Focused - 259: Nobody's Perfect, with Kathy Campbell

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

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 are you?

Excellent. And we've got a guest today. The Internet's favorite unicorn, Kathy Campbell. That's me. And if I'm not your favorite unicorn, well, that hopefully will change today. If you're watching the YouTube, by the way, I guess this is a good time to remind folks that we do put the show on YouTube. on. Kathy has the most amazing set of headphones that are unicorn themed, but I'm not going to tell you any more than that. Yeah. Go watch it. All right. So for people who are not familiar with you, what you do, Kathy, give us the short version. What are the many hats you wear on the internet? Yeah. I, so my main thing is I am a unicorn. I run and own the unicorn sidekick.

which is an online business manager agency where we help small businesses kind of get their stuff together. So whether that's supporting a wide range of things that we help with. And the biggest thing is just letting the business owner get back to what they started the business for. Most of the time we work with solopreneurs or sometimes partnerships and just kind of help build a foundation for a business. to get the best done that you can.

So you can do what you love and not have to worry about the boring business stuff. Nice. And then I also am a podcaster. I podcast right here on Relay. I do Conduit as well as Roboism. And Conduit is a show about productivity that y'all might like. It has turned into more of an accountability podcast as well. We have an incredible community of, we call them conductors, and we hold people to accountability on kind of what they're going to work on for the next two weeks.

And then Roboism is a podcast about robots and tech and isms, but mostly robots with my friend Alex Cox. And then I also am the CEO of Dragon Mount, which is the oldest Wheel of Time community on the internet. And The Wheel of Time is a book series written by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson that came out in the 90s. And it has been a really solid part of my life and career. And I'm really honored to kind of have taken up this mantle. And then I also am a photographer. I'm a dance photographer mainly. And this became a hobby that I was like, how can I fund my expensive gear purchases?

And I was like, cool, I'll charge for it. And so I get to kind of do that as well. I, you know, I've known you for years, Kathy. I didn't realize the whole dragon mound thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a secret nerdum thing that I'm learning is a bigger than I thought because I was like, oh, people don't want to hear about this. And then I was like, oh, wait, people don't know about it if I don't tell them.

So I'm working on that. I read them. You know, you got to a certain point in those books where you got so far, you had to finish it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there are 14 books and a novella for anyone that doesn't know. And the author died between book 11 and 12. And so it was taken up by Brandon Sanderson to finish. And if you don't know who Brandon Sanderson is.

Whole other conversation. A whole other conversation. Yeah, exactly. Mike, do you know who Brandon Sanderson? Anderson is. I think you might not know who he is. I know who he is. But I have not read the books. That's okay. I just read another Brandon Sanderson book recently. It was about a native, like, Pacific Islander. I also the Inberdark. And it was fantastic. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a great one. Yeah. Anyway, that's cool. But we'll have to talk about that offline sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that'll be the deep focus topic.

Yeah, like I need to know what you think of that TV show. So maybe. Oh, I have thoughts. Yeah, I bet you do. Yeah. But the reason we got you here is because not only are you self-employed, you also work with a lot of self-employed people. And I think that a lot of the challenges we talk about this on this show, like land squarely

in that wheelhouse. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree. I'm really in a unique position where I work with so many different industries. and different people from all walks of life and all experiences and something that I've learned. So I've been doing this for more than 15 years now.

Something that I've learned is that there are always specifics for an industry. So for example, a lawyer versus an accountant is going to have different regulations and different licensing and all of that stuff. But ultimately, what it comes down to is the foundational stuff of running a business is all the same. There are minor tweaks and the biggest piece that the biggest variable is going to be the person that's running it or people running it and learning what works best for each of their brains and how they produce what they produce. And I really like the fact that I get to work with so many different business owners that run so many different businesses. And so every day is different. Every hour of my week is different.

It's funny, anytime I have to make an appointment, they're always like, what time of day or what day of the week works best for you? And I was like, it literally changes every day. I cannot tell you, oh, yeah, every Wednesday I am available at this time because that's not true. So it's always really fun, though. And it works with my ADHD brain really well because I'm able to context switch very quickly. So the concept of like deep work really is very rare in what I do every day. And that is how my brain works best. And so I'm really lucky that I get to do what works well for my brain.

You're playing to your strengths. But I guess the question is, how did you get to the position where you can do that? Yeah. It's an interesting journey for sure. So when I started, I was committing time theft at my job. I had come back for maternity leave and they're like, here, we'll just have you on the front desk before you go on maternity leave. And then when you come back, you can, you know, we'll put you back. I was a project manager for a software company.

And a year later, I was still at the front desk and I was like, this is boring. What I, like, I'm literally sitting at a desk where we get maybe two visitors a week and only a handful of phone calls. What can I do to not like get in trouble? because I had finished all my work, you know, by Monday at noon. Okay, now what am I going to do? So I went on the internet and blogs were a really big thing. And I, RIP, Google Reader, may live forever in our memories. But it was easy to access and find all these people.

And I found one of the person that I was following wrote a blog post about how she had gotten a bunch of hate mail because she had a bunch of grammatical errors in her blog posts. And I was like, would you like some help? I know basic enough, like spelling and grammar things. Let me help you. And she's like, yeah, that'd be great. And I just kind of expanded from there. I started working with just photographers because a lot of them were very creative,

but not very structural and kind of built out a, a solid business in that for the first, let's see, nine months or so. And then my life completely changed because my husband had a massive stroke, which obviously at the time, well, so now it's terrible. But I look back at that and I'm like, okay, this was actually a blessing in disguise. Because it allowed us. Because of the disability that we were able to get, I was able to take a different type of job because I was still making project manager salary at front desk career. Yeah. And so nobody's going to hire you anywhere else at that pay range with this is what your experience has been for the last year.

And so the disability actually allowed me to find a part-time job so that I could build my business and still make sure that, you know, we had food. and all of these new medical bills that were coming through. And so I started working for Apple retail up here in Portland and was growing my business. I eventually got a second part-time job for timing-wise to help pay for massive medical bills that were coming in. And it was for a photography software company. And so I then transitioned. So at one point in my life, I was working those two part time jobs. So I would get up in the morning and I'd start working at like 6 o'clock.

And then I would have about an hour transition time from like usually about one or two o'clock where I would stop that job, get on the train, go into Portland and work until 10 p.m. Oh yeah. And at this time I had a two-year-old as well. And I was a mom and a caregiver. And thankfully, we lived in the same apartment complex that my brother did. So he was able to come in and kind of help take care of my husband as needed. And so it was a lot. It was, and I realized, I realized now that that pressure and that need in my life is what pushed me to get to be to the place that I am now.

It took a couple years, a couple really big hiccups. I did end up working, stopped working for Apple retail because they wouldn't allow me to adjust my hours. So I was like, okay, cool. So I worked mostly full-time for the software company that I was working at and was able to grow my community and my client list a little bit more. And then I got laid off from that job. And I was like, okay, now what am I going to do? I don't have this really dedicated and it wasn't quite to the point where I could make my bill payments. And then I learned that Oregon had a thing called self-employment unemployment.

And it says, you know, if you're proving that, hey, you're working enough to build your business will give you the unemployment payments instead of having to show proof of like, here's, you know, so many hours that you're putting into job search. And that is really what allowed me to concentrate on what I was doing, take care of my husband and my kid, and grow to where I could do this full time. But it's a very unique situation and it's not the path that I would have picked for sure. But I'm really, I'm really lucky that it has worked out the way that it has. And the thing you have to remember is that you are who you are now because of that experience. Yeah. You know, the good and the bad of all our lives adds up to you right now. And maybe you wouldn't be in the great position you are if you hadn't gone through all that.

It's true because I definitely would have been so much more scared. I doubt I would have been able to get that push to be able to be fully self-employed, being able to, you know, work from home every day, work with the clients that I want to and the people that I adore and expand and get to go on these incredible work trips because of what I get to do. I just am really lucky and blessed to be in the space that I'm at now. If you could go back and give previous you some advice, what would you say? Or somebody more generally maybe who is in the thick of something like feels like life is lifeing you and you're not sure how it's going to turn out.

how would you recommend or what advice you give us someone who's trying to navigate that? Yeah. I think the first thing that I would do is if you can afford it, get into therapy earlier because a lot of the coping mechanisms that you might produce are not going to be as helpful long term. I've been in therapy for several years now and I'm finally to the point where I'm like, oh, it's not my fault. I didn't, you know, this stuff didn't happen to me.

because I made plans, you know, that sort of kind of like self-gilt, um, that kind of working through and all of the working my kid is now 17, um, and all of the time, effort and energy that I had to put into making sure that, you know, I could pay my bills, but then also try and be the best parent that I could be. Um, and the best caregiver. Uh, I'm really, you know, I'm, I am thankful that I was able to pull the time that I could. with them, but I definitely know there are some missed opportunities. And that's, you know, something that you just kind of have to acknowledge and move past and something that you're very conscious with and those choices that you make and that there is no right way to do anything.

That sometimes whatever you can do is going to be the right choice, the right option. and making a decision is better than just letting life happen. Yeah, being at the wheel. Yeah, yeah. Even if you can't control the weather and how, you know, stormy or rainy or whatever, you can, you know, adjust the speed or adjust the angle that you turn a wet corner. And I don't know, I'm digging deeper into this metaphor, but. And now, having gone through that, you've got this business where people are coming to you and saying, help me, Kathy, Juan Kennedy, you're my only hope.

And I've bumped into you. When I was a lawyer, I think some of my people I worked with were working with you. And over the years, I've seen, because you also helped out of relay, you do bring a calmness to your work that I think is very beneficial for your customers and your clients. But that doesn't come easy. No, no, it's definitely an active choice that I make pretty much every day. In the middle, in the thick of stressful situations, I really am proud of how I can handle it because, oh, it's not having to deal with a, you know, a 20-month-old when the ER and the EMTs are coming and taking care of your unresponsive husband. Sure, sure. You know, so like this, oh, this is, this is not a life, death, life or death situation,

putting together a proposal to present to a big client. Whatever, I could, let's breathe through this. Like, let's, let's work on this. And I do like that I'm able to kind of meet people where they're at. It's been a lot of work to make sure that I can help my clients kind of acknowledge where they're at and recognize and be like, okay, this is, this might be a difficult part right now, but like, we can get through it. Whatever you need to do to adjust or correct or change things, like, you can do this because you've asked for help. And that's the biggest thing that it's hard as

as a small business owner to ask for help where you don't know that you need it. And a lot of times the people that I start working with, I'm helping them in an area that they didn't even know that they needed help with. You and I are both big Disney fans. And a lot of people don't know. Like World War I, Walt Disney, he was too young to join. So he lied. And he got in and they made him an ambulance driver. And I don't know.

I think he was like 16 or something. And so imagine what an ambulance driver in World War I sees driving around those trenches of all those young men. And then you fast forward to his career. And he took so many risks. He went bankrupt two or three times before he was successful. And even after he's successful, he put it all on the line three or four times. He mortgaged his house to build Disneyland. Like he was already a millionaire.

He didn't need to do that. But he put everything on the line again. I attribute it to that job. I feel like when you see how precious life is, you're not afraid to take some risks. And people listening to me right now. sometimes those bad experiences are what give you the wings you need. And I feel like your life is another example of that. Yeah.

But you also get this front row seat because you're working with all these people trying to get their businesses going. And, you know, this show is called Focused. And I think a lot of people trying to make a go of things have a huge problem staying focused. There's a lot of reasons, you know, technological, but there's also just a reason of it's hard. And you're sitting there watching all these small businesses and medium-sized businesses, owners go through this. What are your takeaways? Where do you see the focus challenge for people today in 2026? Yeah, the biggest thing is a lot of people feel like they should be doing something.

Oh, I should be posting on Instagram. Oh, I should be, you know, writing blog posts. Oh, I should be filming videos. Oh, I should be only working with these types of clients. And the fact of the matter is that especially nowadays and especially in this world that we live in, people book services and hire from people. They want to know who you are. What you provide is secondary because anyone can get, you know, a widget from anywhere. You know, these options are available all over the place. People really want to connect to the person that

they're buying something from. And what that means is that you need to be yourself and authentic as possible. And if that means that, hey, you are not going, you should not be spending time sending invoices because money stresses you out. Okay, find somebody else that can take care of that for you. There's people that I talk with that don't like doing their bookkeeping because they want to know, okay, what is the, is my budget taking care of? Is the amount of money in my bank account? And sometimes, you know, having a separate bank account, like several of my clients will do the, kind of a little bit of the Dave's, Dave Ramsey cash thing, but in the, uh, bank account version. So all of the money goes into one. And then we set up an automatic transfer of

like, this is your money that you can spend and make any decisions. And this other account is for, you know, all of this stuff that's pre-scheduled. I know where it's going to come from. I know what it's going to do. This is the money that you can play with. This is the money that, oh, if you want to buy a new widget yourself, like, great, this is you can do it. If you want to do a training, if you want to, you know, whatever you need to do. And they just know, that the main stuff is going to get taken care of. But they don't want to overthink it because if they overthinking it, they start spiraling and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to, you know, hit my goals. Great. Let me take that off your plate.

Or someone doesn't want to be in their email box because email, as we all know, is a black hole. It can be so overwhelming. You can be like, oh, let me just check my email really quick. And then six hours later, you're like, oh, yeah, I was going to do this other thing. It's easy enough for someone that is not directly linked. So I have email boxes for clients that I manage. It's not super busy. It's not a whole lot of emails, but it's enough to where someone was getting overwhelmed. And it's like, oh, let me just take care of it. Here's the systems, the SOPs that we've made for like, this is how these things work. If there's a random question that, that somebody doesn't know, great, well, I'll ask you. But you don't need to go into your email

and figure out these things because I'm just going to take care of it. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to think about email unless you're sending an email to a new something. Like, let's just take that off of your plate. And it's important, though, because some people love doing email. And that's what they want to keep a hold of. They want to have that personal touch. And, you know, that makes them feel good. And that's great. Because because that's what they love. And so a lot of times I will work with clients that are like, I need help, but I'm not sure what I want to do. And I walk them through what I call a delegation matrix. And it's like, what are the things that you are really, really good at and love to do

versus the things that you are terrible at and hate to do? And then there's the things, what do you love to do, but you're bad at, and the things that you hate to do and you're good at. And all of the things in that in that box of I hate to do this and I'm terrible at, let's find somebody to do that for you. Doesn't have to be me. I'm okay with like, please, if I'm not the right person, let's find you somebody else to do this. That is, I have no problem with that. But like finding somebody that fits with you that's in your time zone that you want

or works the way that you want or whatever can fit your budget. like let's get you that help to take care of those things in that bottom quadrant. But you can't do that if you don't know what you do. What do you do all day? Whether you're, you know, making a little handwritten note or you're going through and you're just typing, oh, this is what I think I did today or you're recording. There's a bunch of different time tracking apps that will just be like, here's the websites that you were on, here's the software that you used, whatever it needs.

to figure out what the heck you do all day, then we can figure out what someone else can take off your plate. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Keeper Security. Between work, banking, and shopping, you've got a lot of logins to keep track of. Keeper stores everything securely in one place and organizes it so you can log in anywhere within seconds. Keeper is a password manager that creates strong, unique passwords for all your accounts,

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Keeperssecurity.com slash focused. Our thanks to Keeper Security for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. Kathy, one of the things I always worry about when I'm working on like solving these admin problems is getting too clever in the system. Like a lot of what you do, once you get that data from your client is you figure out what's the system to deal with this. Are they going to pay you to read the email for them? Are they going to make some kind of automation or go offshore to get somebody else to help

them out? But I feel like for a lot of small businesses, a lot of the risk, especially for people who listen to a show like this, is to get some. hung up in the skill building, the system building that you don't actually do the work. Is that a real problem for you? Or do you see that? What I tend to see actually is people get so overwhelmed with setting up an SOP that they forget that really all it needs to be is a loom video of here's what I do. That can be transcript.

It doesn't need to be in this beautiful, you know, leather, bound book that sits on your shelf that you can pull through and flip out, like flip over the pages or in this expensive software program that does it. Like all it needs to be is that information somewhere. And if it is, you know, a transcript that AI pulls from a loom video that you're recording or a voice recording that you're just like, oh, I'm doing this right now. Here's how I do this. if it allows somebody, there's two different ways that you can talk about this.

One, if you get hit by a bus, can somebody run your business? I like to do, if you decide to take a sabbatical for a year, can your business be run by someone else? It's a little bit more positive, a little bit more, you know, optimistic. But either way, can somebody do what absolutely needs to happen? Now, obviously, this is not taking you out of the equation. So if you are making products, you are the one that probably should be designing those, you know, whatever it is that you need to create or, I don't know, writing a book or one of

a manual or videos, content creation. Obviously, that kind of thing cannot be replaced from what you can provide. But can the support emails on how people need to buy those? Can publishing? Can you, you know, any comments on them? the content creation. Like, can you get those managed by somebody else so that when you're gone for a year, it still has a human that's kind of looking and touching at things and making sure that it's happening? If that, like transferring that over into any sort of information,

whether it's a notion or an obsidian or an Apple Notes or it literally does not matter what format it's in as long as it exists. And a lot of times, people get extremely overwhelmed with the idea of doing it, let alone starting it. Like, what if I decide, like, what if I start in Apple Notes and I decide that I want to put in an obsidian? Okay. Because guess what? You've got that information.

Yeah. That can get imported, I'm sure, into obsidian and, like, here, you know, in Markdown or whatever format, it can be transitioned into a place and a location that you want it to. But if it does not exist, it cannot help. A risk for me is just the opposite. I want to build the fancy machine because that way I don't have to do the work. Right, which is fine and that's great, but do you do it? Do you set that time apart?

Do you allow the errors and the, oh, this hiccup, let me go in and fix it? Do you add that tweaking to make sure that it's doing the way that it needs? to happen. How do you think about building these systems for people that in a way that they are a little bit tool agnostic? Like you mentioned, all this lives in Apple Notes. We can bring it into obscene. Because that's obviously where it should be. Why do you think I said that statement? I just. You get the point, though. Like, how do you make it sort of bulletproof, future proof, whatever? I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that you can't. There's no way to know, what's going to happen in the next five, 10 years. And there will always be a way to translate something

from one thing to another. Whether it's manual or automatic, there is a way. But if it does not exist, you cannot put it into a different tool. And so whatever, so a lot of times people are like, oh, let me, you know, put this into my really complex. Like I've, I've mapped this out. Here are the post-it notes with the stickers. you know, and the red string coming through it, but they've had that on their wall for three years, that doesn't help anybody. It really is not, that's not healthy because it's not going to move you forward. It's not going to solve the problems that you're needing it for.

It might look really cool, but if it doesn't exist, then it does nothing. And so a lot of times helping business owners get over that hump and allow them to have the permission to just get it done, even if it's not perfect, is a lot of what I end up doing. Yeah, I feel like there's a temptation, especially if you are technically inclined to be like, oh, I can do this with this app, and then it can connect to this app, and it can connect to this app, and isn't this great? I have this Zapier automation that does 50 different things. And I imagine some of that stuff you look at and you're like, why are we doing this?

Because we can. And it's like, you know what, if that is, if that's the decision that's, somebody makes too. If they want to do that, great. Cool. We'll work with that. But let's make sure that there are backups in place and double checks and confirming that the Zapier is actually working in all of those 50 steps because if it misses step 22 and that means 23 to 50 aren't working, how are you going to know? Like, how does that come into play so that you can make sure that it doesn't ruin your entire life because step 22 did something wrong? And then I'll also what is the real job to be done here?

I imagine that's a big part of what you did too. Yes. Like we've got this workflow, but what are we actually trying to accomplish here? Like why? You know, yeah, if you have a reason for it,

great, that's awesome, fantastic. But I am going to ask you, why are you doing this? I think another trap people fall into is like the capability versus the usability. Like I want something that does this,

this and this. But then stop and look back. How many of those features? are you actually using? And you might be shocked to find that you've built a very complex system where you only are using 10% of it. And it's a big wasted effort and it's more brittle and there's just a lot of things there. Yeah. But here's the thing to remember too is that if you have done that and you have set that up and you decide to change the option, it's not a failure. Yeah. It has not, it has let you love.

learn something and grow from that, it is not a failure. Same with if you decide that you have this business and it's running and then you decide that it's not working, you have not failed. Your business worked for the time that it did and that is also a success. So you don't need to kick yourself because your situation has changed and you need to, you want to go back to a W-2 job. Maybe, you know, you needed different benefits or, you know, a move or something. There's so many reasons that are external to the choices that you make that can affect what you're doing. And making adjustments and tweaks to your life to make it work the best that it needs to work is the way you don't have to explain to anybody. And if somebody asks you, you can lie and you can say,

oh, you know, whatever reason that you want to give, just nobody, nobody really cares if they're going to ask you a terrible mean question, just like I'm sure anyone that has is young and been married or not married. And it's like, when are you getting married? What are you having babies? It's cool to say none of your business. Or make up a lie that makes them feel a little bit bad about themselves. David, who is that author who you mentioned like, I must decline for secret reasons? It was E.B. White. E.B. White.

Ah, okay. Yeah. I love that. That's great. Because he was getting so much mail because of his book. And that was his magic answer. I must decline for secret reasons. Oh, I love that.

All right. I'm going to add that to my list of things that I use. I can't tell you for secret reasons. Yeah. One of the things that I appreciate about the conduit podcast is that that you have these check-ins where you have this seems like sort of arbitrary, loosely held, green, yellow, red system. Yeah.

Did I do the thing? And people take it in a bunch of different directions, but you are not afraid to share about when you don't do the thing. Yeah. And I'm kind of curious, what advice or like what's your perspective as you sort through that? I mean, we just got done talking about, you know, I'm not doing the thing. it's okay to pull the plug and go do something else. But like how do you make sense of that in your own head?

Or how do you like cope with with that? Yeah. I think the most important part in this is that nobody is perfect every time. People are going to make mistakes. People are going to change their goals. And if you've tried to do something and you're like, I'm going to make a really concert like concentrated effort to get something done. and it's not getting done, there's probably a reason for it.

And you don't have to necessarily know what that reason is to know that, okay, maybe this isn't a priority or it's not the priority that I thought it was going to be. And accepting and acknowledging that everybody has this happen. Nobody does everything that they want to do. It's just not possible. And you're going to make mistakes. You're going to try something and not finish it. Or you're going to try something and fail.

And there's something real about that, that, you know, conduit, I feel like, is really unique in the fact that we talk a lot about our failures more than all of our successes a lot of times. and oh, we've had to change something because of X, Y, or C. And our community is really is not huge. And I kind of like that. People are always welcome if you want to come visit relay.fm slash conduit, like come and join the conductors. But it allows you to feel, to acknowledge your vulnerabilities. And I think it really helps people recognize that.

what makes you human is also what makes you special and that not being perfect, nobody is perfect. And really recognizing and pointing out that, hey, I messed up on this. And guess what? That's okay. Because someone else did it too. Someone else tried to do this and they didn't succeed. And I think that's something really powerful in humanity that we don't really talk about a whole lot. Yeah, that's a recurring theme for us here, too. I think too many productivity shows try to, you know, the hosts try to portray themselves as like some perfect specimen of productivity. And it's unrealistic. And I don't think it's true. I don't, I think they're lying, frankly. We all make mistakes. We all are struggling with this stuff. And it's a journey. So long as you keep growing. Quarterly, we have something we call a system check because we wanted to acknowledge the fact that how you do something. something changes over time, and that's also okay. A lot of times people are like, oh, this is the best way to do something.

If you're not doing it like this, you're not optimizing for life, blah, blah, blah. And so we talk about, okay, here's how I get my stuff done. And we do it quarterly because stuff changes. It might be similar. It's like mostly the same, but we've made one tweak to kind of make adjustments. And that's the one episode that we really talk about the actual tools that we use. So here's, you know, this pen that I use. This is the software that I've used.

This is what has changed. Like, this is what I do to make sure I get the reminders that I need, et cetera, et cetera. And by having it segmented into just a quarterly thing, we're not feeling like, oh, we have to change everything every week to prove like we're really productive because, look, I completely rechanged my system. Look at how cool this one is going to be. This one's going to fix everything and, you know, do all of the work that I need to do myself.

Are you familiar with the Museum of Failures? Yes. Okay. I just heard about this. It's pretty phenomenal. It's basically a museum with all the stuff that people have done. It's been a complete failure. So like Apple is in there.

They have the Pippin video game system as a failure. And there's a bunch of like big name stuff that's in there. But I have not seen it myself. But I heard that as you walk out of the Museum of Failure, there's like this giant wall with all these sticky notes and people like grab a sticky note and they write something that, you know, it was a failure that they had. They stick it on the wall. One of the examples I saw was I farted in yoga. Something like that. But it's, it's, I can imagine that be a pretty powerful thing as you walk through that as you exit the

museum just to see all of the ways that everybody fails every single day. And you're right. People don't, don't talk about it. I think it'd be a lot healthier if we did. And every failure that you have has taught you something, whether you know it right now or not, it had like how many there was, gosh, I want to say it was like, I don't know, Thomas Edison or something, the light bulb, you know, oh, it took you, I don't know, 474 times to make this. And it's like, yeah, but 473 times before that is what taught me like to get to this point. Nobody's going to do something correct the first time. kind of goes back to my earlier point that and that makes you who you are. Yeah, exactly. That builds the foundation to get to something that can be successful. And it might look nothing like you planned because by golly, when I got married 21 years ago, I did not think that this is what my life would look like. And it is. And this is where I'm at. And I'm really happy to be where I'm at and feel really lucky. But also, I don't want to do it again.

I've done it once. I'm good. Something I've always wanted to talk to you about. With your job, you're helping all these people out. And I had a similar job as a business attorney for 30-ish years. And I found that for me, I experienced what I call the empathy crisis. And I know that's a term that's already kind of in vogue. And it mentions that people don't feel empathetic. But I had just the opposite problem.

Every time a client came near the problem, I took it personally if I couldn't get solved, even if it was something completely beyond my control. And I got myself too wrapped around the axle on it. And when I left that career, one of the biggest release for me was to not carry that baggage with me anymore. Do you deal with that with your job? Because I could see you falling into that. Yeah, definitely.

I'm a very empathetic person. I feel things very deeply. And it's, it's become a, like, a conscious choice to, by supporting other people and allowing me to be there where I can help them, it gives me a little bit of relief in that, I've been able to, you know, whatever terrible thing has happened, I'm able to release. I'm able to relieve a little bit of pressure. Even like if their business has changed and they can't work with me anymore, that's okay because I was able to support them at the time that I was.

And I feel really lucky that I was able to be a part of that journey, however it is. Or if they've graduated and they've hired a full-time person to do what I was doing for them. And, you know, I've been doing this for 16 years now. I've had people whose spouses have died who have gone through divorces, who've lost children, who have given birth and, like, changed and moved across the country and moved to different countries. And all of these things are kind of what makes humans, humans. And embracing and enjoying a little bit of that, even if it's hard, allows me to make sure that I'm not losing my humanity. in trying to make things optimized as much as possible. It does, there are definitely some days that are harder than others.

I would be lying if I said I haven't cried for other people. It definitely hits difficult, but it's also a part of, it's a part of life and it's a part of joy to be a part of somebody's family and their life. And I feel really honored to be in that role. Yeah, I used to tell myself, and this was pretty effective for me, just the, look, they're hiring you to solve the problem not to worry about it. Yeah. And actually worrying about it gets in the way of solving it.

So just remind yourself of that. But that was a real challenge for me going through this. In terms of your client evolutions, just wait until, because this happened to me, where you represent the parents and then suddenly you're representing the children, the parents are retiring and they're running the business. And like you're the intergenerational service provider. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's scary.

It'll happen if you stick with it. Yeah. I don't doubt. I don't doubt it. And it'll be great because, you know, that talk about a level of trust. Yeah. You're helping somebody and their children are trusting you too. Like, that's pretty great.

It's different and not different for everybody. There tends to be something that somebody will put a lot of personal concentration on. Like, oh, I need to make sure that I'm touching every part of this onboarding process. Because if not, I am going to feel disconnected from my clients. And so there's times that I will like ask the questions. I am really proud of the way that I can communicate with my clients to figure out stuff that they may not realize or they may not know that this is an issue for them. Obviously, at our first meeting, I'm not like, hey, you're doing this wrong. You should not be talking about this.

But over time, as I learn how somebody works or more importantly, how they take feedback or, more importantly, how they take feedback. how they take commentary and are able to answer questions. We're able to work through and be like, okay, this is something that's really important for you, but it does not actually directly impact the stuff that only you can do. Let's find out why so that we can help make adjustments. Whether or not it ever actually happens,

it's not necessarily my problem. Like if I want to try and take something off of your plate, like I will bring it up, you know, every quarter, hey, you're still not having me help with support emails. And I know that you're getting a lot. And I would really, you know, appreciate being able to help you with that. So you don't have to stop working on making this widget to email somebody that's having a problem because it's probably going to be a problem that you've helped before, which means we probably can have, you know, a log. whether in a text expander snippet or in obsidian or in an Apple note where we can just copy and paste and put that information into it, you do not need to be the one to touch the email to get it fixed, to get it solved.

How often do you run into the problem where the person refuses to let go of a task like that? And what do you do to convince them that they don't have to be the one touching it? I would say more often than not, there is something usually for a client. And I've had, I would say probably a 60-40 success rate in being able to eventually take it off their place. For example, I help Stephen Hackett with Relay. I just recently, the reason that this was my example was because just at the beginning of this year, I started taking the membership support emails off of his plate. I've been working with him for seven years, six or seven years, six seven years.

And just now I'm able to like take that off his plate. So like sometimes it takes a little bit longer than others. But now the other day I was talking to him and he was like, man, I haven't thought about this in a while. And it just happens. And everyone's happy. And if I have a question, I can just ask him, like, hey, how do I do this? Fine. Great.

Let's fix that problem. But he doesn't have to think about it anymore. And that's great. Do you ever run into the opposite scenario where people are like, I'm paying you to figure this stuff out? And you're like, you got to give me something to work with here? Yes. And I will definitely, like, I'm not afraid to be like, hey, I need more words.

You need to tell me a little bit more. Like if this is not what you want it to look like, that's cool. Great. Let's fix this. Like, if this is not what you want, why? What, like a thick skin that I've developed is kind of like, hey, I, this is not my job. Like, your job, your business is your business. And I am here to help and support that.

I do my best not to feel emotionally attached if, say, I have a client that has terrible design taste and I make choices. And I'm like, hey, this could look better. No, I would like to use papyrus for my text. Oh, it hurts. It hurts my design soul so much. But okay, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And, And yeah, that's pretty unique. You also mentioned back at the beginning of the episode that the ADHD and deep focus or deep work not really being a thing that works for you. So what's the balance there between not being able to engage in deep work, which is sort of upheld as like the holy grail of focus, right? Yeah. But that's not, I feel like you need focus for deep work, but maybe you don't need deep work

to achieve focus. So you want to unpack that a little bit? Like how do you stay focused in your day to day when you have all these people who are all these different things coming from all different places? How do you focus on I got to do this thing right now? Yeah. I think the important thing to know is that not every project that you work on needs that deep focus doesn't need that deep work.

Like if I'm sitting and I am, I mean, so I guess this is a good enough place to put this. I have recently started a YouTube channel to try and help and support people in different ways. And part of that involves being brave enough to record and actually publish the things. We're getting there. But part of what that means is I need to write my scripts. And that is something that does need a little bit of deep focus in there. Because I have a harder time working through words and making sure that I'm missing, that I'm heading, like hitting all these points, I need to make sure that, okay, I can't

be doing anything else. Let me put my stuff on Do Not Disturb. I'm going to, sometimes I'll take, I will go and I'll, you know, let me get my notebook. Let me put on paper what I'm going to put or my iPad and I'm going to say. and I'm going to type and I'm going to work on this. Going to have specific music. Either Endel is going to like just have this like focus moment stuff. But I know that it's going to be very Pomodoro type style where I'm going to shorter periods of time.

I'm going to have 20 minutes where I'm going to be do not disturb, not talking to anybody, whatever. Nothing that happens in that time except for possibly with family is going to be important enough. Obviously, I'm not going to do. that if I am working on a project for somebody else. I have tried time blocking in the past where I'm like, okay, Monday from 8 to 12, I'm going to work on this client. That was a massive failure because so many of my things were dependent on reactive work for me that it failed miserably. And that's okay because that works really well for my brain. So not everybody. can do this kind of a thing. A lot of times people, you know, talk about email. Oh, I check my email once a day.

If I do that, my brain is constantly sparkling with like, oh, what am I missing? Did I miss something for somebody? Is somebody having a bad time with their project? Now, could I do it, you know, once a day, once a week? Yeah. But I would not be able to focus on anything else. So I always have my email box open. and then most of the time it's going to take less than five minutes. So I don't need to have my emails push to Omnifocus so that I can have this task manager and track it and make sure that I get through and do it. I can just switch on my timery. It takes 30 seconds to two minutes to reply to an email.

It's done. So if something is going to take less than five minutes, I'll usually do it right then unless I'm in that kind of focus moment. I mean, it seems to me, Kathy, like your ninja skill is actually deep focus enabler. Like you go to people and you take the stuff off their desk that's getting in the way of their deep focus. So I'm kind of fascinated with this YouTube thing. And for you, for someone who's so good at opening up deep pockets for other people to now face that in yourself. We're going to talk about that in the more in the deep focus episode today because I have questions.

but yeah. Oh gosh. Keep me posted on this. Yeah, I will. I will. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Incogni. Go to incogny.com slash focus and take your personal data back with Incogny. Use code focused at that link and get 60% off an annual plan. Data brokers are in the business of collecting personal information, which can be an

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Take your personal data back with incogny, use the code focused via the link in the show notes and get 60% off an annual plan. Check it out now at incogny. com slash focus and our thanks to Incogni for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. All right, Kathy, we usually like to finish up the show talking about new and shiny objects we bought and books for reading. Are you game? I'm game. Let's do it.

All right. You were going to, in the outline, you wrote something down for your shiny new object, which has had me looking at it throughout the episode saying, I wonder what this means. So I am a big analog girly. I use a bullet journal for my morning planning tracking. I don't do anything super fancy. It's just a weekly spread. I have a monthly spread that is like just here's a memory of what happened this day.

So kind of like a five-minute journal or whatever, but in the same thing that I do my work on. And something about how my brain works, writing is really helpful. Like that is, that's the way that I, that I do it. And so one of the things, so I do have all of my scripts and stuff in Notion. That's where I'm, I'm doing a lot of the typing. But there's a lot of planning and that sort of stuff that I need to do separately outside of my normal notebook and outside of like Notion and stuff. And so I got a brand new notebook that if you're on the YouTube, you can see it has a unicorn on the front. And so, I saw this at my favorite notebook company, notebook therapy, and I was like, yep, this is a sign. I am going to buy it. So I just recently got it. I barely opened it.

It's got like rainbow holographic foil on the sides, sparkly unicorn on the front. And it gives me so much joy. And I'm really excited to be able to write down the things. that I need to write down without it affecting any of my other work. Nice. Love it. There's something about a new notebook, a new app, like to help make the process more fun for you. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. What about you, Mike? What's new in your desk? Well, I have been traveling a little bit and I've been bringing my DGI Asmo Pocket 3 with me because I have to record some shorts and things like that. But the DJI Osma Pocket 3 is a great piece of kit with the world's worst case. It has this thing that like snaps in and the gimbal will like get hit and move and I'm always

afraid it's going to get scratched. I cannot just throw it in my bag like that. So I was super nervous about bringing it with and I'm like, I got to find something better. I did find something better. And it's actually pretty cheap. It is the, I don't know how you pronounce this. S-T-R-T-R-C. Is that start-R-C or star track?

I don't know. But it's a gimbal protective cover for the Osmo Pocket 3. It's a little plastic thing that snaps over the gimbal head. So it completely protects the Osmo Pocket. And the screen side actually gets placed against the one, I'm doing a bad job of describing this. There's like one little piece that's kind of like a canoe that you can put it in. And then at the very top there's a piece that snaps down over the top of the gimbal. So it doesn't snap down across the entire thing, which keeps it nice, small and compact. But it protects everything that you absolutely need to protect on the DGI Osbo Pocket 3. So the screen is like against this felt thing. It's not going to get turned. It's not going to get scratched. The gimbal is completely protected. And now I finally feel like I can travel with this thing, which is kind of the whole point. of the DJI Asma Pocket 3. So amazing.

Yeah, it's like 10 bucks off of Amazon. A lot of people like try to understand that camera because like it in the caliber of an iPhone camera, but it's not your iPhone. Where do you see the lines drawn on using that one versus your iPhone video camera? Well, for the, I'm trying to get into more, more of the short form video. So for that, like I'm talking into the camera and it feels really weird to whole. hold my iPhone and take like a selfie video. But for whatever reason, the Osmo Pocket feels much more natural doing that, that sort of thing.

I'm still not very good at it. It also, I had a shiny new object not too long ago with that slider. So it actually can attach to that slider and I can, that slider fits in my backpack so I can bring it to the co-working space and shoot B-roll if I need it, which is pretty fantastic. Yeah. And I just love the auto track that's on it. That gives me the confidence to actually shoot video that isn't going to end up being complete garbage when I go back later. And I would add one more thing is the audio is better because if you get their wireless mic, it just pairs and you don't have to think about it.

That used to be such a hard thing to do. And now you get really good audio or something like that. Nice. I bought a thing too. I bought a new printer in 2026. I keep looking at all these pictures. You know, my kids are, they've grown. up on me basically. And I like looking at pictures now, but I realized looking at them on the phone

isn't quite enough. So I wanted a good printer that can print images. I landed on the Canon selfie CP-1500. It's a photo printer. I've been really happy with it. And I find myself printing pictures now. And I really like it. And it's wireless. I mean, they've come a long way. And it doesn't do large format, but I don't need large format. It does the small ones just fine. And they look beautiful. And if you are somebody out there who's just got all your pictures on your phone, you might want to think about this. It's kind of nice having prints around the house.

I was actually, I've been looking for a lot of the dance photography that I do is at competitions where people, I take thousands of photos. Yeah. And I put them on a gallery and people can order them either pay a download or they can print them themselves or order it through my lab. Your print service. Yeah. But I've always looked at the option of, oh, here's how you could do it.

Like, get a printout right at the competition. And over the past, you know, I've been photographing for almost 20 years now. They were always so expensive and so massive and not that great. But this is definitely price appropriate to give a try. Yeah. Yeah. And they're really nice. And like I said, they're small, it'll fit in your bag.

And I don't know if it'll be up to the quality that you need or how well it'll do printing thousands of them. But the, well, and I wouldn't be printing thousands. It would just be, oh, here somebody wants a specific photo that I took day of. I kind of like it. And I'm going to start using it. I'm going to start hanging them and just, you know, put them up on the wall. I love that. Just different thoughts around the house.

Yeah. Amazing. What are you reading these days? Who wants to go first? we'll let Kathy go first. All right. I am rereading the Wheel of Time. I'm currently on book 7, which is a crown of swords.

And I'm doing this for a particular reason. A Wheel of Time Kickstarter, desktop role-playing game, tabletop game. Literally, today, as we're recording this on June 23rd, just finished its Kickstarter run for a month, where it raised $1.1 million. because of my placement as Dragamount and in the Wheel of Time community, I've been really lucky to connect with a lot of Wheel of Time people.

And one of those is the team that's making it. And there is a very good chance that I will be part of the group of nerds, shall we say, that will be supporting and making sure that the information in the, the visuals meets the canon from the books. Yeah. So it's been a couple of years since I've read them and I've only read the final book twice. So I was like, I should probably read them again. So. And honestly, Kathy, you never need a reason to read a good book.

It's true. It's true. Especially I have it all in one big Kindle file. Yeah. And that's just easy because I can just keep going. although I did have to remember where I was at, like, story-wise, to remember, like, to be able to look up which book it was. But we had just finished Demise Wells. And so that was easy enough to recognize.

I reread the Lord of the Rings a couple of years ago. And I felt like I think that needs to be like a 10-year thing for me. Like every time, just read it again. It's a good idea. Yeah. How about you, Mike? So there's a story behind my book. The book is How to Try Again by Steve Cam.

and Steve Cam, do either of you know who he is? No. Doesn't ring a bell. He's been around for a while. He's the founder of a company called Nerd Fitness, which has been in business for 15 years. Wow. I ran into him at a Craft and Commerce a couple weeks ago.

And he had a book coming out, you know, how to try again. Once I actually met him and I'm like, hey, we need to connect. because productivity books were cut from the same cloth. So he actually gave me an advanced copy of his book. It is now available to the public. That's actually where I found out about the Museum of Failures. His very first chapter is basically about all the failures that he's experienced. He's fired himself from his own company twice.

Oh, wow. And yeah, so like the whole book, I'm not very far into it yet, but it's a little bit of a self-deprecating, easy, fun read about, you know, how do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again when things don't go your way. Oh, I love that. So you're not your standard productivity book, and I think that's a good thing. Yeah. Add it to my list.

And I'm back on the morality of happiness. I think I talked about this one in a prior episode, so I won't go to a great length, but it's just talking about virtue-based ethic systems in ancient Greece and their relevance to today. And I really enjoy it. It's a very thick book. And I read it for a while. Then I'll go read another book and then come back to it.

And I'm making my way through it. It's a good book, though. I really enjoy it, but it's an acquired taste. Julia Annis, by the way, is the author. Morality of happiness. All right, gang. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find it relay.com slash focused.

Kathy, where do people find you if they need to get some special unicorn help? Yeah, you can visit the unicornsidekick.com or if you want to see everything else that I do, you can visit Kathy Campbell.com. I thank our sponsors today. That's our friends over at Incogni and Keeper. Stick around for deep focus. If you're a deep focus supporter, you get the ad for extended version of the show. We're going to be talking to Kathy today all about this YouTube experience that she's having.

Looking forward to digging in on that. and we'll see you next time.