boss came to me and he said, Hey, I need your help to mentor this new person on our team. Like they need to learn X, Y, Z, could you go teach him that? He said, Oh, that was like the best thing to do. It happened at my job.

And he lit up, like, you saw that energy lift and, and he just started talking about this stuff. And then I said, okay. I said, this is great. Now does your manager know that was a really great experience for you? And you said, Oh, uh, no. I said, well, what do you think would happen if you told your manager, Hey, this was a really good experience.

I really enjoyed this. If there are ever chances [00:21:00] where you need someone to learn something, move up, get, get help. I really enjoyed that and would like to do more of that. And the person paused and he said, wow, I mean, yeah, I guess I couldn't say that kind of lit up and they said, and they said this then after all of it, that was really exciting.

They said, I guess I've never thought about how I could change to make my job better. I always wanted someone else to change to do this or that, or I thought I had to leave. And so they said, okay, well, I'm going to try that. And I follow up with weeks later and they said, yeah, like I'm getting, I mean, it's not perfect.

I still may need to make some changes in my job, but. Wow, I'm getting more of this thing. That's fulfilling my job. So, so that for me was an exciting thing. There was one other person that, that was really interesting to talk to this person. Wasn't maybe your typical like tech company, you know, that they were working as a janitor in a school district and they hadn't had a lot of success in their career.

They kind of meander through things, but they'd settled on this job. And they were getting some pressure from family to do other things and family. It was like, this isn't a future. What are you doing? Like you got to go to school or all these things. And so I sat down and talked with this person. We did the card store.

[00:22:00] What was fascinating to me is this person put everything up high. Where they listed all these things that are important to them. And then they said fulfilled. I was, I was, I was surprised. I'm like really like janitor. And then we started talking about stories and this person said, well, I'm fulfilled because for them, mentorship is actually an important thing as well.

They said, I've got this crew of high school students I work with. And every day I get to teach them how to take good care of things. And how to do a responsible job and why it's important. And they said, Oh, I just, I love that. That's so great. Yeah. And then they talked about, uh, having a team and they said, man, teamwork is so important to me.

And like, I'm on a team and I meet and here's why, and they just went on and on about what was good. And so then what was fun about that one? Even though they were fulfilled and I'm just like, I'm happy in my job. I'm happy with my path forward. And I said, well, what are the challenges? Now? They sit out my, my family, like, I'm getting some guff from people about what I've chosen.

So we crafted a story together and said, okay, well, what story can you tell? That's going to help others respect your career path and help you stay true to what, what you're enjoying about this. And we crafted that together. And for me, that was exciting to see. Um, [00:23:00] because I think sometimes we do don't think about the stories we're telling to ourselves and the stories we're telling to other people about our career, but they're important, right?

Work is a, a third of our life. Like we, you know, and it impacts a lot of things in our life. It impacts how we act in our families, how we're dads and all that. So understand taking time to understand your story. That you're telling yourself that you're talking to others and what you want to improve or change about the story, I think is important.

It's been cool to see that happen. And a few times with the cards. 

Mike: [00:23:24] Yeah. I think the story that we tell ourselves, both that we tell ourselves, and we tell other people is heavily impacted by societal norms, or like you were saying really a janitor or what our families are telling us, you know, there's these expectations that it, you, it can cause you what I, what I took away from that janitor story is like, Those could cause you to maybe make a change that would, you would leave all the fulfilling aspects of your job, right?

If someone's saying, Hey, maybe there's not a bright future there in, in janitorial work or whatever that is. Or, or maybe you should be making more money or something that's [00:24:00] separate than addressing the why of what do you actually love about this? You know? And so you can actually start to separate those things and understand, and then say, okay, well, what, what would be.

Do you stay in this role or do you do you know something else, but you're, you're kind of getting the underlying truth, which I think is important and what I, why I think it's so important to kind of audit the stories that you're telling yourself is because you can tend to focus too much on the negative.

At least I do. And I think that's human nature. You know, you. Either when you hear someone saying, Oh, you should be doing this. And then you're kind of like, should I? Yeah. And then you have a bad day or something and you're like, yeah, this sucks. I should be doing this other thing. Or if you're just getting down on yourself for some reason, or comparing yourself to others, it's like auditing those conversations is really important, but there's not always yeah.

Good space to do that, to get to actual truth. It's clouded in the last comment someone made or how you're just feeling that day, as opposed to. A mechanism to get down to the underlying truth. 

[00:25:00] Ryan: [00:25:00] For sure. Recency bias is a major force in our lives where the most recent conversation, most recent thing it happened, it clouds cloud is a good word that you use clouds, what we think, and it comes to you.

So, uh, the principle that I like to reference and that I think is part of what I like about. The company that I'm building kind of why I'm building the company. I'm building is the number one regret people have at the end of their lives. And so a lot of people familiar with this Bonnie ware who was a nurse in Australia.

She worked with people in the last 12 weeks of their lives. And she started asking patient after patient what their biggest regret was as they're literally on their deathbed. And she started taking notes. She ended up writing a book, but she published. Uh, there's an article there. If you look at the top five regrets of the dying good article to read and regret, number one, she said this was far and away.

The biggest, the most common regret that people had, and it was, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to me, self, not the life others expected of me. And so when you talk about the stories, you tell yourself what, in listening, we hear advice from others all the time, right? People [00:26:00] think they're coaching.

What they're actually doing is giving advice. Giving advice is not coaching. Coaching is helping you understand what you want and people aren't good at that. That's another purpose of the cards is at work for managers. We want managers to have a mechanism so they can grab on and know, how do I have a conversation where I coach the person?

I don't just give them advice because usually the advice we give is do what I did. Because I did that. And if you do that, because I, it it's important that you do what I did, because what I did is good. Cause I want to make sure that what I did was good. So I'll everyone to do what I did and that's the normal advice.

Right. Um, but when we think about that, number one regret of the dying, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself. I think we need to take more intentional time to think about, well, what do I want, why do I want that? How do I talk about that? And I think, especially with our kids, giving them the tools so they can think.

Well, what do I want? Who am I? I mean, you know, the cliche idea of parents forcing their dreams and ideas on their kids is still alive and well today, I think it's going better than it has in the past, but it's easy to push your kid to do what you did or what you want them to do instead of really [00:27:00] taking time to say, well, what do you actually want?

And then as a parent to say, I'm your advocate. Like, let's go get what you want, but let's help you. And to help them understand what they want, because a lot of times. Wants are expressed as outcomes. Like, Oh, I want this job in the future. I want this thing, but really we need to say, why do you want that?

What do you find exciting or fulfilling about that? There are usually multiple paths to get to where you want to go. And that's a lot of the thinking behind design thinking and the design approach, IDEO and others take, and then we can apply it to our lives as well. 

Mike: [00:27:28] Yeah. You said, um, Oftentimes people that give advice want to feel good about the choices that they've made so that they, so they advocate for the recipient to make those same decisions.

I think that's really interesting. Um, maybe a cynical way to think about how we talk to our kids about. 

Ryan: [00:27:49] It is a little sin. Well it's maybe that, you know, not knowing like, okay, that was maybe a little extreme to say, but I think it's, I think it can be very true. And it's it's at times I've even found myself [00:28:00] asking, like when I'm especially disciplining my kids or encouraging them in a certain way, To stop and go, why am I doing this?

Because they're two things are super easy to lean into. One is what did I do before? So I want you to do that because a year, me and I, you know, I want you to be like me or do what I didn't do, um, or, or do what I did well. But then the second thing is we tell our kids things because we want convenience. I want them to be quiet because it's annoying to me.

I want them to clean this thing up because I don't want to clean this thing up. Whereas I think when we are truly leading a life of love, We're doing it. Not because we want it, but because it's best for them. And I think that changes, especially as dads, some of the advice that we, some of the things we get started about and say, no, no, no, we have to do this.

Um, and I think then instead of using anger as a tool to kind of manipulate our kids into doing what we want, we can use the love to still help them do the things that they need to do. But the, the purpose behind it changes. And I think kids can sense that and they can sense when something's really from love and that you care about them versus.

No, this is inconvenient, you know, be [00:29:00] quiet. Do what you're told, do your thing. Um, yeah, and it's hard to stay in that love zone.  for me, at least. And maybe for others, it can be really easy to go to know this is convenient, you know, don't make my life miserable. Just do it, you know, a bedtime's the worst, right?

When I'm just like, give me some time without like, it's the worst, right? I it's um, Jim Gaffigan, he talks about that. It's bedtime is like a hostage. Or a hostage situation, but in reverse where you're like, I will do anything, like stay in there. I will give you whatever you want. I will to meet all your demands.

It's awful, but it's so easy at the time to be tired and to use anger, instead of thinking broadly about the system, what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? How do I set my kids up for success with an environment? Um, and when I've, when I've tried to do that, I found it more successful, even though it takes a little more pre-thought and energy and patience.

Mike: [00:29:45] Yeah. I wanna, I want to push back a little bit on, you said, um, We, Oh, we parent the way that we were parented or the experiences that we had, um, how can we not do that? I mean, you're [00:30:00] only kind of a, you know, not a victim. I shouldn't say, I don't want to say victim, but you're, you're a result your product of the environment that you're raised in, and you're naturally going to carry that into your parenting.

Right. And you might have, um, experiences, you know, in that, that were negative that you're wanting to correct. Or they were positive and you want to reinforce with your own kids, and there's only so much you can do to break it outside of that. Right. And I think that there's, there's an aspect of it where you can, you can, Sarah, you can, you can love learning and chasing answers and stuff, truth, and that will lead you to maybe reflect on your past and say, okay, maybe I see some things that don't really jive with that because I have these other experiences over here.

Um, but I think it's an interesting dynamic because. I see it as ringing really true, you know, hurt people, hurt people as the is a phrase, right? And it's like, you're going to carry over your positive and negatives. Um, one of the best piece of advice my dad ever gave me, I think the wisest, uh, regarding this is regarding [00:31:00] marriage civically.

And then consequently parenting is you marry the family. And he said, as he said, You don't, you married, you have your own family when you get married and you form your own family, but you marry their family in the sense that you marry all their traditions, their values, their, um, their good and bad, you know, and you don't really appreciate that kind of advice until after a couple of years of marriage, right?

Oh, for shitty men, you know, 

Ryan: [00:31:26] but yeah. But 

Mike: [00:31:27] the reason I say that is because T tell me a little bit about, um, In thinking about that, I was thinking about providing this space to actually reflect on that is an important part of not just going with the default, you know, Parenting habits or, or, you know, good and bad that, that you have, that you were raised with, and that's something that's not done enough, not challenging your kind of your thinking or, or the why you do what you do.

Um, enough as parents and then in our careers and [00:32:00] just personally, and. Tell me a little bit about how maybe that you've experienced that in, you know, in your marriage or in with your kids that you're saying, Oh, I find myself doing this thing and I'm doing it because it was, you know, that's how my parents did it or it's on my wife's praying and singing.

That's how she was parented. And how you maybe changed or had a conversation with your spouse or with your kids about that. 

Ryan: [00:32:23] Yeah, this is a great question because I do think it's natural. The default is, well, I'll just do what was done to me like, or, and I think a better way is to say, okay, that was, that was bad.

I didn't like, I like that being growing up. So I'm going to change it. I'm going to do something different. But I think with my wife and I we've seen both where at times we've caught ourselves where we're like, why don't we do this thing? Oh, well, this is. You know, this is just what you do. This is, this is how you find happiness, or this is what you do in this situation.

I remember when we first got married, uh, this was probably our first real fight as a couple. I remember my wife was like, Oh, Hey, I need to go buy some new shoes. [00:33:00] And I was like, I looked at her shoes and I was like, they're not, there's no holes in like, what do you mean? You need to buy new shoes? Like, we're not, they're not, we're not yet.

Like, you don't buy new shoes until they're like falling apart. And she looked at me and she was like, no, I need some new shoes because you know, I've worn these for a while. And, and I I'd like to go buy some new shoes and, uh, yeah, I was just like, It took me a little while to be like, you know, to be okay with that.

And it's something so silly. I laugh about looking back, but it's because the story I was raised with, and I don't know if you know, my parents did, you know the story or it was just the story that I grew up with was like, Oh, you wear things out before you throw them out. Like, that's what you do. Um, or before you get something new.

And so it was probably the first moment. I think you have a couple of options in that moment. You can either get angry, you can yell, or you can realize that you're becoming more aware of like, Oh, Here's a story that I didn't even realize was a story. I think the first component is become aware of what's even going on.

What is the story? And I think just realizing there is a story and that you should take time to think about that. Um, or when, especially when we [00:34:00] get angry or confused or have negative feelings, it's a good moment to pause and go. What's what's going on? What story am I telling myself about the situation about the person I'm interacting with?

And then you can start to do, you can decide. And I think this is a key truth that helps people be happier in life. You get to decide what story you tell. Nobody can tell the story for it. You get to decide. And so over time I've become, or at telling myself the story that it's okay for us to use money, to buy things that we want, not just things that have worn out to the point that, you know, they, they look awful.

Uh that's OK. And, and my wife's happy about that story and we found other things in our marriage as well, where, where we've decided, we realized the story that either our parents. Tell and some of those stories are incredible and amazing and have given us such very grateful for, I think we've come from stupid backgrounds and solid parents who sacrifice for us, but then there are other things that our parents did that.

Weren't great. Just like any parents when we're giving, uh, when, what we're giving to our kids. As, as dads and as parents, I think it's important to realize we are helping them craft their stories. And I hope that one of the stories I'm [00:35:00] giving to my kids is the fact that stories exist and you get to decide your stories.

And so when you grow up, you get to decide what you're going to do. We've made these choices, but you may like those, you may not. And that's okay. Um, so I think just becoming aware, lets you then make meaning of that. Like, well what does this really mean? And then finally take action over. Am I going to actually change this thing?

Yeah, 

Mike: [00:35:19] that's awesome. Ryan, I think that's almost a good place to end it, man. I think that was a good, um, I, I really liked a lot of what we had to say and I loved the, I loved the product that you guys are building and, um, just got it and I'm excited to use it, um, with my kids too. Cause you, you know, you know, you and I were speaking before and you were telling me about how you do with kids.

I was like, I love that idea because one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately has been, um, What are our core values as a family and approaching the same way you approach it in your business and core values and what our goals and all of that. And, you know, having, having, there are kids 

Ryan: [00:35:57] tell that story 

Mike: [00:35:58] of, Hey, what, you know, what is [00:36:00] our value as a, as our family and tell them the story about how we actually live that out.

Um, I think is a really powerful thing to do, so definitely gonna love in it. 

Ryan: [00:36:08] Love it. Can I, can I leave with one more story? Okay, 

Mike: [00:36:10] go ahead. 

Ryan: [00:36:10] Tap that off because you talk about using it with your kids and here here's maybe my advice on, uh, how do you get your kids to do anything that you want them to do?

Um, and so with, with, I guess the story I'll tell is about ukulele. Uh, so my, my mom is a music teacher and she recently changed. She used to teach her kids recorder. In school, but she actually started teaching in school ukulele. So the entire sixth grade class at our elementary school learned how to play the ukulele, which I was like, that is so cool.

So we got a ukulele while ago we started playing, we had a couple of, and we played a little bit, our kids kind of got into it a bit, but then it kind of went away. Well, when COVID started, we thought. Okay, what are we going to do now? I mean, even though we homeschooled, we were now home a lot more than we were used to.

We used to go out a lot. We were home. She said, okay, what are we going to do to keep him busy? And I thought, you know, I'd really like my kids to all learn ukulele and get into that. So we thought, okay, how are we going to do that? Like, what are we going to do? And there's a lot of ways we could have done that.

[00:37:00] Right. We could have been like, okay, 30 minutes every day, we're going to, you're going to do ukulele or make it a big announcement. Hey, family wear. And not even to tell them, I just said, you know what, I'm going to start playing the ukulele more. So every morning and every night I just started and just picking out songs and singing and eventually some kids come, you know, they'd sing with, Oh, what's that?

Oh, Hey, got another one here. I bought a few more cheap ukuleles so that we had them around. It was like, Oh, well here's as you go into here, you can. So, bye. After a couple months now, all my kids, including our three-year-old have learned ukulele, we sing songs together. Um, and it's just a fun thing for our family now.

And what I love is that I wanted them to do that, but I never told them that. I just said, I want to play ukulele. So they said, Oh, that's a good thing. So my, my advice about the car, cause you said, Oh, I want to use this with my kids. My best advice about how to use these cards with kids is not to pull it out and be like, Hey, we've got this thing and we're going to do actually it's to have a conversation between you two espouses in front of your, like, just out in the open where your kids could see, because especially, you know, these are our game, like right there.

They're beautiful to look at. And so you [00:38:00] start talking and I just actually had another friend who said they had a conversation last night and he said, Oh, my son was like, What's that, what are you doing? I want to do that. And he said, Hmm, I don't know. These are kind of like an adult thing. Like, I don't know if you'll understand all the work.

He said, no, I will I'll understand, like can teach me. And so then he said this morning, just before the party has he texted me. He said, I'm having an awesome conversation with my son about what he cares about. And my son's like, I want to learn these words, dad. I want to know. And so he's starting to teach his son are these words, his son's eight.

So I think that's a cool way to inspire kids to do things without actually telling them what you're doing. Yeah. So that's, that's my advice. 

Mike: [00:38:34] Boom. That is great. I love it. What a great way to end it. Right. I think that's great advice. I think, Oh man, I think we could talk for another hour on that. Actually.

Ryan: [00:38:43] It's a fun topic, so, but yeah. Have been a good conversation today that I always enjoy our conversations, but yeah. Fun to do the podcast. 

Mike: [00:38:49] Hey, thanks Ryan. I really appreciate it, man. Yeah, you're welcome. So you can, we can, uh, you can find you at, um, meat, groove.com. I also link up your Twitter handle and LinkedIn and all that in the show notes, but, [00:39:00] um, check it out.

It's a, it's an awesome product and definitely will help you. Um, not only at work, but also in the family life. So. 

Ryan: [00:39:08] Yeah, for sure. Check that out. The other thing that I do, if you go to Ryan siemens.com, I do a weekly newsletter. It's called patterns. And it's about some of the topics we've talked about here.

Stories and ideas around fulfillment and the catch line is for people who don't want to hit Mondays. Um, so talking about some of these principles and that's where I find some of these stories every week and try to share them so awesome. 

Mike: [00:39:25] Definitely we'll link that up in the show notes. Right. Cool.

Ryan: [00:39:28] Alright. Cool. Okay.

What is 2 Cent Dad Podcast?

Intentional fatherhood while living a life of purpose. Hosted by Mike Sudyk. www.2centdad.com