Focused - 233: I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up, with Kara Monroe

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

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Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast, but more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz. I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about yourself?
Starting point is 00:00:12 Great. I understand you're fresh back from craft and commerce. I hope you had a good time. I did indeed. It was amazing. You should totally come next year. Nick agrees. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:24 But yeah, it's a great conference. Anyone who makes anything, I think, it's definitely worth your time and your money. You don't have to be a quote unquote professional creator. If you're interested in the craft, hence the name, Craft and Commerce, I think it's a great conference with a lot of really cool people. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:45 But we're not here to talk about craft and commerce today as much as I'd love to. We're here to talk about focused productivity with a special guest. Welcome to the Focus podcast, Kara Monroe. Hey Mike, hey David. Glad to be here. I am thrilled to have you. So I have been in a lot of the same internet circles as you for a long time, Kara. But honestly, I was blown away when I saw that
Starting point is 00:01:15 you were starting to present on this idea of a facts of life book in Emsidion. Then I asked you to come do the presentation in the library, my private PCAM community, and it was fantastic. You did a great job, lots of great questions, sparked a lot of ideas. And I was like, we need to talk about this on the focus podcast. So thanks for being here.
Starting point is 00:01:38 For people who don't know you, you're not just the facts of life book lady. You are a coach, you're a consultant, you're a creative problem solver, you're a content creator. What did I miss? How would you define what you do to people who don't know who you are? I think that's a pretty good list. I think I'm one of those people who in the Internet age is trying to figure out who I am as I run my own business and try to create content online
Starting point is 00:02:04 and work with other people. So those are the four big categories I kind of divide my work into. Kara, Mike said you're a content creator, but for folks listening, where do you content create? Where can people go to learn about you? Well, nowhere as consistently as I would like, but you can find me on my personal website.
Starting point is 00:02:27 Um, it's I want to be me when I grow up. Uh, I picked that, uh, moniker a long time ago, and that's a good place to just find out where I'm publishing and writing things and, and putting things out into the world. That's good. Always good to have one place people can go to, to see what you're up to. It's easy to have things get spread out in the world today between social media and YouTube and the blog
Starting point is 00:02:51 and all that sort of stuff. So I try to keep things centralized there. Yeah, I mean, I think you're talking about how you're kind of finding your identity on the internet. I think one of the keys to that is to have a home. Definitely have a place where you can go. Because all of our journeys vary. Like we all talk about different stuff
Starting point is 00:03:11 and we're interested in different things, but you've got to have one place if people are interested in what you're up to that they can go to. Absolutely. And we're all trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up. Absolutely. You said it. Absolutely, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:03:25 You said it. What's your internal age, Mike, in your head? What is it, like mentally, where are you? Good question. I guess probably like 30. College wasn't that long ago, but I've been adulting for a while. I don't know. I feel like, so for me, the older I get adulting for a while. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:03:47 I feel like, so for me, the older, get the younger it goes. Cause I feel like I'm around 12 right now. So in my head at least, I think that's the person I'm trying to make happy. The 12 year old me. I just told somebody last week, I'm like, how is it? My friends have great have grandkids now I'm still 12 years old. I don't know how it is that a lot of my friends have grandkids Yeah, well that actually kind of leads into the topic of the facts of life book because When you give the presentation in the library You mentioned that it's it addresses a very specific
Starting point is 00:04:23 You mentioned that it's it addresses a very specific Problem but maybe not concern that people have because they tend to not think about that stuff until it's too late, but Sort of like an emergency preparedness kit, you know, what do people do in an emergency scenario? But that's not just what it is. So why don't you introduce us? How would you introduce the topic of a, a facts of life book and why does everybody need one? Yeah, I talk about it as life's most important information for life's most urgent moments. Um, and it's, it is, I'm going to,
Starting point is 00:04:56 I'm going to steal that idea, Mike, that it is a little bit of an emergency preparedness kit for the things that could go wrong. I, um, I'll use a simple example just to highlight it, but I teach for a couple of different universities online. And one of the things I always have my students do when they're starting classes is to put the phone number for the help desk into their phones. And the reason is is because you don't go look
Starting point is 00:05:20 for that number until you need it. And when you need it, you probably can't get to it because it's stuck inside of a system you can't log into. And so it's just teaching people how to think through things and to think about what they might need in order to be more successful in those moments to keep them from being crazy. So it's a collection of information that is custom to you and to your life and to how you work. And I call it a facts of life book. Mine is it's a couple of books and some digital stuff. So it's a little bit of different things. So it can take a lot of different forms. And there is obviously a focused angle to this because if you think about this stuff ahead of
Starting point is 00:06:01 time, then you don't constantly have to feel like you're pulled in a million different directions with the emergency scan modality as David Allen would define it. So when I heard you talk about this, it didn't directly tie to how most people think of productivity and focus, but it's kind of like pre-focus work that allows you to engage with what you need to do without worrying about all the loose ends that may be out there. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. I'll use an example of it. My dad is 85. We just celebrated his 85th birthday a couple of weeks ago, and about eight years ago, he suffered a stroke. And one of the things about that is that immediately, we had to sort of pick up all the different pieces of his life and make sure that they were all running
Starting point is 00:06:49 appropriately while he was in the hospital recovering from that stroke. But because of my facts of life book, and probably because I get some of it naturally from who he is, you know, I didn't have any trouble with having a power of attorney for him and having all of his medical insurance information and knowing where that was and knowing where all of his bank logins were so that I could take care of all of
Starting point is 00:07:13 his bills and things like that. And so it is that, that pre-scanning to figure out what am I going to need down the road to make sure that I have this. It's sort of like, um, always being packed for the right trip, I guess, is making sure you've got all those packing lists up to date. And where do you keep your Facts of Life book? I know that the answer to this question. I'm asking it for the listeners.
Starting point is 00:07:36 Well, there are actually two answers to this question. So I talk in like in the library, I talked a lot about keeping it in Obsidian. So I'm a big Obsidian user, love the tool, love how you can customize it to meet your needs. But I also now live with someone else. I lived on my own for years and a couple of years ago, my best friend moved back to Indianapolis where I'm located,
Starting point is 00:08:00 and we bought a house together. Now we have all of this shared house information and she's not gonna open Obsidian and she's not gonna look at it. So we have a physical binder that sits downstairs in a kitchen drawer and if she needs something for the house, it's in that binder. And it meant I had to change sort of how I kept information
Starting point is 00:08:21 but it keeps the house running smoothly. So I think you've got to adapt to who might need it and who might need to use the information effectively so that you're sharing that information with the other people that need to use it. Cause that's the other thing about a facts of life book. It's not just for you. It's for you and any of the other people
Starting point is 00:08:41 who might need to use that information. I think that's such a huge point. I struggle with the same thing, because like my wife, if I told her, we'll just go in the obsidian vault, she would look at me like I was a crazy man. So we put something similar together in one password, because one password has secure notes
Starting point is 00:08:58 and you can put attachments and things in it. But when we did that, I immediately got her using one Password on a daily basis. You know, we got a family plan, and so she's used to using it, and like in her vault is my One Password password, and in my vault is hers, and we both agree anything important needs to go in there,
Starting point is 00:09:20 and then I actually have her in LockMind so she knows. And you know, it's just like having, you have to use a technology that the people that may need to take care of you can be comfortable with. Absolutely. And I'm pretty tool agnostic, but in the facts of life, but course, one password is one of the tools that I use. And part of it is because David, I made the mistake when I set my best friend up with a password manager,
Starting point is 00:09:45 I didn't do the family plan for one password, and so she started using Bitwarden and getting her to change a piece of software. Yeah, rough. She doesn't wanna do it, and so I now, I put things into Bitwarden for her so that she has them. So I migrate two tools, she only has to migrate one. Yeah, you gotta go where they are though.
Starting point is 00:10:06 I mean, the techie has to go to the non-techie. Absolutely, absolutely. But I'm guessing there's more to this than what I probably have in one password. I'm curious, what are the things that you should put in your book of life? Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's really about thinking
Starting point is 00:10:24 about what your organizational structure is. So I'm single, no kids. I don't have a spouse, but I do have a housemate. So my situation is going to be different than other people. And I said no kids, but there is a dog. My Kona is very important to my life. So, you know, I have a section just for him. So you've got to sort of figure out what those sections are for you, but the main ones are usually going to be financial, medical stuff is a big deal,
Starting point is 00:10:53 making sure you've got all of that. If you're like all of us and you run your own business, making sure you know where all your business information is, passwords and access information. I'm also a big advocate of keeping something I call the life timeline. And like if you've ever had that conversation with somebody of, well, when did we go on that trip
Starting point is 00:11:14 to, David, I know you're a big Disney fan as am I. So we're always trying to remember, okay, what year was this cruise? What year did we go to the med? What year did we go to Northern Europe on Disney cruise line? And so I like to keep all of that kind of stuff in a lifetime line. And the great thing about that is
Starting point is 00:11:33 I just keep mine in Google Sheets, so it's very simple, but I can then filter it. I've got these little tabs or columns on it that I add little Xs to if it's a trip or if it's for business or if it's for business or if it's for personal or if it's an award or something. And so I can quickly like customize a resume using that and those sorts of things.
Starting point is 00:11:53 So that's a big tool that I think everybody else should keep as well. I like that lifetime line idea. What is the benefit that that gives you other than being a little bit nostalgic and being able to look back and remember the good times that gives you, other than being a little bit nostalgic and being able to look back and remember the good times that you had. Yeah, I mean, it really is just that.
Starting point is 00:12:13 I keep mining Google Sheets. I'm a big Google Drive user, so I can also link out to my folders of photos and things right from the Google Sheet. So if I'm navigating through that, I can quickly scan every trip I've taken and look at all the photos really fast and things like that. So it's a little bit of that tool for Play and Whimsy too,
Starting point is 00:12:31 to just have a moment of peace and joy in the hectic world. But I mostly use it for going back and looking at things or compiling documents of timelines and those sorts of things. So this is kind of trending into information management territory. And I'm guessing that you have a very specific approach to how you manage the information in your life. It's not just, well, there's information everywhere and I want to have all these different buckets and I like linking things together. So I'm going to do that.
Starting point is 00:13:09 Like how do you apply focus to your organizational structure? Yeah. So for me, this has evolved a lot over time. I have words and phrases that, that are like big bucket categories for me about how things work. So I've got, they largely though fall out around the different dimensions of wellness. So financial, spiritual, emotional, physical, occupational, intellectual, I'm missing a couple, but you can Google dimensions of wellness and they'll all come up.
Starting point is 00:13:47 And so I've got just big buckets of information around those and then within each of those, I subdivide things. So I'm very top down mentally, organizationally, but I think you've got to figure out what works for you and decide if you're bottom up or top down, but I'm definitely a, well, what's the structure that I could apply here
Starting point is 00:14:07 kind of person. So mine has evolved really organically over time into sort of that kind of a structure. That is a very important point. You have to figure out what works for you. That's why I'm generally not a fan of the prescribed organizational structures. I wrote about this recently and
Starting point is 00:14:28 the big epiphany I had was when it comes to how you organize information you really have to figure out how your brain wants to connect these things. It's kind of like where on college campuses they have those desire paths where the students just walk across the lawn and the smart colleges and universities wait for those to appear and then they pave them as opposed to trying to force people down prescribed routes. And I feel like every time I've tried to just adopt some system that somebody has prescribed, I end up rebelling against it after a couple of weeks,
Starting point is 00:15:01 chucking the whole thing and being like, this doesn't work, which also isn't fair. You know, there are elements of it probably that could be applied. And it took me a long time to figure out that, yeah, I really have to craft my own system and I can steal a bit from here and a bit from there. But you kind of have to create a structure that facilitates the way that your brain wants to work. Yeah, and I find this, and I know David, you're a big proponent of roles-based productivity and roles-based thinking. I find that a lot of the time,
Starting point is 00:15:33 my structure evolves around the different roles that I have too. So in my Google Drive and in Obsidian, I have folders for each of those roles and the projects related to those get thrown into them because that's another big way, sort of big chunk of information about how my brain organizes stuff.
Starting point is 00:15:51 And you do, you've got to figure out what works best for you. Yeah, I mean, the roles work for me because they can be universal across all platforms, I guess, you know, like you can have folders in your task manager or calendars or notes folders and then everything, you know, where it goes. The other thing I like about the roles is that if something shows up that doesn't fit in one of those roles, that's like gives you extra
Starting point is 00:16:17 alarm bells that maybe you're getting into territory you don't want to be in. So it has an advantage for that as well. Absolutely. How do the roles fit into the dimensions of wellness that you described? So one of them is that I wanna have roles for each dimension of wellness. So like spirituality is a good one for me.
Starting point is 00:16:41 I wanna be a good member of my church. I want to be a continuous learner about faith and Christianity. Financial wellness is another one. I want to manage my personal finances really well and to make sure that I'm doing that well. And I think for me, even though I hold an MBA, I still hate managing my own personal finances. So I've had to find ways to make that fun and interesting for me. Um,
Starting point is 00:17:12 and so making sure that I've got roles around each of those buckets is helpful for me too. Is there a overlap between the roles or do they typically just align with one dimension of wellness? Uh, it's a good question. I think intellectual wellness, I would do nothing but read books if I could find a way to get paid for that.
Starting point is 00:17:34 So intellectual wellness is always a really easy one for me to fill out. So there's always a learning dimension to all of my roles that I have. So I think there's overlap there, but I try to keep things very specific to their role and not let them creep out into other areas when I can. And then how did you make the managing finances part fun? Yeah, so I have a monthly financial date with myself. Having been somebody who's lived on my own for years, I had to realize, okay, you got to do something fun.
Starting point is 00:18:12 So I grab a snack and go someplace cool and I go someplace different in the house. I don't do this at my desk or I'll even go to a coffee shop. I'll plan it for one of my coffee shop days during the week since I worked from home. I have this monthly financial date and I have a whole script and obsidian of all the different things that I do, and I'm always looking for ways to automate parts of that. I've got a lot of Hazel automations that move things to folders for me, and I haven't quite set up shortcuts for that yet.
Starting point is 00:18:43 I keep thinking there's gotta be a way to make shortcuts work for me in making this more fun, but I'm always trying to tweak it too to make it a little more fun. Well, if you just wait for September, there's some very good automation shortcuts coming to you in the new operating system, so just hold off, yeah. Awesome, good.
Starting point is 00:19:03 I'm excited about that. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by incognito Go to incognito.com slash focused take your personal data back use code focused to get 60% off an annual plan Did you know data brokers can collect aggregate aggregate, and sell personal information including names, social security numbers, login credentials, and more? What can lead to annoying spam and more serious issues like identity theft? Thankfully, you can use Incogni. They reach out to data brokers on your behalf, request your personal data removal, and deal
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Starting point is 00:20:57 That URL is incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I dot com slash focused. Take your personal data back with Incogni and use the code FOCUS to get 60% off your annual plan. That URL one last time, incogni.com slash focused. And our thanks to Incogni for their support of the FOCUS podcast and Olive Relay. So one of the things that you do, Kara, is you do coaching and looking at the different types of coaching that you do, there was one that stood out to me in particular about creative problem solving.
Starting point is 00:21:35 I'd love to unpack this further. How do you go about coaching people to solve their problems creatively. Yeah, it's it's really about teaching a process for innovative thinking. I think a lot of people think to be creative or to be innovative, you've got to just be those things. You can't actually follow a process and learn a methodology that does that. But the truth is you actually can learn a methodology for innovation. I follow it generally a sort of a three step process. You got to get clear on what the problem is before you try to solve it. Too many of us jump right into solving
Starting point is 00:22:12 and then we realize, oh, I wasn't even solving for the right thing. And then you've got to ideate some solutions to that problem, sort of figure out, okay, what are the different ways I could solve it? This is the way that jumps into my head, but what are those? And then putting that into action
Starting point is 00:22:26 and making sure that you're following up to get that done if it's not just a like replace the light bulb kind of problem, but something bigger than that. Cool, so how do you actually work with a client to do that? And the reason I'm asking that question, I don't know how to ask it any better, I'm sorry, but it occurs to me that there's probably quite a few people who come to you saying, I need your help solving this particular problem.
Starting point is 00:22:48 And that's actually not the problem that they should be solving. And you have some sort of process for getting them back on track. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, it starts with a lot of listening. So I'll, I'll just ask them a lot of questions to try to get clear on, on what the issue is that they're solving. And so it's really about, you know, looking at what have you tried before? What isn't working? What do you want to know but don't know?
Starting point is 00:23:15 That's always a good question to ask people because it gets them thinking about the things they might not be thinking about. So I would talk with the person, do a lot of listening, asking them some questions about what do they know, what do they not know about the problem but want to know, what have they tried before. And then we try to visualize the problem in some way. So there are a lot of different techniques for this. My favorite one is something called a why what's stopping analysis. So you sort of put the problem you're solving for in the middle.
Starting point is 00:23:47 You ask why do you want to solve it? That sort of builds the map up. And then you ask what's stopping you from solving it. That sort of builds the map down. And you can get a visual picture of your problem. And I think that's so, it's hard for people at first to do, but then it's so eye opening when they start to see, first to do, but then it's so eye-opening when they start to see, first of all, how multi-pronged this challenge is that they're facing.
Starting point is 00:24:10 It gives them a little more assurance that, hey, this isn't easy. There's a reason I haven't solved this yet. And so it gives them a little bit of self-confidence boost, but it also lets them see sort of how all those little tendrils are related to each other. If you're using it on an individual basis or on a corporate basis, because I work with both, it can give you a much better understanding of, well, which one of these things do I solve to have the most advantage long-term for me?
Starting point is 00:24:41 Is this like a mind map then with the thing in the middle and then why is like a bunch of nodes that go up and then what's stopping you is a bunch of nodes that go down? Okay. Yep, that's exactly what it is. Cool. Do you have an example maybe of, we have to go in depth with this, but just like a sample problem that you've solved and then like examples of why, examples of what's stopping someone from doing that?
Starting point is 00:25:09 Yeah, when we teach this in a workshop, we always talk about maintaining a healthy weight or being healthier. There are lots of easy whys. I wanna live longer. I wanna see my grandkids grow up. I wanna see my kids grow up. I wanna be able to take more active vacations.
Starting point is 00:25:25 There are loads and loads of whys and you can really personalize it to you. And then the what's stopping is, well, you know, I don't have a workout that I like, or I am not sticking to my workout, or I don't eat in a healthy manner. And so you can really dig into those and sort of figure out which one's going to give you the most leverage point to really dig into that problem and solve it. How deep do you go with that? I mean, talking about why is the thing that comes to mind is like the five whys where you just keep asking why five times and then eventually you get to the core of the issue.
Starting point is 00:25:58 So how detailed is this mind map when you're done? You do the best you can with the time you have. I mean, I can do this process just sitting with you in a restaurant for 20 minutes and we can probably do a pretty good job of figuring out an action you can take to try, or we can fill a wall with these maps and have 20 people working on it
Starting point is 00:26:23 in a strategic planning session and work on it and go pretty deep. I mean, we use this when we're working on strategic planning or project development, things like that. We'll use it to get all the way down to the actual tactic level. So it can go pretty deep if you need it to or wanted to. You know, Mike had made a point
Starting point is 00:26:43 and you were talking about how you teach people to creatively solve problems. And something that's been on my mind lately is the number of skills like that where people have this misconception that they're just bad at it and it's not learnable. Public speaking is the classic one, right? Everyone's like, well, I'm just not a good public speaker.
Starting point is 00:27:05 Well, how you get better at it is you do it, Toastmasters, whatever. But I do feel like for a lot of coaching, part of the job is to make yourself obsolete, right? To teach them these skills. 100%. And I think that's always something you find from the best coaches.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Like, how do you get them over the hump of saying, not only am I going to show you how to creatively solve problems, when you walk out of this room, you're going to be a creative problem solver, you know? Yeah. So we start coaching sessions or coaching relationships with a goal plan and we decide when is it that we're going to end this relationship. So we, to use what Steve and Kavi, we begin with the end in mind.
Starting point is 00:27:48 What's gonna be different for you when we're at a point where you're ready to say we're done? And I do, as Mike mentioned, I do a lot of different kinds of coaching. I do financial coaching, I do career coaching. Career coaching's probably the easiest one to understand. So in career coaching, it's usually about, well, I want to get a promotion or I want to get an excellent evaluation next year or whatever that is.
Starting point is 00:28:12 And so we're beginning with that aim in mind. And we're saying, well, and I'll talk about something I know Mike is sort of adamant about that goals are not always the way to go. But for coaching relationships, you've got to have an end in mind to start with that and then help enable that person to get there. Because coaching is about teaching new tools that somebody hasn't seen.
Starting point is 00:28:39 I mean, one of my best skills is I am full of crazy tools that you can use for all sorts of things. One of my best skills is I am full of crazy tools that you can use for all sorts of things. So that's one of my biggest skills. I can bring those tools, but I can't use them for you. You've got to actually apply them and decide that what works for you and what doesn't. So my job is just keep giving you the tools until you find the one that actually clicks for you
Starting point is 00:29:03 so that we can end that part of our relationship together. When can you tell that it clicked? When can you, at what point do you offer a tool up and you see the lights go on? I mean, what's your indicator? Yeah, I just had this with a client a couple of days ago, that's why I'm smiling.
Starting point is 00:29:22 We'll end a session with a tool and they'll be like, yeah, I'm gonna use that. And I'll either get a text a couple of days ago, that's why I'm smiling, will end a session with a tool and they'll be like, yeah, I'm gonna use that. And I'll either get a text a couple of days later that's like, oh my gosh, this is life changing. I cannot believe I didn't know about this until now. Or they'll log into the next session if we're meeting weekly and they've just got this huge smile on their face
Starting point is 00:29:39 and you can just sort of see like their shoulders are down, they're relaxed and they're like, I cannot believe what a difference that has made. Now then we always have to have the conversation about, okay, this might not keep working forever. So we gotta always come back to knowing that this is the problem, and we might have to try a different solution,
Starting point is 00:29:56 but also let's keep using it as long as we can. Yeah, and the other slice of that that I see is people who just never want to be satisfied with one because it's just so fun to try and switch to new ones. And it's like, I am definitely a shiny new object person. Yeah, absolutely. You know, on that thing I was saying earlier about like learnable skills, I was going down this rabbit hole in my own thoughts recently,
Starting point is 00:30:19 and I feel like almost everything is learnable, even like when you bring it up to like emotions, like empathy and is learnable. Even when you bring it up to emotions like empathy and things like that, I feel like there's very few things in life that you are just not good at. It's like when someone says that, I always feel like it's a bit of a cop out. It's like, well, you don't wanna make it a priority
Starting point is 00:30:38 to get good at it. It doesn't mean you're not capable of being good at it. Yeah, David, I agree completely. I mean, if we go capable of being good at it. Yeah. David, I agree completely. I mean, if we go back to those four roles, coach, consultant, creative, problem solver, content creator, the through line of those is I'm an educator. At the end of the day, my aim is to help you learn something.
Starting point is 00:30:57 And I'll use an example. Can I do a podcast crossover? I'll do a bookworm as an example here for a second. You know, I am blessed with more self-confidence than any person should actually be allowed to have. So I've always struggled with how do I teach self-confidence to other people? Um, and, uh, Nate or, um, sorry, uh, Mike and Corey read, uh, what is it? Confident Mind?
Starting point is 00:31:25 Is that the book you just finished a couple weeks ago? Yeah, Dr. Nate Zinser. Yep. Dr. Nate Zinser. And I was like, oh, these are some tools you could use to teach the confident mind and to teach self-confidence. And so if you want to learn something, you can learn it. You just got to go find the book or the teacher
Starting point is 00:31:41 or whatever to do that. So I agree with you completely that it's possible to teach anything. I've got a story about that from a craft and commerce. Actually. There was a guy there who was speaking. His name is Tristan de Montebello. I think he's one of the guys behind the ultra speaking program, which is like the online version of toast masters. But the way that he got into it was he reached out to
Starting point is 00:32:08 think it was Scott Young who wrote the book ultra learning and I guess spoiler alert. I wasn't a huge fan of of that Book just because I don't feel the need to master something really really fast But he reached out to him via cold email and he shared the whole story on stage about how he wanted to be the guinea pig. He wanted to learn something. And he's like, okay, well, let's pick a topic. And they happen to pick public speaking. And so he went from nothing to being in the finals for the world championship of public speaking. And that's turned into this big career. And watching him do it on stage was fascinating. You could tell that he knew what he was doing
Starting point is 00:32:50 and he had practiced this stuff. In fact, at one point there was an interactive part of the keynote where someone came out on stage and they had this exercise they do. I'm blanking on the name now, but basically you hold your hand at a certain level and then as the person who is directing, they raise their hand, the person who's speaking has to get more animated, more excited. She's jumping up and down
Starting point is 00:33:13 when she's got it like way up to her head and then all the way down by her feet. He's real just slow and methodical and we had a group that tried to do that sort of thing live. And it was of course uncomfortable. I think that's the big takeaway is anytime you're going to try to learn something, you have to be willing to be made uncomfortable. But yeah, you can learn anything. And in the case of Tristan de Montebello, it might just completely change your life. Do you ever see the Seinfeld bit on public speaking? It's a kind of a famous joke he did about how they did a study and people are so afraid of public speaking, they're more afraid of it than death.
Starting point is 00:33:54 So if you go to a funeral, the guy speaking is actually in worse shape than the guy in the box. I thought it was funny. That is funny. Yeah. Uh, I'm curious about the, the, the way that you work with people as coaching clients, um, you mentioned that there's a, there's a point where you want to not be needed as a coach anymore. I think that's pretty cool and pretty refreshing.
Starting point is 00:34:21 Uh, is that normal in the coaching industry? It seems to me, maybe it's just my my experiences that people want you to sign up and then you're going to continually get coaching until the end of time. Yeah, I think I'm different in that way. And I think it's because I am an educator first, you know, my my goal is to see you learn something and move forward. It doesn't mean our relationship ends. In fact, I have a couple of clients that are in job searches right now, because I work predominantly in higher education. So the higher education landscape's
Starting point is 00:34:54 a little cranky at the moment. And so I'm working with a couple of them, helping them find jobs, but that's not coaching. That's just the friendship relationship. I'll still look at a resume or I'll use my network to help somebody. That's what the relationship turns into. But I know that the skills that I've taught them, they're doing those skills and they might need another coach. So I have folks that do different things than I do that I can refer them to. But
Starting point is 00:35:23 my aim is for our professional relationship to come to a close. So how invested do you become then because you can't do the work for someone as a coach? And I imagine there are quite a few people who don't give you the immediate text message or join the next session. When you don't get those visual cues
Starting point is 00:35:44 that something has relieved some pressure, you know, how do you handle people who just won't do the thing? You know, sometimes it's just, here's the package. You know, you bought six coaching sessions or you bought, you know, 12 coaching sessions and we'll go until they're done. And I hope you got something out of it.
Starting point is 00:35:59 But if you didn't, at the end of the day, I'm pretty upfront with people when we started coaching environment, you have to want wanna do the work. If this isn't something you wanna invest time in right now and actually do the hard stuff, then don't waste your money on it. Because that's one of my other principles,
Starting point is 00:36:12 I wanna actually add value to your life. Don't spend money on this experience if you're not gonna actually do the work. I see too many folks on the internet selling stuff without actually wanting to see growth in people because they want them to keep coming back and keep re-buying their product rather than actually doing the work.
Starting point is 00:36:34 And I don't wanna be that. Well, I can tell you from personal experience, the hard part for me with coaching, like I've done it a couple times and had great success with it. I've done it a couple other times and I get so invested in helping someone get the outcome that it hurts me when they won't do it. And it's like,
Starting point is 00:36:51 I don't really want to put myself out there in that way, shape or form. If I create a course and you don't go through it and I don't hear from you, that's one thing. But when we have six coaching calls and I could tell from the first one that you're not really there, you're not going to get the result that you're after. And ultimately, I guess the voice in my head is telling me they're going to blame me and my ineffectiveness as a coach. It's probably why I'm afraid to step out there and do it. But yeah, it isn't for everybody. I mean, I think if you're going to get really emotionally invested in that solution, I don't think it's the right step for you.
Starting point is 00:37:26 Cause ultimately that person does have to do the work. And if they're not willing to do it, there's nothing you can do about that. Sure. Do you ever consider like vetting the coaching clients? I mean, when I used to give saxophone lessons ages ago, and I always said the first lesson was a trial for both of us. And you could tell after the first one if they actually wanted to get improved
Starting point is 00:37:49 and they were gonna practice and do it. I think especially for people of your caliber, the two of you, you could just say, look, let's do a first call and then decide if it's the right fit in that. Yeah, I do that all the time, David. So I have two primary ways folks can engage with me. One is just a free 30 minute call
Starting point is 00:38:11 and we'll just see if we're a good fit for each other. And sometimes, you know, I don't take on the client because I'm like, oh, I, you know, I can't help you with this. The other one is I do some free office hours through my community. And if you come into office hours and we start to have a good conversation,
Starting point is 00:38:26 I'll mention coaching to you if I think that'll be valuable for you. And if not, I'll just say, hey, just keep coming to office hours. You may have just two or three one-off questions. That's fine. I offer office hours to clean up the edges of things when folks need that.
Starting point is 00:38:38 I used to do with new legal clients, the first meeting free. I wouldn't charge for a first consultation. And one of my favorite questions would be, what is the end zone to you at the end of this engagement? And I'm like, when I'm done, what do you want to have accomplished? I'll never forget one guy said to me, said,
Starting point is 00:38:58 it was a business dispute between him and his partner. And he said, I want to hurt him so bad that his kids can't go to college. And I said, well, it's been nice getting to know you. But I don't think we're gonna be a good fit. Absolutely, absolutely. It's like people say stuff like that. And you're like, if you give them the opportunity,
Starting point is 00:39:20 you'll be able to find the ones that aren't the right fit that way. Yeah, I wanna fire the client before they actually become a client. So, um, if, if that's the thing we find the other one, when I'm asking, I just sort of asked what your goal for this outcome, if they can't, if they can't say what that is, I'm like, let's do this again in three months, you know, go think about what it is you want to get out of this, but we're not going to go into this without an actual goal.
Starting point is 00:39:44 So who is the person who hasn't thought about coaching, but coaching would be right for? Who should be thinking about this as an option? That's a great question. I think of coaching a little bit like I think of a part of your mental health entourage. So if you have a therapist, you might not need a coach or maybe you do.
Starting point is 00:40:16 You might need more people than that. I think for most people, if you want to intensely, if you want to get intensely better at something pretty quickly and you want some expert knowledge on it quickly, coaching is right for you. Because I think coaching is also more affordable than a lot of people think it is. You know, I work with a whole swath of coaches in terms of what they charge and you know, for better or worse, some people want a coach that just charges more than I do. They want that stature and that, you know, whatever, or, you know, maybe you can afford my rate.
Starting point is 00:40:48 I've got coaches that charge less than I do and they just do things a little bit differently. So I also try to keep a good network of people to work with. You can make coaching affordable for you. Carol, I always like to wind up the show talking about shiny new objects and what we're reading. What's new and shiny on your desk these days? Well, it's not new, but I am using it better
Starting point is 00:41:10 than I have been, which is my Stream Deck. In fact, last night I was playing around with it and I created a whole profile specific around music. So now I can get all my playlists just with the press of a button and I can increase the volume and decrease the volume. So I'm loving my Stream Deck more. And I've also got shortcuts for playing all those.
Starting point is 00:41:30 So I've added them to my phone too. So sort of a dual purpose. Yeah, Stream Deck is so nice once you get it set up. I mean, the fact that the buttons can put a graphical image on them, it just makes it so easy to do things like set up your playlist. There's the, I have a Miles Davis button.
Starting point is 00:41:47 In case of emergency, I press that and kind of blue immediately comes out and my blood pressure goes down. And it's nice having those kinds of things. I've been doing the same thing. I would say that's my shiny object lately as well as my stream deck, because I've been re-figuring it all out. I've got all of my setups now almost programmed in, and I'm using Keyboard Maestro to do that.
Starting point is 00:42:07 So I can push a button and it puts like everything I need to write a blog post on the screen, you know, the research page, the drafts page, you know, all that stuff just shows up. And then it's kind of nice to have that. And you could trigger all that with keyboard shortcut as well, but I think there's something very satisfying about just pushing that button and then like all right. It's go time, you know What about you Mike?
Starting point is 00:42:32 so I recently took a trip and I bought before I got on the airplane and Airfly Pro By 12 South. I don't know how I never heard about this before, but it's amazing. It's this little dongle that you plug into the headphone jack of the entertainment center in the seat back in front of you, and then you can pair that with your Bluetooth headphones so you don't have to use the crappy wired ones that Delta gives you on long flights. It was a little bit finicky to set up, but once I got things paired it worked flawlessly. There's two different modes
Starting point is 00:43:19 with the one that I have so you can actually use it to send you know from the seat back to your Bluetooth headphones, so you can actually use it to send, you know, from the seat back to your Bluetooth headphones, but you can switch it too and you can actually send like if you wanted to plug it into your car, for example, and the the Ox Jack, you could send from your phone to the dongle if your car doesn't have Bluetooth, I guess. But yeah, so it receives and transmits. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. It is a little switch so you can choose which which mode.
Starting point is 00:43:50 It's not obvious in the manual does a pretty pretty poor job of explaining which one is which. So when I first opened it up and I was trying to mess around, just the power button. Oh, shoot. Which way was that actually? But we got it working. It was I think like 30, 40 bucks. And yeah, now I don't have to use those, those, uh, little headphones in a bag that they give you. Well, Mike, why don't you continue the trend and tell us what you're reading.
Starting point is 00:44:19 All right. So, um, I, it's actually the same book that I mentioned last time, but I'm just about finished with it and that is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. We mentioned this in the last episode with Derek Sivers and it's basically what I expected, but also way better than I thought, if that makes any sense. You know how most productivity books are a core idea extrapolated to a bunch of pages and then you feel like, well, that could have been a blog post.
Starting point is 00:44:52 Well, Mel Robbins kind of does that. Like you could read the first 20 pages and get the blinkest version of the idea. However, the book is like 300 pages and I don't think that a single one of them is wasted. It's it's really really good She does a great job of kind of explaining the different scenarios that you could You could use the principle which the the gist of it is people are going to Do bad things they're going to react negatively and you should just let them You know, you can't control what happens. And as a recovering people, pleaser, that was something I needed to hear.
Starting point is 00:45:30 But then the other half of the equation is let me, so let them and let me, and then let me is really just about how I'm going to respond to that. You know, you can, you can get upset and you can fly off the handle and I don't have to, uh, I, I really shouldn't be trying to stop you from doing that but then maybe my response is that I recognize that this is not an accurate reflection
Starting point is 00:45:55 of your judgment of me as my character. It's just emotional response to something that I did or maybe it's something that like this relationship really isn't working anymore and we should agree to go separate ways but I don't know I feel like I'm doing a poor job of explaining this but I'm trying to because I feel like this has already changed my life. There have been several times even in just like the last couple days as I'm not even done with the book yet where I'm like oh yeah just let them you know and I'm not even done with the book yet, where I'm like, oh yeah, just let them, you know,
Starting point is 00:46:25 and I don't, I can feel the blood pressure rising. It's like, okay, it's not that big a deal. I mean, you know, just like the, the, the idea of personal agency that you control your actions, but not other people's, it's such a fundamental thing. And I feel like if this is the way that you need to get that message, then read that book, you know, absolutely. I'm going back to an oldie, but a goodie. My summer after I finished high school, my family member gave me a copy of
Starting point is 00:47:00 Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which I read heading into college. And I recently heard Cal Newport talk about, I listened to his podcast a few weeks ago, and he had mentioned about Walden being influential on him. And that reminded me of reading that book as a kid. And I'm getting ready to head out of town on vacation and I bought the, Michael B. Happy, I bought the actual book and I'm going to reread Walden almost 40 years later. I'm really looking forward to it. Nice.
Starting point is 00:47:30 Very cool. What about you, Kara? What are you reading? It's always a hard question to answer because I'm never reading just one thing. I'm always reading five or six different books at once. But the one I'm slow reading right now is 48 Laws of Power. I'm late to that game.
Starting point is 00:47:44 And I think that that book could be advantageous to me to read. So I've started it. I'm just in the first couple of chapters. So. You know, he gets a bum rap, I think. Everybody's like, because, you know, Robert Green wrote like 48 Laws of Power and the Art of Seduction and he wrote books that sound very manipulative by the titles. But I've read several of them.
Starting point is 00:48:10 They don't read that way like that. They read to me almost like, this is the kinds of things people do and you should be aware of it more than this is how you use this stuff to take advantage of people. I feel like, I've talked to a couple people who are down on him and I feel like you need to read
Starting point is 00:48:26 his book, because I don't think he's saying what you think he's saying. Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see it. I did a little bit of research just before I picked the book and definitely think that there's some, there's a lot of benefit to understanding how other people are and that I can choose, I can choose a different path, but I also have to be aware of what they're doing. And you be aware of it and then you let them,
Starting point is 00:48:48 right Mike? Exactly. Yeah, I think the Robert Green, the 48 laws of power. So I wasn't a huge fan, but I agree with your point, David. I think the thing that it does is with all the historical examples that he shares in that book, it makes it easy for people to connect the dots. You kind of have to fight against that, which is good book reading 101 in my opinion. Speaking of which, we've got a section in our outline called Kara's reading workflow. You know we cannot resist a good reading workflow on the show, Kara. I don't know if mine is good or not, but I am excited to dive into it with you. Yeah, deep focus listeners.
Starting point is 00:49:37 You're going to hear me ask Kara about how in the world she reads five or six books at the same time. Yeah. Kara, one last time, tell folks where can they go to find out about you, maybe get some coaching or follow the stuff you're up to. Absolutely, I am on the web at IwannabeMeWhenIGrowUp.com.
Starting point is 00:50:00 We'll put a link for that in the show notes. Thank you to our sponsor and Cogni, we are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. If you'd like to sign up for Deep Focus, the ad free extended version of the show, you can do it right there. Today we're gonna be talking about Kara's reading workflow
Starting point is 00:50:15 and Deep Focus. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.

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