Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Cathryn welcome aboard to the show so happy to have you here with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1:So we're going to talk about a great topic today which is transition and I want to take you back to any moment in your life where you have had a difficult transition. Tell us about that challenge and why is it so difficult to change?
Speaker 2:Well, one that happened, the most recent one, and a big one for me, was I had sold my second company. I started a couple companies in the staffing industry. And when I sold the second one, stayed on. I stayed on contractually for a couple of years. And then because it was easy, I liked the people I worked with, kept running.
Speaker 2:I opened another office for them. But the thing was, and I didn't even realize it at the time, I was so bored. I felt at this point I had everything. You know, our house was paid for. I made a fine salary, that work was easy.
Speaker 2:And so, and many of my friends at that time, was 67 years old and people are like, aren't you going to retire? And, but no, none of that. I didn't want to do any of that. I couldn't figure out what was going on inside. So as I got more and more bored, other things happened.
Speaker 2:Like I lost confidence. I didn't feel relevant. Things that I didn't realize were happening either to the point that even like driving to a new city by myself scared me. This was me who I traveled all during my career, rent a car, go do this. Those things seemed scary.
Speaker 2:And so had an opportunity that came like life does. It throws you opportunities and you just gotta be looking for them, right? Yep. Yep. Or recognize when they come.
Speaker 2:And this opportunity came in the form of living on a ranch. Oh wow. In East Texas. And, you know, it's a, it's a much longer story than I would want to tell here. But, but there was a house, our friends that own the ranch hated the house and they said, well, you know, we'd love it if you had it.
Speaker 2:And that was within six months We had, I quit my job. We sold our paid for house, completely pivoted, and did a huge transition to live on an eleven thirty acre ranch in rural Texas, East Texas in the hill country. I started a coaching company when I had no idea what I was doing. I had started two staffing companies, which is a piece of cake compared to starting a coaching company
Speaker 1:completely You're changed my almost 70 at this stage, like isn't this, I mean this is terrifying. What, what drives, and I've got to tell you, you're my people. When I, when I left the military my wife was like, this is, you're, they're giving you everything, like you're doing great, why would you leave? And my answer Cathryn was yours. Really?
Speaker 1:So I absolutely 100% she's in a meeting right next to me, I'd bring her in and have her testify.
Speaker 2:I love
Speaker 1:that. You're definitely my people. So you're on this ranch, you're starting a business at almost 70.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:This is scary as hell. What's your self talk? What are you telling yourself? I've done this before, I'm going to do it? Or was it a whole different conversation?
Speaker 2:You must be in my head. That's what I told myself in the beginning. And when you're going through all that, at least this is what worked for me. You know, I saw the opportunity, and I did not know that a ranch was in my that wasn't on like my bucket list. It was nowhere near that.
Speaker 2:So, we saw the opportunity, assessed the risks, and thought, what's stopping me? And the only thing stopping me really was me and my husband. It had to be a joint decision and then take action. We did it fast because if you think about it too much, I'd still be there in El Paso, bored out of my mind, running my, those companies and wondering why am I bored? So, but I love that you said that you can feel this because we're not the only ones.
Speaker 2:Then you feel a little guilty about being bored because we had everything, right? Yes. It's almost like, am
Speaker 1:I ungrateful, right? Like,
Speaker 2:just Yes. A little bit of felt, yes, I felt you should just be grateful for what you have. So my self talk in the beginning was, you can do this. This isn't hard. You've started two companies.
Speaker 2:That quickly changed as I found myself working from home for the first time. It looks like you do too. It's isolating. All those things it takes discipline. Then the self talk kind of turned to Who's going to listen to you?
Speaker 2:Why do you think you could be a coach? But you only have thirty seven years' worth of business experience. Who wants to listen to you? But I had a coach for that. Coaches have coaches.
Speaker 2:And I did have to work through that. It's it's a lot of negative self talk. It's been almost two years. Yes. And I'm 69 years old now and I'm really getting into my stride and I'm secure about what I want, but it's not easy.
Speaker 2:It will never be easy. Thank goodness. That's what makes it interesting. If it was a piece of cake, first of all, everybody would do it. And secondly, it would be boring.
Speaker 2:So I guess I got what I asked for.
Speaker 1:Careful. You know, I had an engineer once like, oh, Ari, I want to do this. And he wanted to go into sales. I was like, careful what you ask for. Like it might not be, in fact, when I was young, I wanted to be a team lead and I was like this is the thing, this is the thing and then I got it and I was like wow this sucks, managing people is hard, I mean you know I learned how to do it well but it took me a while.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's go into, you know, you've managed your own change, right? It was hard, but you got through it. And now you're helping people manage their own change.
Speaker 2:Yes. And I really get a lot of fulfillment out of that. And so, you know, it sounds corny sometimes. Like, I love to work with people and I love to help them, but I really do. And, I have I have some clients that are now, you know what?
Speaker 2:When I really look at everybody, and it's mostly business to business, but I have some individuals, it is transition. Yes. You don't have to be at my stage of the game, which I call my third act like you when you got out of the military. That's a huge And you don't always have a roadmap, even though I know the military gives lots of resources and
Speaker 1:training you on Excel and LinkedIn is not a roadmap.
Speaker 2:It's really not. It's really And now with so many people getting laid off and I'm sure you heard, you know, Amazon, I can't remember the number. It's tens of thousands or 14,000 or something like that, that they laid off. And of course, LinkedIn's blowing up about that. That's a transition or a divorce is a transition of being a new parent, which you said you have children, you know, that's a transition.
Speaker 2:So, guess the thing is that people think they have to do it alone and you don't have to. And I wish back, I look at back at the days when I started my second company, for example, I could have, I sure could have used a coach. I didn't even know they existed. I could have used a business coach. I would have been a better leader quicker if I had done that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's what, that's why that's my passion now. And if I can even help one person, you know.
Speaker 1:Let's just break the first myth today. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to do it alone. You can ask for help. And this, I mean, I felt like, you know, I can, you know, thinking back to the first time I became a manager, this was, you know, well, like thirty years ago, sorry, like twenty five years ago, and I had no idea what I was doing and I knew it back then, but I was afraid to ask for help because like well if you don't know what you're doing and you're doing the job then well there's an expectation of you so is it even okay to admit that you need help?
Speaker 1:I struggled with that. What would you say to people on this aspect of you know, well what if you need to ask for help?
Speaker 2:Wait, that's what you said is so important and you are you a millennial?
Speaker 1:I am. I'm bored of a millennial. I'm 83 82.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. So almost a a Gen X er. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I've been writing a lot about that in my LinkedIn post, you are so spot on with that. So boomers, Gen Xers, and to some extent millennials, wasn't the way you did it. You don't ask for help. Boomers, big time. Hey, you're a manager.
Speaker 2:Figure it out.
Speaker 1:Figure it out.
Speaker 2:We did. But it wasn't pretty, you know, and, think about the lost cost to businesses and all that. So I do strongly believe that the Gen Zers, that's something I really admire about them because they don't just sit back and say, well, you know, oh, okay, you gave it to me. Okay. Well, I'll call you if I need you.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. And they're telling you what they need. I admire that so much. So I think that because of them and to some extent, some of the millennials that are pushing companies to give more support and encourage, just build that culture where you can ask for help. And that doesn't even address us in our personal lives.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of times, those of us that are a perfectionist or, you know, you want to seem strong and not ask for help.
Speaker 1:I may know a guy.
Speaker 2:I think I might be talking to somebody like that, just a hunch. And I can tell you, you know, a super brief story. When we made this move and you've moved, if you've been in the military, you know what it's like to move.
Speaker 1:It sucks. We've lived on We two
Speaker 2:had been in this house for like twenty five years. So we had twenty five years of crap to move, decide, sort through. And so when we, we were a month in and the garage was full of stuff here at the ranch. And I remember I walked out there and I just told my husband I'm overwhelmed, which I never say. I could probably count on one hand the times I've said that.
Speaker 2:And I told him, I don't even know where to start. And he said the perfect thing. He said, Let's start right here with this box.
Speaker 1:Baby
Speaker 2:Baby steps. What is that expression? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? But I say that to illustrate that, I mean, is a generational thing to not ask for help. Now, sometimes I think the younger generations ask for too much help.
Speaker 2:It's
Speaker 1:like, Let's they figure it talk about that for a moment. On the one hand, and I think, you know, we have this almost conflict right, on the one hand yes we want you to figure shit out. I say that to my children at least once a week because I want them to not be dependent on me, want them to build the skills, not just to have a certain skill but to know how to build new skills and to figure shit out. But on the other hand we also want them to be able to talk to us if we're managers or parents or whatever and say look here's the three ways that I think to figure it out and what do you think? What would be the pros and cons?
Speaker 1:But we don't want them to come to us with stupid things where like it's obvious what the answer is just to like relegate or delegate responsibility to somebody else at some other time. Like, so there's a fine line. How do you how do you walk that narrow?
Speaker 2:That's such a great question, and it is a fine line, especially with kids, but it's the same when you're running a team. And what I say to that is that you answer a question with a question. That's a coaching technique, but it's a great leadership technique. Yep. So like, like the kid comes to you and says, you know, how, how do I, you know, how do I open this or whatever?
Speaker 2:Say, well, how do you think? What tool do you think you might need or whatever? And, but I was that leader back, especially I would say with my first company back in the 80s and 90s, they come to me with a problem. Sure, bring it to me. I'll it on my shoulders and let me tell you how to fix it.
Speaker 2:So ask a simple answer, answer a question with a question and keep doing it until they figure it out.
Speaker 1:I feel like, you know, as professionals in businesses, we use the Socratic method, but somehow at home with our kids, we allow ourselves to be a lesser version and just figure this shit out. Like we kind of, we're shorter. I need help here. What would you advise parents? Because you know we sometimes allow ourselves to do with our kids stuff that we know it's not the best version of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know even we admit it, we're like dude like I've had a long day like I need your help. How do you manage that as parents? What would be your advice? You've had, I think you mentioned three kids.
Speaker 2:Four. Four
Speaker 1:kids. Yeah. That's way one too many for me. What's your kind of advice from, you know, backwards?
Speaker 2:Looking backwards is so easy to do. I mean, now I have a boatload of grandkids, so, I'm trying it on them. That is to force yourself to be present because I mean, look, I know when the kids were, especially I had four teenagers at one time. So, you know, when they come to you and first of all, you might just answer, just give it to me. I'll do it because it's easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But if you're not present, so in other words, stop what you're doing. If I'm there, I'm cooking, at least I did this with the grandkids, look at them and listen. So that gives you a second to tamp down that impatience. If you truly don't have time, say, I don't have time now.
Speaker 2:Give me five minutes and then we'll get back to it. But if you can't be really present, that's when our, not so great selves come out, in my experience.
Speaker 1:I have a confession. I feel like I didn't understand what being present and listening was for forty years and I'm 43. So, so I feel like I may be starting to figuring it out now when forced to teach it to my kids ironically. But if there might be a whole bunch of people who are or were like me, what is the advice? What does it actually mean to be present?
Speaker 1:How do you actually build that skill, which sounds like an easy thing to do, but it really isn't?
Speaker 2:It's really hard. And in coaching, it's super important that you do that. And this is where I, it is a skill. You're right. And for me, first of all, it's the eye contact.
Speaker 2:If you're just on the phone and they're not in front of you, then, but it it's about maintaining eye contact, getting rid of the distractions, even though you're in a very, very busy place and listening, not saying anything, but really listening, watching their body language or listening to the tones. If you can do those three things, you know, eye contact, get rid of the noise and really listen. Yesterday, I went to a woman's conference and as a coach and I volunteered my time and we were doing laser coaching for twenty minutes in this huge room, there's 20 coaches right next to me. People are co and I'm like, okay, this is a, this is a test to, but you know what? Because I have that skill now.
Speaker 2:I looked at the person in front of me. I didn't hear anything going on. And so, yeah, it's really hard. Practice it though. And you're going to be the listening part.
Speaker 2:You're going to be so amazed what you really hear. And the nonverbal cues are equally as important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So here's what my son asked me and it's like a naive question that a six year old would ask and it's like, Daddy, what does it mean? You said I hear but don't listen. What does it mean to listen? So I was like, well, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1:But I kind of figured it out actually ironically through the process of doing this podcast and I said look you have to quiet all your senses because he's hyperactive so I was like you have to quiet your mind. He's like well daddy what does that mean? I said well you can't think about the next thing or about something else, you have to quiet your mind. So now you're not thinking about something else, you have to quiet your heart, you can't have these strong emotions because then again you're somewhere else, you're not here, you're not with me, you're not present, you're not listening and he's hyperactive says you have to quiet your body, you can't be fidgeting or at least you know you lessen it to as much as possible and you know when you quiet all your senses and you're truly like you said you're listening and you're looking and you're only doing this one thing then it's an experience honestly that until I figured out I had never, it's a whole new experience to engage with people.
Speaker 2:It is. Wow. That is such perfect advice. Not just for a six year old, but for everybody.
Speaker 1:For the 42 year old who figured it out last year.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, your senses, that's really encapsulates everything because most people, when they listen, they're thinking about what they're gonna say. That means they're not present just like you told your six year
Speaker 1:old. Okay.
Speaker 2:Quiet your mind. And the fidgety part, and that's very hard to do. And your heart. You're right. When there's a strong emotion, and that's why in coaching, they say you're nonjudgmental.
Speaker 2:If you're thinking, that guy's pissing me off or whatever, there's emotion and there's judgment. So you gave perfect advice.
Speaker 1:Here's I would I'll make this argument. Let me see if you agree. I get a lot of times the advice, oh, if you're angry or emotional, like delay, do it later, stop the conversation. I'm gonna give a different piece of advice, let me see if you agree and it's not always possible but here's what I told my son, I said naming the demon takes away all its power, right? So you know obviously that's a religious you know movie context but it works if you just name the feeling, if you acknowledge yourself what you're feeling, what's happening, like oh I'm angry.
Speaker 1:That's half the job, you're no longer as angry. If you just say to yourself, okay why am I angry? Now you're moving your mind from the context of emotion to the logical analysis and you're bringing the two together, oh I'm angry because they're not acknowledging you know this and then you can bring it back to the conversation and you can say something like hey what do you think about this activity, was it successful or not? So you can turn your emotion and you know small Ted Lasso reference here right curiosity not judgment right and when he's playing darts what a beautiful scene.
Speaker 2:It was.
Speaker 1:Turn your emotions into curiosity. Mean seemed to me like magic compared to, oh, if you're emotional, just walk away. Right?
Speaker 2:Or worse, stuff them down. Agree with you, Ari. And I think more for children, you know, as we get older, well, sometimes we just automatically stuff it down. But for a kid, absolutely when you name it, it takes away its power. It makes it less strong.
Speaker 2:So you are in, because you are in control of your emotions, whether you think you are or not. I mean, else can control them except for you. That's right. So that is, that's so wise. And I think you are a coach and you don't know it.
Speaker 2:Or maybe you are.
Speaker 1:You know what? I, I actually, the podcast is taught. I've got it. I've spoken to over 200 people so far through the podcast and I feel like this has been the journey of a lifetime, just speaking to amazing people like yourself. What is the role of gratitude in, in between couples, in the workplace, with children?
Speaker 1:How does this fit in?
Speaker 2:Wow. I gotta think about that is nobody has ever asked me that question before. What is the role? Well, it's communicating an emotion, first of all, just like you said. And I feel like expressing gratitude is validation So like, if I say thank you so much for having me on this podcast, I learned a lot.
Speaker 2:I'm validating, you know, your skill as a podcaster and your kindness and inviting me on. So I think it's, I actually think it's underrated. I think that people don't do it enough. I know so here's a real corny little thing that my family has been doing for decades is at Thanksgiving, before we eat, and we have all the food there. And I don't care how old you are.
Speaker 2:If you're two years old, if you can talk, we go around and say, what's one thing you're grateful for?
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:Kids even can do it.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful. So we're not Christian, but that kind of grace and concept of giving thanks before eating is brilliant. It's beautiful. I just absolutely love that. So I love that example.
Speaker 1:You said something incredibly interesting. You said it's about validation. Isn't that like one of the core things that everybody wants to be validated? Isn't that like such an important thing?
Speaker 2:Yes. And especially at work and in leadership, but you just listen to conversations or meetings and it doesn't take seconds to validate, you know, that, but what you said was really powerful. I validated you a whole bunch during this genuinely validated. It's a coaching technique for sure. But yeah, it's very, very undervalued and underdone, especially by leaders.
Speaker 1:And you said the word genuine. There is a difference between genuine appreciation, gratitude, validation, and kind of generic superficial or the one that my son, my six year old son is great at which we're trying to teach him to step away from it's the backhanded validation. He says to his sister I really thought you would fail doing that. You did a pretty good job. It's like Joshua, that's backhanded.
Speaker 1:Let's not, let's go So, towards the so, so what is, how do you give genuine validation appreciation? What's the
Speaker 2:formula to me is, just looking. I mean, you can, you can find something good to say about anything or anybody. You really can. But so I'm going to take it from a leadership perspective. When you're a leader, you need to know your people and what they're doing, not micromanaging them.
Speaker 2:But so there's a little win or you notice that they spoke, they said something good in a meeting, but it really gets back to listening
Speaker 1:all Thank your you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all your senses or notice that, you know, Ari, I noticed in the last meeting you were so quiet, but today, man, you said three things and then better validation or it's actually feedback then if you give an example, you know, like when you said, blah, blah, blah, that really hit home. But it's so easy to do. I think it's human nature. We just get so caught up in what we're going to say. You're thinking outside yourself, you're going to see a million things to validate people for.
Speaker 1:I had a manager. He used to call me a genius. And at the beginning, it really inflated my ego, but then I noticed he calls everybody a genius. Yeah. And he never gives any specific examples of anything that actually impressed him that he appreciated.
Speaker 1:So that was just to him. That was just how he talked and it was, I don't know, it was insincere. It wasn't genuine and I loved your what you said about well if you actually give the exam and you say hey when you did this it I was so grateful I saw how you grew I saw how you did this really well because you listened you figured out the problem and you gave a valuable comment that's a whole different way of validating and complimenting as opposed to great job guys like the smack on the back, which is just, it's completely meaningless in the long term. So I love that. Thank you so much for saying that.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. Believe it or not, we're out of time. Oh no. We have just one standard difficult question because it's personal. If you had to go back to the most difficult moment in your life, whether it's, you know, a year ago or ten years ago, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:Did you say the most difficult moment?
Speaker 1:Yes. Most difficult, complicated, frustrating, whatever you wanna choose.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh. There's so many. You know what? I would tell myself to slow down to it's partly being present, but to be present and slow down in that tough moment rather than just racing through it to to, you know, get rid of it or figure out what to do. Because I think I would have made better decisions in some of those tough moments.
Speaker 1:I love that. Sometimes you need to slow down to go fast.
Speaker 2:That's the Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:Cathryn, thank you so much for coming to the show today. This has been an absolute genuine pleasure.
Speaker 2:Same here. I loved every minute of it. And I learned from you. I don't know if you learned a thing from me, I certainly did from you. And I thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that. Thank you so much.